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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Educational elitism
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SvitlanaV2
Shipmate
# 16967
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
My view has always been that my child's education is one of the most important things for me to try to get right as a father. I appreciate the argument about the generality of children, but my main responsibility is to the best for my child.
I would under no circumstances put my child in a struggling comprehensive. If it came to it, I'd spend limited resources I have moving to another area or paying for private education if I thought that the only alternative was a poor (determined by a range of factors) school. My child is not an experiment or a project and I'll not use them as a way to improve a borked education system.
Yes, at the end of the day, middle class parents want to do the best for their own children. That's human nature.
Nevertheless, what makes a school 'bad' is likely to vary from parent to parent, and area to area. And what made for a 'struggling' school in the 1980s, say, might not be entirely relevant now. So it's not necessarily a matter of using your child as an 'experiment'.
A significant practical issue is how much time and effort the parents are willing and able to spend on nurturing their children at home, and perhaps whether they get private tutors. These factors can probably make a difference if the school doesn't meet the parents' standards. But parents have to make their own judgments on these matters, obviously.
[ 17. September 2016, 13:31: Message edited by: SvitlanaV2 ]
Posts: 6668 | From: UK | Registered: Feb 2012
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Curiosity killed ...
Ship's Mug
# 11770
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Posted
I have just bothered to check the local schools league tables from 2015 - because I don't think they were published in 2016.
Of the local schools, one of the local comprehensives I've worked in, very rough area, had Excellence in Cities Cluster funding which says something about deprivation of that area, matched one of the local private schools for results with 78% 5 GCSE A*-C in 2014.
The other comprehensive school (they are all academies now) in the same cluster matched two of the local selective schools to the south of me and another comprehensive in town in the smarter area with 60% 5 A*-C at GCSE - that's come down from 66% with the changes in qualification valuation. I worked in that school and it takes children who with moderate learning difficulties, acts as the local ASC school and works with students with behaviour difficulties. It runs four streams within it for KS4, effectively the highly academic stream similar to the old grammar schools, a less academic stream, a technical/vocational stream and a stream for students who need a lot of support to achieve anything. (Plus there's usually a behaviour group with a different curriculum) Those students are mixed ability for tutor groups and house competitions, so everyone gets to meet each other and learns to get on, with support.
Some schools are less able to support and hold more challenging pupils than others. If your child is going through a rough patch, they may be kicked out of the highly selective school whatever the situation. A school that is better at dealing with a range of students is better at keeping and working with students who are struggling for whatever reason. There is usually flexibility to move between streams at any stage, so late developers or students who suddenly find a focus can move into a more academic stream if that's appropriate for them. That's a whole lot better than for those children who fail the selection tests and do not get into the grammar schools.
I attended a comprehensive school that was a recent fusion between neighbouring secondary modern and grammar schools. Lower school got the secondary modern buildings, upper school the grammar. I had to sit the 11 plus to get there because I was in a catchment area that would otherwise have fed into a poor secondary modern school. A handful, 4 of us out of 30, passed the 11 plus, the rest went to that ex-secondary modern. One girl from my primary school, a couple of years above me, did so well at that ex-secondary modern she was transferred into the ex-grammar school for sixth form. One girl in five years.
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Mugs - Keep the Ship afloat
Posts: 13794 | From: outiside the outer ring road | Registered: Aug 2006
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Leorning Cniht
Shipmate
# 17564
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
Need to be very big middle schools - my experiencfe in Leeds was of 'faculties' - so a mishmash of History, Geography and RE subsumed under 'Humanities- ditto for the sciences - bad for all subject specislisms.
I don't agree at all, because I have a different experience (of what sounds like a similar setup). My middle-school age experience is with a teacher for "Science" rather than the separate teachers for Physics, Chemistry and Biology that we had at senior school. And that's just fine. You don't need a degree in Physics to teach Physics to 11-year-olds. Chemists and Biologists can usually do a good job, too. Maths teachers just taught Maths, and English teachers just taught English, but the other teachers mostly taught a couple of different subjects. This wasn't a particularly large school - we had 40 or 50 children in each year group - but it seemed to manage to allocate each teacher a full timetable without asking anyone to teach a subject he or she wasn't comfortable with.
Posts: 5026 | From: USA | Registered: Feb 2013
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North East Quine
Curious beastie
# 13049
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
And another thing: unlike Kent, the grammars in Gloucestershire are not evenly spread across the county. Hence it is a perfectly respectable decision to send your child to a local comp rather than sending them on a long-and-difficult journey to a grammar. Hence some comprehensives in Gloucestershire are very good.
I.e. comprehensives are not intrinsically poor, but are made poor in areas where a selective school creams off the most academically able pupils?
Posts: 6414 | From: North East Scotland | Registered: Oct 2007
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Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
Again, I'm sorry, you don't know what you are talking about.
I admit, I'm not an expert in statistics. But, I use statistical methods enough that I'd be unable to do my job if I didn't know what I'm talking about. Now, what did I get wrong when I said that if you truncate a distribution you change the distribution of the remaining sample?
quote:
And I bored of talking to someone who looks at statistics and think that tells you the whole story of an educational system despite the plain evidence of places that have mixed selective and non-selective schools.
I suggest you actually read what I said, and show me where I mentioned anything that could be described as telling "the whole story of an educational system". I was addressing one small point, namely the false statement that where there are selective schools the other schools are not selective - the simple point that by allowing selection by some you automatically force selection on all, even those who do not wish it. On that point, and on that point only, I was using the statistical argument.
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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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Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
I'm sorry if I've not been clear enough: the school system in Kent is crap. Sending my child to a grammar was the best of a very bad system.
So, the Kent school system is crap. Are you actually wanting that situation to continue, or to work to improve the school system in Kent, and elsewhere?
Obviously all good parents want the best for their children. But, all good citizens want the best for all children. The question is, what helps improve the education of all children - investing in all schools, or just concentrating on a small number of elite schools? I would have thought the answer to that is obvious.
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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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mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by North East Quine:
I.e. comprehensives are not intrinsically poor, but are made poor in areas where a selective school creams off the most academically able pupils?
I think areas where there are so many grammars that they take all of the most able students, from an artificial cut-off measure grade at 11, have a disproportionately negative effect on all of the other schools. In a place like Kent where there are large areas without opportunities for children without 5 A-C grade GCSEs, this means that something approaching 60% of children are failed by the system.
Where grammars have little effect on other schools, in my opinion, is where there is a mixed system and where there has to be a positive choice by parents to apply - so that there remain comprehensive schools which are good.
To me this shows that when there are a fairly low percentage of "cream" taken to grammars, there is little direct impact on specific comprehensive schools - just as, I suspect, when there are few private schools this also has little impact on the others. In contrast when all the cream is taken relatively arbitrarily, those who could have done better in more challenging classes slip behind. In my view Kent would have better overall grades if the grammar intake was 50 or 60% than the current intake. I think it would probably be better overall if there were less grammars.
