If you live in a non grammar school area...

[Gobbledigook]

...what are your secondary schools like?

Is there still competition to get into certain ones, like at primary level, or do you just go to the nearest/local one and that's it?

Am off out now so will check back later. I'm just interested.

Surely a solution would be the big school (ie having the cash to provide a wide range of opportunities) with 'x' % of pupils of 'A' grade material, 'x' grade B, 'y' (or whatever) of Cs etc.

Chuck 'em in together then stream, stream, stream! Provide 1st class science laboratories, sports stadia, performing arts complexes, metal and woodwork-shops. And even a working farm! AND (importantly) a 'pupil referral unit' where all disruptive kids would have to go and could easily be sent. Prize giving would award a prize for 'best-in-school' AND 'most improved' across ALL subjects.

This can be acheived. My husband's rural state high school in Australia got kids into university to do chemistry and kids whose animal husbandry skills won County Show prizes.

FWIW all the secondary moderns in Salisbury make mention in their OFSTEDs how the school can only do so much because the most able kids are creamed off into the state grammars. Many of the grammar kids were privately prep-schooled to ensure their place- there's a reason why Salisbury has no boys private secondary school and the girls' one is RC or another that is frighteningly expensive, yet the town is bursting with prep schools!

Like UQD I was at a (girls'!) grammar (in 73). It was an excellent, academic school. The secondary moderns were, by and large rubbish, teaching watered down academia. This is why the SM/GS 11+ thing failed: No one would grasp the bullet and offer the less academic kids real alternatives, and there was no swapping between schools, once you were in the grammar, you were in for life, ditto the SMs (there were girls in my class who sat CSE maths and got level 3s. They, IMO, shouldn't have been at the grammar at all.).

I want my boys to go to a grammar. They won't because they're not clever enough to compete against prepped kids, but actually it isn't the academia I specifiaclly want at all, it's the focused learning ethos, the high value placed on education, the knowledge that if you mess around too much, you're out. It's the celebration of effort and success. You have to pay a high house price to buy that in a comprehensive!

Or, for us, rent in the catchment of a Winchester comprehensive...

I live in a town with no grammars or private schools. The schools here are pretty dire, with the only options being to commute your children to a private school about an hour away, send them to boarding school or to move out of the town. Our local results are...

1. Middle class area of town 56%
2. Okay areas of town - 49% and 41%.
3. Cheaper housing areas of town - 18% and 25%
4. Mix of housing from 2 and 3 - 28% and 33%

Given that unless the parents move out of town (which does happen), most people do send their kids to their local catchments, we do live in an area of selection by mortgage. Its not good.

I live in a non-selective area and the schools are all good (apart from one, but even that isprobably satisfactory compared with 'bad' schools in London).

Selection is generally based on catchment area and there is a v. good CoE Beacon status school in town most people try to get their children into - they are highly socially selective (lots & lots of questions about what kind of community involvement the parents have etc.). There is some competition for that particular school, but it's no great shakes if your child doesn't get in. TBH, the comp we're in catchment for does almost just as well without the compulsory religion, so we won't even bother applying for the CoE school.

All the schools stream from Y7 onwards and get good results.