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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Educational elitism
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mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Bob Two-Owls:
In a lot of LEAs they don't. Behavioural support is now done in-house rather than at dedicated centres. There are certainly no schools geared up to dealing with disruptive students outside of the justice system around here.
OK, I don't know about your area, but separate behavioural support units exist in many parts of the country.
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arse
Posts: 10697 | Registered: Sep 2002
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Doc Tor
Deepest Red
# 9748
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Sioni Sais:
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
Grammar schoolkids can be disruptive and unruly, but on the whole the knowledge that there will be hell-to-pay both from the school and the parents tends to put a lid on it.
Some parents engage with schools and some don't. The attitude of the school matters and the attitude of the headteacher is paramount. The status or kind of school is secondary.
I had the misfortune to work next to a large private boys-only Grammar school.
If there was only one thing worse than the behaviour of the pupils, it was the behaviour of the parents. By the time I left, I could have cheerfully burned the place to the ground and pissed on the cold ash.
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Forward the New Republic
Posts: 9131 | From: Ultima Thule | Registered: Jul 2005
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
So from the mid-60s on, selective schooling tended to fall out of favour and was replaced in most, but not all, of the country by comprehensive schools.
Isn't it odd that at about the same time social mobility in the UK virtually ground to a halt?
Correlation =/= causation. Didn't they teach you that in your grammar school?
The simple fact is that children from poor backgrounds can and do do extremely well in comps. There's litte evidence they do any better in grammars, and plenty that those left behind in the secondary moderns do worse.
We've never had so many schoolleavers go on to university as we have today, including from impoverished backgrounds. They're clearly not being held back by their educational opportunities, but by something else.
[ 14. September 2016, 12:01: Message edited by: Karl: Liberal Backslider ]
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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Moo
Ship's tough old bird
# 107
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Sioni Sais:
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
I think for the most part the difference is the engagement of parents in their children's education.
Grammar schoolkids can be disruptive and unruly, but on the whole the knowledge that there will be hell-to-pay both from the school and the parents tends to put a lid on it.
Some parents engage with schools and some don't.
And then there are the parents who come charging down to the school to complain every time their child is appropriately disciplined.
Moo
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Kerygmania host
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See you later, alligator.
Posts: 20365 | From: Alleghany Mountains of Virginia | Registered: May 2001
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Doc Tor
Deepest Red
# 9748
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Posted
Social mobility is only meaningful when the son of a barrister gives me a quote for painting the outside of my house.
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Forward the New Republic
Posts: 9131 | From: Ultima Thule | Registered: Jul 2005
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
"Approved schools" were definitely not a third tier of ordinary schools. They were the equivalent of prison for juveniles for those not old enough to go to borstal, where you went if a juvenile court sentenced you to what is now called a custodial sentence.
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Brexit wrexit - Sir Graham Watson
Posts: 7610 | From: Bristol UK(was European Green Capital 2015, now Ljubljana) | Registered: Nov 2008
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Eliab
Shipmate
# 9153
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
Unless your child fails the 11+ in which case you have no such choice.
Well, obviously. That's what "academically selective" means. You have to pass some sort of test to get in.
Lots of parents like - and would choose - selective education for their children. Others might not - and that's fine. I don't think anyone is suggesting that all schools have to be selective. But at present, in much of the UK, the only way to get a selective education is to pay for it. More grammar schools mean that more lower-income families get an option that currently you need money for. That's a good thing.
Also I'm not suggesting that non-selective schools have to be second rate - and certainly not that they ought to be. I'd like every school to be excellent. But since, in the real world, some schools are going to be better than others (even if 'better' means only more suitable for a particular pupil), and since academic selection is perceived by a great many parents as potentially helping to make a school 'better' for their children, I'd rather not have all the selective schools as fee-paying ones.
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"Perhaps there is poetic beauty in the abstract ideas of justice or fairness, but I doubt if many lawyers are moved by it"
Richard Dawkins
Posts: 4619 | From: Hampton, Middlesex, UK | Registered: Mar 2005
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
So from the mid-60s on, selective schooling tended to fall out of favour and was replaced in most, but not all, of the country by comprehensive schools.
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
Isn't it odd that at about the same time social mobility in the UK virtually ground to a halt?
I've had a browse over here. I can't find anything that supports that view of the trend in social mobility.
