Tories pour millions into new grammars while state schools discuss the possibility of a 4 day week

[noblegiraffe]

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/03/07/theresa-may-unveils-plans-new-generation-grammar-schools/

In a cowardly move, the Tories are publishing their White Paper on grammars before publishing the responses to the Green Paper which, the best thing Justine Greening could say about them was that they were 'not overwhelmingly negative'.

What a bunch of fucking shite. And where are they going to get the thousands of pounds required for free transport for golden ticket poor kids? The only potential money-saver here is that we know that the vast majority of poor kids don't get into grammars. Why not save this money and put it into the school that the poor kid would be going to originally? Then everyone would win, including the poor kid who isn't faced with a long commute, the poor kid who didn't get into the grammar, and the 90% of kids who aren't 'grammar material' (decided by a faulty test which puts kids in the wrong school aged 10) who would see more investment in their education which is desperately needed at the moment.

There is financial help available yes Bert, including for sixth formers. That extends to students who parental income exceeds the threshold for free school meals. I don't know what's offered at other schools.

Flying, that is precisely not the point - you are obviously thinking of a rich parent who is making the private school vs grammar school decision. However, if you are the struggling parent of an equally bright child who has to make the decision whether to send them to a poor local school (which they can walk to) or to a superselective on the bus (costing £100 per year), then it looks very different.

£1000 per year.

I was really just teasing Mum with that suggestion. Yes, it would certainly be the leafy comps that go selective, if allowed.

Actually i think the driver of the 'Pates' Grammar School bus covering 40 miles in circa an hour at 4pm must be renamed Lewis Hamilton !

I know my DDs school bus can take up to a hour to travel '10' miles , so i take my hat of to the driver of the M5 Express...

So grammar schools of this type are being 'doubly selective' - firstly by ability (measured by a test in which scores are improved by paid for coaching), and then by income. Triply selective, in fact, because many such grammars have 'opt in' tests, so parents who are themselves relatively uneducated, or have chaotic home lives, or who have little English, or who simply don't understand the system don't enter their children.

Bright children from well-off homes with engaged parents ... no wonder such schools get good results (though the Prgress 8 results are more interesting).

It is depressing how little some people know about how others live.

I know some do but don't care, but most just don't know. That's why awful ideas like selective education gain traction.

I find the iniability to consider 'the common good' as opposed to 'my wants / needs' depressing as well...

Gosh Bert. So only you know and care? That's quite an assumption, and, with the greatest of respect, supremely arrogant.

One of the best grammar school Headteachers I've come across, and a passionate proponent of good education including selective education, said once that his first glimpse of beauty was when he was five, looking out from his house in a northern town one early winter morning, when the snow was covering the grime of the back- to-back housing. He advises the government on this stuff, has done for years.

You've quite a cheek, honestly.

"Gosh Bert. So only you know and care? That's quite an assumption, and, with the greatest of respect, supremely arrogant."

Not what I said.

But it is an inescapable conclusion that people who support selective education must either not know or not care what happens to the children of disadvantaged families. Or know, and care, but prioritize the perceived needs of their own children.

Not sure what the relevance of your anecdote is.........

So goodbye, how would this headteacher propose that every child, regardless of background and family income, who was born with the 'innate ability' to be able to access a grammar school education, both gets into his grammar school and succeeds there? Not just those who can pass an exam on a single day at 10, but those who needed better pre-school education at 2, those who had a chaotic home life and thus a poor primary school at 5, those whose parents are illiterate, those who live in poor neighbourhoods where worklessness is endemic?

OR is a better ambition to be able to give every child, wherever they are born and with whatever ability, the best education for them, regardless of when their ability first shows itself and regardless of the form it takes, without 'high stakes' division into 'sheep and goats' at 11?

The era of a few 'deserving poor' being 'rescued into the middle classes' through grammar school - and possibly university - while the rest remained compliant working class factory fodder, educated only in 'technical subjects' is surely outdated by many, many decades?

My mum - approaching 80 - was a product of that era, one of 'the selected few', whose parents scraped together the cost of uniform and satchel. She regards the idea as antique.

Bertrand the relevance of my anecdote is quite clearly that this one particular exceptional Headteacher is a staunch supporter of selective education despite knowing far better about how 'others' live than you could ever hope to do. I think being born and brought up in that area and in that era he could eat you for breakfast on that one. And obviously his example is just one of many, many people who have that same sort of background yet who support selective education and may - just may - be at least as bright as yourself with at least as much social conscience. Obviously that's a high bar I know. What you say really is very offensive, and excessively narrow.

