Education

[Udayana]

Must be time for another game of political football!

[Harrowby Hall]

I suspect Theresa May's favourite film is Back to the Future.

Having fragmented the education system by encouraging "academies" (OK, it was started by the Blair government) which is gradually producing a "divide and rule" environment, Mrs May is now encouraging "grammar schools".

In principle, I suppose, I have nothing against providing educational opportunities which match the aspirations, aptitudes and abilities of the students they serve, but grammar schools were always better resourced than were secondary modern schools. Grammar schools were cheap copies of "public schools" in ethos, behaviour and intent (mine was anyway) and in many cases were long-established institutions which could not afford to go-it-alone in 1944 and so were taken into the state system.

The turning point for education in this country will be when "technical" education is recognised to be as important and valuable as academic education and specialist technical high schools are as respected and well-resourced as grammar schools.

I cannot see Mrs May accepting this. I'm surprised she doesn't drive a specially-adapted DeLorean!

[floo]

Education is in a mess in this country, more grammar schools are not going to improve the situation, imo.

[jeremyp]

A recent edition of More or Less examined the statistics regarding the quality of education in grammar schools and their corollary: secondary moderns. The areas that still have grammar schools do worse than expected with respect to comprehensive schools.

There's no justification for bringing back grammar schools.

[jeremyp]

Education is in a mess in this country, more grammar schools are not going to improve the situation, imo.

It's not just your opinion

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-37310541

[Udayana]

I was quite surprised by how quickly they've come out with these proposals.

Did Justine Greening have a clue about them when appointed? Nothing of this kind was mentioned in the 2015 manifesto. It looks like something already packaged by civil servants and kept on the shelf waiting for a suitable moment - just add a few ifs and buts to make it sound progressive.

I went to a grammar school and put my kids through the private system but going back to a broken model with added quotas for the poorest cannot be the answer.

[wigginhall]

Yes, back to the future.   Talk about retro politics - the smell of Brylcreem is in the air, and I expect fuel rationing to start again.   I suppose it's designed to please Tory activists?   I can't think of any other reason for it.  Education is really a dog's breakfast now, with academies, free schools, comprehensives, and now this.   

[Jack Knave]

   My head's spinning with all this larking about with education policy. It seems to me it all comes down to now, these days, is which semantic name you give it - depending on your ideology, of course. I think what May is doing is a bloody waste of time.

[Harrowby Hall]

There is something in the political psyche which seems to be obsessed with change. I suspect that it comes from being also obsessed with ballot boxes. If something dramatic has not been done, then it is as if nothing has been done at all and you will be forgotten at the polls - even when doing nothing is the most advantageous and profitable approach,

Making minor adjustments to make an already good policy or practice even better appears to be a non-starter. Catastrophic change is preferable to incremental improvement.

[Jack Knave]

One thing about these new proposals (and I'm not too sure if I fully grasped what was being proposed) that I don't like the sound of is that faith schools will be allowed to have 100% of their pupils to be of their faith, not the 50% they are only allowed now. This bodes trouble.

[L.A.]

One thing about these new proposals (and I'm not too sure if I fully grasped what was being proposed) that I don't like the sound of is that faith schools will be allowed to have 100% of their pupils to be of their faith, not the 50% they are only allowed now. This bodes trouble.

That was the point I found most troubling.

[SusanDoris]

That was the point I found most troubling.

Me too.

[Jack Knave]

That was the point I found most troubling.

It looks it won't get through because of the slim Tory majority and that a sufficient number of Tories don't like it. Some have said it is poly to keep the clamour for Brexit details in the background, during the conference, by stirring things up with this toxic Grammar school debate, which is only at a green paper stage.

[Hope]

I am not against grammar schools in principle, if one is going to have a 'mixed economy' in education.  Wht I do dislike is the 11+.  If grammar school admission was based on teachers' experiences of children and within strict parameters that did away with the need for preparation for an exam, I'd be much happier

For instance:

• Use teacher records and reports about each child during primary
• specify which social categories can be admitted to grammars
• make them either technical or academic in nature

When they work properly, they CAN be a way of promoting social mobility

[Brownie]

I am not against grammar schools in principle, if one is going to have a 'mixed economy' in education.  Wht I do dislike is the 11+.  If grammar school admission was based on teachers' experiences of children and within strict parameters that did away with the need for preparation for an exam, I'd be much happier

For instance:

• Use teacher records and reports about each child during primary
• specify which social categories can be admitted to grammars
• make them either technical or academic in nature

When they work properly, they CAN be a way of promoting social mobility

Yes they can and they are free, giving the less well off a good educational opportunity if they are bright enough.  Grammar schools are very mixed and the financial circumstances of the parents vary tremendously but that really makes no difference.  I think people often forget that a grammar school is a state school.

Regarding the 11+, I agree that teachers' assessments as Hope suggested are better (I didn't quite understand what you meant by "specify which social categories can be admitted to grammars", Hope), and the individual child needs to be considered as an all round person, but in areas where there is no eleven plus, grammar schools set their own entrance exam so there's not much difference.
What is, and has always been, bad about the 11+ is the sense of failure felt by those who do not pass.  Yet, we all have to learn to cope with exams at some point so I am unsure about that one.  As long as kids don't feel unduly pressurised, it seems to be OK.  Some children love exams, they thrive on them!

Grammar schools must not take priority over comps which should ideally offer a good education to all abilities and encourage particular talents.  They used to be wonderful places when they started off.  Many chose to go to a comprehensive rather than a grammar because of the good reputation and all round vibe of the place.

[Jack Knave]

Yes they can and they are free, giving the less well off a good educational opportunity if they are bright enough.  Grammar schools are very mixed and the financial circumstances of the parents vary tremendously but that really makes no difference.  I think people often forget that a grammar school is a state school.