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
Posts: 12277 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2004
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chris stiles
Shipmate
# 12641
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eliab:
But at present, in much of the UK, the only way to get a selective education is to pay for it. More grammar schools mean that more lower-income families get an option that currently you need money for. That's a good thing.
The converse of this is that where there are grammar schools, poorer children do worse than poor children nationally (see https://www.ifs.org.uk/publications/8469).
So the other way of looking at this is that middle-classes are being appealed to as a special interest and given a subsidy that makes us all worse off on aggregate.
Posts: 4035 | From: Berkshire | Registered: May 2007
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Teekeey Misha
Shipmate
# 18604
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by North East Quine:
I was trying to say that I thought that a fee-paying education was now a barrier to election in Scotland.
<SNIP>
quote:
Also, you need to unpack the figures re the number of privately-educated MSPs.
Elections to Holyrood aren't "first-past-the-post." There are two votes, one for a constituency candidate and one for a party. Many of the privately-educated MSPs were elected from the list, not as individuals. It would be interesting to calculate how many of those elected to a constituency seat were privately educated.
A quick glance through the lists provides a minimum figure; it's not easy to find where a lot of the MSPs went to school (do they not publish such information because they don't think it's important or because they are hiding the fact they were independently educated? Let the reader decide...) so it's not possible to produce more accurate figures without settling into some serious research (and this may be a slow morning, but it's not that slow!)
Of 129 MSPs, I can find 18 who went to independent schools. That's 14% of MSPs compared to a national figure for Scotland of c.4.5%.
Of the 18, 7 are regional MSPs. That's 5% of all MSPs, 39% of independently educated MSPs, and 12.5% of Regional MSPs.
11 are constituency MSPs. That's 9% of all MSPs, 61% of independently educated MSPs and 15% of Constituency MSPs.
As I say, these are minimum figures. One has to wonder why an MSP would list his primary school, polytechnic and Sandhurst but not mention his senior school. An Old Etonian in hiding, perhaps? There are also some who were almost certainly independently educated but I can't find it as fact so I've not included them (e.g. the woman who is the daughter of a Stowe-educated, MC winning, ex-Tory MP now a peer? Suspect she may have gone private, but can't be sure!)
Oh - and the list includes three MSPs who were educated at English independent schools, including one Etonian and one Harrovian.
A quick reading of some minimum figures would suggest that being independently educated isn't that much of a barrier to being elected in Scotland. I should think being English would be a much greater barrier. There aren't many English MSPs... ![[Paranoid]](graemlins/paranoid.gif)
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Misha
Don't assume I don't care; sometimes I just can't be bothered to put you right.
Posts: 296 | From: UK | Registered: Jun 2016
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eliab:
Before I get into this I think there is a moral difference between a) preferring selective education for your children in a set-up where selective education is clearly the better option if you have it, on the one hand, b) and on the other thinking that a system where selective education is better is a preferable system.
In short, I wouldn't think anyone morally wrong for sending their children to a private or grammar school. That doesn't mean I think the government morally right to expand them.
quote:
Lots of parents like - and would choose - selective education for their children.
Some parents who would and do choose selective education for their children don't get it.
quote:
I don't think anyone is suggesting that all schools have to be selective.
The problem is that if some schools are selective that means that the other schools have to take a higher proportion of children who weren't selected.
quote:
But at present, in much of the UK, the only way to get a selective education is to pay for it. More grammar schools mean that more lower-income families get an option that currently you need money for. That's a good thing.
This is a bit like describing the lottery as an option to win a million pounds.
What lower-income families get is the option to gamble on being selected or rejected. And higher-income families are able to pay to increase the chance of being selected. That option lower-income families do not have.
quote:
But since, in the real world, some schools are going to be better than others (even if 'better' means only more suitable for a particular pupil), and since academic selection is perceived by a great many parents as potentially helping to make a school 'better' for their children, I'd rather not have all the selective schools as fee-paying ones.
If the existence of selective schools only affected the children selected there wouldn't be a problem. The problem is the knock-on effects on the people who for whatever reason are not selected.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
Isn't it odd that at about the same time social mobility in the UK virtually ground to a halt?
I've had a browse over here. I can't find anything that supports that view of the trend in social mobility.
