May has got her Grammars.

[ScrubTheDecks]

Despite widespread lack of support from the education sector. Despite not having got a majority for her manifesto determination on this. Despite the Tories having cancelled BSF. Despite schools budgets being SLASHED.

She has introduced a 'slip it past' programme of expansion for existing grammars. So: no access to the newly funded grammars in areas where they don't exist. Weasel words about lowering standards for disadvantaged pupils to ensure access....so, admitting they don't bloody work as agents of social mobility or inclusion!

Why not invest in Outstanding comps all over the country that are doing well by all students, including the disadvantaged? Why not invest n comps all over the country that are struggling to recruit teachers and need standards raising?

A nostalgic move by a grammar school educated vicar's daughter (faith schools expanding too - hooray, what a great move for the religiously declining, multi-cultural C21st that is!) for a golden age of grammars that never did what they were supposed to do in the first place - except for a minority of lucky pupils.

I am utterly disgusted by this. Totally anti-democratic move.

I understand those MN-ers in a grammar area where you have no choice but to buy into the grammar system, or those who have, on an local level, poor schools and for those with bright kids, grammar is the only salvation. But grammars and disadvantaged / under achieving schools are to an extent are symbiotic .

Good comps getting their budgets cut should go on strike right now. Oh, but they can't / won't because of the public exams. Nifty timing, T May.

Is there a march I can go on?

[Crazy3]

Agree with all you have said. It is an utter disgrace that while state school scrimp and scrape to try and make ends meet funding goes into Grammar education.

[Missingthesea]

My late brother, who was a lot older than me, went to a provincial Grammar in the 1950s. It seems to have been pretty poor. No one was encouraged to try for university - the Head expected all the boys to become either teachers or civil servants. My brother had a gift for languages, but it wasn't encouraged by the school. In the end he left at 15 and joined the armed forces.

[Peregrina]

Funnily enough, Lady Plowden sent her children to Independent schools, where I suspect that not many of the methods she espoused were practiced.

I have mixed feelings about those methods - I suspect that it worked well for some children, and for some teachers. I suspect that it didn't for others, so personally I am glad the pendulum has swung back to some extent. I can vaguely remember the ideas being introduced in my last year at primary, and being given a maths question to 'discover' the answer too, and thinking that they knew what the answer was, so why not just tell me, instead of wasting my time.

However, I think that's the style of learner that I am. As an adult learning languages I find I prefer a fairly structured class, some reading, some translation, some grammar, some conversation. Other learners I know have only been interested in conversation classes, and don't want to know about grammar. Horses for courses.

[letstalk2000]

My Mum pre breakdown '1985' was a committed 1960s style Public school educated socialist teacher ! ( would vote DUP today if she could) She believed in advocating the 1967 'Plowden Report' in to education policy .

The Plowden report stated children are foremost children and not future adults. In essence children would be complicit in their own educational preferences. This in practice meaning the 'outdated' formality of education removed from the classroom !

Mother was empowered by the creation of Countesthorpe School in Leicestershire. This being a school with no sanctions, set periods or even classrooms.

After recovery from her breakdown, she went the other way politically and became a passionate believer in selective education and a (pro market capitalist )....

[marytuda]

Lovely bit of educational history cantkeep. My mum even older (90) left rural grammar with her Leaving Cert aged 15 ‘because you didn’t need A levels for university then”. She then trained as social worker at university, a profession in those days it seems often targeted by nicely spoken, well-meaning gels not considered quite academic enough for teaching.
It’s as though (with apologies to modern social workers who face completely different ballgame) it was viewed as helping impart nice responsible middle-classness to the less clued-up. Mum always said after having us she couldn’t go back because profession had changed beyond recognition.
She also had no brothers and I too have often wondered about the (negative) effects on her if she had had one. He’d have been sent to Public School no doubt which would have meant no money for her and sister’s education - they were posh-ish but not rich! (Sister also graduated and ended up married to famous author. Mum married penniless but fairly brilliant immigrant. . .)

[letstalk2000]

It was a dump due to how the school was run, the expectations bullying and the fact the teacher only concern was their own safety.

It is quite telling that I was called a 'skank' by children from families embedded with generations of career criminals ! This terminology was reserved for the children from the children's home. The kids acknowledged I was not the typical 'skank' due to my accent and coming from the grammar but a skank nonetheless.

The school really did not know what to do with me other than tell me to redo the worksheets that I had completed in 10 minutes while the rest of the class fought with each other . On two occasions I was sent out of the class and given detentions for asking why we were doing Maths worksheets designed for primary chool children!

The school did not believe in any setting in subjects. This probably being because they would have had to deviate from their plan of copying worksheets aimed at primary schools.

