New Grammar Schools: good or bad?

[thing47]

I see Liz Truss has announced she is in favour of creating more grammar schools (Rishi Sunak has opted for saying he will allow existing ones to expand, which is in keeping with current Conservative philosophy). What does everyone think of this? A good idea, or not? I know we have quite a lot of teachers on this board, be interested to hear what you all think.

It would be interesting to see those historic demographics @cantkeepawayforever. I share your scepticism about how effective the system was with regard to social mobility back in the day.

My elderly father did go to a grammar school from a working class family, and he did pretty well for himself, so arguably he benefitted from the opportunity. However, his brother - who my dad considered equally intelligent- failed the 11+ and ended up at the secondary modern. In the end, it didn't make much difference- my uncle pursued a more academic occupation after leaving school and they both ended up in similar jobs. My dad has never believed that the grammar system promoted social mobility. As I said further up the thread, my exceptionally academic mother was not able to go to the state grammar school in her area.

I'm sure there were success stories, but I often wonder how representative they really were.

This makes an interesting read from Full Fact. Doesn't look like grammar schools were so good for social mobility even back in their apparent heyday.

fullfact.org/education/social-mobility-selective-education-era/

The fact you assume pupils at secondary moderns (some of whom will only have just missed passing the 11+) will need an extra year to pass GCSES shows why we shouldn't have secondary moderns.

There is no evidence at all that returning to a selective system will enhance educational results all round - if that was the case then the selective counties would do better than the non selective ones (they don't) and countries which have selection would do better in international tests than those who have comprehensives (they don't). Estonia doesn't even use streaming or setting yet outperforms the UK.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-50590581

In a situation where parents pour money and effort into trying to get their kids into grammars (and this happens everywhere that grammars exist) the schools who take the kids that fail can never have equal status. If parents really believed that they'd let the exam do its job instead of doing everything they can to ensure it makes the "right" decision.

None of this is to condemn the parents who do this - if I lived in a selective county I'd do the same. But let's be honest about it.

@HPFA - but surely the opportunity to have an extra year to do gcses may be beneficial for some people. even if some people just miss out, they might have an extra year to do better in gcses than they would have done otherwise and then go to the same 6th form. people now have the summer-born child dilemma and want to delay entry into school but are denied - which is a bit crazy.

People see Further education colleges and 6th forms as fine; also apprenticeships and traditional 3 year uni.

Goodness! As someone who failed the 11+, I did better in my exams than the vast majority of the kids at the nearby super-selective grammar school, so I certainly wouldn't have thanked you for making me do an extra year!! People aren't thick, you know, just because they haven't crammed for a silly test at age 11!

To be fair @Anothernamechangeplease I think the suggestion was an opportunity to take another year to do GCSEs rather than a compulsion. 😀Obviously a lot of DCs wouldn't need to do this, as you didn't. Isn't this how the US system works? You have to get sufficient credits before you are allowed to move up a grade? (disclaimer: I don't know much about the US system). Does it work well?

People want the best for their own kids, that's understandable. But education isn't a zero sum game, we should be aiming at improving all schools – that has a societal benefit – we shouldn't be improving 20% of them while making the other 80% worse.

To be fair @Anothernamechangeplease I think the suggestion was an opportunity to take another year to do GCSEs rather than a compulsion.

Sure, but some grammar school kids might like that opportunity too. I remember my dsis tutoring one young boy who was struggling terribly after having to be coached to get in.

I think that's a separate issue from the grammar school debate, personally. Totally agree with you though that we should be aiming to provide a better education for all pupils and not only the lucky few.

Ideally, education should be designed in such a way that the architects of the system would be happy for their own kids to go through that system no matter where they happened to fall on the spectrum of academic ability. The problem that we have at the moment is that the vast majority of decision-makers assume that their kids or grandkids will fit into the top 20%, so they don't really give a toss what happens to the other 80%.

@Anothernamechangeplease - no system is gonna suit everyone and ideally there would be movement within the systems. In the grand scheme of things gcses aren’t everything, nor are a levels or uni.

some people are not in the right sets or miss out on a 6th form place or uni/apprenticeship place. So people either decide to try a different course or work for a year/re-do exams and try again. Some people re-train as adults. It would just be nice to offer more variety than there is now.

If we want people to be able to move within the system, then surely the best way of doing this would be to offer a wider range of options within comprehensive schools. Moving schools in the teen years is immensely disruptive, and a better comprehensive system would enable us to minimise the need for this.

