Reintroduction of Secondary modern schools for majority of children.

I suspect it's about grabbing back votes from UKIP.

I've always been somewhat bemused by the fact that Farage, who lives in Kent (a grammar school area) chose to have his own children privately educated. I wonder why the grammar schools weren't good enough, or maybe his children weren't bright enough.

I've been away and just caught up with about 4 days of posts on this thread. It's so good to see the majority of contributors feel strongly that the proposed expansion of the grammar school sector is divisive and also, that this kind of segregation isn't beneficial.

I agree with the view that Mrs May is after Ukip voters, as well as traditional tory voters who are struggling with increasing fees at private schools so see this as a way of getting in effect, private education paid for fully by the state. Including of course, those parents whose children are excluded at 11.

I wonder whether Mrs May has allowed this suggestion to run as a sop to her right wing and to encourage Ukippers back to the tories. She is a bright woman, surely she knows it's unlikely to get through a vote given all of Labour, the Lib Dems and many tories oppose it.

Yes, Iam64, I've also read that Theresa May is using the grammar school subject as a way to bring into line recalcitrant MP's, whilst knowing she won't be able to get it into law. Risky tactics, though, I'd have thought!

It probably shows what she thinks of some of her MPs if they are so easily persuaded.

On a long road journey DH and I were discussing our respective grammar schools. He said he was horrified at being sent to a school where he had to wear a cap! It was a 3 form entry boys grammar and about 2/3, he thought, stayed on to 6th form.
This set me thinking - mine was a four form entry girls grammar - so around 120 admitted at 11. In the 6th we had 2 registration groups - arts and sciences, with sciences nowhere near 30. I'd estimate therefore than of the 120, 50 at most stayed on - the ones that were headed for University or teacher training college.
Not very impressive really.
Anyone else remember how many stayed on to 6th? (rushes off to find school photo...)

I went to a grammar school which, unless one was Oxbridge material which I wasn't, was not very good. I don't remember any of us staying on for 6th form and most of us went into run-of-the-mill office jobs. However, I have always found it a benefit to put 'grammar school' on my CV and in later life I made up for my paltry haul of GCEs and gained various professional qualifications. I do think my grammar school education was what gave me the confidence to do this but I don't think I could argue convincingly to bring back grammar schools. I wish the government would invest properly in the education of all our grandchildren and in the training of our teachers so that they all have the same opportunity to succeed - and then leave the whole thing alone, stop fiddling with it, let teachers do their jobs without all this constant interference.

The idea that TM using the grammar school discussion as a sop that she doesn't expect will ever be passed into law is interesting. If it is the case then I'm rather inclined to give her some credit for more political deviousness than I thought she had (not that I'm a TM expert; she's an unknown quantity really). She has to get all her MPs on board somehow. The government doesn't have a big majority to play with.

My grammar school experience chimes with NotTooOld's and JessM. Unless you were amongst the elite top quarter, which I wasn't, you just bumbled along, with no one taking much notice of you.

I can't recall how many forms there were per year, four, maybe? There were two six forms so I suppose about half stayed on.

Isn't it amazing Notsoold the way the passage of time can create an illusion of a golden age in which grammar schools provided people with an automatic passport to university?
It would be great if some more ex-grammar-schoolers could remember what percentage went on to sixth form.

Was not even so clear cut as that. I had some friends in local secondary (even the name is second class) moderns and they had a 6th form. I remember she did the sciences at A level and went on to teach.
I was impressed at the time as the girls also had career choices at o level. The could go down what my friend described as the commerce Road and were taught shorthand and typing ad well as all things business like bookkeeping and stuff. Or they could choose the nursing route where they did a pre-nursing course -the school fed the local hospital. A levels were also an option. Our Grammar was stuck in the past and not nearly so forward looking with the result that those leaving had not nearly so much to offer except the fact they had been to grammar school which wasn't much when you think if of other than at 11 we were a minority chosen to attend the local grammer.

Was getting into university the sole aim of a grammar school education? So long as people who had some grammar school education had access to something they wouldn't have had access to otherwise—like my grandad who passed his eleven plus and went to grammar school until he was fourteen but had to leave to go down the pit when his dad died—surely that was a good thing? My grandad certainly benefited hugely from his short time at grammar school.

Which is not an argument to bring grammar schools back. I'm just saying that I don't think their primary purpose was to get people into uni. I think it was to educate people more than in the ordinary (parish?) schools that went from 4–14. My eldest brother started at a school like that in Leeds. Apart from his first day when my dad took him and collected him, my mum got a fourteen year old girl to take my brother and bring him home. She had two other young kids and a pregnancy to deal with and it was a mile to school.

Mine was a three class intake grammar school and there were two sixth form classes for my year. There would have been a few more than there were except that the school stopped catering for boarders at the end of my fifth form (my year had the last intake of boarders) so four or five of the seven remaining boarders (mostly from forces families) went to sixth form at a different boarding school.

Primary education, secondary education, tertiary education.

Not even a whiff of second class unless you're looking for it.

Some people'll find 'offence' in anything.

Oh dear bags you can't help yourself can you!

You likewise, it seems, ww. You don't really believe the 'secondary' part of the name 'secondary modern' was because they were designed as second class schools, do you? You must have heard primary and tertiary used in the same way just to signify what age-group was being accommodated.

I always imagine you following up your remarks with a sniff

I don't do argument bags as you must be aware by now - sorry.

Ha! I don't. ?

I'll try and remember that you don't do reason-based discussion, ww (please don't bank on my remembering though). And, obviously, your not doing it won't stop me rationalising silly stuff as well as non-silly stuff. Cheers (can't drink alcolhol, soz. It doesn't agree with my meds).

Oh you are wrong there I do reasoned based but not personnel which is why I reacted to your last comment about me taking *offence" nothing reason based about that comment. However if you had expanded on the education on offer at your parents grammer and whether anything similar to my friends secondary modern was offered -which in my view was excellent- then we could have had a reason based discussion as you describe it.

There was never any possibility that I could have gone to university or even stayed on for 6 form as my father died at the beginning of my second term at grammar school and I think poverty could describe the state my mother and I were left in. She was an older mother for those days, 44, and not qualified for anything. Grammar school , as I have said before on GN, gave me social mobility and confidence in myself that I would not have found at the secondary modern. I know this from my friends from primary.
I will be forever grateful for that opportunity. Now that would be different I realise but then was then.

It was reasoned actually, ww, and the one about finding offence anywhere wasn't about you. It was a general remark based on this morning's observation as well as others made elsewhere (not on gransnet) of lots of other people, of an apparent misunderstanding.

Your comment: "you can't help yourself" seemed unreasonably personal to me, as if a rational remark to correct what appeared to be a misunderstanding of a common term was somehow wrong or mean. It wasn't. My initial remark was not personal in any way. It comprised was a statement of fact that secondary when used of schools does not mean and never did mean second-class. Thus, "not a whiff". All very straightforward as well as plain truth.

was

I don't think the word "Secondary" when referred to schools, means second class these days ( because there aren't grammar schools around) but when I passed my 11+ ( not for what good it did me) in the 70's it most certainly did .
"If you work hard you will go to the girls grammar . If you don't you will go to the secondary school"

And I still think nobody who wasn't looking for a second-class element would see it in the term "secondary modern". I do not believe for one moment that the educationalists or politicians (or both) whose idea it was ever intended anything other than a separation from primary schools which, until sec mods were invented, went from 4 or 5 years old to 14 and were just plain "school". "Modern" secondary schools were to go to 15 at least and would be separate from "primary, schools.

This is not argument. It is historical fact.