The school today despite being renamed 3 times and having had millions thrown at it is much the same !

If there was not a grammar school option here, the school would just be the same albeit destroying a further 25% of children's futures !

[Stillwishihadabs]

Some school (mostly comprehensives) are dumps it's not right and clearly awful for the dcs who have no choice but to go there. We need to stop pretending this isn't the case. Our local school hovers around 40% a-c with the e-bac of 11%. This is a pitifully low level and anyone with any nouse at all makes sure their dc end up elsewhere

[Peregrina]

letstalk - do you think a local 'dump' is OK for other people's children, or do you think that all children are entitled to a decent education?

Some Sec Mods were decent and some were dumps. A lot of grammars were not nearly as good as they liked to think they were and happily bumbled along.

[letstalk2000]

Sorry about the capital letters in the middle of sentences.

[letstalk2000]

Cantkeepaway. Due to a bizarre set of circumstances around my family life. This consisting of breakdowns alcoholism and redemptions, my secondary schooling was diverse !
It consisted of 4 years at a girls grammar those being 1st 2nd year and the Sixth Form. My 3rd year(9) was spent at a Modern School. This after being taken in to care (after my mums breakdown and dads alcoholism) I was placed in the local 'dump' by the council. Then if by magic 'Cinderella' style, I ended up in a prestigious girls boarding school for 4th and 5th years paid for by my uncle.

The redemption part being my mother coming out of her depression . She manage to get back in to teaching and subsequently ended up as a Deputy Head at a girls grammar school.

This means I have rather unusually experienced rather different parts of the education system. This along side with having a SEN DS who told me tonight he wants to go to University like his sisters .

'Steady on' this is a boy who has made stellar progress in the last 18 months when he achieves getting to University that will be remarkable !

[cantkeepawayforever]

Absolutely. I do wonder if my mum hadn't been an only child - if she had had a brother - whether her parents would have allowed her to take her education as far as she did.

[Peregrina]

I agree cantkeepaway - the 30 odd who didn't get 5 O levels weren't allowed into the sixth form, so the places were filled with girls coming from a couple of good Secondary Moderns. The best of these had managed 10 O levels. I couldn't but help think at the time, why on earth hadn't she got to the grammar school? Did it matter in the long run - well she lost the chance to learn a second language. I wouldn't say she missed out on science because my school wasn't too hot on that, but she could type.

Some reasons for not going to the grammar were things like an expensive uniform ruling it out, although I think uniform grants existed. There were still parents who wouldn't let a girl go to the grammar, but would let a son go. Similarly quite a lot of parents wouldn't let their daughter stay on to the sixth form. Get a job, get married, produce a few grandchildren, this was the life mapped out for them.

[cantkeepawayforever]

And since even those women who got to university - my 80 year old mum is an Oxbridge graduate - were only given the choice of the civil service or teaching when they consulted the Careers Service at the end of their degrees, it is no wonder that grammar school girls thought they might as well go straight to teacher training college, if teaching was where they would end up anyway.

[cantkeepawayforever]

However, you do still get apologists for the grammar system stating that 'secondary moderns are so much better for the less able, because they can learn a trade' - ignorning the fact that a sizeable chunk of the lower grammar school performers and the higher secondary modern performers would, on a very slightly different test, or simoply sitting the same test on a different day, would have been assigned to each other's schools. The lack of accuracy in selection via the 11+, given the wholly different paths it arbitrarily sends children of identical ability on, should be a scandal.

[Peregrina]

But talk to women of a certain age, and you will find a lot of grammar school girls were pushed into teacher training. I think it was only from the mid seventies that you needed two A levels when they pushed to make it an all graduate profession. Now most of my teacher friends eventually went on to get degrees - some via the OU, some by taking a few years out to go to University.

[cantkeepawayforever]

Tbh, one of the reasons that the version of the grammar school / secondary modern system that existed just prior to the comprehensive era was so unsuccessful was that it was already predicated on the idea of a vanished era - where secondary moderns would churn out manual workers / those fitted for the 'lower clerical ranks', content to stay in their fixed place in society, and grammars would educate the middle class and a few elite others for 'professional jobs' such as teaching etc, while private schools would cater for 'the ruling classes' and higher professional roles. Even art that point, that model of society just didn't exist - and it is far more ridiculously antiquated today.

[cantkeepawayforever]

letstalk,

In general, more young adults went straight into employment.

One of the developments over time has been the decline of 'traditional' mass employment for a living wage for those with lower level, or no, formal qualifications.

