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I can't help feeling that much of the currently fashionable condemnation of grammar schools is based on two false premises; that they are socially divisive, and that kids who failed the old 11-plus were branded as 'failures'. I'm an old geezer now who went to a boys only grammar school in the early 1950's but we had all sorts there, bright academics through to some right tearaways. I was just a boy from a working class family but I enjoyed and benefited from grammar school though not enough to go to university, doing two years National service instead, but my mates outside school were a mixture of Secondary Modern, Technical and Grammar school boys. We got along fine and theTech and S/Modern boys went on to become printers, plumbers, builders and engineers, all of whom I suspect made more money than I did. Surely any school regardless of type will grade kids by ability and attempting to force kids of different backgrounds to socialise will not work. Finally, condemning today's grammar schools on account of the number of kids getting free school meals seems totally irrelevant. I realise I may be the only surviving Rangers supporter who went to a grammar school so if I get any response I expect it to be unfavourable. No matter. Come on you RRRRRRRRRR's !
The whole unfairness of the old system was that the number who 'passed' the 11+ in each education authority was dependent on the number of grammar school places available. Therefore an entirely arbitrary number became the target for you to achieve depending on where you lived. Decisive doesn't even begin to describe it.
Actually I never said they did. I said they did worse overall in a grammar school system. This means that includes both those who do get in and that don't. But just puff up your ego a bit if you like.
Your point is disingenuous because your implication was that grammar schools are bad for poor children, which seems to be untrue. We don't have a grammar school system. Neither do we have a comprehensive system. The system is mixed, chaotic even. In these circumstances it's tempting to look for statistics to support a preconception, rather than be rational and do it the other way round.
No, where had that statistic come from, that only 20% of places will be grammar schools? My experience is a lot higher.
Your experience is totally irrelevant - and even more so, ...... wildly inaccurate - see the Butler 1944 Education Act for what was put in place after the war. Initially proposed as a tripartite system, with 20% maximum grammar school places, the remainder were technical schools (which unfortunately were ignored) and secondary moderns, catering for the remaining 80%.
This policy continued until the Wilson government made the comprehensive schooling system mandatory in 1965. Thatcher stopped the compulsion to change from grammar to comprehensive when the Tories took power in 1970. However, three counties, Buckinghamshire Kent and Lincolnshire, and Northern Ireland managed to retain the 11 plus, plus a few odd spots within other counties.
Currently comprehensive schools cater for 90% of all UK secondary school education.... these are the facts.... - not a personal point of view or a feeling of what I'd like the facts to be.
Just proves how dangerous it is to set policy on one person's individual and incorrect experience of what happens in the real world; just as Teresa May is doing ............ winding the clock back to the 50's.
Why does it feel like R'SWiPe is still on the books? Yer Couldn't Make It Up.Well Done Me!
Not sure if this has already been said as there are a lot of posts. In my opion if you want good schools you should copy the best in the world. So at this moment in time that is Finland. In Finland all schools are state owned Privately funded school are not allowed. So elitism is not allowed. Also no homework. Crazy hey. Quite frankly the Government in the UK can not be trusted with anything let alone anyones childs future
Grammer schools are not for me. Everyone should get the same opportunities. The kids with any nous will rise to the top anyhow. There's only so many jobs out there.
That's it everyone's a home owner everyone's a shareholder everyones has been pulled up to a new bench mark. Theresa May at the forefront of egalitarianism.
Shot Knee I left Walpole/ Elthorne a few years after you but i do recall a music teacher who was barrel chested and was nearing retirement i think his name was Howell.
Where has this 80% number come from? (genuine question)
I've based my experiences of Grammar schools on growing up in Slough and now living in Gloucester. As far as I am aware, it was an even balance between comps and Grammar in Slough. I suspect its the same in Gloucester.
Before I moved to Slough I was in Uxbridge....I applied for 3 good comp schools but was out of the catchment for all. So was offered schools my mum didnt want me to go to. Hence why we packed up and headed for Slough. So actually being no Grammar schools didnt help at all, everyone still applied for the good schools but only those living closest got to go there.
The pass rate for the 12 plus, which is predetermined, because there are only so many places, means there cannot be an even balance of grammars to non selective schools. There are now only four grammar schools in Slough (and actually only a third of the pupils now come from within Slough local authority area; kids now travel in from up to 15 miles away). The ratio for pass/fail at 12 plus has always been around 1:3/4.
