New grammars by 2020 which will exclude 90% of local kids

[noblegiraffe]

What an excellent use of scarce public funding, to build schools that most kids can't access instead of using it to build good comprehensives to improve the life-chances of everyone.

Word from the government (who appear to be ploughing ahead with the proposals before they've even published the consultation results) is that new grammars will only take the top 10% rather than the top 25% of kids. God knows where they've got the evidence that the top 10% of kids require a different school but they're certainly not sharing it with us.

It is also beyond me how making grammar schools even more elite will help with the promised social mobility agenda, when previous discussions were about how the pass grade would be needed to be lowered to increase the number of disadvantaged kids gaining access.

And if you were in favour of a grammar school opening in your area because you thought your kid would get in, how sure are you now? How much less tempting is a grammar school opening up if your kid is more likely to be sent to the other school?

In addition, expect to see furious threads in the near future from parents whose local school of choice has converted to a grammar and their kid is now being bussed to another school in the MAT that they wouldn't have chosen for them.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-38906594

But middle class parents already play the system with comps- buying/ renting up property in the areas with the best schools so even getting into them for some(let alone bussing to them) isn't an option,paying bus fees to get their DC to a preferred comp,tutoring their DC through Sats to get good set allocations then tutoring through GCSEs and Alevels.....

Do the spurned comps drop academic subjects?Ours (with a more favourable comp and grammars in competition)certainly doesn't.

And Talkin this your bright child is guaranteed a string of As in any comp rhetoric is just rubbish which is why parents up and down the land who can vote with their feet.

I live in a county with no grammar schools and have seen nobody voting with their feet. I grew up in a county with grammar schools and I remember the awful last year of primary school only too clearly, when suddenly I was, apparently, a stuck up snob. One of my closest friends got into my grammar school on appeal, but her confidence was shot by then and she spent the whole time telling everyone how much thicker she was than everyone else. I have relatives living in a grammar school county now (including teaching in a grammar school) andnthe levels of stress and tutoring from as early as KS1 are phenomenal. So much angst about chances of getting into the grammars already ruined because their children didn't get into the right primary, or because their children are not in top tables, or didn't do well enough in KS1 SATs, so the school won't be pushing them. You vote with your feet if you want to, but plenty wouldn't. Only the exact same people who already play the system as much as they possibly can would vote with their feet.

GreenGinger2 - your post is a bit contradictory. You say you have a more favourable comp and grammars. So nothing like the areas you are complaining about, where there are lots of awful comps. Do you really think those awful comps will become more favourable by having the children who have been coached through an exam removed from them? For one thing I am quite certain of is that no exam will ever be created for which a child cannot be rigorously prepped if competitive parents so wish. And if you are capable of coaching for the 11 plus, you are just as capable of coaching your child through its SATs and thus getting it into top sets, if it is able. Failing secondary moderns really are a terrifying sight to behold.

And yes, I do think you would find schools dropping the number of languages offered, not offering three sciences, not offering computing, etc, if they ever did offer them in the first place. You need people with the ambition to take the harder subjects up to offer them - and you need teachers able to teach them. School budgets are so incredibly constrained that the situation is dire. There are also not enough teachers. All schools will be considering what subjects to drop. We need to stop starving all schools of funding and to stop spending schools money on political vanity projects if there is so little to go around. The alternative is to only provide a reasonable education to 10% of children, which is not an improvement on the current situation.

his grades would have been considerably better at a Grammar

If this school was so bad then the whole school cohort may well have got better grades at a better school. There must also have been students who got Ds in Maths and English instead of Cs. It's not just about the top %.

And who is going to pay the bus fares (if there is a bus) of poor children to get to their grammar schools, if they beat the odds? The underfunded Local Authorities?

Don't have that angst in our county. Loads of good alternatives,vast maj of parents don't give a shit re the grammar.

Said comp offers everything but still fails to stretch the more able. Was an issue with Ofsted.

I could have sent them to the better comp but it would have cost the same as going to the grammar which they preferred.

So, you don't actually need the grammars in your county is what you are saying...

Or, that even with grammars, some schools still don't stretch the most able?

I would have though it's even more likely you will not stretch the most able if you pretend to yourself they are already in another school altogether.

It's one of the oddities of the grammar debate that the schools which were so terrible that grammars are needed suddenly become perfectly good schools once they are occupied by the failures.