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arse
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mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
So, the Kent school system is crap. Are you actually wanting that situation to continue, or to work to improve the school system in Kent, and elsewhere?
I'll take advice from you when, and only when, you show everyone what you are doing to change the inequalities in some Scottish cities where a disproportionate number of students are privately educated.
As it happens, I am doing things, but I don't actually need to justify myself to someone on a bulletin board who has already proved himself to be talking shite.
quote:
Obviously all good parents want the best for their children. But, all good citizens want the best for all children. The question is, what helps improve the education of all children - investing in all schools, or just concentrating on a small number of elite schools? I would have thought the answer to that is obvious.
OK, let's wait and see the choices you make when your children need to go to school. Then you can legitimately contribute to this conversation based on the choices you've actually made rather than choices that are just theory.
[ 17. September 2016, 16:20: Message edited by: mr cheesy ]
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arse
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ThunderBunk
Stone cold idiot
# 15579
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Posted
I don't have any children. I still have to work and live alongside the products of the education system. I also, as a human being and (dare I say it) a Christian, am interested in the furtherance of human flourishing. For these reasons, I will continue to make comments, with or without mr cheesy's permission.
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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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mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ThunderBunk:
I don't have any children. I still have to work and live alongside the products of the education system. I also, as a human being and (dare I say it) a Christian, am interested in the furtherance of human flourishing. For these reasons, I will continue to make comments, with or without mr cheesy's permission.
That's fair, but I think someone who is a parent makes the best choices for their child in the circumstance that they're in and not for the generality of children in society. I think you have to be parent in that situation to understand how you would deal with it.
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arse
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ThunderBunk
Stone cold idiot
# 15579
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
quote:
Originally posted by ThunderBunk:
I don't have any children. I still have to work and live alongside the products of the education system. I also, as a human being and (dare I say it) a Christian, am interested in the furtherance of human flourishing. For these reasons, I will continue to make comments, with or without mr cheesy's permission.
That's fair, but I think someone who is a parent makes the best choices for their child in the circumstance that they're in and not for the generality of children in society. I think you have to be parent in that situation to understand how you would deal with it.
But decisions about education policy, about the way that schools should be set up, the ethos on which they should run, have to be made in a way which takes into account the general as well as the particular. Spectacularly poor policy results from the idea that it can only be made by people who made particular decisions in particular circumstances. I appreciate absolutely the need to work with what you were given at the time in respect of your own children, but I really don't believe that this puts you in any better a position to shape the general case, other than the extent to which you have experienced the process of making a choice. At very least, it would be catastrophic to assume that your choice is universally right, which observation (including of my own reactions on other questions when I catch them in time) suggests is the general instinct.
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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 mr cheesy:
OK, let's wait and see the choices you make when your children need to go to school. Then you can legitimately contribute to this conversation based on the choices you've actually made rather than choices that are just theory.
Well, my children are at school. They're both in the state sector, admittedly currently at primary level. In a few years they'll move up to the local high school, with all their friends.
I believe that a good comprehensive school trumps a good selective school any day. Of course, unless they move out of Scotland, my children won't be able to attend a selective school. But, even if that was an option I would still prefer a good comprehensive school for them.
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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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Leorning Cniht
Shipmate
# 17564
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Posted
It's worth mentioning here that I don't think results tell anything like the whole story. School is not some black box I shove my children through in order to have a set of good grades drop out of the other end.
It matters to me that my children are able to fulfill their potential through education, and are not arbitrarily constrained, but it also matters to me that they enjoy their education. The process is an important as the results.
So if you offered me a choice between two schools - each likely to allow my children to achieve broadly similar grades at the end, and each likely to offer a range of experiences (perhaps different experiences in one school vs the other), then I'd choose the one I think my children are most likely to enjoy. Every time, without the slightest doubt.
This is why, even if I had the means, and it offered the best education, I wouldn't send them to boarding school. My specific children wouldn't enjoy it. (Actually, it's quite possible that #2 would enjoy it in a couple of years, but not now.) In an alternative universe where I had lots of money and lived in the UK, I could imagine sending them to a public school as day pupils.
[ 17. September 2016, 19:24: Message edited by: Leorning Cniht ]
Posts: 5026 | From: USA | Registered: Feb 2013
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shamwari
Shipmate
# 15556
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Posted
I think the whole State system is c**p these days.
I went to one many years ago. School began at 8am and finished at 1pm. We has afternoon "prep" for an hour (homework) then we had sports (taken by one of the Teachers). Then another hours prep in the evening.
On Sat we had rugby / cricket / whatever and always with a Teacher in charge. No question of having to join outside clubs in order to pursue sports. School teams provoked pride and a focus for school unity and pride.
It was a balanced educational system. It worked. And it was a State system.
How different from today!!
Posts: 1914 | From: from the abyss of misunderstanding | Registered: Mar 2010
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by shamwari:
I think the whole State system is c**p these days.
Based on what? We are hearing from lots of people about various good aspects of the current State system. A general feeling that things were better in the old days and all has gone to pot since then is good fun in the pub but dismissing it all as crap is an inaccurate generalization.
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
Posts: 12277 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2004
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Russ
Old salt
# 120
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
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Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
However you cut it, it's still "we're taking the clever ones away to teach them better. You thickos wouldn't benefit so bye-bye".
Bluntly, yes.
Not that that prevents the remaining schools from doing all they can to push their students, of course.
Except that "you're thick and shit at this school stuff, but try anyway" is really a rather hard sell.
Tell me again why you can't push the most able in a top set in a Comp the way you can at a Grammar school, because since no-one's actually explained that, I believe it can.
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Wish everyone well; the enemy is not people, the enemy is wrong ideas
Posts: 3169 | From: rural Ireland | Registered: May 2001
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Eliab
Shipmate
# 9153
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ThunderBunk:
Selectivity is said to be desirable because it improves the education of a certain proportion of pupils. I simply don't believe that this is the real motivation; there is no more thought about the actual process of education...
Are you reading the same thread as I am?
There are at least three perspectives that have been argued for in favour of selection: the pragmatic view that grammar schools are a valuable alternative where other provision is poor; the view that educating the most able in separate schools fosters academic excellence at the top range of abilities; and the view that selective education positively benefits some children, but not necessarily all children in a given range.
You can disagree with any or all of that, sure, but those are all views about "the actual process of education", and none of them have yet been shown to be untenable.
quote:
Selection is desirable because it then fuels the inevitable competitive merry-go-round of house purchasing, coaching, tiger parenting etc. etc. etc.. All I hear is salivation at the thought of league tables, house prices and other complete distractions.
Links to the posts on this thread where you hear this?