Factory work of all kinds, mining, heavy and light manufacturing, shipbuilding, manual work on building / transport projects, railway work, farm labouring, merchant navy, fishing, not to mention all the 'smaller' trades - shopkeeping, tailoring, cobblers - and (pre first world war and to a lesser extent up to the second) domestic service, not to mention apprentices to all trades, shorthand typists etc: my family tree contains examples of all of these largely vanished mass employers.

As a result, there was not the sharp dichotomy you suggest of university vs borstal - there was every chance of earning a decent living without lists of formal qualifications. That just doesn't exist today, and that is one of the factors driving the push to improve absolute educational standards for the middle / lower attainers, in order for them to compete in the modern world.

[letstalk2000]

If the grammar schools didn't get girls to University !

Did the modern schools manage to keep the Borstals in business then ?.

[cantkeepawayforever]

The thing is, the Progress8 score for high attainers at Boston High School (grammar) is -0.38. So it selects children, and then teaches them in such a way that they lose 0.4 of a GCSE grade compared with children of the same ability in all schools (selective and non-selective) nationwide...

And that's with 11% PP children, a figure lower than all but the the leafiest of leafy comprehensives.

[Peregrina]

Some good ideas there, ScrubTheDecks.

I am not sure about Maths though - my exam board had calculus on the O level syllabus, my DH's didn't. Mind you, I could plug figures into the equations, dy/dx, crank the handle and churn out answers, but hadn't got the foggiest idea of what the result meant. I wouldn't have been able to apply it. Yet I passed O level reasonably comfortably. Basic geometry like pythagoras, I use to this day and am pretty OK at mental arithmetic, but I think that came from working in shops were we only had old fashioned tills, so we had to be able to add and subtract.

There were other areas of maths, which never appeared on the syllabus, set theory, matrices, for two, which I think might have been and gone from the exams now. But I digress.....

BTW I think there is nothing wrong with BTECS - the maths for some of the engineering ones can be quite rigorous, and the more practical approach suits some young people better. But what would people like Gove know? I found it interesting that before she was sacked from Education, Justine Greening, a product of a comprehensive and a Russell group university, was beginning to engage in constructive dialogue with the education sector.

[Badbadbunny]

So Children don't sit an 11+ exam for Boston Grammar then?

According to their website, entry is via 11+ exams.

[Peregrina]

So Children don't sit an 11+ exam for Boston Grammar then? It isn't a grammar because it takes all comers from a defined catchment area?

I gather that Tiffin is something of an exception being 'super-selective' and taking children London wide and not just the local boroughs. I doubt whether these exist outside Greater London.

Out in the non London world, Boston Grammar sounds only too like the grammar schools of old - some good, some good in parts, some pretty poor. Girls grammars especially seemed to be like this - very long on petty rules, but not too hot when it came to getting girls to university. Why bother when 5 O levels secured a place at a teacher training college? Theresa May would not have got to Oxbridge from my grammar.

[ScrubTheDecks]

Letstalk: I’m many ways I agree with you about educational / NC standards overall. I am horrified by the curriculum books for literature and history (for example) compared to the complexity of essays I was required to research and write at my selective school. But as you say, top students from all our sectors scored low-medium in old O level papers . However the maths my Dc do now is WAY in advance of what we did. Or maybe that is because I was in a bottom maths set and just scraped a pass.

I don’t think tne system is failing. I think improvements could be made by:
Focusing on education rather than results- at government level.
Bring back teachers centred and advisory services, so that teachers can share experience, ideas, get inspiration and support from practicing teachers rather than being performance managed by Heads from industries that know fuck all about teaching and young people.
Putting more money and resources into those who are not functioning at school. Pull them out, not just for the sake of the diligent, but so that they can flourish, too. Lots of young people do well in a PRU, with a smaller curriculum and perhaps doing more vocational work. (But this shouldn’t be irrevocably decided as their pathway at 10!)
Stop using education to disguise the unemployment levels. Young people shouldn’t be in sixth form if they could be making better use of their lives elsewhere. Ditto for Uni. Make education a positive choice, with the value that that gives it.

I could go on, but won’t, I’ll spare you

[letstalk2000]

Is 5 grade 4s at GCSE selective or very inclusive !

One can imagine that the 11+ taken at Boston High/Grammar is a different animal to that taken at Tiffin/ Chelmsford Grammars .

[cantkeepawayforever]

The thing is, a bad grammar in a poor area is still selective, in the same way as a good comprehensive in a gppd area is still a comprehensive.

You can't say 'all grammars are good ... oh, except the bad ones, we won't call those grammars really' or 'all comprehensives are bad ... because the ones with good intakes can't be called comprehensives'.

A grammar school is a grammar because it is selective, and a comprehensive is comprehensive because it admits children from the full range of abilities in its catchment. End of story. You don't get to leave out those that don't fit the narrative...