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?

Why is it a bad thing to be socially selective !

This being to select people most alike with each other.

At a risk of being sent to trial at the Star Chamber of Mumsnet. !

The successful schools manage to keep the 'crap' out and hence achieve the highest Ofsted ratings.

So you agree that Ofsted are rating the pupils and not the school.

Probably ...

If schools were socially selective BUT had an equal chance of getting an Outstanding Ofsted grade regardless, because Ofsted properly took intake into account, then I would have less of an issue.

It is the tight linkage between social selectivity (as evidenced by low %PP) and high Ofsted grade that is so glaringly iniquitous, especially as a school with a high proportion of deprived children actually has to work SO much harder (as social workers as well as educators) to achieve anything like the same progress.

High ofsted grade SHOULD equal 'school doing brilliantly with its intake'. it doesn't. It indicates 'usually, school with easy intake doing well; on much rarer occasions, school with harder intake succeeding amazingly against the odds'

However, if I was a school Inspector and I saw a group of school children politely engaging with a teacher, wearing neatly coordinated uniform it would send out positive vibes !

Conversely, if I went to a school where children were shouting over the teacher using 'four letter' words my opinion of the school would no doubt be tainted.

People are human and not drones who can completely separate their own experiences when trying evaluate a school fairly.

I do agree that aptitude tests and various scholarships are a way to skew the intake. Like Banding though, they have been useful in attracting a critical mass of aspirational parents to apply to the school, and are perhaps useful in turning a school around and ‘de-polarising’ it from the kind of situation BadBunny describes. The school you are talking about used to be considered a total horror show. Now it is hugely sought after. Actually, who knows whether the education on offer has changed as much as the intake.

Perhaps schools should only be able to use aptitude places for 5 years.

To the PP who asked: I think any comprehensive school can only offer up to 15% on aptitude.

I didn’t know banding was done relative to the results rather than on an absolute scale. No wonder the numbers in the various attainment groups are so unbalanced (in the small print of the Dept of Ed performance tables). In the particular school Clavinova was describing. In other Banding tests I know of the scores are pre set.

Which takes me back to my question about whether the education has changed to the same degree as intake!

Interestingly the area around this school is distinctly leafy and the othe nearby comp (which has no ‘extra’ entrance criteria at all) is more often favoured over the banded, Lottery, scholarship school for those who live within the small distance catchment.

No clavinova DS would have been fine at local schools - but he can only take up one place. With fairly minimal extra input we ended up with a choice and so exercised it; not the only ones in his class to do so by any means . . . And I do not consider our chosen school "selective"! If anything, we chose it for its diversity and demonstrable commitment to All; despite having able child, I liked that about it. But hey - why make this about me? How does this disqualify me from having an opinion on grammar schools?

Please tell me if I am being completely daft, or naive, but isn't the function of the much-hated SATS test to pre-filter the streaming for secondary schools?

And on banding - yes that is interesting I didn't know that either, scrub. I had been wondering how some "non-selective" schools manage to end up with an intake heavily weighted in favour of the most able at KS2 (going from at stats on the government comparison site). While others have a clear majority (as you would expect) of middle achievers. It couldn't just be down to the aptitude places.
But anecdotally - around here there are several schools with challenging intake (ie Not skewed in this way, plus v high PP%) - judged Ofsted Outstanding. So Outstanding is not exclusively limited to the low PP% schools. Though I'm sure the general tendency is true.

Indeed, some people on this and other Grammar threads disagree with Grammars in principle and / or the £50m whilst sending their child to one.

What parents do in individual circumstances in order to get the best for their child within the options open to them (without defrauding the system) is a different matter from a belief about how system should be different.

If I lived in Kent my kids would be at a Grammar (if it all went to plan on the day). If the comps near me were bad rather than good I would have been going for aptitude tests.

Parents have to work with the system as it is, not as they would like it to be.

So Outstanding is not exclusively limited to the low PP% schools. Though I'm sure the general tendency is true.

Absolutely. There ARE Outstanding schools with high %PP (one or two in London; a few Catholic schools, from when I last looked at the data - but very few amongst the 150 or so schools with the highest %PP - and very few not amongst the 150 schools with lowest %PP). But if Ofsted really measured education quality provided by the school, in a way that truly corrected for intake differences, you would expect that roughly the same proportion of schools would be Outstanding at all levels of %PP. And that simply isn't true.