Of course not. It's fantasy.
quote:
There is one definite charge, though: schools are being talked about as if they operate by some kind of magic, performing a standard process on every unit input into them.
By whom?
My argument makes a positive point of emphasising that children are not standard units, that what works for one person doesn't necessarily work for another, and the individual choices by those who have responsibility for a particular child best are important.
And while there are certainly many people disagreeing with the conclusions that I draw from that, I'm not going to accuse anyone on the other side of not seeing children as individuals. Many of us (with all sorts of views on the main question of selective education) are illustrating our arguments from the personal experience of ourselves and our children - but none of us, as far as I can see, is seeking to apply our own experiences as a "standard process".
[ 18. September 2016, 08:28: Message edited by: Eliab ]
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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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Curiosity killed ...
Ship's Mug
# 11770
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Posted
I did answer this above. The best comprehensives do push the most able - and turn out students with 14 A*-C grade GCSEs. And there are lots of the best comprehensives in inner city London and the old Excellence in City cluster areas.
The problem is everything has changed in the last couple of years with the Gove changes coming through, so things will be different this coming June compared to the last few years.
Good comprehensive schools will also be working to provide vocational and technical alternatives. The pattern at KS4 has been:
- one smaller highly academic stream sitting up to 14 GCSEs;
- another larger academic stream that offers 10 GCSEs with some vocational offers;
- a vocational stream that offers City and Guilds or BTEC qualifications alongside GCSEs so the students can gain industrial engineering or art and design qualifications with the core subjects (maths, English, science, ICT, citizenship, PE, humanities and RE);
- a supported stream for students with learning difficulties working towards fewer GCSEs and some vocational qualifications plus life skills
- an alternative education group who study core subjects alongside work experience and vocational qualifications. These students' timetables may include a day studying motor mechanics or construction, a day or two of work experience in a garage or a building site (insurance is a problem for under 16s), two or three days in school studying maths, English, ICT and citizenship plus PE, RE, humanities and science, not all of which will be sat as qualifications, but accredited in other ways.
The current* citizenship requirements are:
- personal finances,
- sex and relationships,
- drugs education,
- healthy lifestyles,
- making informed career choices and applying for jobs and courses.
* it was last year when I was last putting qualifications together, I don't think it has changed since, but that's one of the things I am currently procrastinating over.
eta - cross post with Eliab, this was addressed to Russ
[ 18. September 2016, 08:36: Message edited by: Curiosity killed ... ]
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Mugs - Keep the Ship afloat
Posts: 13794 | From: outiside the outer ring road | Registered: Aug 2006
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North East Quine
Curious beastie
# 13049
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Posted
I think the state system has worked well for our two. We are rural, so it is a genuine comprehensive, not a city comprehensive in a middle class enclave, or a struggling comp in a sink estate.
I have two children, both bright kids. One would have passed an 11+. She got straight As at the comp and is now at a well-respected Uni. The other wouldn't have passed an 11+, but the comp let him pursue his passion (creative writing) whilst scraping together a mediocre set of exam results. He went to a Uni which has low entrance requirements and it has all worked out.
A selective system would have sent them to different schools. It would not have benefited the more academic child, and would have harmed the less academic child. It might have harmed their sibling relationship. Juggling two schools would certainly have strained family life.
Posts: 6414 | From: North East Scotland | Registered: Oct 2007
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Eliab
Shipmate
# 9153
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
If there's a large selective school in the area (whether fee-paying or state grammar) that takes a large portion of pupils then the "comprehensive" will no longer be representative of the local population - by default the distribution of pupils will be biased by the absence of those who satisfied the selection criteria of the selective school. Having one or more school being selective forces all local schools into a form of selection by default.
So if I would prefer a selective school for my children, and you would prefer a comprehensive for yours, what then? Are you saying that non-selective education only works if (almost) everyone participates, and that in actual fact a sufficiently large number of families with children in a particular ability range would not choose to participate if given the choice?
That is, I think, a very powerful argument in my favour. A system that only works by compelling large numbers of families to accept a system that they would not choose for themselves is (almost by definition) a bad system. If you can't make a sufficiently good case on the merits to keep the most able pupils in comprehensive schools, then the argument for compulsory comprehensive education fails.
If that is your case, who should be free to choose a selective education if they want to (as many do)?
Only those who can afford to go private?
Only those who live a small number of English counties?
No one?
None of those seem to me to be satisfactory answers.
[ 18. September 2016, 08:41: Message edited by: Eliab ]
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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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Russ
Old salt
# 120
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
Except that "you're thick and shit at this school stuff, but try anyway" is really a rather hard sell.
Tell me again why you can't push the most able in a top set in a Comp the way you can at a Grammar school, because since no-one's actually explained that, I believe it can.
Seems to me it's about culture & ethos.
Grammar schools have a culture that prizes intellectual achievement above all else.
I recently read something where an award-winning teacher described his job as being a "nerd farmer".
A culture where it's not only OK to be a nerd - it's positively encouraged.
Separate schools support separate cultures in a way that streaming doesn't. Even if you push streaming all the way to a "school within a school".
The question that needs to be addressed is what culture is appropriate for the vocational/technical school. You're right that such a school is a hard sell if filled with pupils who've been told that it's a dustbin school and staff who'd much rather be teaching a grammar school class.
It needs a positive vision. (And staff whose idea of job satisfaction is helping the dimmest pupils). And just as with the other end of the ability spectrum, that vision and culture can best be developed with a degree of separation from the mainstream.
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Wish everyone well; the enemy is not people, the enemy is wrong ideas
Posts: 3169 | From: rural Ireland | Registered: May 2001
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Arethosemyfeet
Shipmate
# 17047
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Posted
I'm pretty sure I run a nerd farm in my classroom, judging from the proportion of my students who have gone on to university to study science or engineering. I'm pretty sure also that the fully comprehensive school I attended had a culture that valued academic achievement, as did the FE college I went to for my A-Levels. You don't need selection to value achievement.
Posts: 2933 | From: Hebrides | Registered: Apr 2012
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Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eliab:
If you can't make a sufficiently good case on the merits to keep the most able pupils in comprehensive schools, then the argument for compulsory comprehensive education fails.
For the moment, let's put aside situations where the local comprehensives are demonstrably poorer than grammar schools, or vice versa. Since ultimately that is a question of resourcing to bring the comprehensives upto scratch. And, also the reverse situation where the comps are better than the grammar schools.
So, assuming the quality of schooling at both grammar and comprehensives is so close that there's no obvious "get a better education" (as judged by exam results) reason to choose one over the other. Is there a good reason to prefer comprehensive over selective education? Naturally, I believe there are reasons why comprehensive is best, including:
- Maintaining, as far as possible given the local area, classes where class is not a factor (sorry, couldn't resist the pun). It is good for children from different backgrounds to mix, to become friends, to know how others live. This is especially true for those from the more wealthy end of the spectrum. Ultimately this should lead to a reduction in some of the nonsense in British society about the poor being lazy scroungers etc. It also means the poorer kids can see that richer kids are people just like them, and that they can aspire to more.