Even assuming the whole country goes selective, reducing the demand for bussing around the country to grammars, what happens if your kid happens to be in a year with a very bright cohort, or has an off day when it's the selection test - and so they don't pass? That decision has forced them into secondary modern education, without the chance for streaming in a comp (and I don't know why people on this thread say comps don't stream; they absolutely do). By the logic of this thread, that single thing at 12 means your child now can choose between a selection of manual jobs, because that is what people here think sec mods should be for. What about the kids who fail and who don't want to be trained to be manual workers?
My parents were beneficiaries of the Butler education act. They went to grammars in the great postwar expansion, and became the first in their families to do so and go on to university. But make no bones about it — and I'm really not a great class warrior or anything, but this is true — the purpose of selective education was to make social stratification more efficient. The public school graduates would continue to run everything; the sec mod and tech school graduates would do the physical work of postwar rebuilding; the working class kids who went to grammar school would manage and administer it.
That's it everyone's a home owner everyone's a shareholder everyones has been pulled up to a new bench mark. Theresa May at the forefront of egalitarianism.
Shot Knee I left Walpole/ Elthorne a few years after you but i do recall a music teacher who was barrel chested and was nearing retirement i think his name was Howell.
Howell was the music teacher who "discovered" John MacVie. Clark was the fat History teacher who used to quote naval phrases at kids - "batten down the hatches", " ready about", "cast off" " Belay the ship" etc.
Why does it feel like R'SWiPe is still on the books? Yer Couldn't Make It Up.Well Done Me!
Grammar Schools (n/t) on 13:23 - Sep 10 by Pommyhoop
Completely with you bro on the lack of females at school. I was at an EX Grammar Catholic All Boys school. Hated it ..I mean HATED ..I didn't go at all in the 5th year.I swore my Son wouldn't go to an all boys school and he didn't ..My two girls went to good Catholic all girls schools tho .until we came over here ...
I was going to wait until I got to the end of this thread before contributing but I felt the need to step in here.
No you really don't get it do you?
I, like the person you responded to, went to a grammar school, and apart from a being a bit self conscious that I was one off the poorer (financially) pupils there I did enjoy my time. Again like the person you responded to, I'll agree It was almost certainly better than a comprehensive school. But that was because I was lucky enough to get in, there were plenty that didn't. The alternative is not to select, that doesn't leave all kids behind as you suggest, for instance my two sons have been to an academy in Putney and are currently studying Maths at Oxford and Computer Science with AI at Loughborough.
All the expert opinion is that the grammar system is flawed, every educationalist I have ever spoken has told me so. All the evidence suggests that the able kids will still get on in joint ability schools AND a good proportion of the other kids will be dragged along with them as there is no longer such a strong culture of failure and "stigma" associated with achievement.
Education should NOT be elitist, it should be geared to providing the best education suited to a child's needs. Grammar schools condemn too many to the junk heap too soon.
You say "if not going to grammar schools is throwing kids on the scrapheap then how is having no grammar schools available helping matters exactly?" which implies that by not having grammar schools everyone is on the scrapheap. That's a pessimistic view, why not take the viewpoint that if we make all schools equal (and call them grammar's) everyone will benefit?
As I think I said in my first post, not having grammar schools doesn't only remove the element of rejection (although it does this as well) it also has been shown to improve grades of the lower performers without any significant detrimental effect on the higher performers.
You can fail your 11+ unless you are good on all things tested. I was fairly poor, and therefore in the lower streams for English and the humanities, but top stream for sciences and maths, which probably swung the 11+ for me, but how many are good enough but in only one area of study and then miss out completely due to a failed 11+?
Your point about some kids making it despite the system again takes the pessimistic view that those that would have gone to a grammar school, but are condemned to a secondary school education would suffer the same fate. What appears to happen in practice is that they don't suffer in this way, and that there is less stigma and bullying on the rest of the students that strive for higher grades.
I do agree that a lot of schools are shite, and I can honestly say in my own little way I am trying to do something about it - most years I take 2 GCSE and 2 A level students on for work experience and I visit schools to give talks and lectures. But the solution to shite schools is surely not to sort out a few of them, call them grammars, and say sod the rest, surely we should all be demanding that ALL schools are improved.
With regards to your elitist remark I'm sorry if I did misinterpret it.
Finally, it has been interesting to read about peoples various experience in school, but that alone does not mean that any of us know what is going on in general, and the fact remains that the vast majority of educationists agree that grammar schools do more harm than good.
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