As you say, no system is going to suit everyone, but I don't personally support a system that seems to be designed to suit those who already have the greatest advantages anyway.

@Anothernamechangeplease - In many areas there is already a split between middle school and 6th form/further education college (and very few people complain about selection at this level or at uni). It’s just a question of when people consider kids develop (some take into their 20s!) and when it’s acceptable to select.

a grammar system may allow the top streams to cover things at a more similar pace to academic private schools. IF secondary moderns had a lower pupil to staff ratio (increase grammar class sizes), they may be able to give more attention and breadth of subjects as some private schools. But it’s a big IF - and probably not likely to happen. So I think grammars could work but probably won’t.

In a truly comprehensive system, there is really no reason why the top sets couldn't work at the same pace as the top streams of the grammar schools. Fund it so that they can have slightly smaller class sizes if there is really so much angst about kids not being able to keep up. As for keeping pace with academic private schools, I think the gap is massively overblown, but that's a whole other thread!!

Smaller class sizes for the lower sets would also be helpful. We just need to be willing to pay for it.

As for selection at 16 or later on for university, I am not too bothered by that. The impact of disadvantage will not have been erased for the poorest kids, by any means, but it's probably too late to try to address it via the school system at this stage. Most kids will have matured and found their level by that age. Also, sixth-form and university selection is mostly done on the basis of public exams such as GCSEs or A-levels, which the poorer kids have at least been taught to prepare for - it's rather different from the spurious 11+ tests that private schools and 1:1 tutors cram for while the poorer kids are left without a clue what they're supposed to be doing.

@Anothernamechangeplease - it’s just a case of when you think kids can mature and Rates of skill growth. Some people won’t have bothered for gcses (like you didn’t for 11+), but focus at a levels. For others it will be degree, for others postgrad or retraining. An extra foundation year for uni prep for kids who were disadvantaged at a levels may also help.

actually for many school systems, I think probably what is more important is staff resources and discipline. I don’t have a problem with comprehensives if they do setting, but I do think a more flexible approach (timing of exams) and wider range of subjects would help. also, more opportunities for kids to work and train at 16.

The perenial issue here is that what is best for the population as a whole is not always best for the many of the individuals within the population.

Within the broad cohort of school aged children across the whole population, the best educational outcomes will be achieved with a truly comprehensive system where all the cohort are educated together in a school which has the resources to support excellence for those pupils with the capacity to excel, and and to give extra help to those who need it so that no one is left behind.

It is also known that girls tend to have better outcomes if they are in a single-sex environment, but boys do better in a mix-sex environment, so on average everyone does better if schools are mixed, but that population benefit is bought at the cost of some girls not achieving what they might have.

Some very bright and able students are able to thrive in a mixed ability environment but others will only reach their full potential if they are in a selective environment among others of similar ability. It's best for the population as a whole if for the schools to be mixed ability but that good for the whole population is bought at the cost of some very able children not achieving what they might have.

This tension between the good of the many vs the good of the individual can't be resolved. It's natural and obvious that generally politicians who are in charge of the strategic decisions for how education should be managed for the whole population will have different priorities than the individual parents whose children are in the system. When a politician is a parent it is perfectly natural for them to want a different solution for their individual child than the thing that is best for the whole population.

The "problem" here is the fundamental nature of humanity - here we are, a species evolved via survival of the fittest and so with natural tendencies to prioritise our own well-being and that of our offspring over the wellbeing of unrelated individuals, but a species which has evolved sufficient intelligence to discover "enlightened self interest" and devise a society which functions overall for the good of the many rather than the individual. Across numerous topics including gun control, socialised healthcare, justice, education, tax and dozens of other areas, we give up our individual freedoms for the good of the whole but each individual stands to gain or lose a different amount from that trade off, and there are always some who have a bit more to lose that baulk at the cost of prioritising the many over their own best interests. That is never going to change. Even in totalitarian socialist regiemes where individual freedoms are supposed to be totally surrendered to the good of the whole, individuals find ways to advance their own (and their family's) self-interest.

Yes, I was just being facetious late at night really @Anothernamechangeplease sorry if my jokey tone didn't come across.

