Grammar schools proposal so appalling that a cross-party alliance forms to fight them

[noblegiraffe]

Former Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg (Lib Dem), former Education Secretary Nicky Morgan (Conservative) and former Shadow Education Secretary Lucy Powell (Labour) have written a joint piece for The Observer condemning the plans by Theresa May to open new selective schools.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/19/help-poorer-pupils-selection-social-mobility-education-brexit-grammar-schools

"The formation of their cross-party alliance against grammar school expansion, which is opposed by about 30 Tory MPs, spells yet more political trouble for May on the domestic front. Last week, chancellor Philip Hammond was forced by a revolt in his own party into a humiliating budget U-turn over national insurance rises for the self-employed, and Conservatives lined up to oppose planned cuts in school funding.

Launching their combined assault, and plans to work together over coming months, in an article in the Observer, Morgan, Powell and Clegg say the biggest challenges for a country facing Brexit, digitisation and changes to the nature of work, are to boost skills, narrow the attainment gap between disadvantaged children and their peers and boost social mobility. By picking a fight over plans to expand selection in schools, May will, they argue, sow division, divert resources away from where they are needed most and harm the causes she claims to be committed to advancing.

Before a debate in the Commons on social mobility this week, the three MPs say it is time to put aside political differences and fight instead for what is right. “We must rise to the challenge with a new national mission to boost education and social mobility for all,” they write. “That’s why we are putting aside what we disagree on, to come together and to build a cross-party consensus in favour of what works for our children – not what sounds good to politicians.”

www.theguardian.com/education/2017/mar/18/cross-party-alliance-grammar-schools-theresa-may

[bojorojo]

Why does anyone think a good school has lots of poor pupil behaviour? They do not. This is why good schools are needed for everyone and good teachers who are experts at teaching all children, bright or less bright. It generally correlates that the best schools have the best teachers and best leadership. We need this for all schools, not just grammar schools. Bright children can succeed in good schools perfectly well but some children do not get to go to a good school. They should be entitled to a good school,with aspirations for all students, and it should be the local one. No-one should have to drive miles and miles to a good school and no-one should have to drive past a grammar to a poor school.

[Clavinova]

HPFA
You've linked to Jack Marwood's twitter comment about house prices and schools - you obviously agree with this recent sentiment from him as well??!

"As regular readers will know, I’ve argued before that selection by house price is - contrary to received opinion - a good thing. Parents should not feel guilty for choosing to live in the most expensive neighbourhood they can, with the intention of gaining a place at a school they like. It is actually necessary that parents do exactly this, as it fulfils the dual function of giving parents some choice over their children’s school as well as putting pressure on schools to provide an education which parents want. If you have moved house to get your children into a particular school, are considering doing so, or would consider doing so in the future, you are acting exactly as you should, for the good of the system as a whole. Far from being morally wrong, it's essential that parents act in this way."

[GreenGinger2]

No bright children do not do perfectly well in good schools.

www.gov.uk/government/news/too-many-bright-children-let-down-in-the-state-system

Having visited several good schools during our secondary research I'm afraid I didn't think the behaviour was good enough at all. Certainly not good enough for my standards.

[HPFA]

Of course, Clav when I link to someone I carefully research their every utterance over the last ten years and make sure I agree with every word of it before posting.

I would not consider under any circumstances post to a link that other people might find interesting and helpful. The many links that appear under my header that actually contain factual information potentially useful to those who disagree have been posted by a malicious user pretending to be me.

[HPFA]

Insert "with me" after disagree.

[GreenGinger2]

Who says grammars have the best teachers,leadership and behaviour?They're not Eton. They have massive classes,very little money and contain a broad spectrum of children.Ours suited our needs and have a teaching style and ethos I like but seriously I doubt very much they have the "best" teachers. They're situated in a far less desirable area than the comps for a start, I know some teach in both sectors and have plenty of behaviour/ bullying incidents. They deal with it well though. Any school is perfectly capable of doing the same.

