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?

The establishment on both the left and right of the political spectrum (with a few exceptions) have promoted comprehensive schooling for 50 years !

When I went to my grammar school in 1983, people were convinced , even conservative county councillors that my cohort would probably be among the last in the county to take the 11+ (Lincs) !

35 years later and grammar schools are probably in their strongest position since about 1970 (even before then many authorities had started the process of going comprehensive)

Therefore despite having the backing of the mainstream political establishment , comprehensive schooling has been a failure !
This After a political battle going back even before Antony Crosland 1960s assertion to close every grammar school in the country.

This being the case because a Mothers/Fathers wish for their child to attend a grammar school is far greater than in 1983 ! Grammar schools have become the gold standard of state education, not the pariahs intended by Crosland.

So because a handful of grammars in Lincs are in demand, this is enough to condemn all Comprehensives, which presumably you know little of, as failures?

I await your comments as to the sterling success of Lincs Sec Mods, although I don't doubt that there will be some good ones.

Back in the late 60s my girls grammar out of an intake of 60 each year regularly had 30 or so failing to get 5 O levels. Assuming 25% went to the Grammar, 12.5% of the 16 year old population is not exactly a sterling result, for supposedly clever children. One of the local comps, not at all selective, and losing some children to independent schools, got 60% 5 A* to C GCSEs last year.

This being the case because a Mothers/Fathers wish for their child to attend a grammar school is far greater than in 1983 !
Not mine, letstalk. I just want a really good school. Guess I must be a total wierdo!

Regarding you % figures for passing 5 O Levels in the 1960s , a 50% pass rate was outstanding for the time !

Only about 15-20% of all pupils stayed on past the fifth form , indeed it wasn't until 1972 that the school leaving age was 16 !

Therefore to state that 50% of girls at your grammar did not achieve results that in a 'real' comparison with today, would equal 5 A* at GCSE is misleading !

I await your comments as to the sterling success of Lincs Sec Mods

Better still, perhaps you can explain why OFSTED rated this Lincs Grammar as RI:

www.compare-school-performance.service.gov.uk/school/139180?tab=secondary

Why is this misleading? These were supposedly the cleverest children around - the 25% who passed for the grammar school. What happened for the majority who weren't even offered the chance of taking the exams doesn't affect that particular argument. Now pass rates are significantly higher yet the majority of children are educated in Comprehensives. To my mind this shows that Comprehensives are doing something right!

There are some very poor schools in Lincolnshire . However, the poorness of the schools has very little to do with grammar schools existing in the county !

Thank goodness at least 25% or so of kids can get a chance of a decent education in Lincs.

I imagine a lot of posters like the top 25% or so in comprehensive schools . This being so the general standard of education can be masked . Therefore if a school attains a 60-65% GCSE pass rate it masks the overall performance or standard of education given.

Peregrina. The argument about whether modern school children could pass an O Level from 1968 or so was examined by Channel Four and its 'That'll Teach Them' series that ran from 2003-2006!

The series took the brightest 16 year olds from private, grammar and comprehensive schools and placed them in to a controlled environment.

The results were very telling over the three 'grammar school' series of 'That'll Teach' Em experiments . 90% of these bright A*A GCSE students failed to achieve above grade '3' in Maths/English.

The usual excuses were trotted out by the PC brigade These consisting of different exam content old styles of learning. writing etc.

The truth being I would bet a significant proportion of the pupils gaining 2Bs or grade 6 and 5 or 6 C or Grade 5 GCSEs would not attain at CSE grade 1 standard from a1968 exam !

I noticed the pun modern school children. I mean children of today or of the last 15 years evidenced from the Channel 4 experiment.

Interestingly the series also had one season where they operated as a 'Secondary Modern ' school albeit perhaps an unrealistically funded one.
The results from that experiment proofed that if the system had developed in to a tripartite. This with proper funding, a vocational approach could have benefitted many non academic children giving them in demand skills of trades !

proved that...

letstalk2000

That Grammar school has pretty much the same number of high ability DCs as this school, which is located fairly close to that Grammar School:

www.compare-school-performance.service.gov.uk/school/138754/haven-high-academy

The Grammar School had 56 high ability DCs in the GCSE co-hort, the comp. had 53

The Grammar School has 7 disadvantaged DCs the comp. has 48.

The Grammar School has 14.4% EAL and the comp. has 38.8%

The Grammar School has 11% FSM the comp. has 31.2%

These two schools demonstrate the point that a Grammar school will not raise the attainment level of all the bright DCs in the area. It will only raise the attainment of those who get into the Grammar School. The education of the 53 high attainers at the comp. is not being improved by the nearby Grammar, quite the opposite.

No point quoting statistics. Each side can manipulate them in any which way they want to. As parents we use our gut instinct and done informed judgement to choose schools for our darling children.
I would never choose a comp for my kids, I have a nephew in a top 5% state comp in a leafy and affluent area. He came out with crap gcse results last year. All I know is that in grammar schools, we get a very small portion of shit results. There is a huge pent up demand for them. Who on earth would turn down the chance for their kids to have the privilege of attending. Not me!

Maybe your nephew wouldn't have done very well at the grammar either portico.
A grammar should get good results with the able children they cream off.

Boston Grammar is not really a grammar in the truest sense of the world , hence why it has the lowest attainment of any grammar school in England !

Five grade 4 GCSEs gets admittance to its Sixth Form ! to take BTECs . That just about sums up the town...

73% at Level 5 Maths/English must be the lowest of any grammar school in England and probably N.I as well , though they don't use numbers . However, they have a C* grade which must be a grade 5 !

letstalk2000 well I assume it's not a comp. so what is it?

in grammar schools, we get a very small portion of shit results.

Well, I certainly know of children not allowed to take exams / excluded / entered for GCSEs as external candidates elsewhere to enable the grammar school they attended from Y7 to mid Y11 to preserve their good GCSE grades.... though that of course is not solely the preserve of grammar schools, as private schools managing out pupils and other state schools encouraging the 'home education' of children with SEN are elements of the same story.

JESUS ! I stand corrected the girls school 'Boston High' is even worse 65% at level 5 GCSE !

That is below those 'coveted' Modern schools quoted up thread , they also beat considerably beat both Boston grammars at A level.

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...

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 .

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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