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.

ThNk you, cant. You took the words out of my mouth.

Goodbye. I need no imagination to know about the mental health issues that young people suffer.

However, the mostly middle class mostly privileged children at grammar schools have lives a million miles away from the lives of many children in comprehensives or secondary moderns. That many mumsnetters have no idea of the sort of lives some of these children live is perfectly exemplified by the "But why can't they just practice for the 11+ at home-that's what we did" attitude.

I suspect few of your children's classmates come to school hungry.

Bertrand. However, the mostly middle class mostly privileged children at grammar schools have lives a million miles away from the lives of many children in comprehensives or secondary moderns. That many mumsnetters have no idea of the sort of lives some of these children live is perfectly exemplified by the "But why can't they just practice for the 11+ at home-that's what we did" attitude.

'You know when i was a lad , i had to get up at 3am to get to school by 9 am i had to walk 7 miles and then i had to walk another 4 miles to work from 4 pm -11pm' !

Bertrand do you think all grammar school kids live in multi million pound mansions with swimming pools and live in maids !

For god sake you are confusing Beneden and Eton pupils with grammar school boys and girls...

? flyingwithwings - where did Bertrand talk about insanely overprivileged children in grammar schools?

However, the mostly middle class mostly privileged children at grammar schools have lives a million miles away from the lives of many children in comprehensives or secondary moderns.

What is privileged !

For me its a relative term and does not apply to families living in 3/4 bedroom Barratt homes in Aylesbury like where i live and my 2 DDs friends live !

"Bertrand do you think all grammar school kids live in multi million pound mansions with swimming pools and live in maids "

Yes of course I do. That's why I said "mostly middle class, mostly privileged"

Don't embarrass yourself.

Define Privileged ....

What on earth is wrong with a 3-4 bedroom Barratt home? That's undoubtedly privileged when compared to the list given above which included asylum seekers and people in temporary accommodation to which Bertrand referred when she made her comment.

Flying,

I was not suggesting that EVERY secondary modern or comprehensive child faces the difficulties I have listed.

However, the presence of those that do, do pose a very high extra overhead on the schools that they attend - both in terms of liasion with other agencies, providing food /clothes,. and dealing with the academic fallout of such situations.

The difference between e.g. 1 child coming to school hungry and 30; no looked after children and 15; no Travellers and 7 families; no children vulnerably housed and 18 families - it all adds up to a significant extra burden, in the same way that

Can you not see that a 3-4 bedroom house vs a single room in a B&B; adequately nourished vs lacking key nutrients; have a stable home vs asylum seekers; living with their own family vs foster carers or in a children's home; not caring for parents / relatives or siblings does = RELATIVELY privileged?

And as I say, none of those i have posted about are THAT unusual - I have encountered all but 1 in a very MC primary, and all in a more mixed one.

"What is privileged !

For me its a relative term and does not apply to families living in 3/4 bedroom Barratt homes in Aylesbury like where i live and my 2 DDs friends live !"

That is a statement of such appalling crassness that I can't bring myself to address it.

I am in the US. Our local school district has a massive problem with unofficial segregation here due to most non-white families living in the poor area of town and most white people in the rich end of town minority children end up in underfunded schools (funded via property taxes here, obviously cheaper houses means less tax paid for schools).

The school district has taken an interesting approach. They have opened up 'magnet' programs inside the existing schools. My children will be going to an academic magnet next year that has opened in the high school in the poorest part of the city. There are specialized (and extremely expensive university grade) labs for the magnet. However, the dean of the magnet wants the labs available for the other children in the school to use. This is the same at the other magnet programs. They are primarily used by the magnet children but the other children in the school share the facilities. For instance the arts magnet school shares a campus with the science magnet. Students from the science program can take classes in the arts magnet facilities, the art magnet students take classes in the science magnet labs.

Maybe that is one solution? Have grammars share facilities with the local comprehensive but separate classes?

Jackalope that sounds like a comprehensive with a streaming programme to me?

I wonder if in a lot of areas what will happen is that there will be a top comprehensive stream called 'the grammar stream' and streaming will become more compulsory. DS's school used to stream a lot more than it does now but stopped doing so much of it because they reported the evidence showed no very great effect on outcomes - I hope they meant more than pure results.

Annandale,

IME streaming is relatively rare, because it is so inflexible and thus misses out so many of the benefits that an all-ability school can offer.

Setting by subject or group of subjects is much more common, which allows e.g. those able at languages but poor at Sciences etc to be in an appropriate sets for each.

There is nothing wrong with living in 3or 4 bedroom Barratt home !

I also don't consider being 'Autistic' as being a Privilege either or being unable to get a job for ten years, thus being totally dependent on DH and my family !

Bert what has been said about challenge subsequent to my post (not just by you) reinforces what I said. Such a lot of stereotyping shows a woeful lack of understanding.

And yes Fourmantent, you too, swinging in with that answer to all complex ills suffered by grammar school kids: it's all about 'pressure' .

The arguments on this thread are getting absurdly simplistic.

I suppose what I mean, flying, is that there are a large set of people who will need no specific social / welfare help or support from the school, over and above the norm supplied - a bit like the vast majority of children are not SEN.

Then there are those people who are equally distributed between all schools - those with illnesses or disabilities or difficulties such as family breakup that are absolutely independent of academic ability and socioeconomic group.

I would say that your DDs and their friends would largely fit into one of these two groups, as would all but a vanishingly tiny proportion of grammar school pupils.

Then there are a group of people who need more help for reasons that are linked to, or compounded by, their socio-economic circumstances. That will include pretty much all of those in the post I made above - those who have substandard housing, those who are refugees, those who are carers, those who live with substance-dependent adults, those in local authority care. These are NOT equally distributed between schools, and where 10% are creamed off who require no help or require help not linked to socioeconomic circumstances, they will be disproportionately represented in the 'other' schools - secondary moderns - because they will be virtually absent from the grammars.

,"Bert what has been said about challenge subsequent to my post (not just by you) reinforces what I said. Such a lot of stereotyping shows a woeful lack of understanding."

I honestly don't understand. Are you saying that children do not live in the circumstances I describe? Or that there are as many children living in those circumstances in grammar schools as there are in non grammars? That when I go into school tomorrow to help with breakfast club the children are not really hungry? That their life circumstances do not make school harder for them? That the grammar schools need to have breakfast clubs too?

They are also, of course, under-represented in (though not absent from) comprehensives serving relatively wealthy catchments. Which is why, way upthread, I suggested that all schools within a wider geographical area e.g. a large town should take the same % of children from deprived families.

Goodbye, could you identify the stereotypes that you are referring to? I'm a little puzzled?

Read back over the thread yourself can'tkeepawayforever.

While you're doing that I'll keep biting my tongue.

God, i hate this hinting business. Spit it out, goodbye. Explain how our school's breakfast club is "stereotyping".

goodbye, no, still genuinely puzzled.

There are difficulties that some families face that are closely linked to socioeconomic circumstances - not necessarily causally, but they are co-incident e.g. refugees are often at least temporarily economically deprived.

All the data nationwide says that grammar schools have fewer children - often as many as 20-30% fewer children - in difficult socioeconomic circumstances than the community in which they are located.

Ergo, fewer children with the difficulties created or exacerbated by deprived economic circumstances are in grammar schools.

That's just what the data says? Like all population-level data, it does not describe everyone's circumstances - e.g. the refugee child attending a Scottish private school is not represented in the data, but at a population level it is simply descriptive.