The earliest date in any of those tables and charts is 1991. I'm talking about something that happened in the 1960s and 70s.
How many people born in the lower social classes in the 1950s managed to move up into the middle classes? How many people born in the lower social classes today do you think will do the same?
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
We've never had so many schoolleavers go on to university as we have today, including from impoverished backgrounds.
That's because there are so many more universities now, some of which will accept (and even graduate) virtually anyone regardless of ability.
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
Social mobility is only meaningful when the son of a barrister gives me a quote for painting the outside of my house.
People moving up in the world only matters to you if other people are moving down? I find that quite sad.
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
What lower-income families get is the option to gamble on being selected or rejected. And higher-income families are able to pay to increase the chance of being selected. That option lower-income families do not have.
Then surely any move to expand the number of grammar school places - and therefore the number of families who "win the gamble" - can only be a good thing.
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
How many people born in the lower social classes today do you think will do the same?
I was googling around to find an answer to this (because my first instinct was to say "more" but without any figures).
I found this and thought "bugger, Marvin's right.". Then I looked at the parent page and realised it was about the US.
I still haven't found a corresponding UK chart but now a) I'd really like to know why this trend exists and b) the answer isn't to do with comprehensives because I don't think educational reform in the US coincides with the UK dates. Correlation really isn't causation.
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
Posts: 12277 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2004
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Doc Tor
Deepest Red
# 9748
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
I still haven't found a corresponding UK chart but now a) I'd really like to know why this trend exists and b) the answer isn't to do with comprehensives because I don't think educational reform in the US coincides with the UK dates. Correlation really isn't causation.
My informed guess it has almost entirely to do with the GI bill.
Spikes in the 40s (WWII), 50s (Korea), late 60s/early 70s (Vietnam), early 80s (Iraq). The GI bill gives stipends to veterans going to college.
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Forward the New Republic
Posts: 9131 | From: Ultima Thule | Registered: Jul 2005
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SvitlanaV2
Shipmate
# 16967
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
We've never had so many schoolleavers go on to university as we have today, including from impoverished backgrounds.
That's because there are so many more universities now, some of which will accept (and even graduate) virtually anyone regardless of ability.
There's also the added problem that the number of graduate jobs hasn't really expanded to fulfil the expectations of many graduates today. So they're often doing the same jobs they would have done if the universities hadn't expanded - but with student debt.
Education isn't just about the money, of course, but if either good money or career success is the expectation you either have to attend a prestigious university (which means better schooling beforehand), do a carefully chosen postgrad degree, or gain brilliant extracurricular skills to enable you to shine in showbiz, sport, entrepreneurship, writing or some other non-academic field that requires utter determination and focus. And interestingly, even non-academic success is increasingly being achieved by privately educated young people nowadays.
Posts: 6668 | From: UK | Registered: Feb 2012
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mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
I still haven't found a corresponding UK chart but now a) I'd really like to know why this trend exists and b) the answer isn't to do with comprehensives because I don't think educational reform in the US coincides with the UK dates. Correlation really isn't causation.
I think the culture of the USA and the UK are quite different - and that the educational inequalities in the UK have been very regional in the past.
On culture, the famous "American dream" has meant that many Americans believed that it was possible for them to move up and change their social status providing they worked hard and believed in themselves. That idea hasn't been a traditional part of the British psyche, where for much of the last few hundred years the vast majority of people just did what their parents did.
On regional educational inequalities, there have always been areas of the country which were "sacrificed" for the greater good. Take for example the Welsh Valleys. It isn't possible to prove that children from the valleys were thicker than those from the home counties, but throughout most of the twentieth century, almost the only options for men was to either work down the pit (or in other heavy industries) or to emigrate. The number of people who went to university could be counted on one hand and special efforts were made by churches and trade unions to improve the educational standards left by the woeful state funded schools.
I'm sure it was exactly the same in many other areas were "essential industries" needed bodies rather than brains.
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arse
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Callan
Shipmate
# 525
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
quote:
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
So from the mid-60s on, selective schooling tended to fall out of favour and was replaced in most, but not all, of the country by comprehensive schools.
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
Isn't it odd that at about the same time social mobility in the UK virtually ground to a halt?
I've had a browse over here. I can't find anything that supports that view of the trend in social mobility.