[Clavinova]

HPFA *The many links that appear under my header that actually contain factual information potentially useful to those who disagree with me have been posted by a malicious user pretending to be me." ?????

The blog I copied and pasted was written 2 weeks ago not 10 years ago - I googled to see who Jack Marwood was as you linked to him.

[HPFA]

I think you're rather missing the irony here, Clav

[Clavinova]

HPFA
I rather think the joke's on you.

[cantkeepawayforever]

"They're situated in a far less desirable area than the comps for a start,"

How many of the children from the 'less desirable area' around the grammar actually attend it? And how many - like you - travel in from more desirable areas a long way away?

How does the %PP at the grammar compare with the %PP in the area immediately surrounding the school (probably best indicated by the %PP at the geographically nearest secondary modern / not quite comprehensive)?

[cantkeepawayforever]

I'm also a little puzzled by 'broad spectrum of children'.

A comprehensive, by definition, contains children from almost all centiles of ability - possibly very few at the outlying ends of the normal distribution, but say from the 2nd to 98th. That's my definition of 'a broad spectrum of children'.

A grammar, by definition, contains only children from a small section of the ability curve - given the selection process is notoriously imperfect, possibly from the 75th centile upwards, with a few outliers? About a quarter of the range?

[cantkeepawayforever]

Anecdotally, though of course the plural of anecdote is not data, both I and my DS were, frankly, terrified by the corridor behaviour in a selective school that we visited - on an official tour, no less, I hate to think what it would be like normally.

[GreenGinger2]

Broad spectrum as in kids being kids- they vary.

So within admittedly narrow band there will be a range of ability,there is then esl and Sen and a variety of backgrounds. Then very differing personalities and the normal variety of social issues and problems that come when dealing with youngsters.

Teenagers are teenagers not cardboard cut outs. They don't morph into perfectly behaved drones because they are at a grammar school.

[cantkeepawayforever]

Green, I suspect - it would be normal - for the range to be slightly less extreme at a grammar school compared with one with a fully comprehesnive intake.

How many families does the grammar have in unsuitable or temporary housing? With substance-addicted parents? Refugees (included unaccompanied children)? Children in foster care or children's homes? Having no English at all (as opposed to 'from an EAL background') - the 11+ is not usually available in translation? Young carers?

Yes, a comprehensive may only have a few of each of these categories, while a grammar may have none, or vanishingly few, but it does serve to somewhat restrict the spectrum from which pupils are drawn.

It's a decreasing spectrum, isn't it? Private schools will have children from a range of families, from the very rich to those who scrape together the fees, but almost none who are genuinely deprived. A grammar will have a larger range, but not the extreme cases. A comprehensive - depending on where it is located - will have from some to many of the extreme cases. secondary moderns will tend to have a slightly higher % of extreme cases, because once the 'non extremes' are removed by the grammar school serving the same geographical area, they become more concentrated in the other schools.

It's a bit like the %PP - your grammar has a %PP of 8ish AFAIR, but how does that compare with the nearest secondary modern serving the same area?

[Notenoughsleepmumof3]

I'm not advocating more grammar schools, but I think the ones that I know about are doing a very good job and opening up scholastic opportunities for able children that may not get that at a comp and don't have the means to go private. I am advocating better state schools that can teach the most able as well as the least able, that provide a wide range of opportunities in music, art, sport, languages as well as academic challenge in science, math, etc. When schools do this, everyone benefits because kids are good at different things. But, they need the opportunity to do this. There are some schools that do this very well and are comps, but there are some schools that are failing the top kids and many others in the school. And the reality is, if parents can get a better option for their kids they will try and do this. It would be ideal if my children could get the same education at our local Secondary as they are getting at the schools they've ended up at, but that isn't possible because the curriculum, the school hours, the teachers, and the classroom behaviour doesn't compare to where they are in my individual case.

[HPFA]

I rather think the joke's on you.

I aim to please.

[cantkeepawayforever]

And the reality is, if parents can get a better option for their kids they will try and do this.

Yes, I understand this.

