New analysis - Grammar schools in England

[IntheMotherhood]

There's been quite a bit of engagement from various MNs recently over disproportionate focus on % A*/As league table and what this does to providing an actual education to our children.

There's also been discussion on super selective schools, specifically grammars and the continued obsession on 'getting in' being a pinnacle of 11+ academic ambition for many families.

Does it really make a difference if your child is of high prior attainment? Does the individual perceived benefit(s) of going to a Grammar outweigh the larger social disbenefit(s)?

Thought this new analysis published online today in the British Journal of Sociology of Education might be of interest.

Make yourself a cuppa and enjoy.

"....Using the full 2015 cohort of pupils in England, this article shows how the pupils attending grammar schools are stratified in terms of chronic poverty, ethnicity, language, special educational needs and even precise age within their year group. This kind of clustering of relative advantage is potentially dangerous for society. The article derives measures of chronic poverty and local socio-economic status segregation between schools, and uses these to show that the results from grammar schools are no better than expected, once these differences are accounted for...."

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01425692.2018.1443432

[IntheMotherhood]

Piggy my Amazon prime copy of Cleverlands arrived today. In time for Easter hols! 👍🏽

[Piggywaspushed]

I hope you enjoy it : it's really an interesting read for the most part. Finland especially, I felt.

[Iceweasel]

IntheMotherhood, the top set of a high performing comprehensive would be too easy for my DS in maths and science.

He would, however, be unlikely to be able to access a scholarship and bursary to attend a super selective independent school. He is not advanced in all academic areas and would struggle with a scholarship interview.

That I knew he would be happier there is exactly the reason why I sent him to grammar.

[TalkinPeece]

Iceweasel
the top set of a high performing comprehensive would be too easy for my DS in maths and science.
Do, please explain how you come to such a conclusion?
Are all of the kids in comp counties dumber than your child?

[noblegiraffe]

Why, iceweasel do you think the top set of a high performing comp would be too easy, when those are the kids who go to a grammar?

[cantkeepawayforever]

Rather over half the top set of a local comp got 9s in the new Maths GCSEs last year. The rest (and about half of set 2) got 8s.#

Would life in that top set (which also contained a decent number progressing to the higher levels of the Maths challenges / Kangaroo etc each year) really be 'too easy' for a child who passed for a grammar?

[poshme]

Someone up thread said that grammars get the same funding as other schools. In our area the grammars get less per pupil than other schools as the local authority takes a bigger cut from the grammar schools than from the other schools.

This is not based on the pupil premium, it's a historical anomaly that the grammars have been fighting a long time.

DS is at grammar, it's far more culturally diverse than our local comp. it's one of the reasons I chose it- until DS went there he'd never met anyone his own age of a different religion.
(And before anyone jumps on me about that, we live rurally & it is very non-diverse area)

[Iceweasel]

Why, iceweasel do you think the top set of a high performing comp would be too easy, when those are the kids who go to a grammar?
The children who go to the grammar would not all attend the same comprehensive. So the top set at a comp may have students in the top 20% of ability, the top set of a grammar may have students in the top 5% of ability. His grammar takes kids from a miles away and brings them together.

[cantkeepawayforever]

Iceweasel,

So you think that my information is wrong, that top sets of comprehensives don't get 8s and 9s?

Or that children who WOULD get 8s and 9s don't exist in top sets of comprehensive schools?

Or that if your child was in the top 5% - and therefore able to get an 8 or 9 - they WOULDN'T get that grade in the top set of a comprehensive? Why not?

Part of the difficulty, of course, is that what YOU mean by comprehensive is, because of where you live, ['the other school in a grammar area' - ie a secondary modern.

Yes, children of very high ability are rarer in secondary moderns. That doesn't mean that in a proper comprehensive system, they aren't catered for very well indeed - secondary moderns aren't comprehensive, any more than a grammar school is.

[BeyondThePage]

DD goes to mixed 6th form at a boys grammar school - it was a purely personal choice - she needs to be pushed to succeed. At her current school she is being pushed to achieve 8/9, at her former school they are pushed to achieve a pass.

Would be great if that were different, but it's not.

We are in Gloucestershire, so she meets a much wider ethnic mix at grammar than she ever did at her secondary - because people are bused in from non-grammar areas not just local.

[TammyWhyNot]

IceWeasel, I bet my comp-attending DS and his friends would not find it hard to keep up with your DS. They include 3 who just won a national STEM competition run by a Royal Society, several of them swanned straight into the Kings Maths School, they do loads of extra curricular extension work. Normal S London comp.

[Piggywaspushed]

A boy at DS2's comp remembered Pi to 143 digits in a challenge last week. He is not bullied. He is, as you would imagine, a little different but eh is loved, admired and lauded and given many opportunities. I actually suspect he might not be so cherished in a grammar : btut hat would eb supposition, so I shall not do that.