IIRC, there was a massive expansion of white collar jobs and, therefore, able working class children were able to fill them. After the 1960s not so much.
IME supporters of Grammar Schools tend to either have gone to Grammar Schools or be the sort of people whose kids are likely to get into Grammar Schools. Funnily enough you never meet people of more modest backgrounds conceding that they and their kids were fitted by nature to be hewers of wood and drawers of water and that Grammar Schools are not for the likes of them and a secondary modern is all they can aspire to, presumably whilst tugging their forelock and dolefully muttering about knowing their place in the manner of Mr Ronnie Corbett. Which is why the whole system was so bloody unpopular and why the government got rid of it.
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How easy it would be to live in England, if only one did not love her. - G.K. Chesterton
Posts: 9757 | From: Citizen of the World | Registered: Jun 2001
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
My informed guess it has almost entirely to do with the GI bill.
Spikes in the 40s (WWII), 50s (Korea), late 60s/early 70s (Vietnam), early 80s (Iraq). The GI bill gives stipends to veterans going to college.
To be absolutely fair, in the UK it might have something to do with the fact that a significant proportion of the preceding generation had been killed during WW2, leaving avenues open to people born in the 50s that weren't open to their kids.
Regardless, I'm still convinced that grammar schooling provides more opportunities for kids from the lower social classes to improve their lot than comprehensive schooling. Firstly because in any system there are going to be better and worse schools, and in a non-selective system the deciding factor will be who can afford to live near the good ones. And secondly because it did exactly that for me.
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
Able child goes to grammar school, gets qualifications, surprise surprise, does well in his career - must have been the grammar school. Of course, the control doesn't exist - you can't reincarnate that child and repeat his life exactly and see what happened in the Comprehensive, although the fact that Comprehensives do send children to high prestige universities rather indicates that he might have had much the same career.
But no, it must be the Grammar school what done it.
Marvin cannot prove that he would not have done just as well in a comprehensive. He believes it, but he has no evidence to support it. I'd prefer to believe he did well because he applied himself and had natural ability. Wouldn't he?
There is however evidence that those children who don't get in do worse than they would in a non-selective system. I'm not willing to shit on the less able.
[ 14. September 2016, 14:34: Message edited by: Karl: Liberal Backslider ]
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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Boogie
Boogie on down!
# 13538
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Posted
I failed the 11 plus and would fail it again today. I went to a secondary modern school.
But I have been a successful teacher and deputy headteacher for 40 years now.
I was lucky, my Dad knew I had brains and taught me at home every evening after school.
Many years later I discovered that I'm 'differently wired' and have dyslexia and ADHD.
Now, having gained a postgraduate diploma in SpLD (specific learning difficulties). I now coach adults with ADHD for the NHS. We are a small team of two psychiatrists, two nurse practitioners and three coaches. It's incredibly rewarding.
It makes me sad to see people judged only on traditional academic performance. This seems much, much more prevalent in the UK.
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Garden. Room. Walk
Posts: 13030 | From: Boogie Wonderland | Registered: Mar 2008
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Doc Tor
Deepest Red
# 9748
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
Regardless, I'm still convinced that grammar schooling provides more opportunities for kids from the lower social classes to improve their lot than comprehensive schooling. Firstly because in any system there are going to be better and worse schools, and in a non-selective system the deciding factor will be who can afford to live near the good ones. And secondly because it did exactly that for me.
No. You would have done just as well (if not better) at a comp.
I've two generations of anecdata to back me up. Both me and my brother went to a genuinely rough comp that we were in the catchment for. We both have PhDs. Our kids also go to our respective local comps. Our daughters are now at the same (Russell group) university. My son is in the top 0.1% of STEM students, according to his AS results.
It's really not difficult. Grammars take the top 20% of kids at 11, and get academic results that are better than average. No shit, Sherlock. Why might that be?
You can, on one hand, argue that Grammars get the best out of their pupils, and on the other, kids at Comprehensives succeed despite the school. But we both know that's pretty much a self-serving argument.
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Forward the New Republic
Posts: 9131 | From: Ultima Thule | Registered: Jul 2005
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
IIRC, Marvin usually argues he'd have been beaten up for being a swot at the Comp.
Which may be true, but isn't because it was a Comp, it was because it was a shit school that wasn't setting a good ethos. Better to address that and benefit all students than to drag the top 10-20% or whatever out and leave the rest to sink.
