Reintroduction of Secondary modern schools for majority of children.

This can only be a vanity project as educationalist are almost without exception opposed to thus as unworkable and unfair.

Surrey is in the lower quarter when it comes to per capita spend per pupil.

I'm not sure how the formula works. I expect it's because Surrey is seen as not having high social needs. Cambridgeshire is also towards the bottom of the list. I know London's high spend is often defended, because salaries are higher.

Looking at the per capita spend is interesting when you compare them with the £37,000 for Eton. The per capita amount for Cambridgeshire is £3,718.

Hey DJ - here in Norfolk in the last few years, we too got peanuts for transport! Wonderful! First time in ages we've had anything at all, and we're actually building proper roads! (Mind you, the second one around the north of Norwich doesn't go all the way. May get to complete it in the next tranche of money in twenty years time!)

Money is sticky stuff. It mostly gets stuck around London and the Home Counties.

Nfk, reminds me of when we moved down to Oulton Broad in the seventies. It was in the dark and we asked this man if we were there yet. He told us we were on the right road. We had to get to a wide road and when it narrowed again we would be there. We were expecting a dual carriageway, but it was actually that that bit of the single carriageway did widen! We missed it, and had to turn round and go back.

Are you as baffled by this as I am?

Grammar schools will not be in every town, says Theresa May

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-37533367

She seems to be tying herself up in knots there.
She says about identifying those who have free school meals, but doesn't say what they do with them once identified. Now she wants to identify those who are not on free school meals but still struggling.
Struggling to do what?
Poor children do not necessarily benefit from being removed from their friends and put into a different environment.

Struggling to find a good school for their children - I think this is the group she referred to in her doorstep speech when she became PM.
FSM is probably as good a proxy as any for being on a low income. Of course there are lots of families struggling on just above that level, many of them as a consequence of Osborne's policies.

Going to be even more soon, when they bring in the new benefit cap. There will be no trouble identifying lots soon. They will be the ones who are on the streets or in bed and breakfasts as they have lost their homes.

What a dog's breakfast it all is - more back-of-the-envelope policy making. It makes me despair - these are children's lives we are talking about.

I get so exasperated when ministers do not listen to the professionals who actually have to implement these off-the-cuff policies. What is the point of training teachers and then not listening to what they know and can tell us?

Educational standards will rise for ALL pupils if more money is allocated to education - in our area (rural) we get a ridiculous allocation per capita that takes no account of the extra costs of living out in the sticks and is far less than in cities.

We need good well-trained well-supported teachers working in well-maintained buildings with good resources; we need freedom and flexibility for teachers to exercise their professional judgement regarding their locality and school; we need a broad curriculum; we need paperwork to be reduced to a minimum.

I went to a grandparents' morning at my DGS's reception class. As we went around with him chatting and looking at what he had been doing, a TA was following us around with a clipboard so that she could note down what he had said and done and find categories of expectations to tick off. To those of you who have been nowhere near education for yours, you really would not believe what goes on. There are lists of categories of expectations for children from 'do they talk to their peers' to 'can they wipe their arses' - and you have to provide proof that these have been achieved. It is all quite crazy like some dystopian film. He had an achievement folder that had a list of criteria met and their reference number after each item - e.g. painted a picture (ref. shows manual dexterity; ref. knows colours; Ref * able to blend colours) - I expect you are getting the picture. For one of the activities there was three quarters of a page of criteria!

Reception class teachers know when their charges need a bit of help getting on with one another, or lack some basic social skills and they just gently help them along - all this proof and box-ticking is demeaning to both parties.

Oh - don't get me going on all this!

"years"

Whatever her rhetoric in her speech today, she doesn't want them all to benefit, just those who she thinks will be able to benefit from getting into a good school, those they will identify.

I am appalled by the suggestion that we throw 11yr olds on the scrap heap! Theresa May was in the news tonight saying that parents wanted to have sec mod schools! (I think she means for 'other people's' children.

In truth, do most parents of infants and junior age children think their child is in the top 10% of ability (say), and that they would be sure of a grammar place. Not sure that there is mass delusion on this scale.

So why do polls consistently report that about 60% support a segregated system? It's crazy!

What kind of parent wants a sec mod for their children?

I just don't understand it. So two children of almost identical abily sit and work together for seven years in primary school. One is lucky on the day and passes, so is destined to become a barrister, a doctor, a CEO or whatever and the second is encouraged to become a clerk, a plumber or a shop assistant. There's absolutely nothing wrong with being a clerk, a plumber or a shop assistant, but they're having doors firmly shut in their faces at the age of 11 as the result of narrow testing. The idea that children can be sorted into race horses and pit ponies at that age is just ridiculous.

Where do you get your poll information from, daphne?

If it's yougov, that's a self selecting poll.
The latest yougov said that 61% of parents who filled it in and attended a grammar school themselves would get their children to do an 11+ exam, but only 38% want more grammar schools built.

Have you got the link to the YouGov poll? What other polls Daphnedill?
I joined YouGov for a few months just to see how it operated. Badly, was my verdict.
Endless invitations to fill in surveys about shopping and car buying.
Poor questionnaire design - suspect they don't pay a lot to the people who devise them.

One of the problems with YouGov is that they are only polling people who have the time and inclination to sign up to answer their surveys. Not necessarily a representative sample for any purpose.

You're right, dj. It was YouGov which came up with the 60%. However, it's not the only poll which shows support for grammar schools:

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/poll-labour-working-class-grammar-schools-crobyn-rayner-theresa-may-a7197971.html

BMG is the same as yougov, all online polling, from people who have signed up to their panels.

We were lucky, as where we lived they kept their grammar schools,although I wouldn't call them grammar schools like they had in the 1960s, where one had to pass a much more difficult test than my lads did.

I call that unlucky. Much better to have excellent comprehensives.

I had a very interesting conversation yesterday with a friend who was a chemistry teacher. Taught only the really clever ones in the best grammar and private schools. I'd only seen things from my perspective, as one who'd failed the 11+. She saw the ones who'd just passed, who'd had extra tuition from loving parents in order to get to these 'best' schools. She was absolutely, vociferously FOR the comprehensive system because she'd seen the damage done to children being given the best academic education while what they really wanted and needed and would have been happy with was a the more practical route given in secondary and comprehensives. The ones who'd been pushed to get into the grammar bounced along the bottom and came out with worse qualifications than if they'd 'failed'. Often it paid to fail! It made me feel a lot better!