What is the real value of highly selective independents/grammars now?

[Bubblesbobbles]

Genuine question for parents further along in the process - what do people now see as the actual value add of highly selective Independent schools versus strong grammars/comprehensives?

I’m asking because the level of pressure around 7+/11+ entry for some schools (Bancroft’s/WCH/ICHS etc.) seems enormous now, with many children heavily tutored just to gain entry, and often still requiring significant tutoring/support afterwards.

At the same time, I know pupils from schools like Woodbridge who avoided that whole prep school/11+ treadmill, yet still ended up at places like Imperial studying Engineering and Physics with top A level results, EPQs, UKMT participation, competitions, strong extracurriculars, etc.

It also made me wonder whether mixed ability teaching environments may actually suit some children better in terms of confidence, independence and self motivation.

Another thing I noticed when visiting schools was that advertised “small class sizes” sometimes appeared to refer to form groups rather than actual teaching sets, which surprised me a bit.

I also wonder whether the gap between grammars/comprehensives and Independents is narrower than it used to be now that curriculum resources, enrichment opportunities and good teachers are more widely accessible.

For parents who chose either route — what do you genuinely think made the biggest difference for your child:
academic environment?
peer group?
confidence/networking?
teaching quality?
extracurriculars?
university outcomes?
pastoral support?

Interested in hearing balanced experiences from both sides.

@swdd we only have 1 local grammar and thousands apply to it

Teachers can be passionate, innovative, and committed to their students; and still prefer to work with better behaved, harder working higher achievers. I repeat: I have no reason to believe that those best teachers are any less likely to move to grammars or selective independents than their less passionate, less innovative, less committed brethren.

If, however, you define the best teachers as those most committed to social justice and to improving the life prospects of the most disadvantaged children, then I could see your point.

Teachers in state schools absolutely have in-depth specialist knowledge

Not all teachers in state schools have in-depth specialist knowledge.
https://www.iop.org/about/publications/physics-teacher-shortage-and-addressing-it-through-3rs

"We estimate... that over a half of physics classes at Key Stage 4 are taught by a teacher who does not have a post-18 qualification in physics"

"The shortage has a bigger impact on students in areas of lower socio-economic status (SES) because their schools are less likely to have in-field physics teachers."

The report doesn't address what the deficiencies are like at independent schools, nor does it break out grammars from comprehensive schools, but given what we both know about the SES at selective schools, whether independent or state, the problem will be worst at comprehensives as a category.

It’s quite insulting to assume all we are good for is behaviour management.

I can't stop you from thinking in black and white, that a teacher can be good only either at behavior management or at specialist knowledge. I deal with shades of gray; I believe that some can be good at both, others can be good at neither. I can't stop you from thinking that the only possibilities are binary, that either all teachers at state schools have the appropriate specialist knowledge or that none of them do. I believe that some teachers at any school have the appropriate knowledge but that the percentage at selective schools is higher than at comprehensives and the percentage at independent schools is higher than at state schools. So I can't stop you from feeling insult where none was intended.

@Platypus7 as others have said it’s obviously not right that the best teachers are in any one sector - it varies massively and you can’t generalise. There isn’t even one meaning of “best” - perhaps you can explain what you meant by that.

@swdd what you say may be true of some independents but there are loads in London where you have to be loaded AND extremely intelligent and driven. No one is coasting at Westminster or even schools several tiers below that.

@user149799568 I am not the one thinking in black and white, I believe it was you who said that independent school teachers are better qualified and state school teachers are better at behaviour management. Of course there are good teachers in all sectors, we all have our own strengths. But I genuinely don’t know why you assume teachers at private schools are better qualified? Schools all recruit from the same pool. I know many who have gone from state to private and the other way, we all have the same level of education in our field.

I have been teaching for a long time, I know a lot of teachers and I am only speaking from my own experience.

what you say may be true of some independents but there are loads in London where you have to be loaded AND extremely intelligent and driven. No one is coasting at Westminster or even schools several tiers below that.

I wouldn’t say there are loads that have only extremely intelligent children @VarioPerfect what schools that are several tiers below Westminster have only extremely intelligent dc?

I believe it was you who said that independent school teachers are better qualified and state school teachers are better at behaviour management.

