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?

eliza

I can't remember where on here i read it

But there was a post saying that back in the day girls had to get a higher pass mark to get into grammar schools than boys did

Dont have grammar schools in my county

I can't work out whether thats good for my children or not

I live in a grammar school area and agree with the person who was saying about children being tutored from Year 3. I know of children who on top of that did a three day intensive programme in the summer holidays. These are children who are already massively advantaged purely by being middle class.

I went to a grammar myself and I never felt as good as the other kids there because I wasn't as clever and well off as some of them. I suffered from low self esteem so how will these children be supported?

UnderneathTheAsh: but it has been demonstrated, evidenced, since Grammars began, that the vast majority of pupils are from middle class backgrounds.

And although there are still ‘dire comps’ the balance has changed now. The pressures on young people are such that it is now cool to be clever, and kids on top sets in comps can be very high achieving. Kids who would not have been put in for the 11+. Kids whose parents couldn’t afford the more expensive uniform and the bus fares to the further away Grammar.

A child from a prep school with a parent who has books in the house and goes through the VR tests is so much more likely to pass the 11+ than a child who has simply never encountered some of the vocabulary used in VR.

With more investment in comps, more young people can be supported to succeed. We don’ t need to segregate kids at 10 years old. It is expensive, counter productive and divisive.

What I find particularly horrendous is the suggestion that our lovely state primaries should evolve into nasty little 11+ prep schools . . As JustRichmal says above, the number of man-hours under 10s waste learning to jump through hoops in grammar school areas bothers me more than what fretful parents spend on it . . . . When our DC were in Y4, another mum asked the HT at a parents' forum if our inner London school wouldn't consider training (some, maybe top-table, with parents willing to pay?) DC for selective or private school entry? To his credit, the HT ruled it out quite firmly. A school governor came on later and advised the parent to hire a private tutor.
But how long could the HT resist that sort of pressure, if the grammars were all around us, scooping up top-table kids from every primary (and not just a few out in the distant suburbs?) How long could we, as parents?
Who really wants this madness back? And I speak as the product of a 1970s grammar school education; of which the most important impact was to make us all feel vastly superior to the secondary modern kids in town. Neither school, frankly, was any good; a brilliant comp like the ones both have since become, I hear, would have been 100x better for all of us. "Academic" kids don't benefit from being academic all the time, and "non-academic" kids also have talents, which can only develop if they maintain a modicum of self-belief . . . How do grammar schools help with any of that? Mine certainly didn't.

Rufus and Eliza; when the 11+ was introduced more girls than boys passed. Not surprisingly, really. Boys are still slower to mature academically are they not? Summer born boys being the last in the pack?

Anyway, rather than send more girls than boys to Grammars they evened it out by making the threadhold higher for girls.

Now they are saying they will make the pass mark lower for poor kids. Such a blunt instrument: on average overall poor kids of the same potential ability do worse. However, some of our poorest communities, such as refugee and immigrant families, are the most driven to support their kids. The highest performing child in my Dc’s Primary school had a single mother who was totally brassic.

How much money will be spent trying to devise tutor-proof tests!

Any system that requires SO much tortuous engineering to make it ‘fair ‘ or do what people want it to do in society is not really well designed, is it?

I saw this on the news and felt so saddened. It will only increase the class divide. It's that simple. May doesn't care about the general population in any way.

Why should only bright children from poor backgrounds be given opportunities? Does this mean we write some off from infancy because they haven't had any chance to show whether they are potentially bright or not?

However, I can't see it not be manipulated to help those children already more advantaged - I doubt whether the kid being pushed around B & Bs and with an unemployed or minimum wage parent will be first in the queue for the grammar.

Its 50 million, a drop in the ocean for the schools budget. And its being given so that they can expand, they aren't being given any more funding per pupil. Its really going to make zero difference in the grand scheme, not worth the fuss.

ScrubTheDecks How do they determine middle class background? I've only seen the FSM and PP numbers for grammars, are they using another measure? I wouldn't call someone middle class because their parent has managed to keep working in minimum wage jobs and never applied for FSM.

How about having catchment primary schools for each grammar and commit to taking the top 20% from each school (as defined over 2 years by their teachers) plus remaining places for other students eg those at the prep schools, and/or those outside the 20% identified by their teachers.

Teacher assessment is notoriously unreliable.

Is it any less fair than endless prepping though?

I couldn’t agree more, op. This is a move to institutionalise social advantage for those who already had it. Consistent with most policy from the current lot.

error teacher assessment is very unreliable, 11+ tests are also unreliable. That doesn’t mean that we can replace one with the other, it means the entire system of selection should be scrapped.

@noblegiraffe - agree entirely about removing the whole system. Mine went to a great comprehensive and out performed their cousins at one of the super-grammars.

Just pondering really and thinking of a way to create a tutor proof system that gives an equal opportunity to those children without access to tutoring whether private or parental.

In my utopian world , we would actually spend extra resources on those who struggle with education either academically or because of disengagement, rather than creating hot houses for the academically able.

When people talk about the 11+ and grammar schools they talk about it as if it / they are only one type of thing. They aren’t and the methods of selection are equally varied.

I live in Bucks. Our secondary education is 100% selective- there are NO comprehensives just Grammars and uppers. There are 13 Grammars and 21 uppers. All the Grammars have catchment areas (as do the uppers). Bucks is the only county which is opt out. Every child in a Bucks primary school is automatically entered for the 11+ to be sat in September of year 6. It is designed to broadly select the top 30%. Primary schools provide a familiarisation paper but can not tutor. I know no one who has tutored from year 3 / 4 in Bucks. To gain a place you need a standardised score of 121+ and then meet the catchment/ distance requirements. The test is NVR and Englis & Maths (not VR).

