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

Well, I went from my comp to Cambridge, and discovered that I was just as well educated as my private school and grammar school peers.

The top ten percent will do well anywhere, if they have a positive attitude and good support from home.

Why would anyone want more than 4 A levels? 0r more than 3, from next year on?

Personally, I got more than 4 A-levels because I thought it would be useful anecdata in anti-grammar school arguments 20 years down the line.

Also, indecision and people-pleasing.

I think clever mathematical types tend to do several overlapping numbery A-levels and then a science that isn't physics and/or a language or other A-level of interest as well.

I'm from a generation where only the superest of superstars did 4. And where more than 1 A made you a local nine day wonder.......

My dad went to Oxford with an A-level D in the subject he was studying.

How old are you? I was very impressed by DP's A levels ( we are in our early 40s, but one if them was in General Studies, so doesn't really count. They were all grade A, too. But I beat him in my degree classification. And then he had a successful and well paid career, while I didn't.

one of mine was General Studies too, but that totally counts!
I only got 3As and 3Bs, but then I also had a bit of a breakdown in sixth form which is perhaps not totally unsurprising.

I went to a grammar school and now work in a super-selective grammar school but my three children are at a comprehensive. The grammar is a lovely calm learning environment for those inside it, but so damaging to other local schools. Imagine taking away the three brightest pupils from every comprehensive class - the shining stars of their year group - the Head Boy / Girl material, the comp's chance at sending a few children to a Russell Group university, showing others behind them what you can achieve if you work hard - that's what 10% selection means for the schools left behind.

I wish people would stop referring to the "also ran's" schools in selective areas as comprehensives. They aren't.

I have never ever understood how schools can be "comprehensives" in areas where there are grammar schools.

Fortunately, I live in Scotland where we have been fully comprehensive for 40 years.

They can't, prettybird. Except I suppose in some areas which have only very selective schools with no catchments- they have much less impact on other local schools than "normal" grammars.

But grammar supporters don't like the term "secondary modern". Too much baggage!

No Bertrand because as i have mentioned High schools up in 'Redcar' are more 'High or Upper' than non Grammar schools are in Kent or Bucks.

If they're bright, why aren't they getting into the local grammar?

Because, Noble, they're having to compete with a much higher number of brighter/better prepared kids from a huge area i.e.wider than the catchment or even borough. If kids didn't aspire to come to Trafford grammars from Southport because they had a local one, than local kids would have more of a chance.

Nothing to do with the kids,
but one of my bugbears about selective schools (of any sort) is that they massively increase the total distances that pupils travel
and thus and to pollution and climate change

or the fact that providing taxpayer funded buses to drive past one school on the way to another is not a good use of the taxes I pay

Near where I live a bus stops opposite the driveway of one school to take kids to another school 6 miles away.
Free because its a "faith" school.
Madness.

My comprehensive had no streaming for anything except maths, and being "swotty" was very much discouraged by peers, especially boys. Very glad to hear things have changed on that, in some schools at least!

The issue in the UK is that if you are going to have comprehensive schools you need to properly set it out so you can meet the needs of each group of students.

We have comprehensive schools up high school here in the US. It is a good system that they have because the SEN and G&T programs become much more challenging to provide when you get into the upper years. Our school district is doing everything they can to improve the high school and will put money out to hire a teacher to run an AP class a child wants to take. I do not know of another school district offering that.

The top 5% of an intake is the elite and I think the bigger issue is that we don't have a good system in place to provide for them within regular schools. This group have their own struggles. DS is turning four and has ASD but is very very bright. I am shocked at his ability (def not from me!) and if he continues along this trajectory I am going to be looking at the school for guidance on how to keep him motivated because this level of functioning is beyond what I have seen (and beyond what his special ed teacher has seen too). I went to school with a girl who got 5 A's in her A Levels at 15 and started at Cambridge at 17, graduating 3 years later with an offer to join a research team. She was extremely bright but really struggled socially. Her parents were very very worried about her development.

Right Stevie in which case it sounds like the percentage of kids sliced off depends on how far children are willing to travel and how close the next nearest grammar is rather than any figure set on entry by the DfE.

How will they ensure that a grammar takes the top 10% of kids? That would appear to only have any meaning in a full two tier system where there are actually grammar school places available for the top 10%.

Grammar school places can't sit empty so if there aren't enough 'top 10%' kids to go around then they'll have to take less bright ones. And it seems that where there there's a lone grammar, and there are loads of kids willing to commute to it, then even being in the top 10% of ability won't guarantee you a place, because there are enough even brighter applicants to bump you out.

So this 'top 10%' thing is just bollocks designed to pacify parents worried about the effect on local schools.

Want2be
Thing is, I chat to my cousins all over the USA and the totally different way of funding US schools means that UK "comps" and US "comps" are oranges and cabbages.

In the UK there is a national formula for every school place, its a bit wonky but basically poor areas get more money than rich areas.

In the USA, schools are funded locally so rich ares get more money than poor areas. Super Zips are a well known issue.
Hence why a family member moved from Troy to Albany - 1/2 mile but over the school board line, to get better school funding.

Also, in the UK we have "parental choice" - my kids did not go to school within my "district"
not the case in the USA
unless you have access to a non-district Charter School - but some of them are pretty dire, depending on which State you live in as the oversight laws vary hugely.

Here in the UK, oversight rules are the same for the whole of England ....

Tiggy
Colyton, Tiffin, which others .....

TAlkin Here in NJ the state redistributes. Newark has more $ per child than 'superzips' such as Millburn. I have colleagues at work who are moving to East Orange, a notoriously bad neighbourhood, because the town get so much in state funding that schools are very well funded.

Our town gets a lot of state funding because we are a former abbot district. We still have about 45-50% of kids on FSM's in our town in the public school. Spend per child is about $20k, which is more than what the private schools charge in tuition. Its a big part of the reason why schools in our town more than rival the private ones.

I agree with charter schools being a disaster but I disagree with you on parental choice. My kids are in school with people from all walks of life and parental choice would most probably reduce that diversity. The charter schools in my town have much much less diversity and they accept kids from out of district.

Christ, even more argument against grammars if they're allowed to sit empty.

In practice, that doesn't happen though does it?

As I said, I'm in two minds about it.

As grammars were, way back when my DH went to one, they did provide opportunities to disadvantaged kids. As it stands now, they no longer do so I'm not so convinced.

Want2be
NJ is a pretty urbanised state .... how about Montana ..... or Virginia .......
50 miles between high schools does not give a lot of "choice"

And NJ (once it recovered from the predations of Trump) is a rich state
others are not
why should kids born in poor places be condemned to a poor education
Nancy De Vos had fun in DC after all today