A boy at my school can do a Rubik's cube blindfolded and had grade 8 trumpet at age 9. he is taught up a year and thrives.

[TammyWhyNot]

Indeed, the top sets at our competition and the 2 neighbouring ones were getting 9s 8s, A*, As in Further Maths (highest mark), 12 or 13 GCSEs... nearly all of them, not a rarified fee.

No selectives nearby to top slice.

[TalkinPeece]

iceweasel
The children who go to the grammar would not all attend the same comprehensive. So the top set at a comp may have students in the top 20% of ability, the top set of a grammar may have students in the top 5% of ability
There are less than 20 superselective grammars in the country

Are you seriously saying that all of the children who do not live in superselective areas could not give your son a run for his money in most subjects
really ?

[cantkeepawayforever]

There is also the point that the 11+ is a very dodgy measure of actual ability, so the grammar probably does contain MOSTLY children who do fit into the top 20%, with a few accidental outliers, but definitely NOT exclusively the top 5% (unless it is actually aiming for the top 0.5%, in which case 'probably top 5%ish' is not a bad estimate)

[Iceweasel]

I didn't say that the grammar contained exclusively the top 5%, I think the grammars in my county take about 15% of students, which I understand is not exclusively the top 15%. I said the top set at the grammar might contain the top 5% of students, which was only a rough estimate.

[TalkinPeece]

iceweasel
what you said was
the top set of a high performing comprehensive would be too easy for my DS in maths and science.
and I wondered what gave you the impression that your son is so much brighter than kids in Comp counties ?

[Iceweasel]

I'm sure there are children in the top set of comprehensives that will get the top GCSE grades. I'm sure my DS would get similar GCSE grades at a comprehensive as a grammar.

I'm not thinking about that yet though, my DS is in year 7! I just want him to be happy and challenged after a difficult time at primary. The top set in maths at grammar is just about challenging enough so that he is happy. He is still in the top few in the class, but doesn't stand out at last.

[noblegiraffe]

So you have no idea what it’s like in a high performing comp, iceweasel, you’re just assuming that your DS wouldn’t be challenged or happy there.

[HPFA]

But if a comprehensive has say, six sets for a Maths and a grammar has five wouldn't that mean that the top set at the grammar had a narrower ability range than the top set at the comp?

We can argue whether it's necessary for a top set to be so narrow in order to challenge the most able but that's a different issue isn't it?

[TalkinPeece]

iceweasel
The comp that my kids attended is good but not in the top few in our county.
Each of my kids got a string of A and A* grades at GCSE
Neither of them were in the top quarter of the top set in their year groups

I think you rather over estimate how different grammar school kids are from those in non selective areas

[cantkeepawayforever]

HPFA,

Your point is absolutely accurate - the ability range in the top set of a grammar would be narrower.

Iceweasel's point - that the top set of a high performing comp would be too easy in Maths for her DS - is not accurate.

[cantkeepawayforever]

Iceweasel, are you genuinely suggesting that the top few in the top set of a high performing comp are going to be less happy than your DS, even though they are likely to be of almost exactly the same ability? Why?

[JellyBean231]

I have a mixed opinion on grammar schools and I went to one!
We lived on a very large, very rough and well known council estate. I had no idea we were poor til I went to grammar school! I definitely felt different to most of the others (except for one other girl in my class who also came from a council estate and we became firm friends!) Honestly, it made me a stronger person and bought out that will in me to show people that I deserved to be there too (that I hadn't had in me til then) and I was pushed, hard, to succeed. I don't believe I would have done so well in our local comp because I did need that push,- I would have happily spent my school days messing about and bunking off like my friends did that went to our local comp. I spent a lot of the time wishing I had gone there too as I felt I was missing out on all the fun. I look back now and am grateful I was pushed to do well, plus I met lifelong dear friends that I would never ever have crossed paths with.

However, our local comp was known to be shockingly bad and had a terrible reputation, so is in no way comparable as the schools are polar opposites. My dsis went to a different local comp and absolutely thrived there. She left with pretty much identical exam results to me and loved her time there.

I do not think grammar schools should be abolished completely, but I do feel as though some comps (especially those near grammars, in my experience) can just be left floundering because the emphasis is on getting your dc into the grammar to avoid the comp. More emphasis should be on taking the best bits of independents and grammars and inserting those into the comps to level the playing field. I do not believe your whole education should be based on how you perform on one day as an 11 year old child.

[Iceweasel]

The kids in fully comprehensive counties are just as bright, not sure why you thought I thought otherwise. However, the top 5% would be less than 10 kids in a year (assuming a cohort of less than 200).