My children’s grammar takes 120 children and generally allocates in catchment to about 3 miles. The catchment upper takes 210 children and allocates in catchment to about 5 miles - so broadly similar. The 2 schools are within walking distance of each other and their is no us and then - all children have friends at both schools. I have a number of friends with children at both schools.

Henrietta Barnett in contrast has no catchment and takes the highest ranked 98 girls who sit their test (who could live anywhere) - so in principle could take no local children. Kendrick (in Reading) has a very large catchment- approx radius of 30m and takes the highest ranked children who sat their test from within catchment.

I could go on but the point is grammar schools are not a single entity.

Bucks is probably closest to the old system. The problem in Bucks is highly tutored students from ooc who raise the qualifying mark making it harder for Bucks children to get places.

None of them are perfect systems by any means but they are all very different systems.

I do wish that more people on MN could take on board that there are good comprehensives up and down the country, that serve all their children well, and not only in 'naice' areas too. We should be looking to see what they do and try to replicate their success elsewhere, instead of trying to resurrect policies which were regarded as failures 50 years ago.

From having worked in a comprehensive school (high performing) for many years I have found the emphasis on league tables to be destroying the breadth of subjects offered - vocational courses have gone and non academic children are being badly failed and pushed into choices tgat are neither appropriate, attainable or useful.

I live in a county where there are 4 grammars, 2 mixed sex, 2 single sex. They are all on the edge of the county, so not easily accessible to all. From what I know, there are between 450-650 applicants for each school, who admit 150 per annum.
I can't help thinking that this scenario is completely different to the Kent setup, which gives me a different, maybe said skewed view of grammars.

In the north of my county, there are great, high achieving schools.
The East of the county underwent a social engineering restructure under the Labour government.
The great schools that existed, both single sex and mixed were amalgamated into newly built schools. The buildings are brilliant, look good and are functional as a school. The results aren't as sparkling as the schools. We live in a very divisive area where people are openly racist, very different to the 30 miles we moved from.

When the new schools opened, the mix of children in each changed. You have the Catholic school, heavily over subscribed due to not wanting to go to the 97% Asian school, again heavily over subscribed. We have 2 schools already that have shut (in the last 3 years) due to dwindling numbers, putting extra pressure on the already bulging schools. The other schools in the area, the OFSTED reports don't make good reading.
The grammar school in the east of the county (out of catchment) has a double decker bus of 76 from this town and I guess more who are driven there. I would hazard a guess that the vast majority of these children are not tutored, the area is always in the 'poorest area' surveys.
I really don't think the grammar school (20 miles away) affects the standard of school in our town but gives the children the opportunity to better themselves.
The schools in the same town as the grammar get good results.

Prior to moving to the east of the county, grammar wasn't on my radar due to the 3 schools within walking distance that are both rated outstanding and deliver good results.
It was only when we moved that my eyes were opened to how an area can have no good schools. The best school in my area has a 50% A-C, the next best school has 70 support staff and a social worker on their books.

Everybodies opinion is based on what they know, which is probably what is local to their area.
From what I read on here, our area is vastly different from other areas and can they even be compared?

Aaaah thank you scrub

I knew it was a 'thing'

I'd just forgetten every single 'fact' about it

KittyMcKitty: interesting observation about league tables and subject choices.

I think most people whodebate this in any depth are aware of the difference between grammar systems in Kent and Bucks, and the so-called super selectives like Henrietta Barnet.

I am less sure that people know the difference between a bad school and a school full of people you don’t want your children to mix with. People seem not able to read the small print of the performance tables (hardly surprising: the DoE have made it far harder now) and see what happens, for example, to the high attainers who may be being very well served even in a school that has low overall A-C (As was). Likewise, a school that has great stats may be relying on a high ability intake and might support slower children (like the eager applicant’s) extremely badly.

My kids’ Outstanding comp, that has good behaviour and does very well across the board including inclusion, has a police officer on the door and a social worker on tne books. It’s part of being the good school they are!

I think most people benefit from grammar or independent schools because the bottom tier is removed, ie there is less likely to be disruption from children who are disengaged with education. Children who behave and want to learn in comps and secondary moderns are disadvantaged as have a disproportionate % of this to deal with.

Most parents will admit they opted for independent or grammar to optimise their child’s chances of having an education less disrupted by the bad behaviour of other children. I include myself in this.

The key is actually more investment in those children who disrupt the education of others. Removal to dedicated schools or units within schools to help these children also fulfil their potential. With ability to move back into mainstream if behaviour improves. Well behaved children of all abilities should remain in mainstream.

There are no grammars in this area. Many of the secondary schools are not performing well here. There are a couple of leafy areas with good comps and a faith school which is near impossible to get into. Far from the lack of grammars improving the comps, what happens is that parents with enough money move away or pay for private school. The gap between state and private results is wide. It seems many people are happy to virtue signal support the comprehensives - as long as their children live near a very good or outstanding one. They justify it to themselves by assuming families without money must be unintelligent so don't need such a good education anyway

Cone, I’m not sure I understand what you think should happen in your area? Investment in Grammars, or investment to make all the comps better?

I am lucky to have a choice of good comps (albeit with high proportions of ‘rough’ children that MN likes to avoid). It is precisely because I am lucky enough to have seen how good comprehensives can offer a good education to all that I support more investment in them where they are not operating so well.

Rather than paying to rescue those who pass the post on test day and leaving the rest.