I understand the fact that the notion of 'the common good ' - ie the good of society as a whole - is so easily over-written by 'the wants of the individual'.

I find it hard when the 'wants of the individual' -'I want an grammar school education for my child' - trample on the equal right of another child to have a good education, by reducing the overall quality of the schooling available to them (remembering that sec modern + grammar is a zero sum game compared with the comprehensive system, so for each winner there is a corresponding loser).

I suspect I am an old-fashioned fuddy-duddy.

[HPFA]

I find it hard when the 'wants of the individual' -'I want an grammar school education for my child' - trample on the equal right of another child to have a good education, by reducing the overall quality of the schooling available to them (remembering that sec modern + grammar is a zero sum game compared with the comprehensive system, so for each winner there is a corresponding loser).

Beautifully put.

[Fourmantent]

There are plenty of gifted, academic, bright, clever students who will fail the 11+ and they will be worse off in a sec mod than they would have been at a comp.

One in five adults were put off learning after they failed the exam, according to the survey, which questioned 1,000 UK adults.

Embarrassment was the most common emotion cited in the study, followed by anger, low self-worth and shame, the mature education company Love to Learn found.

[GreenGinger2]

Whatever the amount of pp( and some comps will have less than the figure you suggested) they still need to be catered for as do any other kid with an individual need or life trauma( death,illness and divorce don't choose schools)

The fact is because a school is a grammar it doesn't morph in to an Etonesque private experience. You need bags and bags of money for that alongside a school stuffed with the uber rich and their contacts. Grammars have Pp kids and the full range of middle classes several tiers of which are anything but wealthy. There has been no detailed examination of the salaries of all grammar kids,the focus is always solely on pp. I suspect going by our experience a fair few kids are anything but rich.

[GreenGinger2]

Four their are also hoards of kids worse off in many comps than other comps.

Parents do the best they can. Some choose to bus to grammars or other comps they prefer instead of the local one. Others go the whole hog,paying thousands to get into better local areas and parts of the country with better schools.

[BertrandRussell]

"I understand the fact that the notion of 'the common good ' - ie the good of society as a whole - is so easily over-written by 'the wants of the individual'."

And almost invariably the wants of the already privileged.

[HPFA]

By the way, I should have really linked to the whole piece by Jack Marwood.

Additionally, allowing parents to exercise choice in their child’s schooling based on the place they can afford to live does not automatically reduce any other parent’s access to a good education, unless – and this would be an odd position for a politician to take - you believe that it is impossible for all schools to provide a good education.

I find his argument a little over-elaborate - I think it might have been better just to stick with the obvious - that if you define the "best schools" using raw figures of exam results you will always find the "best schools" are in wealthy areas.

icingonthecakeblog.weebly.com/blog/why-parents-selection-by-wealth-is-better-than-schools-selection-by-ability#comments

[goodbyestranger]

The release of today's news article about the DfE research into selection by house price indicates that the government announcement is due anytime soon, so don't all exhaust yourselves before noble's next announcement related thread.

noble in your last thread you hotly denied that a main plank of argument of those opposing grammars is that the DC at the non grammars do less well if the brightest are removed, yet as I read these threads that argument is repeated over and over and over again. Are you sure it isn't a central argument? It really does seem to be, on MN at least.

[Notenoughsleepmumof3]

The kids at grammars are not rich. Most people who can go private do choose this over a grammar, because of the social aspect. I don't agree with this, but I recognise it as a fact. It exists.

I believe in the greater good and have advocated that myself. I wanted my local school to provide what my DC needed. I didn't move house (not an option), nor did I tutor my kids, because I can't afford that, but I did wait in line with my DC for two extremely hard exams for a school and he passed and he got in, and I'm thankful, because the local alternative was not good enough IMO. Visited it 5 times. Those are the schools that need improving and I feel if they had more to offer kids like my DC, things would improve across the board.

How do we as parents get this to happen? Been to several local meetings. Spoken to councillors and heads. They seem ok with it. And for me, it just wasn't good enough.