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.

So @BertrandRussell if you lived in my area you probably would have just sent your DC to the Comp and not the Super Selective Grammar then, but would you have been tempted?

See we really do have the choice. Your DC can take the 11 plus and if they get in they choose whether they go to Grammar or to the Comp.

I can assure you that Kent High Schools are nothing like the old secondary moderns!

But, if they don't have access to the top 20% then they have the intake of the old Secondary Moderns. By definition of grammar schools being nearby, they certainly aren't what people in all comp areas would call comprehensives!

I also suspect that many modern day comps are nothing like old comps either!

(Which is the trouble with all these debates as it is easy to judge on our experience as children 20-30 years ago or longer, rather than on how schools are now.)

Our comp offers triple science & latin, 2 MFLs, at one end and construction at the other.

sendsummer I think that when it comes to sixth form choices, the DCs have a pretty big say in where they go. I don't think it would be down to the parents to keep them in a sixth form that didn't fit. There are several options around here including long journeys to grammar sixth forms, sixth forms that require As and sixth forms that do re-take Maths and English. Subjects will vary too. Our sixth form requires B grades and does not do retakes. We have several 4As, 3As, etc going off to Oxbridge, Imperial, Bristol, etc.

So provision is good and altruism is not required. Therefore the statement below that you say is a common choice for parents does not apply to the cases you cite.
^i only wished to challenge ALL parents just want the best school for their children. Not all parents do.
I don't, because i don't want to disadvantage others.^

I think that when it comes to sixth form choices, the DCs have a pretty big say in where they go. TBH I would not be altruistic at the expense of my DCs’ best fit school whatever their age.

sendsummer I think you have got me muddled up with someone else.

Don't sixth formers choose their own best fit sixth form?

Greentent my post follow on from your comment
I know many who share Cantkeepaway's philosophy
I presumed that was referring to the philosophy of altruism.
i only wished to challenge ALL parents just want the best school for their children. Not all parents do. I don't, because i don't want to disadvantage others.

So, with regards your comment on choice of sixth forms, for me age is not a factor. Even if my DCs had less say age 5 or 11, I would not be altruistic on their behalf. I would always choose to send them to the best fit school.

DD sat the Kent test in 2017, she's very bright so we didn't tutor her. The first paper she saw was the practice test. Only 7 children from her school sat the test, and 3 of them went into school crying. Unsurprisingly, they were the children who had been tutored from year 3. How any parent could out that much pressure on a child, I'll never know.

And the fact is, they are tutored to pass the test. But once they've passed, and they get their place (at a super selective or otherwise) the vast majority struggle to keep up with the work once they're there. Which means their parents employ a tutor essentially for the whole of their time at secondary school. What kind of a childhood is that? A constant reminder that you're good, but you're not quite good enough.

DD passed and gained a place at a super selective Kent school, but we moved for DHs work in August, to a county with no grammar schools so she now attends a bog standard comp. She's still doing brilliantly, and when I look back at friends whose girls are having trouble fitting in (working class families, with bright children aren't the norm in super selectives) I'm glad DD is out of that world!

TBH I would not be altruistic at the expense of my DCs’ best fit school whatever their age.

This. It’s a facile gesture and unless the parents thought the non grammar was actually a better fit (in which case they are lying about their reasons) they have martyred their children for nothing.

As for the “working class families don’t fit with bright children” line, that’s wrong on every level.

I’ll ignore the obvious prejudice and say in my experience, academics fit in anywhere and are appreciated more so by “brighter” 🙄) people.

Education is a leveller.

Of course you’ll get a few arrogant children who know no better. And vice versa at the school down the road towards the grammar kids. But on the whole skill is appreciated and acknowledged and celebrated.

100m maybe read my comment again. You've misquoted me. My comment was about bright children who are from WC families, as my own DD is. Many struggle socially to keep up with expectations of grammar school life. I was privately educated, and I can tell you that from the age of about 8, the differences between myself and the other children were very obvious. And I suffered for it. Which is why, despite getting an assisted place for JAGs, my parents sent me to a state school. Because although I would have kept up academically, I would have suffered socially. There's no prejudice against middle class families, I'm just speaking from experience.

My apologies if I misunderstood you. I still hold that prejudice towards anyone be it for monetary, race, religion, perceived class or anything else is a rare occurrence. Chips on shoulders and arrogance taught at home aside, it simply doesn’t happen.

Schools would clamp down on it for a start, but from Reception onwards in the schools I frequent the children are taught about acceptance and fairness and decent values. In my experience singling our someone for their background has never happened beyond the occasional staring in awe at celebrity parents.

This. It’s a facile gesture

Individually, it might appear a facile gesture, i agree. However, over time, educated parents of bright children choosing to send their children to a comprehensive even where a grammar is available - both geographically and in terms of ability - DO change the public perception of such comprehensives.

Some of the reasons parents give for NOT sending their children to comprehensives when a grammar is available is are:
'They need to be with similar ability peers in order to thrive'
'There isn't anyone at the comprehensive who gets the kind of results I expect my child to get'
'They don't send any pupils to the kind of university I expect my child to go to'
If people like me do send their bright children to comprehensives - and in my area I am part of a large group, following the lead set long ago by those who gradually changed the profile of the school from 'a true secondary modern' to 'a true comprehensive', then those children form a peer group, get those grades, enter those universities (because the school is good, but historically its intake was skewed towards lower ability students) and other similar students follow them.

