Justine Greening grubs around for grammar school support after disastrous consultation

[noblegiraffe]

Despite the grammar school consultation only closing recently, the results not yet being published, and many high-profile education organisations condemning the plans, Justine Greening has decided to try to whip up Tory support for grammar schools by sending an email to Conservative party members and backers asking for them to support a grammar school campaign.

Ignoring all the evidence that this is a stupid and costly mistake, with real implications for parents who want to send their children to comprehensive schools and for disadvantaged children, she has described how 'popular' they are with parents, who perhaps aren't as well informed on education issues as the organisations and professionals who publicly responded to the consultation.

schoolsweek.co.uk/government-launches-pro-grammar-schools-campaign-just-days-after-official-consultation-closes/

Is this pigheaded or just desperate?

Also, the grammar schools are starting to look a bit 'tired' and the facilities at the private schools are getting better and better.

Our local state grammar schools are certainly "tired" as they didn't sell their souls to access the grants/subsidies of the last 10-20 years - their main building is condemned due to leaky roofs etc and has to be moth-balled.

There's a comp just over our county border in a small village - it has come from nowhere on the back of "ticking boxes" to get millions of state/EU funding. Theatre, sports halls, all weather pitches, computers on every desk in every room - you name it, they have it.

Despite all the money thrown at it, the comp is still under-performing, despite it being in a leafy, rich county. It's got a horrid reputation for bullying and rolls are falling! Staff are leaving like rats off a sinking ship. This isn't in a deprived area!!

The grammar, on the other hand, remains popular, over subscribed, has virtually no bullying, yet is in a much more deprived area. It's clearly grossly underfunded, looks awful to an outsider, but the kids are happy and successful there!

My point is that money is no guarantee of success. Huge amounts have been pumped in to build new schools, but some have still failed.

as well you know.

Actually, I don't know. I don't really pay any attention to where posters send their kids to school and all this talk of London schools is totally meaningless to me. Where a poster sends their child is rather irrelevant to any argument IMO, just like 'would you send your kid to a grammar' is not going to get the same answer as 'should grammars exist?'. Everyone works within the system that exists, not the one they want to exist.

Let's bin partially selective and faith schools too, btw.

"has virtually no bullying"

It probably helps that the grammar has

• no children with behavioural problems
• almost no poor children
• almost no children with significant SEN
• a cohort of unusually committed parents

People love comparing 'leafy' comps with grammars, to the detriment of the comps. My dc's go to a comp in a road where no house costs less than 2 million. They still have lots of kids who have major behavioural problems, lots of challenging behaviour in the classrooms (except in the top and bottom sets).

Teachers dream of having a class full of highly motivated children. That's what you get in a grammar. It's what you don't always get in a comp. Not the teachers' fault or the schools'!

If it was down to me I'd pay teachers according to the level of disruption they experienced. Teachers in schools with high levels of bad behaviour and difficult kids would be on a starting salary of 100K.

Somewhat off-topic but I've read that some far-eastern countries such as South Korea, Singapore and Japan rotate their teachers by lottery to different schools every 5 -7 years to avoid the same schools having the best/worst teachers - even the head teacher moves. You mentioned a failing secondary school near you noble that had no experienced maths teachers whereas the 'middle-class' comp you teach at is fully staffed with experienced maths teachers. Sounds like a good solution to me! Now I really must go Christmas shopping and leave you to it.

Clavinova

Coloma and other church schools are highly selective.

The people who don't support grammars also tend not to support other forms of unfair selection and socially polarised systems of education.

In other words, it's no point putting that forward as evidence of hypocrisy.

If you want schools which are socially mixed the only defensible system is comprehensive.

"You are right - half the anti-grammar school posters on this thread send their own dc miles away from home (up to an hour's journey each way) to avoid their local 'good' comprehensives and access much better comprehensive schools elsewhere."
I am pretty sure nobody will mind if you name names here

You mentioned a failing secondary school near you noble that had no experienced maths teachers whereas the 'middle-class' comp you teach at is fully staffed with experienced maths teachers.

Did I?
I don't know the maths staffing details of any secondaries in my area apart from my own.
We're not fully staffed with experienced teachers either

Bertrand Not quite gone out yet - they would - I had a post deleted recently - too much identifying info.

Noble Well I don't remember all the details but something about NQTs from Ireland at the other school? Definitely going out now - rather an important day coming up.

Indeed Clavinova but that school is nowhere near me.