Please show where I said that before the last paragraph of my most recent post, where my inference about averages is based on the information in the report I linked to, specifically that children from lower SES backgrounds are less likely to have teachers with the appropriate specialist subject knowledge.

But I genuinely don’t know why you assume teachers at private schools are better qualified?

There are different types of qualifications for teaching. There is the PGCE and then there is specialist subject knowledge. It is often pointed out that independent schools do not require the PGCE whereas state schools do, so private school teachers are, arguably, less qualified on average than state school teachers at pedagogy.

“Teachers can be passionate, innovative, and committed to their students; and still prefer to work with better behaved, harder working higher achievers.”

Dies that favour state or private schools though? I suspect a great many parents who choose private schooling do so precisely because their children aren’t and never will be high achievers and so they need to do all they can to help them out.

It would favor academically selective schools, both state grammars and academically selective privates.

Oh but we are all being persuaded by teachers and parents on this thread that there are absolutely no barriers for DC in comprehensive schools? On the contrary, state schools have the best teachers whilst the dim pupils in private schools are being taught by lazy unqualified staff. Surely it's the private schools pupils that should get contextual offers for being failed by rubbish private education?

OP was comparing highly selective private schools, not just any PS. Parents at super selective schools, be it grammar or private, are obsessed about education. No one else would go through 4/7/11/13+ exams, it's self selection first of all.

My child does not attend a private school or selective one. People have suggested that such schools are advantageous because:
They have more specialist teachers
They have teachers with higher academic qualifications
They have wider subject choices
Peers are more engaged and families are more supportive of the school
Disruptive behaviour is lower
Some posters have challenged some of these views. All I am suggesting is that posters who do think that such school environments are advantageous recognise this when contextual offers are discussed.

I think the main advantage of the grammar near us is the attitude to learning and the cohort you're in. The whole cohort is essentially quite pushy and ambitious. If you've got a dc who should be keeping up nicely then that's a good environment to be in. I contrast this to my state school where you were shoved in a bin if you did your homework (by students although I wouldn't have put it past some of the teachers)

At 4+, it’s not even a real exam. It’s just taking DD along to play with some puzzles and do some fun activities. Once they're in, they can literally sleepwalk their way through to 18. That’s how our current 'selective' all-through independent school operates. No wonder the parents here aren't keen on actual education.

This is not true :) There is nothing "fun" about NLCS 4+ assessments, for example. It's not true they can "sleepwalk" through to 18 either - I know of children at various super selective schools who were advised to leave even before 11 and those who themselves decided to leave as children were not enjoying a super selective academic environment.

It remains to be seen if top schools will be dumbing down their standards, but at the moment many of them are still oversubscribed so feel no need to.

@Platypus7 I don't know what state school you work at but it is not the norm to have students with 8s/9s. The average GCSE grade at an average state sixth form is about 5-6.
I want my son to be taught by specialist teachers and I moved my son from state to private to achieve this. I honestly think that if I hadn't he would not be doing Further Maths at A-level, which is essential for the type of degree he is considering at the top universities. Prior to me moving him he was being taught by multiple cover teachers in Maths. It is quite normal where I live in the country to use non-specialist teachers all the time even at A-level.
Londoners are very lucky in terms of state education. They also need to realise that kids in the rest of the country are not so lucky. State schools in London outperform schools from other parts of the country by 10% year on year at GCSE.

As the op asked for views from both sectors, I thought I would give my experience of having a DD at a large mixed comprehensive. It isn’t very high achieving, but neither is it in a deprived area or has very low results. It is around ‘average’ on most performance measures - a little above on some.

Good things
*Big cohort - you can find your tribe. DD has a great friend group who are engaged. She is quite quiet and hangs out with similar girls. They aren’t all very academic, but they are engaged in school in lots of different ways. She has never experienced any significant hassle from other students.
*Sporting, music & performing art extra curriculars.
*Good facilities for the above.
*Broad curriculum - vocational options & further maths, triple science etc. You can choose a KS4 offering that suits your aspirations and aptitudes.
*Engaged teachers, rigorous teaching good feedback to the kids on what they do well need to improve.
*You can do well if you have the aptitude & put the effort in. You do need to be able to stay on track though even when others aren’t (see below).
Less good things
*There is no getting away from the fact that the disruptive behaviour of a minority of students sometimes impacts on others learning. Funding constraints make managing the impact harder.
Significant incidents are also witnessed - it doesn’t have a direct impact on DD, but it is an environment where you are exposed to challenging issues.
*Because we aren’t in a high cost of living area staffing shortages aren’t a big problem. However, there can be some areas where costs mean staffing is sometimes more squeezed than is ideal.