Ideally, education should be designed in such a way that the architects of the system would be happy for their own kids to go through that system no matter where they happened to fall on the spectrum of academic ability.
I really like this, this is so well put, and should be the litmus test of lots of policies.

very few people complain about selection at this level or at uni
I made this very point a few pages, ago @Namenic

Sorry, bold fail. I meant to say that academic selection per se isn't unacceptable, as you say @Namenic we all think it's OK for universities to have minimum entry criteria. The difference is that at 18 a lot more people have some idea of what they want to do and where their interests and strengths lie than they do at 10.

it’s just a case of when you think kids can mature and Rates of skill growth. Some people won’t have bothered for gcses (like you didn’t for 11+), but focus at a levels. For others it will be degree, for others postgrad or retraining.

@Namenic , I don't agree that it's just a case of when kids mature, though that's a part of it. It's fundamentally different because all kids are taught to prepare for GCSEs and A-levels, whereas many are given no preparation whatsoever for the 11+. The ones who get in are typically the ones who have been extensively prepared for it.

It wasn't a case of me "not bothering" with the 11+. I had simply never been exposed to questions like that before and it took me a little while to figure out what they were getting at. I distinctly remember looking at one of the verbal reasoning questions in the exam, and thinking about how bizarre and pointless it was - not least because the answer was so blindingly obvious to me that I had started to second guess whether I was missing the point. Speed is absolutely of the essence in those tests, so had I been used to the question type, I could have very quickly moved on to the next one. Instead, I spent a little longer trying to process it to work out what they wanted. I had never done a single practice paper - my parents didn't want me to go to the grammar school in any case, and I think I had been absent for the only practice paper that we did in school. My friend, on the other hand, had been doing weekly 11+ practice with her dad for the last 4 years. Of course she knew what she was doing with it!

I was no late bloomer. I knew at the time, without question, that I was the cleverest kid in my primary school class. My teachers knew it too, which is why they had moved me up to work with an older year group for much of my time at primary school (terrible idea, but again, that's another thread!). So I was a little confused when I didn't get into the grammar school and a few of my less able peers did. They were confused too. Thankfully, I wasn't traumatised by it, as my parents were very clear that they thought the comprehensive school was the better option in any case. They weren't wrong - I think I received a better and more rounded education as a result of going to the comp. However, it did highlight for me that the 11+ was more about preparation than ability.

One solution to all of that would be to have state schools do more 11+ prep for all children, to at least level the playing field a bit. However, so much of the 11+ is about practice, and if they spent loads of time on preparing for a pointless exam that wasn't relevant or important for the majority of kids in the class, then the opportunity to do other important stuff would be lost. Personally, I don't think selective education is important enough to warrant that, so I would save the time and let everyone go to a comprehensive school instead.

This is a good post, and I agree with you overall. It is never possible to find a system that suits everyone. It's about trying to find the best balance between what works for the individual and what works for the population as a whole. Personally, I think comprehensive schools with good setting offer that best balance, and the best chance for the maximum number of people to succeed, but of course, there will always be some who would thrive more in another setting.

My problem with the grammar system is that I think it is stacked heavily in favour of the kids who are already privileged - predominantly bright, middle class kids with parents who care about their education. The vast majority of those kids will still do very well in the comprehensive system.

Ideally, education should be designed in such a way that the architects of the system would be happy for their own kids to go through that system no matter where they happened to fall on the spectrum of academic ability.

I really like this, this is so well put, and should be the litmus test of lots of policies.

I would love to claim credit for this, but it isn't really my idea, unfortunately. It's basically nicked from Rawl's veil of ignorance - he argues that, if we really want to create a fair society, when we are designing social policy, we should imagine that we are wearing a veil of ignorance that means we don't have any knowledge of our position in that society. So we imagine that we have no concept of our own intelligence, ability, race, gender, class, socio-economic status etc. If we did that, we would probably seek to ensure that the least advantaged people were looked out for, because who knows, that might be us! I think it's a pretty sound principle but one that is rarely applied in practice by our uber privileged policy makers.

No one school can be all desired things to all pupils and prospective teachers. Even if a single comprehensive school were large enough to provide the whole spectrum of subject and teacher choice at the right academic level then it would probably be criticised for being too large and therefore unable to allow sufficient students opportunities in the first sport teams or school plays or just overwhelming for a shy pupil.
Even very well funded and respected comprehensive schools lose pupils to super selective grammar school sixth forms as the latter may provide something which is regarded as helpful at that stage. Or very good teachers decide they would rather teach there.

The word "system" appears many times on this page, and it seems that many posters are conflating opening up a few more grammar schools in the 2020s with something of a return to the post-war decades. This is rubbish, of course.