- Being able to put each individual child into classes suitable to their ability for that subject. Classes which will push all pupils to achieve their best, and with options to move between sets as needed. A selective school would usually be smaller, so those who were generally good enough to get in but still struggle (or, even excel) in a given subject would be less likely to be part of a group of pupils that could form a functional lower (or upper) set.
- Non-selective schooling will almost always ensure siblings go to the same school, which makes family life better. Also, most children from primary school will go to the same secondary school, so friends would stay together. That continuity of family and friend relationships will make transitions between schools easier, and with most kids from one area going to the same school then school transport becomes easier as well.
Which will do for a start.
Now, what is the corresponding list in favour of selective education (keeping to the same scenario where there's no difference in exam grades)?
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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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North East Quine
Curious beastie
# 13049
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Posted
originally posted by Eliab;
quote:
A system that only works by compelling large numbers of families to accept a system that they would not choose for themselves is (almost by definition) a bad system.
We have a friend in Kent who was educated in a Scottish comp. He would like a similar education for his children, but feels compelled to pay for tutoring for his children to get them through the 11+ because the options for those failing the 11+ in his area are dire. His children are having a more stressful childhood than ours because of this pressure. But he feels compelled to accept the system, even though it is not one he would choose for himself.
By your argument, that makes the selective system a bad system.
Posts: 6414 | From: North East Scotland | Registered: Oct 2007
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Moo
Ship's tough old bird
# 107
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell
It is good for children from different backgrounds to mix, to become friends, to know how others live.
It is very good, but the fact that the children are in the same school does not necessarily mean that they socialize with those who are different. The size of the school makes it possible for them to spend all their time interacting with those who are like them.
I feel very fortunate that for the first six years of my schooling, I attended a two-room school with three grades in each room. There weren't enough of us to form cliques. If you wanted to play a game that required a certain number of kids, you welcomed everyone who was willing to play, regardless of whether you liked them.
Putting kids from different backgrounds or with different interests and abilities together does not guarantee that they will interact. If the school has programs to encourage interaction, it will take place. However, it does require effort.
Moo
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See you later, alligator.
Posts: 20365 | From: Alleghany Mountains of Virginia | Registered: May 2001
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Curiosity killed ...
Ship's Mug
# 11770
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Posted
All of the comprehensive schools I was discussing above have mixed ability tutor groups for registration and other activities.
One of the comprehensive schools has mixed age and mixed ability groups and peer mentoring embedded, so students a couple of years above are expected to support students younger than them. (I'm not sure if they are still doing it, but we piloted year 8 students mentoring students still in primary school before they moved into secondary school for more vulnerable pupils.)
One of the other schools has a peer mentoring system where students are mentored from before they started in secondary school - it's something I piloted a few years ago.
These schools make sure students do not just spend their time in similar cliques.
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Mugs - Keep the Ship afloat
Posts: 13794 | From: outiside the outer ring road | Registered: Aug 2006
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Eliab
Shipmate
# 9153
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by North East Quine:
We have a friend in Kent who was educated in a Scottish comp. He would like a similar education for his children, but feels compelled to pay for tutoring for his children to get them through the 11+ because the options for those failing the 11+ in his area are dire. His children are having a more stressful childhood than ours because of this pressure. But he feels compelled to accept the system, even though it is not one he would choose for himself.
By your argument, that makes the selective system a bad system.
Yes, it does. That's quite right. That's why I'd like a variety of different schools, all well-funded, all dedicated to the success of every one of their pupils, and with their difference in approach, focus and ethos clearly advertised so that parents (the people who know their children best) can make an informed choice about which school to send them to.
That's obviously more workable in areas of high population density, as there will be enough schools in a small enough area to give a viable choice. If there's only one school in a given area, then of necessity it's a comprehensive.
However in areas where there are plenty of schools, why not have a variety? There are demonstrably parents who would choose selective education if they could. There are demonstrably parents who would choose comprehensive education. Neither choice is irrational or immoral. Where we can enable both, why not do that?
Certainly in most (probably all) of Kent it's going to be practical to have selective and non-selective options, and to give both options proper resources. Therefore we should.
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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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Eliab
Shipmate
# 9153
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
Now, what is the corresponding list in favour of selective education (keeping to the same scenario where there's no difference in exam grades)?
Since my reason for choosing selective schools is precisely because I think my children will get better results, that's not an easy question to answer. All my reasons - the school focussing efforts at the level appropriate to the vast majority of pupils, the sense of achievement and investment of earning a place, the ease of setting appropriately high but achievable aspirations, are valuable mostly because I would expect them to improve results (not just in terms of exam grades, but including that).
The "in principle" reason for supporting state selective schools, which would apply even of they clearly weren't better educationally is parental choice. Many parents want them. That choice ought to be - and is - available to those who can afford to pay for it. I think it should also be available - but currently isn't - to parents who would choose it but can't afford private schooling.
I appreciate that on the hypothesis that these parents are, essentially, choosing a placebo, their freedom to do so is not going to be so obviously valuable as if we assume (as I do) that there is something at stake, because one choice may be better or worse for a particular child (even if they are on average equivalent), but even so, I think it is generally better to allow for parental choices than not.
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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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Arethosemyfeet
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# 17047
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Posted
Choice in this area is not possible. If you have selective schools then, by definition, you cannot have comprehensive schools. The two are mutually incompatible.
Posts: 2933 | From: Hebrides | Registered: Apr 2012
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Jemima the 9th
Shipmate
# 15106
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by North East Quine:
originally posted by Eliab;
quote:
A system that only works by compelling large numbers of families to accept a system that they would not choose for themselves is (almost by definition) a bad system.
We have a friend in Kent who was educated in a Scottish comp. He would like a similar education for his children, but feels compelled to pay for tutoring for his children to get them through the 11+ because the options for those failing the 11+ in his area are dire. His children are having a more stressful childhood than ours because of this pressure. But he feels compelled to accept the system, even though it is not one he would choose for himself.
By your argument, that makes the selective system a bad system.
I have friends in Kent who are going through much the same thing - the tutoring begins in year 4, and ramps up in 5, before the exam is taken at the start of year 6.
Just over the river in Essex, we only have 2 grammar schools in our town (one for boys and one for girls). Our kids' juniors gets perhaps one or two into the school each year. This makes much less difference to the kids who are the more intellectually able in the comps - there are enough of them to still do well.
Anecdotally, also, a friend's mum retired a few years ago from the girls' grammar. She felt that the academic standard had dropped fairly significantly in recent years - the girls they had now were those who had been tutored to pass the test, not necessarily those who were innately more able.