Plenty of kids at independent also miss out on the extra curricular. There is a real correlation between having driven parents and this sort of achievement whether in state or indi. Some parents are very pushy and expect their children to be high achieving. My dd is in a selective indi and off to uni this September. I’ve been pretty determined that she make the most of opportunities so have encouraged her to join everything with a view to having a story at university application time. Some of her friends have just gone to lessons. It worked and she got offers for her first choice course. The state school she would have gone to is pretty middle class as the catchment picks up the wealthiest area of my fairly wealthy city. There is a well attended annual ski trip for example and plenty of law firm partner / doctor parents. But because 20% of the catchment is more deprived it also as a whole qualifies for contextual offers. The course she wants to study is an A star offer but contextually 2 grades below and it’s pretty galling to actually know someone in her year in primary who has an offer of 3 B’s for the same course whose family is objectively as privileged as mine (professional educated parents, tutoring, fancy holidays) and has done lots of extra curricular too (as it is on offer you just have to look for it). Anyhow, I’m no longer convinced on the value for money proposition and my 11 year old dc will be going to said state school September and I will have an objective view on all of this soon. If it doesn’t work out for them we will move them to private.

Private school just isn’t an option for our family and there are no grammar schools in the county. I don’t think about school ‘choice’ because there isn’t one. I just encourage DD to work hard and make the best of the opportunities she has.
However, even if I could afford and wanted a private school the idea of putting a child in for a 4+ or a 7+ just seems completely alien. Preparing a 6 year old for an exam they could fail. It just seems completely unnecessary stress for the child and family. I didn’t even know it was a thing before I read about it on mumsnet. When I read about the prep some families do for the 7 or 11+ exams, it just seems a very stressful childhood experience. I know people say some kids enjoy it, but I’m sure some hate it but just want to please mum and dad so get on with it. I remember reading about one little girl who ‘failed’ to get into the same school as her older sisters at 7. I just felt sad for her.

Only one uni in England (Bristol) to my knowledge offers contextual offers to all students at specific schools. Most require 2+ contextual ‘flags’.

However, even if I could afford and wanted a private school the idea of putting a child in for a 4+ or a 7+ just seems completely alien. Preparing a 6 year old for an exam they could fail. It just seems completely unnecessary stress for the child and family.

This is what I mean when I say it's self selection first of all.

There are 150-200 all-through 4+ private schools across the UK, hyper-selective ones like NLCS are rare exceptions. I was talking about the other 99% of them.

I'm just referring back to the OP, it says "highly selective" PS so I just picked one of those. What's the point in comparing grammars and non-selective PS, they belong with different worlds. Our friends were choosing between HBS and SPGS, they never applied say to Forest School.

Ok. So what OP was actually talking about here is the value of hype-selectivity,. Labels like grammar, comprehensive, private are just red herrings.
A hyper-selective intake does two things that standard schools can't touch: 1. It unlocks accelerated learning. The pace is fast, the depth is there, and teachers can actually deploy top-tier academic resources because they have a room full of pupils who can keep up. 2. The peer effect is guaranteed. You get a cohort of motivated DC backed by self-selected parents who prioritise education (nobody gets past these super selective entrance exams by accident).
Frankly, actual 'teaching quality' is a distant secondary factor here, as high achievers get those top grades through heavy independent self-learning anyway.

@footbeds maybe several tiers was going too far but eg Forest School which has been mentioned on this thread as a lower tier independent school in London is nonetheless selective seems to have got over 80% A*-B grades at A level last year, and it’s certainly competitive to get into.

Agree on this,
Then the difference between grammar and PS is mainly in sports and to some extent music.
There was virtually no sport to speak of at my DC1 grammar and the parents' priorities are stem, stem, stem.