There is no 'inescapable conclusion' of that sort. I've no axe to grind whatsoever since my DC are all through the system. I'm still prepared to continue to support all the efforts currently being made to extend the same education to those who I think need it the most - the very able disadvantaged. It is possible to do things without those things directly or even indirectly benefiting oneself. I mean, it happens all the time in different ways everywhere doesn't it? You must be surrounded by some pretty insular people down there in Kent.

can'tkeepawayforever I wouldn't like to speak for him he's far too formidable. Obviously there are a range of strategies required to get those disadvantaged DC into grammars, almost exactly the same strategies used to get the same sort of DC into Oxford and Cambridge and other competitive unis. I'm not going to keep repeating myself - the record is already sounding broken.

Goodbye- if you think I have been offensive then feel free to report. I stand by what I say. And no anecdotes about little shoeless waifs longing for beauty in the 50s will change my mind. I know some people think that grammar schools were the champions of social mobility in the past but they weren' then and they aren't now.

Arguments from authority count for nothing.

Goodbye, the point is that I cannot see ANY large scale strategies that are even starting to think about working towards the level of change that would be needed... only a tiny level of tinkering at the edges as a form of window-dressing.

And i believe that the huge effort that would be needed to make access to grammars genuinely 'innate ability from birth' based and not based on layers of entrenched economic and social advantage is simply wasted - it would be much better to put that same seismic level of effort into improving education for all.

[While looking at bus timetables, I looked up Pates Grammar school approach to social inclusion .. apparently if a Pupil premium child passes within the top 200 - out of however many thousand who take the test- then they are deemed to have come in the top 150. No recognition at all of the barriers that might prevent them taking the test in the first place, or of making it to that top few % untutored and from a relatively poor primary, with less well-educated and sharp-elbowed parents. I could weep. Window dressing at its worst.]

What is the actual point of grammar schools? Where is the evidence that the top 10% (an arbitrary figure so I'm sure there isn't any) actually need to go to a different school? I understand that parents might want the chance to 'save' their kid from a poor local offering, but why the top 10%? Why not kids identified as low attainers? They could do with specialist input and whatnot and will be a drain on the economy if they don't get it.

Well the 'typical' Comprehensive school has not and never will be successful in improving the social mobility of the poorest pupils !

What they do though is allow for the educated 'liberal' parents children to succeed , whilst doing nothing for the disadvantaged !

This of course is Ok for the liberals , because they can convince Comprehensive schools work and benefit the many, because their offspring made it to Oxbridge !

The other benefit of course is they can pretend to be caring 'Socialists' by not favoring one child over another.

There isn't any evidence to support of grammar schools. Wholly selective areas do not do better than comparable wholly comprehensive ones.

This of course is Ok for the liberals , because they can convince Comprehensive schools work and benefit the many, because their offspring made it to Oxbridge !

Substitute the word Grammar, and pretend that a bright working class child can also make it, even if they happen to be the only one in a class of thirty.

The other benefit of course is they can pretend to be caring 'Socialists' by not favoring one child over another.

I don't think Mrs Thatcher ever pretended to be a socialist. She got rid of grammars because she knew it was a vote loser for her.

fl;ying, but some very good comprehensives with very, very high levels f PP children DO enable them to succeed.

So what we should be doing is learning from them about what works (many of them are in the London area, so LOTS of money, and visibly available jobs within a short travelling distance could be a factor - but there are similar success stories elsewhere), and applying that intelligently elsewhere, taking context into account.

What are we doing instead? Taking an antique model that didn't work very well even in the context of its time, and for which there is no evidence of it working on a 'whole system' scale now, and try to apply it unintelligently everywhere...

What I mean by 'whoe system' is that, if selection really worked, selective areas would perform better overall than similar non-selective areas. They don't. What that indicates is that marginal gains at the 'top of the top' end in grammars are counterbalanced by marginal losses for middle and low ablity children in the 'other' schools.

Peregrina, one in a class of 30 is on the high side for PP children in today's grammars. Again, having looked at the data for a superselective, there were exactly 2 children on PP in the GCSE cohort that year. Out of 120+.

So for example:

Harris Academy, Battersea: 88.7% PP.
Progress 8 for these children: 1.16

Sheffiend Park Academy: 59.5% PP
Progress 8 for these children: 1.00

What are these schools doing, and how can it be replicated?