Monocultural grammar schools in London

[mayberra]

So I've just recently read about the term "monoculture" and its prevalence in London superselective grammar schools. How does that impact the children's perception of the world? What do the parents think? Are there any studies on this that I could read?

I'm not a journalist at all. Just a curious reader who wants to know more about a social issue I've just come across.

Thanks

Do you have a link? I can’t think of any London grammar that I’d describe as monocultural, especially compared to schools outside London.

You can get population stats for specific schools on this government website: https://www.find-school-performance-data.service.gov.uk/.

Like the pp, I'd need you to define what you mean by "mono culture" before commenting. If you mean clever kids of clever driven parents, I might agree. If you mean a particular demographic culture I'd be more cautious. Even if you said you meant "middle class" I'd be cautious, and ask you to define middle class. Clever, driven parents will inevitably seem more middle class than the population as a whole, but many have pulled themselves up there by their own boot straps.

@krinklekrisp can I ask how to get population stats of individual school from the website above? The only stats that I found relevant to OP's question is percentage of free school meal. We knew grammar school has significant less free school mean percentage compared to normal state school in general. But that is not specific to London I guess.

Sorry, yes, that website only shows a few high level stats - free school meals, EA, etc. However, you can get full stats by downloading the latest school census data from here: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-pupils-and-their-characteristics

So what culture are we talking?

@krinklekrisp thanks you. That is a lot of data, it is still not individual school break down but the summary stats by school characteristic is very insightful.

Individual school breakdown is there. You have to download the full dataset to find it in the csv file called "pupil_characteristics". The meta data will explain the column headings.

Actually, they made a few changes to the file structure in the 2022 data, so the file you need is called spcschoollevelunderlyingdata.csv.

Found it, under the other link called "the school level underlying data" . Thanks again.

I don’t know about London but I went to a grammar school in Devon. I’m 38 now and in a school of 800 there was a single mixed race boy when I attended. All these years later a photo of him is still on the front page of the school prospectus 😂. I’m not sure what being in London has to do with it - many areas of the country are still pretty much living in a monoculture. Personally, when I went to a uni that was very popular with independent school kids they seemed to struggle to understand mixing with people of different social classes/ wealth brackets more than bumpkins like myself did with mixing with people from different religions/ racial backgrounds.

If you need more recent data, 2023 data will be published in early June. (The census takes placevin January each year and is published in June).

@mayberra would you please link the article you read?

Anyone?

What are the headline facts from this elusive data?

There's no monoculture whatsoever at my kids' London grammar school. Over 40 different languages are spoken by its pupils and staff.

Thank you for the link to the data and guidance on finding the relevant sheet, @krinklekrisp.

I’m not sure exactly what @mayberra is meaning by the term “monoculture” but I’ll stick my neck out a bit.

We were fortunate that DD’s primary school in Birmingham was a lovely mix of ethnic, religious and socio-economic backgrounds. A couple of years ago we were considering various schools including girls’ grammars for DD and were a little concerned that our child might find herself having to negotiate the tricky teenage years in a “monoculture” of girls whose cultural values differed significantly from ours.

We didn’t manage to find this data a couple of years ago, and the grammar schools wouldn’t let us visit due to the Covid pandemic (though the comprehensives were welcoming!) and it seemed a difficult question to ask. Nevertheless, we made our choice, and DD is happy at her chosen school – but I am fascinated to review the data now.

I can only assume that the OP is referring to Asian pupils. Many of the London grammars (& independent schools) have very high numbers of Asian students. My own children went to schools with high numbers of Asian students (we aren't Asian) and I would say it impacted their social lives slightly but other than that they were very happy - everyone mixed well. I was glad they had this experience as all 3 went to universities (or perhaps did courses?) were there were very few students from other cultures.

The national statistics pages look a bit daunting. A few days ago I think I posted a link to this FoI request from HBS school in North London, which in years 7-11 seems to be about maybe 75-80% Indian, something like that - see below. This is not a number that would particularly surprise me, though I only really have direct experience of the South London places. Precise figures vary by school, 75-80% is probably atypically high. Many would have a much lower figure than this.

I don't think it's the hugest deal ever, either way provided your own culture isn't one that might specifically for whatever reason clash with the dominant one.

As PP says, there is probably a social element, e.g. I'm not sure you'd expect a hypothetical school-organised 'battle of the bands' held at one of these places to be a Woodstock-esque affair. But to a very large extent kids are just, y'know, kids.

If it matters to you then for your peace of mind it might It's worth checking what sports teams the school runs and so on - in my experience it's the norm for these schools to make quite a decent effort, maybe slightly more effort than most comps in similar areas do.

If this matter to you it's worth checking their detailed A level results, you'd probably find that, say, art, maybe also one or two other subjects, are relatively less popular than at the national level at the expense of STEM, though provided they do run the subject then e.g. being in a small class might be a good thing [or not].

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/pupil_diversity_3#incoming-1956757

@Cookerhood what do you mean that it impacted their social lives? How?

They found that many were travelling quite some distance to school so tended to socialise within their own communities. Some of them were not permitted to socialise with people from outside their culture. This is very much a generalisation though, they had plenty of friends in school but didn't do that much with friends outside school. This is an issue at any school where they are commuting quite a distance to school (mine were local).

and that's just it the term monoculture without further reference means different things to different people. my grand daughter attends a london independent and the class is very white looking but not necessarily british.

OP

Do you mean mainly Indian ?

It's pretty clear the OP has dumped and run and was just a timewaster. Probably best to let the thread slide into oblivion now.

My own interpretation is the homogenous group of "pushy" parents of these schools. Some generalisation here I think culture and value heritage does play a part in forming this.

DC once got offer from a similar school and my consideration is with the link below

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/secondary/4712980-how-pressured-full-on-is-qe-boys?reply=123846697