Sorry, I realise I have been ambiguous. I should clarify that I meant that very few of the schools with the lowest %PP nationally are NOT Outstanding.

I have posted this before but ds was old level 6 at the start of year 6. He spent a lot of that year really bored going over stuff he had already covered and then nothing at all happened after SATs. We asked how the local ( now in special measures) school which he was allocated would challenge him. They told us they would "consolidate the basics".I could totally see that another year (never mind 2) effectively repeating the year 6/7 ciriculum might just turn him off school forever.
Luckily he is at a superselective in a neighbouring county and is at a new level 7 or 8 for maths at the end of year 9.

Stillwishihadabs
That’s a lovely story. Why I love grammar schools!

Loads of my top set Y9 are at a new grade 7 or 8 for maths at the end of Y9 . In a comp.

I will believe that this is wonderful when I hear people come on and tell me how they moved to Kent or Bucks because of the wonderful Sec Mods there, and how there is £50 million for them.

This doesn't mean that there aren't good ones - indeed in some areas with more children of grammar ability than there are places it's going to follow that there will be sufficient children to make up top sets which can match those in the grammar school.

It's time for some fresh thinking as to what will benefit all children in the 21st Century, not resurrect policies which started to fail in the 1950s and 60s (when no, by no means all Grammars were good, some were pretty poor.)

It's time for some fresh thinking as to what will benefit all children in the 21st Century, not resurrect policies which started to fail in the 1950s and 60s

What about the intervening 50 years? Wasn't the demise of the grammars in the 70's supposed to "benefit all children"? If the modern/liberal thinking of the last 50 years had actually worked, we wouldn't be having this discussion. So, what's new for the future that we've not already tried in the last 50 years?

Today 07:56 noblegiraffe
Loads of my top set Y9 are at a new grade 7 or 8 for maths at the end of Y9 confused. In a comp.

That’s great. In Y9 we gave 5 maths sets. Set 5 are mostly 7s, with odd errant ones at 6/5

Badbunny: IS education overall getting worse or not succeeding? I would say that more and more comprehensive schools are getting better.

My argument with education in this country is the constricted, prescriptive nature of the NC, the lack of selective research needed to pass ( never ‘read chapters 3-5 and discuss the following question..) , the amount of butocrscy that bogs down great teachers, and as a pp (possibly you) said, league tables that have encouraged schools to focus on getting kids over the C grade threshold above all else,

Though the introduction of grade 9 and Progress 8 might change that.

I have seen comps support success and social mobility where the child would not have had a chance to get into Grammar.

We hear precious little about the many good and great comps just getting in with it.

I have seen comps support success and social mobility where the child would not have had a chance to get into Grammar.

We hear precious little about the many good and great comps just getting in with it.

I agree with both of these, but we don't hear it. Nor have I heard of people in Comprehensive areas pressing for the return of Grammars - too many will have memories of the Sec Mods which came with them.

Badbadbunny - If the modern/liberal thinking of the last 50 years had actually worked...

The Grammar System often reminisced about today, was designed to be a Tripartite System not a two-tier system like the current one, and that never really worked as it should have either:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammar_school

The Grammar System often reminisced about today, was designed to be a Tripartite System not a two-tier system like the current one, and that never really worked as it should have either

So does anyone actually have a better system, other that the usual soundbites of basically just throwing money at it, but just carrying on doing the same? Anyone got any plans for proper reform or does the educational establishment just want more money to carry on doing what they've been doing the last 50 years?

So does anyone actually have a better system

Even if they did, they would need to have the power and authority to make the necessary changes.

Unfortunately those who have the power and authority to make changes have decided to expand the existing two tier selective system in the areas where it currently exists and thow money at those schools.

Much of what we have today is working, badbunny, despite the many challenges which remain. State schools generally are now 100x better than they were when I was at one, or even a decade or two later (late 1980/90s). There are brilliant comps up and down the country; not enough, but enough to show how well they can work. . . And proper funding everywhere would help.