Posts: 801 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2009
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Dafyd
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# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eliab:
A system that only works by compelling large numbers of families to accept a system that they would not choose for themselves is (almost by definition) a bad system. If you can't make a sufficiently good case on the merits to keep the most able pupils in comprehensive schools, then the argument for compulsory comprehensive education fails.
Selection intrinsically requires some people to accept a system that they would not choose for themselves, namely the people who are rejected. So that's not really a good argument in favour of a selective system.
I think also, just because you can't make a case for people to refrain from a choice when the choice is available doesn't mean you should make the choice available. If you have a tax loophole available whereby people who send their children to private school or use private medicine get to take the amount off their tax bills I doubt you'll get many people who can take advantage choosing not to. That doesn't mean that there aren't good reasons for not making the loophole available.
Likewise, I can quite consistently not send any more tax to HMRC than I am required to, while still believing that HMRC ought to tax people on my income bracket more.
It seems reasonable to think the government ought not to pay for selective services except on the basis of allocating scarce resources to the most needy. If a public service is available everyone ought to be able to benefit from it. If that means that selective services are only available to those who have the money to pay for them, that's unfortunate for those who want 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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leo
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# 1458
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
Need to be very big middle schools - my experiencfe in Leeds was of 'faculties' - so a mishmash of History, Geography and RE subsumed under 'Humanities- ditto for the sciences - bad for all subject specislisms.
I don't agree at all, because I have a different experience (of what sounds like a similar setup). My middle-school age experience is with a teacher for "Science" rather than the separate teachers for Physics, Chemistry and Biology that we had at senior school. And that's just fine. You don't need a degree in Physics to teach Physics to 11-year-olds. Chemists and Biologists can usually do a good job, too. Maths teachers just taught Maths, and English teachers just taught English, but the other teachers mostly taught a couple of different subjects.
RE suffers from too many non-specialists already without further dilution.
Also, middle-schools miss out on teachers who also get the stimulus of teaching A'level.
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My Jewish-positive lectionary blog is at http://recognisingjewishrootsinthelectionary.wordpress.com/
My reviews at http://layreadersbookreviews.wordpress.com
Posts: 23198 | From: Bristol | Registered: Oct 2001
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Curiosity killed ...
Ship's Mug
# 11770
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Posted
So do most secondary schools, leo. Lots of 11-16 secondary schools. Not that many 6th forms in schools in some parts of the country.
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Mugs - Keep the Ship afloat
Posts: 13794 | From: outiside the outer ring road | Registered: Aug 2006
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Eliab
Shipmate
# 9153
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
Choice in this area is not possible. If you have selective schools then, by definition, you cannot have comprehensive schools. The two are mutually incompatible.
Only if you concede that, given a free choice, most parents who could choose a selective school would do so. If there are good reasons for parents to choose a comprehensive at any level of child's academic ability, then selective and non-selective schools can co-exist.
They do, of course, already co-exist where access to selective education is limited to those who can pay. The question is whether such access should be thus limited.
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
It seems reasonable to think the government ought not to pay for selective services except on the basis of allocating scarce resources to the most needy.
I think our fundamental disagreement is that this does not seem reasonable to me.
You could, I think, have a society which sees education as something that, primarily, parents should pay for from their own resources, but nevertheless allows for state provision in cases of need. That is, after all, how we see food and shelter - most people pay for that themselves, but we think its the state's job to provide a safety net.
However I don't think that is in fact how we do see education in the UK (or generally in the West, at least at primary and secondary levels). We have handed over the job of providing 90%+ of formal education of minors from families to the state. That's not a safety net. That's a transfer of responsibility.
Given that the state is now responsible for education, it seems to me to be unreasonable to say that it must provide a one-size-fits-all scheme for all but the most needy. It has inherited the responsibility that would naturally (absent a sufficiently resourced and organised society) fall onto parents to provide the best it can for the children in its care (that is, almost all of them). That means that it is properly within the moral competence of the state to make the same sort of decision for a child's education as a responsible parent would make had they the means to make it. Since very many responsible parents clearly would choose selective education as their preferred approach, it follows that the state is morally competent to make selective education available.
While I concede that "the most needy" have, by reason for their need, a special claim on state provision, I certainly do not think that this is the only basis on which the state can properly allocate resources. I think the state's responsibility for education goes deeper than that.
Of course, resources are not unlimited, and we probably can't give every child the education their parents would choose if they were wise and responsible millionaires. But a practical restriction on what we can actually do is not the same as a moral restriction on what we could rightly do. I can't see any reason why a society would be unjustified in making selective education available as an option.
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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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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
Now, what is the corresponding list in favour of selective education (keeping to the same scenario where there's no difference in exam grades)?
That's ridiculous, because the difference in exam grades is the principal benefit of grammar schools. However, there are also some other benefits:
- As I've said before, grammar schools can guarantee that they will focus on academic excellence rather than just getting as many C+ grades as possible.
- Grammar schools don't have as many disruptive students.
- Especially round here, grammar schools have far better facilities for sport, music, drama, etc. And no, extra funding for the comps wouldn't change that because if a school doesn't have a sports field then it simply doesn't have one - you can't just buy up all the houses nearby, level them and put in a cricket, rugby, football or hockey pitch. The nearest comp to me didn't even have sports teams.
- Grammars often have more variety of subjects available, because by concentrating the top whatever percent of pupils in one place it becomes possible to offer classes such as Latin, Classics, Geology, etc. that are usually only of interest to the smart kids. If those kids are split around all the comps there won't be enough of them in ant one place to make such classes viable.
But again, academic excellence is reasons 1, 2, 3 and 4 why I think grammars are better. To arbitrarily exclude that as a reason to support them is to make a tacit admission that they are indeed better in that way.
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eliab:
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
Now, what is the corresponding list in favour of selective education (keeping to the same scenario where there's no difference in exam grades)?
Since my reason for choosing selective schools is precisely because I think my children will get better results, that's not an easy question to answer. All my reasons - the school focussing efforts at the level appropriate to the vast majority of pupils, the sense of achievement and investment of earning a place, the ease of setting appropriately high but achievable aspirations, are valuable mostly because I would expect them to improve results (not just in terms of exam grades, but including that).
You've given three reasons for choosing a selective school. Two of them are not exclusive to selective schools: all schools can, and IMO should, focus efforts at the level appropriate for the pupils, and set appropriately high but achievable aspirations.
The second of your reasons, "the sense of achievement and investment of earning a place", is quite possibly the most compelling case for selective education. Though, it has a flip side - those who do not achieve the grade gaining a sense of failure.
I do think that it's important that children (well, everyone really) can have that sense of achievement from doing something well. One of the tasks of education is to find what a particular child can do well, and help them achieve that.