The whole schools sharing teachers is a good idea - I went to a talk by the head of a maths organisation and he said that the problem with maths teacher recruitment was so bad that he would certainly consider qualified maths teachers being shared among schools or teaching by Skype as a potential solution.

The main barrier is that our school system is adversarial rather than cooperative. Which school is going to willingly lend its best teachers to a rival school when there's always one eye firmly on the league tables? This might work within MATs, but not across them.

"The main barrier is that our school system is adversarial rather than cooperative"

Because of a government who believes we can apply the ideology of the markets to our education system as a means of improving provision.

They intend for there to be winners and losers. Namely because their own children will never be at the losing schools. The children at the losing schools are just collateral damage, and they're almost always the poorest and most disadvantaged kids.

clav I would repeat my earlier questions to you when you continually brought up this line. Why is this in any way an argument for restoring secondary moderns? The school you continually decry as being "Selective" is not even oversubscribed!! How would making it into a grammar mean that more people got access to it?

Increasing the number of grammar schools is just another way of saying, "aren't faith schools, schools with complicated selection criteria which favour those with resources, and schools in postcodes with expensive houses great? Let's give already advantaged children even more ways of obtaining a competitive advantage and give up on the rest of the hoi polloi!"

You cannot really claim, given the data, that selection by 11 plus is a fair system in a way that selection by any other means is not. It quite clearly favours those parents most willing and able to shove their children through the requisite hoops, whilst still excluding a majority who would love to have been able to jump through those hoops for their children or who did not realise that raw ability in a poor primary school with parents lacking the education and nouse to make up for the deficits was not enough to compete against years' worth of grooming for a single test (a large proportion of which time and energy would most definitely have been better spent learning and experiencing other things, if it were not for a rather silly test which fails to distinguish potential from intensely focused preparation).

"Bertrand Not quite gone out yet - they would - I had a post deleted recently - too much identifying info"

Not sure how giving the mumsnet names of the people you claim are behaving in a hypocritical manner would be giving too much identifying information. I can only assume tht you were, at least, exaggerating with your "half"...

Clavinova how does that work if comprehensives aren't usually able to select from outside their catchment?

The faith school I attended had 'feeder' primaries, if your child attends the right primary then they can go up the criteria.

A few years ago a child who lived opposite the school could not get in. One of the feeder primaries is in another town.

Sashh - some faith schools selection procedures are disgraceful.

mini

Totally agree, and their practices too.

It's amalgamated with the boys' school now but in my day you had to wear a knee length skirt, at school and travelling to and from.

It rather effectively stopped anyone from the local Muslim community applying.

If you read the mission statement then often education comes second after promoting the faith.

I'd like to see them banned.

mini

RC schools used to have very few ESL students, but when Polish / eastern European children started to arrive in numbers suddenly their 'baptised child' became 'baptised before 6 months', in Eastern Europe it is traditional to baptise at 1 year.

Even if you do want to baptise early if you are taking a baby to Poland you need time to get a passport.

Reading through here I think the thought process on education is wrong. Grammar schools focus on educating one section of children. What is the plan for educating all children? Our school district in the US spends as much as the private sector on a per pupil basis. Everyone complains that results should be better given the spend. When you point out that the publicly funded school covers the cost of SEN, with some children going to specialist schools that cost as much as $180k per year, they go very quiet. Our public schools also have less children per class than the private schools.

So offering grammar school places is one piece of the puzzle. I want to hear what the plan is for all students.

But this government does not like to give away its plans, Want2bSupermum. If it were to give its plans away, it would be to admit that the plan is that there is no plan. The majority don't matter enough, you see.

Still, they've had a jolly fun time being disruptive and then coming up with a new bit of madness.

The trick is to keep changing things and never keeping still long enough for them to see the whites of your eyes.

Grammar schools focus on educating one section of children.
Yes and the corresponding secondary modern focus on educating their cohort of medium and lowewr ability children..
A grammar school can offer GCSEs and A levels in a good range of solid academic subjects, whilst a secondary modern can leave out the Latin and further maths , bit instead offer a range of vocational subjects.Horses for courses.A comp trying to be all things to all people spreads itself too thin.

There's no question that if children from DS1's school went to DS2's school instead, they'd do better.

I doubt it. Whether a school is good or bad is determined by its intake.Postcode lotteries just dilute the 'good' students' and drag every school down to the lowest common denominator.