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
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Posted
Selecting those who do well in an arbitrary test at 11 will result in some academically less gifted students getting into the grammar schools (because their parents paid for tutors to train them to pass the exam, which is largely unrelated to actual ability) and some academically gifted students failing to get into the grammar schools (because they had a bad day, stressed out on having to sit an exam at such a young age, don't do well at exams, matured slightly later).
In a poor grammar school, those less gifted kids will get bullied for being "thick", and probably those from less well off backgrounds will be bullied for being poor. In a poor comprehensive those academically gifted kids who failed to get into the grammar will still be bullied as "swots".
The solution to bullying is to improve all schools and equip teachers, in cooperation with parents and others, to be able to punish bullies and create a culture where bullying is unacceptable. Besides, being the class swot and getting stick for it doesn't need to be the end of the world, and many of us were in that position and have done OK anyway (of course, just because many people survive, even do well, doesn't make it right).
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Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.
Posts: 32413 | From: East Kilbride (Scotland) or 福島 | Registered: May 2001
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Doc Tor
Deepest Red
# 9748
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
IIRC, Marvin usually argues he'd have been beaten up for being a swot at the Comp.
I was beaten up for being a swot at the Comp. That's because, as you rightly surmise, it was a crap school. If I'd have gone to a Grammar, I would have been beaten up for being bad at sport (I was, quite spectacularly) or not having university-educated parents, or wearing hand-me-downs, or something, or anything, or having a huge overbite, which took a great deal of medieval dentistry and time to fix.
The one thing that going to a Comp didn't affect was my academic trajectory.
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Forward the New Republic
Posts: 9131 | From: Ultima Thule | Registered: Jul 2005
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chris stiles
Shipmate
# 12641
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
Selecting those who do well in an arbitrary test at 11 will result in some academically less gifted students getting into the grammar schools
Additionally, I believe that at that stage the variations in age inside a single year can still have a reasonable impact on how developed and prepared children are.
The approach of being able to take it at 10,11 and 12 seemed somewhat more fair, but the other problems with inequality still don't go away.
As I said, it appears to me to be a case of a particular set of the population - who aren't particularly underprivileged - getting an additional subsidy from the state.
Posts: 4035 | From: Berkshire | Registered: May 2007
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
Marvin cannot prove that he would not have done just as well in a comprehensive. He believes it, but he has no evidence to support it.
I know which comp I'd have had to go to if there hadn't been grammars available (or if I'd failed the 11+). I also know that I was the only kid from its catchment area who went to a grammar (Birmingham only has five of them). This means I know exactly what facilities would have been available, who I'd have been in class with, and what the standard of teaching was like.
None of the three factors is in any way encouraging.
quote:
There is however evidence that those children who don't get in do worse than they would in a non-selective system. I'm not willing to shit on the less able.
How can there be evidence that some will do worse without there being evidence that others do better?
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
Which may be true, but isn't because it was a Comp, it was because it was a shit school that wasn't setting a good ethos.
No, it's because it was a shit area that didn't have a good ethos. The school was shit because of the kids*, not the other way round.
.
*= OK, not all of them. But enough that no amount of "ethos setting" by the school was going to make a blind bit of difference.
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
Marvin cannot prove that he would not have done just as well in a comprehensive. He believes it, but he has no evidence to support it.
I know which comp I'd have had to go to if there hadn't been grammars available (or if I'd failed the 11+). I also know that I was the only kid from its catchment area who went to a grammar (Birmingham only has five of them). This means I know exactly what facilities would have been available, who I'd have been in class with, and what the standard of teaching was like.
None of the three factors is in any way encouraging.
So obviously the right thing to do is focus all the resources and good teaching on Marvin the Martian and fuck the rest. Including many who were just as clever as Marvin but weren't entered. Or for whom there wasn't room. Or who had a bad day when they did the 11+. I'm really not sold on that idea.
quote:
quote:
There is however evidence that those children who don't get in do worse than they would in a non-selective system. I'm not willing to shit on the less able.
How can there be evidence that some will do worse without there being evidence that others do better?
Well, if the fact is that the top don't do any better but the bottom do worse, then that's what we'd expect evidence to show. As it does.