I also think that it's important for children to have a sense of belonging to a school, an investment not only in their own future but the future of all. How that is achieved is a difficult question, but I don't think that selective schooling is necessarily the only, or best, way.
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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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North East Quine
Curious beastie
# 13049
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Posted
Originally posted by Eliab:
quote:
We have handed over the job of providing 90%+ of formal education of minors from families to the state. That's not a safety net. That's a transfer of responsibility.
In Scotland, the state imposed an obligation on parents to educate children for the benefit of the state. Children were seen as a resource. Here is what Knox had to say in 1560 : The rich and potent may not be permitted to suffer their children to spend their youth in vain idleness, as heretofore they have done. But they must be exhorted, and by the censure of the church compelled, to dedicate their sons, by good exercise, to the profit of the church and to the commonwealth; and that they must do of their own expenses, because they are able. The children of the poor must be supported and sustained on the charge of the church, till trial is taken whether the spirit of docility is found in them or not. If they are found apt to letters and learning, then may they (we mean neither the sons of the rich, nor yet the sons of the poor) not be permitted to reject learning; but must be charged to continue their study, so that the commonwealth may have some comfort by them.
Children are educated in order to be "effective contributors." Society benefits from an educated population.
Posts: 6414 | From: North East Scotland | Registered: Oct 2007
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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:
Now, what is the corresponding list in favour of selective education (keeping to the same scenario where there's no difference in exam grades)?
That's ridiculous, because the difference in exam grades is the principal benefit of grammar schools.
Well, obviously, if you select those pupils most likely to get better exam grades then by definition that school is going get a higher proportion of better exam grades. Which, of course, doesn't mean those children wouldn't have got as good grades at a comprehensive school. Not that school should be a grades factory where the only thing that matters, or even the most important thing, is the grades.
quote:
As I've said before, grammar schools can guarantee that they will focus on academic excellence rather than just getting as many C+ grades as possible.
"Guarantee"? Is anything in life guaranteed? And, academic excellence is but one part of education (see above), so are you admitting that grammar schools are unbalanced in equipping children to be rounded adults in our society? Yeah, academically bright is good, but even those of us from a comprehensive school were infected with the "push them to get the best grades" ethos and may have the grades but in many areas of life are totally unequipped.
"Getting as many C+ grades as possible" is just plain stupid.
quote:
Grammar schools don't have as many disruptive students.
Is that just because they can simply expel anyone who doesn't fit the pattern of academic excellence, knowing that someone else will pick up the pieces? Or is there some form of magic that means children who pass the 11+ have a different temperament to other children? The smart kids aren't bullies?
quote:
Especially round here, grammar schools have far better facilities for sport, music, drama, etc. And no, extra funding for the comps wouldn't change that because if a school doesn't have a sports field then it simply doesn't have one
But, the only reason grammar schools have better equipment is because they have been better funded. Why did some comprehensive schools have to sell off their sports fields? Was it, perhaps, because they didn't have enough money to keep on teaching what the government deemed to be the essentials? And, the grammars didn't have to sell their sports fields because they had extra money.
I admit, a school without sports facilities is deficient. And, rectifying that may be very difficult but not impossible - use of other facilities (council sports grounds, for example) or even rebuilding the school on a different site. But, the question being asked isn't "are grammars schools better than inadequately equipped comprehensives?", the answer to that is obvious. But, "if we equipped all comprehensives properly, would 'grammar school pupils' do just as well there?". Which is why I wanted to level the playing field and compare good grammars with good comprehensives.
quote:
Grammars often have more variety of subjects available, because by concentrating the top whatever percent of pupils in one place it becomes possible to offer classes such as Latin, Classics, Geology, etc. that are usually only of interest to the smart kids. If those kids are split around all the comps there won't be enough of them in ant one place to make such classes viable.
But, again that's only a matter of provision of adequate resources. If you're worried about numbers, then resource schools for smaller numbers - and, it's not unheard of for neighbouring schools to pool pupils, I know that a small number of pupils from my school went down the road to a school nearby for Spanish O levels since the other school had a Spanish teacher (we only managed French and German), and another group had an afternoon a week at a local FE college to get access to some specialist equipment for their CSE technical courses (IIRC it was CAD-CAM software).
quote:
But again, academic excellence is reasons 1, 2, 3 and 4 why I think grammars are better. To arbitrarily exclude that as a reason to support them is to make a tacit admission that they are indeed better in that way.
Whereas, I didn't arbitrarily exclude academic excellence. I was just recognising that pupils in good comprehensives are capable of getting academic qualifications comparable to those in grammar schools. And, if you're going to do a decent comparison then it needs to be between good grammars and good comprehensives.
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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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Sioni Sais
Shipmate
# 5713
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Posted
Does anyone really think secondary modern schools are better than comprehensives? That is the other side of selective education and something like four or five times as many will attend these as will be able to attend a grammar school.
I've yet to see any arguments in favour of secondary moderns, but I'd like some advocates of grammars to provide some by way of evenhandedness.
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"He isn't Doctor Who, he's The Doctor"
(Paul Sinha, BBC)
Posts: 24276 | From: Newport, Wales | Registered: Apr 2004
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eliab:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
It seems reasonable to think the government ought not to pay for selective services except on the basis of allocating scarce resources to the most needy.
Given that the state is now responsible for education, it seems to me to be unreasonable to say that it must provide a one-size-fits-all scheme for all but the most needy. It has inherited the responsibility that would naturally (absent a sufficiently resourced and organised society) fall onto parents to provide the best it can for the children in its care (that is, almost all of them). That means that it is properly within the moral competence of the state to make the same sort of decision for a child's education as a responsible parent would make had they the means to make it. Since very many responsible parents clearly would choose selective education as their preferred approach, it follows that the state is morally competent to make selective education available.
I assume that any morally responsible parent who would choose selective education as their preferred approach for their child would not then ensure that their child isn't selected.
If the state is to make selective education available to every parent who wants it, it is no longer offering selective education. It is only offering a selective education if it refuses selective education to some people who want it. (The refusal needn't be explicit and overt. If there are people who know or believe they needn't bother trying that's still an effective refusal.)
Any benefits of a selective education that require selection are dependent upon some people not getting it.
For example, the sense of achievement in making it into a selective school is dependent upon some people ending up with a sense of failure on not making it in. Since no morally responsible parent would choose for their child to have a sense of failure in order that their other child might succeed, the state ought not to offer selective education with that intention.
(I suppose that if the achievement were purely based on effort rather than on ability that wouldn't apply.)
The claim that the comprehensive approach is one-size-fits-all doesn't adequately describe what happens with selection.
