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

[noblegiraffe]

You said a high performing comp, iceweasel, those schools have more than their fair share of high ability students.

My school has ten sets for maths. I don’t think our top set is so full of duffers that iceweasel’s DS would be sad.

[TalkinPeece]

jellybean
Comparing schools 20 years ago with now is not valid

when I was a kid, state schools did not produce anywhere near as good as private

• with the caveat that private schools hushed up their bad results left right and centre
  

before the modern obsession with tutoring, grammar schools may well have taken the brightest kids
now they take the best tutored / funded

league tables - for their sins - have changed schooling for ever
base your views on 2018 not last century

[Iceweasel]

No, I am not suggesting that the top few in the top set at a comprehensive would be less happy than my DS, I only know my own child.

[TalkinPeece]

but you do not know all of the other children and where he truly sits in the scheme of things

[stateschoolparent]

There are some very clever kids in the top sets of comps, particularly in London where there are either no local grammar schools or they are too far to commute for most people. Indeed there are several kids at our local comp who got into some of London's most selective private schools but chose not to go (or in the end their parents couldn't afford it). In fact there was research done years ago about middle class kids who attended rough inner city comps which found their academic performance exactly the same as those who attended private schools.And re maths and science easily the brightest kid I have ever known was a cousin who was borderline genius but attended a very rough state school with knife muggings etc. Needless to say he need up at the worlds leading uni for maths.

[cantkeepawayforever]

DS and DD attend a high performing comp.

There were too many children (c. 200 intake) with the old L6 for them all to be in the top set in Y7. And, as I say, more than the whole of the top set got 8s and 9s in last year's GCSEs.

Skewed intake, I agree - leafy, unchallenging intake - but comprehensive.

[Iceweasel]

I am not in London, not middle class, and if the seven grammars in my county were not here my child would not be at a 'leafy comp'!

[TalkinPeece]

If Gloucestershire did not have Grammars it would have proper comps
so you'd either be paying fees
or roughing it wit the rest of us

[Bobbybobbins]

As a parent with a child who will have to attend a special school, I really disagree with the suggestion that transport should be funded to 'super selectives'. Ultimately it is a child/parents' choice to attend these schools - they would still be accepted in their local school and catered for (although possibly not as well). This is not an option for many children with severe special needs who are simply not welcome in mainstream schools.

I am also a teacher at an inner city comp with 1/3 of our children receiving pp funding (roughly national average and certainly not a leafy comp).our whole top set got grade 8/9 in maths GCSE, children to Oxbridge every year etc.

[Iceweasel]

but you do not know all of the other children and where he truly sits in the scheme of things
No, I don't know the other children, I said I only know my child. He did well in year 7 CATS and got into grammar without tutoring though.

Maybe I was wrong, maybe in a 'leafy comp' the top set would be at the same or higher level as at the grammar. If that was the case then DS would be fine. I don't think that would be the case even if we had 'proper' comps in Gloucestershire though. Don't schools like that select by postcode as a proxy for income, so my child wouldn't have a chance anyway?

I'm certainly not afraid of him 'roughing it', he is a kid from a single parent, low income household.

[TalkinPeece]

iceweasel
I live four miles from the comp my kids went to and well outside the catchment boundary
but they (and dozens of their friends from round here) got in

yes, houses in the catchment of top comps cost more
but not everybody owns their house or lives in catchment

DO NOT believe most of what you read on MN about how hard good schools are to get into

[Iceweasel]

DO NOT believe most of what you read on MN about how hard good schools are to get into
We arrived in the UK a year ago, I've learnt everything from MN
.

[IntheMotherhood]

Thanks for the info on school transport to non mainstream schools Bobby. Do you think that grammar schools have a place in the state school ecosystem if seen through a special needs lens? Apologies if that offends anyone as is a crude comparison - just testing my thinking.

[ReelingLush18]

DO NOT believe most of what you read on MN about how hard good schools are to get into That's simply not true in London though unless one has been very strategic about where one has bought a home. Our closest school by some way is one of the most leafy and best performing comps in London. We are out of catchment, partly because the school operates a sibling policy (in my view totally unnecessary in London)...

[cantkeepawayforever]

IntotheMotherhood,

I know that your question was not intended for me, but it is something that I have wobndered about for some time.

I think there is a place for 'Special Schools for those of such extreme ability / disability that their needs cannot efficiently or appropriately be educated in mainstream schools' at BOTH ends of the spectrum of need.