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
Indeed. I'd particularly draw attention to this bit:
quote:
A Tory, yes, a Tory, wrote
Over the past 20 years inner-London schools have gone from the stuff of tabloid scare stories to some of the best comprehensives in the world. The poorest children in Tower Hamlets and Westminster now do better than the average for all pupils in selective counties like Kent and Lincolnshire.
In other words, Marv, it was the schools. Children's attitudes can be moulded and changed by the right school environment. It was environment that moulded them negatively in the first place; it's environment that can mould them otherwise. For some reason you laud a system that failed the hundreds of others in your peer group because it worked out OK for you.
[ 14. September 2016, 15:48: Message edited by: Karl: Liberal Backslider ]
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
What lower-income families get is the option to gamble on being selected or rejected.
Then surely any move to expand the number of grammar school places - and therefore the number of families who "win the gamble" - can only be a good thing.
Grammar school places for everyone, you mean? I'd have no problem with that.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
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Doc Tor
Deepest Red
# 9748
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
Which may be true, but isn't because it was a Comp, it was because it was a shit school that wasn't setting a good ethos.
No, it's because it was a shit area that didn't have a good ethos. The school was shit because of the kids*, not the other way round.
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*= OK, not all of them. But enough that no amount of "ethos setting" by the school was going to make a blind bit of difference.
I pretty much went to the school you didn't. The teachers (as opposed to the Headmaster, who'd probably be on the Yewtree watch-list if he wasn't dead) were almost universally brilliant - if you wanted to learn. And one thing that the school did right was aggressively stream the (six class) intake.
That's 30 kids out of 180 in each year who automatically got put forward to do the subject's O level, rather than the CSE.
I still sent my kids to a comp, because comps now are so much more than the one I went to.
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Forward the New Republic
Posts: 9131 | From: Ultima Thule | Registered: Jul 2005
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Doc Tor
Deepest Red
# 9748
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Posted
The only possible way I'd support new Grammars would be if they were only for children attracting the pupil premium.
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Forward the New Republic
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
So obviously the right thing to do is focus all the resources and good teaching on Marvin the Martian and fuck the rest. Including many who were just as clever as Marvin but weren't entered. Or for whom there wasn't room. Or who had a bad day when they did the 11+. I'm really not sold on that idea.
You prefer a situation where all the resources and good teaching are focused on kids whose parents can afford to move into a good catchment area?
It's all very well saying every school should be amazing and excellent and perfect, but it's never going to happen, because even if every school in the country had the facilities and teaching standards of Eton there are still too many kids out there that are just shitheads who don't give a fuck about anything academic whatsoever, and whose parents actively support them in that attitude.
quote:
Well, if the fact is that the top don't do any better but the bottom do worse, then that's what we'd expect evidence to show. As it does.
You were just now saying that it's impossible to know how any given child's studies would have gone differently had they been at a different school. Is that what you think or not?
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
So from the mid-60s on, selective schooling tended to fall out of favour and was replaced in most, but not all, of the country by comprehensive schools.
Isn't it odd that at about the same time social mobility in the UK virtually ground to a halt?
My impression from the statistics I've seen (and didn't bookmark) is that social mobility ground to a halt in the early eighties. I'll let you guess who I think was responsible for that.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
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Doc Tor
Deepest Red
# 9748
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
It's all very well saying every school should be amazing and excellent and perfect, but it's never going to happen, because even if every school in the country had the facilities and teaching standards of Eton there are still too many kids out there that are just shitheads who don't give a fuck about anything academic whatsoever, and whose parents actively support them in that attitude.
London proves you wrong. It gets results that places like Kent, with its Grammars, can only dream of.
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Forward the New Republic
Posts: 9131 | From: Ultima Thule | Registered: Jul 2005
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Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
Which may be true, but isn't because it was a Comp, it was because it was a shit school that wasn't setting a good ethos.
No, it's because it was a shit area that didn't have a good ethos. The school was shit because of the kids*, not the other way round.
Which neatly illustrates the unavoidable fact we face. If the intention is to do our best to provide the best possible opportunities for our children, then we need to tackle a range of different problems simultaneously. How do we improve a shit area? How do we improve the ethos of people so that they make the best use of the opportunities the local schools offer?
That would be more than just a magic bullet of taking a very small number of children to a grammar school.
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Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.