Incidentally, we keep hearing about choice but so far there's been no indication that the government will provide the means for people who want to keep their schools comprehensive to oppose new grammars. Obviously, detailed legislation has yet to appear but "choice" will probably only be given to those who want grammars.

I'm in Gloucestershire - already have the top 9% creamed off for Grammar schools - or that is the way it was planned to be, what ACTUALLY happens is that people who can afford tutors, pay them to get them through the 11+, not just locals but from 4 other counties (one of them in particular is in the top 10 schools, so "poor" locals who are not naturally top 2% locally say, haven't got a chance) - maybe if other counties got more grammars and they had to only apply in county this would impact less. But there will always be a Top local school, other old/existing grammars, new grammar hierarchy going on.

I would have though it's even more likely you will not stretch the most able if you pretend to yourself they are already in another school altogether.

A very good point. The whole argument seems to go:

1. Bright children are "held back" by the presence of the not so bright.
2. Even though the not so bright do better in comprehensives than in secondary moderns this just shows that the interests of the bright are being sacrificed to help the not-so-bright. This is the argument currently being promoted with great energy by Julia Hartley Brewer.
3. The not so bright will do better in a school where they can be top set rather than in a school where they are closer to the middle.

I don't get this argument at all.
a) No exam can possibly divide children accurately in this way.
b) At what point does this holding back effect start to be an issue? Northern Ireland has grammars that take about the top 40%. So presumably the top of the cohort is being held back by the bottom?
c)Let's say the top of the cohort is being dragged down by the middle in comps, why does this only happen to them? You can't simultaneously argue that the top of the cohort is being dragged down by the middle and that the middle is being dragged up by the top. Why is the middle not being dragged down by the lower? You can either argue that children don't do better in comprehensives than in secondary moderns (which is contradicted by the evidence) or you should admit that the dragging down argument is flawed.
d) If you actually believe the scenario above you then you cannot argue for scenario 3. Because the top set in the secondary modern will presumably now be subject to the dragging down effect rather than the dragging up, therefore replacing comprehensives with secondary moderns will be to the detriment of these children.
e) I've often seen the argument that children would prefer to be at the top of a secondary modern than round the middle in a comprehensive. This may well be true of some children but in that case surely that's a cruelty to those who end up the bottom of the grammar cohort? Wouldn't they have been better being in the top half of a comprehensive to being at the bottom in a grammar? And what about all that bullying and misery which is supposed to be the lot of the bright child in a comp? Now that the bright child in a secondary modern is right at the top of the cohort , won't they be now subject to the same bullying as that allegedly received in comps?

I'm sure I've disappeared up my fundament at some point here. But I find some of the assumptions that seem to lie behind the pro-grammar case really quite difficult.

greenginger
And Talkin this your bright child is guaranteed a string of As in any comp rhetoric is just rubbish which is why parents up and down the land who can vote with their feet.

Funny that House prices in Hampshire have not suffered from the lack of comps

Funny that overall exam results in Hampshire with only comps are no lower than Kent which has no comps

I do not believe that Winchester has suffered too badly for having four comps that all serve all of the people
rather than a grammar and three secondary moderns

My kids did not go to my local comp because I fundamentally disagree with the ethos of the sponsor chain and wish they were not in charge of it. 500 other local families think the same, leaving it with hundreds of empty places.

lack of grammars I mean .... typo

Londoners flock out to Hampshire to get away from selective schooling

Yes, the 'my more able kid would have done better at a grammar than a crap school with a 21% pass rate' argument is probably true.

But so is 'everyone would do better at a good school than a crap school with a 21% pass rate'

A grammar means that a handful of kids are saved from the crap school. What about all the kids left behind? Why is no one talking about 'saving' them?

Is it because you think that your kid won't be one of them so you don't care?

Absolutely.

My local school is dire.
It is half empty and gets dire results
It should shut -But its a new build sponsored academy

so every parent who cares - whether rich or poor, whether brainy or brawny - does their best to send their kids anywhere else

selective schooling would not change that
getting rid of sponsored academies would change that

A grammar means that a handful of kids are saved from the crap school. What about all the kids left behind? Why is no one talking about 'saving' them?

Peter Hitchens, arch pro-grammar campaigner says it won't be a problem when there are enough grammars for every child who "deserves" one to have a place. So as failing the 11+ shows you don't "deserve" a place at a grammar it doesn't really matter what happens to you does it?