Things you wished you had known about the 11 plus process

[Goposie]

For me, that the numbers applying are crazy and the sheer odds stacked against getting in.

Well re @BertrandRussell 's post & replies

If you are in an area where 11+ is an option , then there is option not to do it. If in the very few areas ( or am I right? one area where schools are entirely selective ) - what do you do ? No comprehensive option. Do you tell younger DC - you can't go to the grammar because elder DC didn't go ?

& this @MariaNovella
"If you are deeply philosophically opposed to selective schooling, surely the principled course of action is to move to an area without selective schooling?"

I think that is naive - It is not just as easy as that to move house and uproot family to a different area / county because of the schooling on offer ( wherever you live & whatever the schooling ) - it just isn't. Sometimes one has to pragmatically deal with what is on offer in family circumstances and work within the system. We did - I bet you would hate my choices

Secondary Modern schools only exist in the minds of those that want them !

Why not call them what they are, which is underperforming socially and educationally challenged comprehensive schools .

Example like this from a non selective county.

www.compare-school-performance.service.gov.uk/school/142583/great-yarmouth-charter-academy

In selective counties secondary moderns exist! There are no comprehensive schools if 30% of the students have been removed & sent to grammar schools. Comprehensive means all students of all abilities.

“Why not call them what they are, which is underperforming socially and educationally challenged comprehensive schools”
Because none of them are comprehensive and many of them are not socially or educationally challenged. Next question.

The ones wanting to abolish he grammar school system are trying to drag those bright kids down to the failed the grammar level.

But it wouldn’t work. They would just be top of any school like their parents before them no doubt. And trying to use those bright engaged parents to bump up interaction with a school where the other parents don’t bother, no, do your own work. Take take take, gimme gimme gimme!

It seems the common denominator of the
moaning parents is parents that are moaning!

“The ones wanting to abolish he grammar school system are trying to drag those bright kids down to the failed the grammar level.

But it wouldn’t work. They would just be top of any school”

Yes, of course they would. What do you mean?

BertrandRussell

”Next question”

You realise that ^ is an internet parade of someone entitled and rude and asking for free stuff don't you?!

😂

*Parody

“You realise that ^ is an internet parade of someone entitled and rude and asking for free stuff don't you?!“

Don’t know what this means either!

BasiliskStare - I also made pragmatic compromises. But I don’t spend my time shouting about how dreadful the school I chose is and how they should be abolished, even though on paper it is a deeply incongruous choice for my family!

Well I shall leave this as have not had a child going though the 11+ but I do find the comment ( and I have seen it before) If you don't like the schooling where you live , move. It's a tangent and I recognise that. But just not so easy to just move house to fix a problem. . Well have derailed enough so shall bugger off.

BertrandRussell

“You realise that is an internet parade of someone entitled and rude and asking for free stuff don't you?!“^

Don’t know what this means either!

It’s a meme. Woman was asking for free lifts and stuff and everytime anyone suggested anything or offered anything, she found fault with it and dismissed it with “Next!”

Your rude “next question” comment is very similar.

It’s a reddit thing btw. Quite amusing at the time. Can always spot the reddit readers on MN!

^Your rude “next question” comment is very similar.“
Ah, I see. Well it was actually intended to be a bit rude because I was answering a particularly silly question asked by a poster whose name I recognise and who knows perfectly well it was a silly question.

I do hope you call out other rude posts, by the way. There have been plenty on this thread.

If the so called Secondary Modern schools are not socially and educationally challenged , why do you get in such huff about them !

Finally I could not give two hoots whether a grammar school is 6 times less likely to admit Pupil Premium kid than a comprehensive school .

This is a complete red - herring and means absolutely nothing. The only thing it means is that not many children attend grammar schools from parents who don't have either one parent or a combination of two working 37 hours on Minimum wage .

It tells us nothing about how many grammar school children come from families with 2 parents working full time earning minimum wage or just above.

Thank goodness many grammar schools have large numbers of Asian and African children attending them . This puts any claim of them being 'racist' to bed , I bet this fact really grates the grammar school haters looking for any dirt to throw....

The problems, historically, with secondary moderns have been these:

1. That children who attend them have been considered not bright enough to warrant an academic education,
2. That they have been vastly underfunded, given that they do, by their nature, include children who need extra support
3. And the worst by far, that the selection process, though it does identify many children who are academically able (and some who appear to be, because they are well prepared), does not identify many more who are as or more academically able, particularly if they have some form of learning difficulty (for example, dyslexia or dyspraxia), and these children, due to (1) and (2), do not get the education they should. It is worth mentioning that some sec mods have always done their best to alleviate these problems, and provide a good education for all their pupils, as far as possible.

It's one thing being anti selective system. It's quite another to accuse parents who live in a selective system of not wanting their DC to mix with "plebs" or an "I'm alright Jack" attitude because they want their kids to go to the Grammar rather than the High. And incredibly hypocritical if you yourself send your DCs to Grammar.

Dione,

Why is it more hypocritical to send your child to one part of a bipartite system than the other, if you don't believe in the system at all?

Bert - and others in her position - live with the system they have where they live. Their child takes the 11+ (as they will also in the fullness of time take SATs, GCSEs and BTECs / A-levels etc), and goes to the school that their score assigns them to.

Where is the hypocrisy?

It's not. It's hypocritical to slag off other parents for doing the same thing you did.

Those who are opposed to the grammar system and whose children didn’t get in, it may well have been a self fulfilling prophecy.

My ILs didn’t want any of their grandchildren going to the “posh grammar” and sure enough none of them got in. It was talked about in such disparaging terms in their house that I’m surprised the kids even turned up for the exam (must have been compulsory? In the Wirral?)

The ones wanting to abolish he grammar school system are trying to drag those bright kids down to the failed the grammar level.

So in successful comprehensive systems, are the brightest children being failed, and do the most able pupils in such comprehensives only achieve what children in secondary moderns in e.g. Kent do?

If that were to be the case, then selective counties would enormously outperform similar but comprehensive counties - because once you match all the secondary moderns with the comprehensives who supposedly are only allowing bright children to reach a secondary modern level, then the pupils at all the grammars in the selective county would be outperforming the lot, bringing the selective county out miles ahead.

Except no, that's not what the data says. Within the limitations of matching any areas - variations in demographics, employment patterns etc - the data for selective counties and comparable comprehensive counties is the same. So to a first approximation, if you take 10,000 children of matched socio-economic and family backgrounds in selective county A, and match them with comprehensive county B, put them through the schooling system in each county (careful division at 11, or not) and then look at the results, they are statistically very similar. There is no overall benefit, at that cohort level, of having a selective system

Is cantkeepawayforever the same poster as BertrandRussell?

Dione,

Is the criticism of the people, or the system? If of the people, is it not 'what is done' but 'how it is done and talked about'?

It is one thing to send one's children off the the allocated school for their results in sorrow and anger that the system exists at all (and then get very, very actively involved in improving the lot of all at the secondary modern through being a governor etc) and quite another to send those children to the same schools with some of the comments made about the 'wonders of grammars' seen on this thread.

To Youwhat: no.

I am lucky enough to live in an area where the selective system is optional, and to be able to choose to send my children to a comprehensive.

Not - as some on this thread imply - because they are not clever enough to go to grammars, but because we choose not to send them.

It is possible - though as I said earlier, perhaps even rarer than I realised - to make decisions for one's own family that are, as far as possible, for the good (or at least not the harm) of the many, for society as a whole (and in particular looking at the effect on the most vulnerable in society).