Posts: 32413 | From: East Kilbride (Scotland) or 福島 | Registered: May 2001
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
Indeed. I'd particularly draw attention to this bit:
quote:
A Tory, yes, a Tory, wrote
Over the past 20 years inner-London schools have gone from the stuff of tabloid scare stories to some of the best comprehensives in the world. The poorest children in Tower Hamlets and Westminster now do better than the average for all pupils in selective counties like Kent and Lincolnshire.
In other words, Marv, it was the schools.
I'd be very interested to see how they did it, assuming the writer isn't just manipulating statistics to get the answer he wants.
Maybe they followed a policy of excluding the worst offenders so as to improve the performance of the rest.
quote:
Children's attitudes can be moulded and changed by the right school environment. It was environment that moulded them negatively in the first place; it's environment that can mould them otherwise.
They're at school for about seven hours a day, and at home for the other seventeen. And "at home" has the advantages of a five-year head start and family ties. I just don't see how school can win that contest.
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
Grammar school places for everyone, you mean? I'd have no problem with that.
Not everyone, because then you'd still have all the same problems as comprehensive education. But if the selective system was switched so that it got rid of the bottom 10% then that might work...
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
How do we improve a shit area? How do we improve the ethos of people so that they make the best use of the opportunities the local schools offer?
That would be more than just a magic bullet of taking a very small number of children to a grammar school.
If you solve those problems you won't need grammar schools any more. What's your plan?
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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ThunderBunk
Stone cold idiot
# 15579
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Posted
The whole British attitude to education is saturated in snobbery from top to bottom, and is borked. It's an open question whether that or our compendium of delusions about Europe will lead the country over the edge first.
Why on earth we cannot admit that people have different gifts and nurture those gifts on the basis that they are of equal value, I have no idea.
The urgent task, to my mind, is to dismantle the system of assessment and targets that completely distort and distract the entire education system. Having got rid of that complete mess, and reminded the population what education is for, we can then build an education system which has a fighting chance of preparing its charges for a productive and fulfilling life as part of society.
We have simply forgotten that there are people throughout the process and experience of education and set it up as if it were a sausage factory. From a Christian perspective, this is sinful, as it impeded its charges in developing towards their God-given potential as fully alive human beings.
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Currently mostly furious, and occasionally foolish. Normal service may resume eventually. Or it may not. And remember children, "feiern ist wichtig".
Foolish, potentially deranged witterings
Posts: 2208 | From: Norwich | Registered: Apr 2010
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Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
How do we improve a shit area? How do we improve the ethos of people so that they make the best use of the opportunities the local schools offer?
That would be more than just a magic bullet of taking a very small number of children to a grammar school.
If you solve those problems you won't need grammar schools any more. What's your plan?
OK, if I was PM with the full support of a loyal cabinet (has any PM ever had that?).
1. There needs to be something that recreates the belief that an education is useful and important. Without that you'll just have loads of kids thinking "what's the point?" and parents not seeing any reason to get involved in the education of their children.
I don't think that can just be that passing exams allows you to get a job. We need to recreate an attitude that an education is an end in itself, that it develops character, and is not just about passing exams. Kill the attitude that all you need to learn is how to answer the test questions. So, ditch all the assessments of schools, league tables and the like, that are based just on exam results. Find other metrics, if indeed there is any need to assess performance - are the kids happy? Do they have fun? do they want to come to school? Are they excited by finding out how to do new things?
2. Spend money on helping poor areas improve themselves. Don't just employ some rich consultant to say what needs doing, but involve the local community. If there are jobs needing doing (which there will be) train local people to do them. If there is a lot of low quality housing, train local people in the skills needed to renovate their own neighbourhood - and then pay them decent wages to do the work. Fund apprenticeships for young people in the local school - subject not to passing exams, but on attitude to study and behaviour, reward those who have a positive attitude (good exam results will probably follow a good attitude anyway).
3. Treat people as people. They are individuals with particular skills and aptitudes. Encourage them, don't keep trying to force them to be someone they aren't. Someone who doesn't fit the mold isn't a failure. I remember my school supported a pupil who had artistic tendencies involving spray paint and walls - he was given a role in redecorating parts of the school. Rather than play hooky, and getting into trouble for criminal damage, he was at school turning blank walls into some quite amazing pieces of art. He went onto art college, I've no idea after that - but a turn around from someone who was probably heading for a criminal record at an early age.