I wish i could claim to be a local renegade, a trailblazer, a moral crusader - but actually, round here I am deeply normal, really just following in the tracks of, and helping to secure the ethos set by, those trailblazers years ago.

(As a possible indication of how non-trailblazing I am, around 1 in 6 to 1 in 7 of the comprehensive's students get GCSE grades exceeding, in man cases by a massive margin, the grade requirements for the sixth form of the nearest super-selective - a benchmark around 10% of the superselective's own students don't meet. Choosing comprehensive above grammar for very bright students is really very boring and normal, in this neck of the woods, and only a tiny handful move at 16 despite having the grades and more)

I’m not convinced. With the spread you’ll get as many not getting into anywhere (doesn’t matter why) as you do those going on to further ed. You cannot hope to compete with a school taking the top ten percent the majority of which will be applying, and getting into, to uni.

I still think you did your children a disservice. There were other ways to support a school without using them as exam fodder.

Whatever, at best it won’t matter in the end, and that’s setting sights quite low for a political gesture!

Sending one’s children to a school where they are happy and do well academically is hardly doing them a disservice.

100mdash,

It depends what you mean by 'compete'.

If you compare students of like ability between two schools, and look at their results and destinations, then if students of like ability get like results and go to similar universities, it doesn't matter that school A has 150 such students, and school B has 30 (and 120 of other abilities). The schools have done equally well for those students.

All parents want to know is, and I deal with them daily, how many the school got into x or y college, either the exact number or the percentage.

Everyone knows an anomaly who got to Oxbridge despite their education. Parents want solid results year after year and to be truthful said colleges know what they are getting from a certain schools so the odds are good.

You haven’t got that tradition, you haven’t got the numbers, you are relying on people to make a political decision year after year and one year they won’t. And you’re only as good as your previous year’s results. maybe two or three years at a pinch.

The best teachers aren’t attracted, the best pupils aren’t attracted. Why? Because the school you are trying to turn it into already exists.

It is not a an altruistic gesture for cantkeepawayforever as the school selected was a good fit for her DCs; from memory the comprehensive is excellent and involved less commuting than the grammar options available.

Now going for a poor comprehensive rather than the better one (for teachers and SLT) or for a sixth form which was less enabling than another, that would be altruistic but probably an empty gesture.

If the decision wasn’t altruistic I understand it more. Logistics play a huge part in choosing a school and I pity you having basically been thought of as “mad” by all the other parents who would gladly do a 40 minute school run to ensure that all important name on the cv.

And, if that is the case, no wonder parents who have turned down the grammar have grasped the political angle as an excuse thinking it sounds a lot better than you can’t be bothered to drive.

But it doesn’t sound better. It sounds weak. It sounds like you’re a soft touch, scared of the big boys, or a dropout.

100mdash,

I am immensely grateful for your misplaced pity, as are my DCs.

They think - being confident, ambitious, able, socially-aware people - it is hilarious.

"You haven’t got that tradition, you haven’t got the numbers,."
Honestly, the school does - obviously not quite the raw percentage of the grammars every year, but the hundreds, possibly thousands by now, who have gone to university from it over the years set a decent tradition. It really, really doesn't need your condescension.

“Sending one’s children to a school where they are happy and do well academically is hardly doing them a disservice.“
My ds would undoubtedly have been happier at the grammar school. It wasn’t a choice open to him. Talking about choice in education is a very smelly red herring.

8 I pity you having basically been thought of as “mad” by all the other parents who would gladly do a 40 minute school run to ensure that all important name on the cv. *

Um, no, actally, locally what is commonly regarded as mad is doing a 40 minute commute every day to a school that, like for like ability, confers vanishingly little advantage, such has been the change in parental and public view over the years, and such is the quality of the schools concerned.

I can assure you that Kent High Schools are nothing like the old secondary moderns!

I can confirm the 'High' school my youngest DS attends in Kent is not the same school i had this misfortune to attend in the first and second year. Ds 2 is very happy in year 7 and does not one bit envy the two hours a night homework his two twin year 10 sisters frequently get from their grammar.

As regards to the Kent test and grammar schools i am agnostic in whether i am in favor or not. I have personal experiences of grammar and modern schools in Kent.This being both as a child and parent. I have put four children through the process with three of them passing and just DS 2 failing last year , though grammar school would not have been right for him anyway . As The saying goes different strokes for different folks. For instance i don't know whether it was the grammar school that was the deciding factor in ensuring DS 1 aspired and achieved a Cambridge placement.

DD1 cried terribly when i suggested we were considering moving to North Yorkshire two years and that they were no grammar schools within 40 miles . The cosy familiar all girls academic atmosphere is so important for her.

DD 2 would go anyway where there are boys, anything else is of little relevance to her. She is always badgering me to let her leave her school and attend the one her brother goes to

The point here is make sure the school fits the child.