Say you have two schools in an area: one specialises in sports and one specialises in music. Now it makes sense for the sports school to say of one child that they have two left feet but are rather good at singing and so should go to the music school. But if a child has no obvious talent for either sport or music then what is to be done with them? The fair answer is to allocate them randomly, or to let them choose.
That's not what's going on in the case of selective academic schools. Nobody gets accepted into an selective school because while they don't meet the selection criteria for the selective school they'd be an even worse fit at the comprehensive or the secondary modern. That's not offering the size of schooling that best fits the child. That's offering selective schooling to the people whom it fits, and comprehensive schooling to the people whom you don't care whether it fits.
quote:
While I concede that "the most needy" have, by reason for their need, a special claim on state provision, I certainly do not think that this is the only basis on which the state can properly allocate resources.
I don't either. I was offering as one rationale that would allow selection, but which I do not think applies. If a family is only able to pay to send one child to school it should choose the one best able to make use of that (and who will then be able to benefit the rest of the family). But if the family has enough money to send all the children to school, then it would be morally irresponsible of the family to select only some.
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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 Alan Cresswell:
Well, obviously, if you select those pupils most likely to get better exam grades then by definition that school is going get a higher proportion of better exam grades. Which, of course, doesn't mean those children wouldn't have got as good grades at a comprehensive school.
Mr cheesy posted some research on page 4 that found that the average estimated effect of attending a grammar school on pupils of all abilities was 5.5 additional GCSE/GNVQ points compared to going to a comprehensive school.
The idea that all grammar school kids would do just as well at a comp is false.
quote:
Not that school should be a grades factory where the only thing that matters, or even the most important thing, is the grades.
The only thing? No. But hell yes is it the most important thing. Your grades at GCSE and A Level will be used by universities and employers to decide if you're good enough to join them. That's important to everyone who thinks that getting a good job is important.
quote:
"Guarantee"? Is anything in life guaranteed? And, academic excellence is but one part of education (see above), so are you admitting that grammar schools are unbalanced in equipping children to be rounded adults in our society?
Depends what you mean by "rounded adults in our society". It's the sort of phrase that means different things depending on the beliefs and politics of the speaker, and as such I'm not convinced there should be one "official" definition that we can expect our schools to teach.
quote:
quote:
Grammar schools don't have as many disruptive students.
Is that just because they can simply expel anyone who doesn't fit the pattern of academic excellence, knowing that someone else will pick up the pieces?
That's part of it, sure.
quote:
But, the only reason grammar schools have better equipment is because they have been better funded. Why did some comprehensive schools have to sell off their sports fields? Was it, perhaps, because they didn't have enough money to keep on teaching what the government deemed to be the essentials? And, the grammars didn't have to sell their sports fields because they had extra money.
There are a lot of comprehensives that have never had sports fields. There's not much room for such luxuries in crowded cities.
quote:
But, the question being asked isn't "are grammars schools better than inadequately equipped comprehensives?", the answer to that is obvious. But, "if we equipped all comprehensives properly, would 'grammar school pupils' do just as well there?". Which is why I wanted to level the playing field and compare good grammars with good comprehensives.
The point is, not all schools are good. And they never will be. If you live in an area where all the comps are bad and you can't afford to move to one where they are good then you're screwed, unless there's a grammar across the border that will at least give you a chance to access decent education.
Remove the grammars, and you remove that one chance from a lot of people.
quote:
I was just recognising that pupils in good comprehensives are capable of getting academic qualifications comparable to those in grammar schools.
The research I linked to earlier suggests otherwise.
quote:
And, if you're going to do a decent comparison then it needs to be between good grammars and good comprehensives.
Good grammars = available to anyone who is smart enough, regardless of income.
Good comprehensives = available to anyone who can afford to move into their catchment area, regardless of intelligence.
There's no contest for me.
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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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:
Well, obviously, if you select those pupils most likely to get better exam grades then by definition that school is going get a higher proportion of better exam grades. Which, of course, doesn't mean those children wouldn't have got as good grades at a comprehensive school.
Mr cheesy posted some research on page 4 that found that the average estimated effect of attending a grammar school on pupils of all abilities was 5.5 additional GCSE/GNVQ points compared to going to a comprehensive school.
Yes, and did you read it or just what mr cheesy quoted? The comparison was between grammar schools and secondary moderns, not between gramma schools and comprehensives. And, the difference in performance was attributed to two factors. Just from the abstract (since it's available to all)
quote:
After taking account of the cost factors and grant entitlements that influence funding per pupil, secondary modern schools in the years 2000/01–2002/03 were funded around £80 less per pupil while grammar school pupils received over £100 more per pupil compared to comprehensive schools. Secondary modern schools were more likely to be in financial deficit than comprehensive and particularly grammar schools. Thus, students are academically disadvantaged by attending secondary modern schools, which in most selective LEAs do not receive sufficient additional funding to offset the depressing effects on attainment of the increased social segregation arising from a selective system
The deficit in performance is directly linked (see the "Thus" I emphasised in the above quote) to not secondary moderns not receiving "sufficient additional funding", and in particular that this was needed to "offset the depressing effects on attainment of the increased social segregation arising from a selective system".
That study states that:
a) selection results in social segregation, which depresses attainment in secondary moderns
b) LEAs preferentially support grammar schools, and secondary moderns are under funded.
So, again, if we're to do a fair comparison between selective and non-selective education we need to remove the factors such as funding differentials. A comparison between well-funded grammars and underfunded secondary moderns is not helpful in this discussion.
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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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Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
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Posted
Re-reading that I realise I wasn't quite as clear as I thought I was. The linked report compares grammars and secondary moderns to comprehensives, showing the effects of selective education compared to non-selective. But, it's comparing relatively well funded schools (selecting brighter pupils) and relatively under-funded schools (selecting less-bright pupils). The comparison isn't between equally well funded schools (selective or otherwise). Is that any clearer?
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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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Erroneous Monk
Shipmate
# 10858
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Posted
This is hugely difficult reading for me (and hugely difficult posting).
My boy is in Year 6 in an outstanding RC primary in a relatively deprived area of London. He is in the top decile in his class (of 28).
The nearest grammar school is a minimum 70 minutes travel time on public transport. So both because I don't think that being crammed on public transport is a great way to spend 2.5 hours of every day, and because I believe that even if he got the pass mark in 11+, he isn't guaranteed a place (the grammar is over-subscribed even after selection, and we'd probably be eliminated on distance), I'm not putting him in for 11+ and he hasn't been tutored for it.
We're within an easy journey from a good boys independent school and we can afford it. But I can't get myself comfortable with it. I was at an independent school myself - selective but not particularly academic - I imagine they took candidates that scored below the common entrance pass mark to fill the places. I was a high achiever. I was unhappy.
But most of all, I'm not sure how I would tell my son that he is going to a school that his primary class mates couldn't even consider because their parents don't earn as much money as me.