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Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.
Posts: 32413 | From: East Kilbride (Scotland) or 福島 | Registered: May 2001
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
Grammar school places for everyone, you mean? I'd have no problem with that.
Not everyone, because then you'd still have all the same problems as comprehensive education.
It would be comprehensive education.
quote:
But if the selective system was switched so that it got rid of the bottom 10% then that might work...
How would you get propose to get rid of them? Set up televised games in which they fight each other to the death? Sell them off to aliens to use as drug supplies?
You're being a lot more defeatist than I hope we can be.
If people oughtn't to think education isn't for them, it would help not to reinforce that message. If there's a selective school in the area that isn't going to take them, that definitely sends them and their parents the message that education isn't for them.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ThunderBunk:
The whole British attitude to education is saturated in snobbery from top to bottom, and is borked. ...
Fair comment and a sad reflection on the whole subject. See how the entire debate always homes in on how or whether schools can contribute to greater equality, social mobility etc etc etc. How to provide schools that will result in children emerging at the end of their schooling actually better educated, more intelligent, having greater ability to think for themselves, or being better equipped with skills always seems to be regarded as far less important.
Objectively, children ending up better educated has to be the self-evident primary purpose of education. If that can be done in a way that is socially more beneficial, that's a useful secondary purpose. If it turned out that could only be done in a way that was less socially beneficial, that would have to be accepted as an unfortunate price to pay for better education. But nobody can have that secondary debate until they've accepted that the primary purpose is to produce better educated young adults, and reached some sort of persuasive conclusion of what would be the best way of doing that.
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Brexit wrexit - Sir Graham Watson
Posts: 7610 | From: Bristol UK(was European Green Capital 2015, now Ljubljana) | Registered: Nov 2008
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SvitlanaV2
Shipmate
# 16967
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
See how the entire debate always homes in on how or whether schools can contribute to greater equality, social mobility etc etc etc. How to provide schools that will result in children emerging at the end of their schooling actually better educated, more intelligent, having greater ability to think for themselves, or being better equipped with skills always seems to be regarded as far less important.
Objectively, children ending up better educated has to be the self-evident primary purpose of education.
What we mean by 'better educated' children - if we don't simply mean children who are further up the international league tables for numeracy and literacy - is far from 'objective', and in our postmodern world it's likely to be increasingly difficult to find a consensus on the issue.
Moreover, whatever we do mean, it's likely to entail even more expenditure for the state education system. Money is always the problem.
Posts: 6668 | From: UK | Registered: Feb 2012
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Teekeey Misha
Shipmate
# 18604
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
quote:
Originally posted by ThunderBunk:
The whole British attitude to education is saturated in snobbery from top to bottom, and is borked. ...
Fair comment and a sad reflection on the whole subject. See how the entire debate always homes in on how or whether schools can contribute to greater equality, social mobility etc etc etc. How to provide schools that will result in children emerging at the end of their schooling actually better educated, more intelligent, having greater ability to think for themselves, or being better equipped with skills always seems to be regarded as far less important.
Objectively, children ending up better educated has to be the self-evident primary purpose of education. If that can be done in a way that is socially more beneficial, that's a useful secondary purpose. If it turned out that could only be done in a way that was less socially beneficial, that would have to be accepted as an unfortunate price to pay for better education. But nobody can have that secondary debate until they've accepted that the primary purpose is to produce better educated young adults, and reached some sort of persuasive conclusion of what would be the best way of doing that.
Posts: 296 | From: UK | Registered: Jun 2016
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Teekeey Misha
Shipmate
# 18604
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Posted
[Tangent]
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
...children emerging at the end of their schooling actually better educated, more intelligent, having greater ability to think for themselves, or being better equipped with skills always seems to be regarded as far less important.
Better education doesn't make children more intelligent. It makes them better able to use their intelligence in the ways you suggest, but it doesn't make them more intelligent. Nothing makes them more intelligent.
[/Tangent]
[Apologies that repeat post appeared out of nowhere! Nobody thought "bulletin board posting" an important skill when I was at school, unless it involved putting the drawing pins in symmetrically!]
[ 14. September 2016, 23:42: Message edited by: Teekeey Misha ]
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