However, the cut-off for the 'high' end is extremely high, and may not be the same across all subjects, so such Special Schools (of which there would be very, very few, probably 1 per county) could sensibly be co-located with a comprehensive, which most pupils would attend most of the time.

However, provision for those needing university-level Maths at 11, for example, could then be provided for children who were identified by an Ed Psych assessment as 'not efficiently educated in mainstream'. We are talking those who are in the 1 in 1000 or 1 in 10,000 - those of whom there are a single example per large school, or 1 in 10 years per large school - level, not 5 in 100 or 25 in 100.

I am thinking of the Royal Ballet School / Yehudi Menuhin school type model - the vast majority of able young dancers and musicians are well catered for by local dance schools / music teachers, complemented by associate-type outreach schemes / junior conservatoires / holiday courses. A few are so able that educating them through that type of provision is not appropriate or efficient, and so they are brought together into a very small number of expert centres, combined with a 'normal' comprehensive education across the remainder of the curriculum.

[cantkeepawayforever]

To clairify the point "However, the cut-off for the 'high' end is extremely high, and may not be the same across all subjects", what I mean is that even those children who are at the 1 in 10,000 ability in Maths may well be within the normal range of ability in History, Geography, English, Art - so a Special School catering to their high ability in Maths could be co-located with a comprehensive school at which they attended most of their other subjects (Computing, Physics etc might also be taught to that child in the Special School, because they are also likely to be areas of strength)

[noblegiraffe]

those of whom there are a single example per large school

I don’t think I’ve taught anyone in over a decade in a large school who needed university level maths aged 11.

[cantkeepawayforever]

I would also say that there may only need to be 'high ability special schools' for a limited range of subjects.

You seldom hear someone say 'my child is of such high ability in English / History / Geography that they cannot be sensibly educated in a mainstream comprehensive'

Maths, some Sciences, Computing [to be fair, those 3 probably involve the same children to a greater extent than the others] Art, Music, specific aspects of PE, maybe Languages? Would a series of units attached to comprehensives, so 1 for highly able Maths / Science / ICT; 1 for Languages; existing provision for Music and PE; maybe 1 for Art per county?

[cantkeepawayforever]

I agree, Noble The ones I know of are '1 in a career' type, so the 1 in 10,000 or less.

[cantkeepawayforever]

However, I've therefore gone a bit too extreme. Those who simply could do GCSE at 11, and A-level at 13, so about 5 years ahead, are probably more worth designing a system around.

[noblegiraffe]

I’ve met one exceptional mathematician who couldn’t really be catered for within the school curriculum. The problem with designing provision around those students is location. They are sufficiently rare that if you want a bricks-and-mortar facility to accommodate them then it’ll probably be in London as per, and any other exceptional student would have to either be uprooted, or board - a Kolmogorov maths school that Dominic Cummings was wanting.

If you want to go the route that they are currently trying to take of a maths-specialist school in every major city, you’d need to water down your entry requirements. And despite the DfE really trying to push this, no one wants to set them up (bar Exeter and KCL). www.gov.uk/government/publications/how-to-open-a-maths-school

[cantkeepawayforever]

The thing is, you don't NEED to water down the entry requirements, as the only children who can't be catered for within a full spectrum comprehensive ARE the extremely extreme.....

[cantkeepawayforever]

(The really extreme mathematicians I do know of have been catered for through streamed lectures and links to local university tutors OR through scholarships to a small handful of very high-performing private schools)

[cantkeepawayforever]

if you want a bricks-and-mortar facility to accommodate them then it’ll probably be in London as per, and any other exceptional student would have to either be uprooted, or board

That's what happens to exceptional dance / music students, I suppose. It's just that from the posts on MN I had perhaps assumed that genuinely extremely able young mathematicians who can't be educated in mainstream comprehensives because it would be 'too easy' for them / they would be bullied / they are 'too able' were more common than you suggest.

[noblegiraffe]

cant you would have to water down the entry requirements - take the KCL maths school for example. It’s 16-19 so sixth form offering A-levels in maths, Further Maths, STEP and a couple of other mathsy subjects. The kids there will be sitting A-levels at the appropriate time, therefore they need to be excellent at maths but they don’t have to have sat GCSE aged 11 or whatever, and in fact the school wouldn’t really be appropriate for those kids because they’ll have probably already sat A-level. They and Exeter operate within the school curriculum, not completely outside of it.