My in-laws live in west London, and my son's cousin is at *That Catholic State School*. My in-laws think we should be putting the two best west London Catholic comps down as 1 and 2 choice. But again, the journey would be dreadful.
More than that, I have formed a view - possibly unfairly - that the preference among certain families for the west London Catholic state schools is a form of snobbery. Those schools are posher and they are whiter. but I genuinely believe that it you took the intake from The London Oratory, and fed it into Cardinal Pole or Bishop Challoner, you'd get the same results. A school is not magic.
So why is it all so difficult? Why don't I just fill in the form now, put the three nearest Catholic comps down, and fill the remaining space with the two nearest academies and the nearest door-to-door school?
Because I'm worried that if he isn't happy, and if he doesn't go on to fulfil his potential (not just academically, but his potential to be a loving, kind, emotionally intelligent boy), that I'll tell myself it's my fault for (a) not choosing the grammar or (b) not going private.
And while I have 5As at A level and a Cambridge degree, I get told what to do every day by people who are thicker and less well qualified than me. So.... does it matter?
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And I shot a man in Tesco, just to watch him die.
Posts: 2950 | From: I cannot tell you, for you are not a friar | Registered: Jan 2006
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mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
Re-reading that I realise I wasn't quite as clear as I thought I was. The linked report compares grammars and secondary moderns to comprehensives, showing the effects of selective education compared to non-selective. But, it's comparing relatively well funded schools (selecting brighter pupils) and relatively under-funded schools (selecting less-bright pupils). The comparison isn't between equally well funded schools (selective or otherwise). Is that any clearer?
No, because it is still bollocks.
I've provided the numbers of funding of children at different schools in Kent. There is no relationship between whether the school is "relatively well funded" and its relationship as a grammar or non-grammar.
And not only that, nobody has provided any evidence whatsoever to show that there is a general picture showing grammar schools being better funded than non-grammars anywhere in the country. In fact, it is highly unlikely to be true given that the Labour and successive governments have been throwing money at the "worst schools" via the original Academy schools programme, which the grammars were not allowed to join. When most of them joined as Gove academies, there was nothing like the same level of support because the vast majority were not considered to be failing and in need of special measures, superheads etc.
Instead of plucking myths out of the air, try searching and finding some real facts.
The issue of playing fields is a different one. many of the grammars were originally set up by foundations several hundred years ago, and hence it was not so easy for the LEAs (pre Academy days to force them to sell off playing fields. So it may indeed be true to say that the grammars retained fields and sports facilities when others did not.
But even this is not the whole story, given some schools (presumably not grammars) were allowed to specialise as Sports schools and were given extra funding for sports facilities. Indeed, many of the grammars are in very old buildings with poor sports facilities, albeit with sports fields.
The picture is patchy and any suggestion that grammars are somehow always better funded and with better facilities is a myth. Particularly when it is repeatedly paraded here without any actual evidence to show that it is the case.
[ 19. September 2016, 12:37: Message edited by: mr cheesy ]
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arse
Posts: 10697 | Registered: Sep 2002
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mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Erroneous Monk:
We're within an easy journey from a good boys independent school and we can afford it. But I can't get myself comfortable with it. I was at an independent school myself - selective but not particularly academic - I imagine they took candidates that scored below the common entrance pass mark to fill the places. I was a high achiever. I was unhappy.
But most of all, I'm not sure how I would tell my son that he is going to a school that his primary class mates couldn't even consider because their parents don't earn as much money as me.
For me this is where the rubber meets the road and where theoretical rhetoric about the generality of what is best for children goes out of the window.
Personally, I'd go independent. Without a second of thought - providing I'd been around and persuaded myself that it was a good place for him to study.
quote:
And while I have 5As at A level and a Cambridge degree, I get told what to do every day by people who are thicker and less well qualified than me. So.... does it matter?
Well y'know, join the club. I suspect many of us here are overqualified and underemployed.
For me, the question is not about how I turned out but about my child reaching their full potential and not meeting barriers that I could have overcome if I'd rearranged my finances and my prejudices.
So I'd have no hesitation in going with private education if I had the money and it was the best available solution.
[ 19. September 2016, 12:46: Message edited by: mr cheesy ]
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arse
Posts: 10697 | Registered: Sep 2002
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
The issue of playing fields is a different one. many of the grammars were originally set up by foundations several hundred years ago, and hence it was not so easy for the LEAs (pre Academy days to force them to sell off playing fields. So it may indeed be true to say that the grammars retained fields and sports facilities when others did not.
Of course, it doesn't really matter why more grammars have sports fields than comps. The fact of the matter is that they do. No decision we make now can undo the past, or magically regenerate all the lost playing fields of yore.
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
Of course, it doesn't really matter why more grammars have sports fields than comps. The fact of the matter is that they do. No decision we make now can undo the past, or magically regenerate all the lost playing fields of yore.
Right, and if the issue is that all schools should have sports facilities, why is there a focus on those that do rather than those that don't?
It's just a smear to keep saying that grammars are effectively state-funded private schools. Anyone who has ever been to a private school and then to the vast majority of English grammar schools could tell that they're nothing like each other.
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arse
Posts: 10697 | Registered: Sep 2002
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Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
The picture is patchy and any suggestion that grammars are somehow always better funded and with better facilities is a myth. Particularly when it is repeatedly paraded here without any actual evidence to show that it is the case.
Well, I for one haven't done so. Which is why I've been trying to find any comparisons of selective and non-selective education on a level playing field - excluding those situations where grammar schools are significantly better resourced and worse resourced*. As, I thought, my posts had made clear. It isn't my fault that the paper you linked to reported on grammar schools that were better resourced. You've also made clear, from information on Gloucester, that where grammar schools don't receive a significant resource advantage that the local comprehensives are considered the better schools.
* 'resourced' here including legacy resourcing (such as buildings and sports fields) as well as current funding. Though, sometimes those legacies can be a liability (for all schools). I went to a school that was a merger between a pre-war grammar and a post-war secondary modern. The elegant, brick-built pre-war building had better classrooms compared to the concrete post-war building with draughty windows. But, the pre-war science labs were quite simply not up to the job (there was a major rebuilding of them while I was there) whereas the post war building had better science labs - it also had the workshops for technical studies (I'm not sure, but I don't think the old grammar really bothered with woodwork, metalwork, catering and so on).
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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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mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
It isn't my fault that the paper you linked to reported on grammar schools that were better resourced. You've also made clear, from information on Gloucester, that where grammar schools don't receive a significant resource advantage that the local comprehensives are considered the better schools.
It certainly isn't my fault that you can't find studies which meet your idiosyncratic standards for comparison, particularly given I found the paper in question in response to your claim that you didn't know of any relevant studies.
Grammars are not being compared to the poorest schools. OK. So what?
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arse
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