Regarding the 11+, I agree that teachers' assessments as Hope suggested are better (I didn't quite understand what you meant by "specify which social categories can be admitted to grammars", Hope), and the individual child needs to be considered as an all round person, but in areas where there is no eleven plus, grammar schools set their own entrance exam so there's not much difference.
What is, and has always been, bad about the 11+ is the sense of failure felt by those who do not pass.  Yet, we all have to learn to cope with exams at some point so I am unsure about that one.  As long as kids don't feel unduly pressurised, it seems to be OK.  Some children love exams, they thrive on them!

Grammar schools must not take priority over comps which should ideally offer a good education to all abilities and encourage particular talents.  They used to be wonderful places when they started off.  Many chose to go to a comprehensive rather than a grammar because of the good reputation and all round vibe of the place.

Yes....and I think it is wrong that they are physically separated into two different buildings. This is where I think Comps reflect the outside world better.

[Brownie]

More resources must be put into comprehensive schools to bring them back to how they used to be (I'm aware that there are still some really good ones).

However the grammar has its place.

[Harrowby Hall]

Yes they can and they are free, giving the less well off a good educational opportunity if they are bright enough.

One thing that many people are not aware of is the grammar schools were discriminatory in terms of sex.

Girls had to achieve a mark in the 11+ that was significantly higher than boys in order to obtain a grammar school place. In most LEAs there were similar numbers of places available for boys and for girls. Since girls may have an intellectual development as much as two years in advance of boys, many girls were rejected with marks that were higher than those which guaranteed entry for boys.

Decisions made for grammar school entrance were based on norms rather than criteria.

[Hope]

(I didn't quite understand what you meant by "specify which social categories can be admitted to grammars", Hope), ...

Brownie, I was trying to point out that grammars should be primarily for children from lower economic categories, rather than from families who can afford to buy into the catchment area as and when it suits them.

Grammar schools must not take priority over comps which should ideally offer a good education to all abilities and encourage particular talents.  They used to be wonderful places when they started off.  Many chose to go to a comprehensive rather than a grammar because of the good reputation and all round vibe of the place.

Whilst I'd largely agree, the size of classes and of some of the larger schools can act against the provision of an education to the brightest - whatever their background - simply because of the gulf between them and the least able children who are often their classmates.  Comprehensive education tends to raise the level of the least able towards that of the average pupil, whilst not necessarily pushing the most able.

[Brownie]

Hope, thanks for that.  Yes I think you are right about comps, no reason why they have to be like that though.  Certainly when I was young the highly academic pupils at comprehensives went on to high achievements comparable to grammar schools, whilst there were plenty of skill building opportunities for those less so.  Some 11 year olds were actually headhunted for comprehensives. Times change.

HH said: Girls had to achieve a mark in the 11+ that was significantly higher than boys in order to obtain a grammar school place. In most LEAs there were similar numbers of places available for boys and for girls. Since girls may have an intellectual development as much as two years in advance of boys, many girls were rejected with marks that were higher than those which guaranteed entry for boys.

I didn't know that, was that always the case or just for a period of time?  It must have been quite an achievement for a girl to win a grammar school place in those days.  We never thought anything of it when I was at school, took it all for granted I suppose.

[Harrowby Hall]

The process was largely mechanistic, Brownie. The majority of grammar school education was in single sex schools.

In my home town there was a grammar school for boys and a grammar school for girls. They were separate institutions. Each year there were, perhaps, 60 new places in each school. The boys' school "selected" the 60 top scoring boys and the girls' school "selected" the 60 top scoring girls. No comparisons were made between the two groups of students - it was just the way things were.

I suspect that something similar happened in the rather smaller number of mixed grammar schools. The norm was that the sexes should be evenly represented. Hence some boys who were accepted would have lower marks than some girls who were rejected.

[Brownie]

Thanks HH, must have been the same where I lived - and my husband who went to the nearest boys' grammar; hee hee, I will tell him I was intellectually more advanced when we were 11.

[Enki]

Thanks HH, must have been the same where I lived - and my husband who went to the nearest boys' grammar; hee hee, I will tell him I was intellectually more advanced when we were 11.

I went to a single sex grammar school, although there was a mixed sex grammar school available. My first teaching job was at a secondary modern. I was appalled at the differences. It seemed to me, (and still seems) that the secondary modern was considered a dead end school for those who didn't make it. Even with the undoubted problems with comprehensives, my view was/is that they were a far better idea, and were, potentially at least, capable of producing a better all round education for a wider ability range than the grammar/secondary modern setup.

[jeremyp]

When they work properly, they CAN be a way of promoting social mobility

But in practice, they don't.

Grammar schools benefit the well off disproportionately because the more wealthy parents have more resources to get their children through the 11+.

Grammar schools are a bad idea (as far as studies in those LEAs that still have them have shown). I can't believe we are going back to the 50's in yet another area.

[jjohnjil]

I went to a single sex grammar school, although there was a mixed sex grammar school available. My first teaching job was at a secondary modern. I was appalled at the differences. It seemed to me, (and still seems) that the secondary modern was considered a dead end school for those who didn't make it. Even with the undoubted problems with comprehensives, my view was/is that they were a far better idea, and were, potentially at least, capable of producing a better all round education for a wider ability range than the grammar/secondary modern setup.

I agree.  I also was at a single sex grammar school and for many years thought it the best way of giving clever kids more chance against the private school system.

My kids all went to comprehensives though and I'm glad the 11+ had been abolished by then.  I know that they would have felt rejected if they hadn't passed,  As it was, they were always trying to get to a higher level because it was possible to move up and down.