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.

I worked in a grammar school until last year. It dripped money. The students had been tutored to within an inch of their lives for £30 an hour for the 18 months prior to the test. It was rammed full of the Home Counties and North London's middle classes peppered with the occasional council estate kid

I am struggling to believe this. Grammar schools have some of the lowest funding in the country.
My ds school are asking parents to buy books, they are utterly desperate.

My dds secondary modern (in Kent) has much higher funding due to the pupil premium.

I think that proves the point, sparkly. Grammars (the schools not the kids) are skint because they have hardly any poor kids.

Just to clarify - Kent is not fully selective, Mascalls for instance is a comprehensive. If you pass the 11plus, you don't go to the nearest 'normal' grammar if you live in Paddock Wood for example.

There are also superselectives in Kent.

The 11+ in our area seems to be doing a reasonable job.

Do you think that 11 plus scores at your DCs school correlated with GCSE/A Level grades?

Well noblegiraffe, it's not the point as I was challenging the poster who said that the school was 'dripping with money'.
They are not.

Pupils probably are from better off families but there are those who are working poor. Pupil premium is quite a crude measurement of family wealth.

Pupil premium is apparently a good proxy for general wealth of a student intake. Dripping with money = the kids, not the school.

I disagree with that noblegiraffe, I don't think that it is.

worked in a grammar school until last year. It dripped money

To me (and at least one other poster) it came across as the school.

Grammar schools have some of the lowest funding in the country. My ds school are asking parents to buy books, they are utterly desperate.

My dds secondary modern (in Kent) has much higher funding due to the pupil premium.

That's outragious. Has the HT complained that they are not getting the pupil premium for the DCs at their school who are entitled to it?

But that was only one school dripping money - which might have been by parents stumping up for 'voluntary' contributions.

Sparkly

From Education Datalab's response to the grammar school consultation regarding the need for a measure to capture low income families who don't ever qualify for FSM:

"We would make two points here. Firstly, the FSM6 measure is already capturing close to a third of pupils, so to some extent we question the need for a broader measure. We appreciate that there are a number of pupils from very low income households who will never qualify for free school meals (Hobbs and Vignoles, 2010), but any metric that is flexible enough to capture them is likely to lead to a large proportion of the pupil population qualifying."

MumTryingHerBest
Very recently you posted this link to an outstanding comprehensive school as an example of why we don't need grammar schools;
www.compare-school-performance.service.gov.uk/school/136901

In 2014 St Clement Danes School had an intake of 60% high attainers at KS2 and a fsm rate of 1.9%. Is this your ideal comprehensive school?

Basically, it's unlikely that grammar schools are incredibly short of pupil premium kids but just happen to be disproportionately full of kids who skimmed close to but never qualified for pupil premium.

Clavinova

www.compare-school-performance.service.gov.uk/school/136901

for the 2016 GCSE cohort it had:
101 high ability
80 middle abiliy
10 low ability

almost a 50/50 split between high and middle/low ability. The higher number of high abiity is bolstered by the 10% academic selection. Perhaps you have a better example with a 33%/33%/33% split?

noblegiraffe I have read the full article that you quoted from. I could link to many more academic papers that suggest it is not a good measure.
It's been interesting, I got lost in papers about the link between housing and educational attainment too.

Sparkly You don't think wealth distribution in schools follows a curve? Why not?

MumTryingHerBest forgive me if I have misunderstood but was your response a clumsy attempt at sarcasm?

I clearly was refuting that grammar schools are 'dripping with money' because they have fewer pupils with pupil premiums.

I then said that I did not agree that pupil premium was an accurate enough way of analysing family income.

My son's superselectives is pretty heavy on well off families but there are a fair few that are just scraping by. His best friends father works in a chicken factory for example.

I don't know how you accurately measure how many are working poor.

Sparkly You don't think wealth distribution in schools follows a curve? Why not?

What do you mean 'follows a curve'?

Dh is a statistician, I just asked him, he doesn't understand what you are getting at either

Will clarify. The students dripped money. They also paid quite substantial 'monthly contributions'. The school didn't avoid the cutbacks either.

I was merely trying to get across the point that it wasn't particularly meritocratic as they are often portrayed so.

My ds school is a top superselective, they are begging for money. Maybe it varies as to where they are. We are in west Kent.

They can't afford books for the new GCSE syllabus.

Mum
50% high ability is a critical mass of high attainers.
The 2016 fsm rate is still only 5.5%/last 6 years which is lower than my nearest super selective grammar. The Progress 8 for disadvantaged kids at the comp is -70 and +69 at the grammar.

Our grammar school is in an area that has been underfunded for years. It gets 60% less than those in London. They thought they'd be getting more under the fairer funding scheme but they are going to get even less.

The impact of pupil premium has shown to be quite limited so it seems even more unfair.

I'd love to know what these unfair advantages grammar schools have some posters keep whining about. I'm not seeing a lot. Parents pay to get their kids there thus saving the tax payer,said schools get a large amount less per child.

Sparklydress Tue 07-Mar-17 21:50:01 I clearly was refuting that grammar schools are 'dripping with money' because they have fewer pupils with pupil premiums.

I have to refute the claim that Grammar schools are short of cash because they have fewer pupils eligible for PP.

The PP funding is meant to be spent on supporting those pupils eligible for it. If you have no DCs eligilbe for PP funding then you are unlikely to incure the extra costs of the services/resources required to support those DCs.

crazycatguy did you work as a teacher or in admin with access to the individual contributions that parents made?

Also, I don't think that grammars are portrayed as being especially meritocratic. They used to be and they have the potential to be but there's a widespread recognition that tutoring has become endemic, which is why strenuous efforts are being made to counter the advantage that tutoring brings. No-one is complacent about the need to get admissions right, least of all the grammar school Headteachers.

Sparkly, I mean if you plotted the incomes of parents at the school on a graph, I would expect it to follow a curve, like the normal distribution. If the area was relatively deprived I would expect the curve to be skewed so that the majority of parents fell towards the lower end. If it was a really posh area, I would expect to see the curve skewed the other way, with more people towards the higher end.

I would be surprised to see a completely random distribution, or a big bump at one end where you've got loads of low-income parents then another bump at the other end with loads of high-income parents.

I would expect if you had lots of PP income parents, that you would also have a reasonable number just over the threshold.

Is that not how it works?