The old tripartite setup, with secondary moderns, technical schools, and grammars; with variable leaving school ages [14 to 18]; and with different qualification levels [nowt/CSEs/O-levels], for all its faults and unfairnesses, that was a 'system', designed to select a very modest number of people for cognitively challenging work by getting them to sit the most difficult exams.

Modern grammars practice segregation for segregation's sake. Segregation isn't a means to an end, it's the means and the end, it's the whole point of it. Near enough everyone sits GCSEs at the end of it, most people sit A levels. That's not a 'system', it's just some local authorities for whatever reason mandating segregation by [ultimately] social class. I repeat, not a 'system'.

Even very well funded and respected comprehensive schools lose pupils to super selective grammar school sixth forms

Not if there aren't any.....

I live in an area where exactly this happens. Super-selective grammar schools swap pupils amongst themselves at 6th form (there is a definite 'pecking order'), discard pupils they don't want (ie where the 11+ failed in its job) to the non-grammars and take in some of the non-grammars' highest attainers.

I have less objection to the varied post-16 destinations for which young people are 'selected' than I do to the 11+, for reasons others have given upthread:

• The selection is on the basis of GCSE results, a universal national exam system that the whole education system is geared towards and which is an adequate indicator of likely A-level performance (not a minority, largely irrelevant test based on VR and NVR)


• By 16, most young people are fairly clear in terms of their overall direction and aptitudes


• 16-18 has many more alternative pathways (apprenticeships, FE colleges, sixth form colleges, school 6th forms etc) so it genuinely is more likely that a young person can obtain an education 'appropriate to their interests and aptitudes'.

On the first point, i wonder whether there would be any future in exploring whether places for any grammar schools that continue to exist should in fact be on the basis of SATs results, now that these scores are numerical and quite fine-grained (ie 120 / 119 / 118 rather than just 4c / 4b / 4a)? SATs are again a national assessment system taken by the vast majority of children, based on actual curriculum subjects, and therefore at least do not exclude those who are not pre-prepared for a nion curriculum assessment? There could be an element of 'contextual performance' included, as there is for e.g. university offers, with a high score from a school with a generally low-performing cohort being given more weight than a high score from a school where this is 'the norm'.

I now, know, the private primary 'grammar crammers' don't choose to take SATs. I can't help but see having to take them as a side benefit, especially as it might well put paid to many of the 'private is always best' statements....

Agree re using SATS for admissions to the existing grammars, and scrapping the 11+. The private schools could decide to opt into SATS or opt out of sending kids to the grammar system. That would be fairer than what we have in place at the moment!

My DDs comp gets many private (including from the posh one down the road beginning with E) students in the 6th form. Assume because there are so many subjects offered and results are great. And it's free.

The biggest problem is not the 'school system' as such it's the curriculum. Effectively we try to teach a narrow 'grammar school' curriculum to all, when it clearly is unsuitable, and worse uninteresting, for many. It is an appalling inditement of our education system that so many children emerge with nothing concrete to show for 12 years of compulsory education. They may have turned up on time ,played in the school teams , been in orchestra or school council but only have the option to take exams which involve a turgid uninteresting curriculum and exams which are predicated on at least one third having to 'fail'.

I would like to see a system where the education post 14 is more like the states (which I know is not perfect) but is one where everyone attends the same High School but where there is a lot of choice of curriculum and where 'credit' can be obtained for a huge variety of activities and subjects. My god daughter in California is very academic but has also been able to take courses in more practical subjects and also artistic ones, none of this will preclude her getting the academic credits that she needs for pre med .

Of course there are core subjects that people have to take but if you can obtain credit not just for raw scores but for participation as well and everyone is able to operate at their own level the students would be so much more motivated. So as long as you get standard level maths and english etc you could also do motor mechanics, dance , advanced literature, public health or a language , astronomy or whatever floats your boat. This would give our young people a much more stimulating education where all could find something to excel and achieve at, would give them more choice and control over their school curriculum and arguably greater rigour because classes would self select and teachers could teach to the childrens' potential.

I realise this is somewhat Utopian but as the mother of three very different dc two at each end of the extremes and one with a very spikey profile I have found the narrowness of our education system so frustrating, it values conformity over potential and has more than a passing resemblance to a sausage factory.

If SATS were the admission mechanism there would be even more pressure on primary schools to get good SATS results and become "SATS factories". Too many schools already drop pretty much everything other than constant maths and English practice in Year 6. And, based on MN threads, whilst everyone wants their child to get into the school with the best results, they don't want this to be at the detriment of a broad, less SATS focused education in Year 6.