Reintroduction of Secondary modern schools for majority of children.

Please bear with me as I haven't been watching this thread before, and really mustn't start looking back on it now (jobs to do!).

But I just noticed a couple of recent posts re children being retested at 12 and 14, and I know this did happen in my area back in the day. I went to a large girls' grammar school serving a mainly rural area and with 6 forms per year. We were told we were randomly selected for each class, but we all knew that wasn't the case! One of them (T) was a smaller class just for those girls who came into the school from other areas or following the 12 and 14 plus. They were re-allocated from there later (after proper assessment, I suppose). I can't really imagine how it worked, but I do know two girls who joined the grammar at 12+ and opted to go back to the secondary modern, so yes, that happened too. Whether anybody went back against their will, I don't know.

I have been saying for years that it was the jobs not the schools that made the difference. That is why so many, consigned to Secondary Moderns, also did very well, educating themselves either through job specific exams or through the excellent FE provision.

This is exactly what May should be looking at. Of course we need the brightest to get relevant education but that is going to be the academically brightest, technically brightest and vocationally brightest. This old and rather class ridden view that bright only equals academic could kill progress.

Absolutely Jess. I used to work close to an LA that has some of the best comprehensive schools in the country (and I am talking about the vast majority of schools, not just a few).. I do not think that any grammar school could have done any better for the children in those schools.
What is needed in education is a period of stability, sustained and focussed school improvement, support for recruitment and retention of staff, proper planning for new schools and sustained support for disadvantaged families.
What is not needed is privatisation by the back door, a system that changes every five minutes depending on the government's latest vanity project and the sustained rubbishing by politicians and the press of schools, teachers and LAs.
I am not holding my breath.

Of course it won't work. It isn't a new idea and it never did work.

Grammar school places were never to do with marks but all to do with spaces.
I tried to move from the sec mod to the grammar school at 12 yrs and there was a whole hall full of us and it turned out that we were competing for 2 places!
Children are not going to go 'down' to the sec mod after a few yrs in grammar school, therefore unless they move away from the area there are no spaces.

The joy of the comprehensive is that you can move sets without a change of uniform and friends.

Going back to your earlier post NfkDumpling are you saying that children will be re-tested at 12,13 and 14 ? How can that possibly work? Children could be going backwards and forwards like yo-yo's (I may have got the wrong end of the stick)

Yup Mamie - I know of one mum who withdrew her children from a local prep school, because they told her that the eldest was unlikely to pass the 11+ to get into a grammar across the county boundary.
The head of education in the OECD has criticised May's grammar school idea.
I'm inclined to think that if you want to decrease inequality of opportunity you should identify poor kids with high IQs early (in primary) and give them support and extra stimulation throughout their school careers. Rather than giving more money to grammars.

It is interesting really. My GDs are in a grammar area, in a very prosperous town. The grammar schools take many children educated in independent prep schools and others who have been heavily coached for a number of years. The local secondary schools (church schools and an academy) do very well indeed with the children that they have and a significant proportion go on to university. The proportion of children on free school meals in the grammar schools is very low.
It seems to me to be more like private education on the cheap.

I've just read a VG article by Philip Collins in which he says this:

Besides, Mrs May’s advisers know all the objections to grammar schools. They know the cause of social mobility in the 1960s was the conversion of Britain, between the end of the First World War and the end of that decade, from an essentially blue-collar economy into a mostly white-collar one. Suddenly there was more room at the top. Grammar schools coincided with this change but did not cause it. At the height of their popularity, of the grammar school children who gained two A levels, less than 1 per cent came from the skilled working class.

Whole article here

I seems a great deal of the growth of home schooling has come from Faith communities, mainly Muslim, with a suspected increase in unregistered schools. This does not seem to me to be what we usually think of as home schooling.

How demoralising for the schools that aren't designated as Grammar Schools. Presumably round one creams off a smaller number of the 'brightest', then what? ... an additional class in the second year creamed from the success of the remaining schools. Then the remaining schools work hard and do their best by a smaller number of children with less money to do it and again their most successful children are moved with the money that goes with them and this may repeat for one more year yet again widening the intake at th Grammar and narrowing it at those schools feeding these children in with the budget for the Grammar growing each year while diminishing at 'the other' schools. This sounds even more demoralising than it was first time round. Madness!

I don't see how children will be able to move at 12,13,14 as there will be a finite number of places. It will be a competition to get there in the first place and then a competition for the few available slots which come free as children move out of the area or don't make the grade. I feel the pressure on those at the lower end of the grammar schools will be enormous. Frequent testing will be necessary to make sure they're up to standard, or they'll be moved out to make room for the late developers.

It won't work!

What the system needs gillybob is more school places. While vast sums of money have been thrown had Academies and Free Schools over the past few years (often in areas where they are not needed), Local Authorities have not been allowed to build and open schools where they are needed.
The biggest issue surrounding this ridiculous debate about bringing back grammar schools, is that there is no focus on the two major issues facing education; the shortage of school places and the shortage of teachers.

Assuming of course that the children can actually get into a school close to where they live. My granddaughter will be going into secondary education next year but I have it on good authority that if she doesn't get into a local feeder school (on appeal) then she hasn't a hope in hell of getting into the local comprehensive either.

The whole system needs a good shake up.

I agree with you, Eloethan. I think young people today have more competitive pressure than before. It's very easy for older people to dismiss their concerns, because 'they don't know how tough life used to be'. Having worked with teenagers for over 30 years, I honestly think they experience an increasing amount of pressure, which is ironic, because I also think that parents themselves are under increasing pressure to get things right.

It's impossible to generalise about the people who choose to home educate their children. I know a few and I don't think they would be happy with the return of grammar schools either. I'm not going to write an essay about the different reasons they have, because they're so diverse, but I do believe that the vast majority of people are generally happy with their children's schools.

I would be the first to admit that there are problems in schools, but they won't be solved by segregated children at 11.

On Question Time tonight it was stated that Theresa May isn't proposing that there just be an exam at 11 which would determine who could go to grammar school. No, there would be the chance to take an exam at 11, 12, 13 and, I think it was stated, 14. This sounds ridiculous to me. How would a grammar school know the number of places that would need to be allocated or how it could accommodate gaps in students' subject knowledge if there is a possibility of there being an influx of young people at different points in time and of various ages? Wouldn't young people who entered a grammar school at the age of, 13 or 14, find themselves on the back foot by joining a school that presumably would be at a different stage in many subjects? Having moved schools several times myself, it was difficult enough to adjust to schools of the same type, never mind moving from a secondary modern to a grammar.

Whatever system is put in place to supposedly try and ensure that young people (the majority) consigned to a secondary modern do not see themselves as "failures", I think there is still every chance that a fair number of them will consider themselves in that way.

I agree with the young woman in the QT udience who said that at a time when it is reported that more and more children are experiencing anxiety, depression, self harming, etc., to place even more competitive pressure on them will only exacerbate the problem.

Why is it that so many are home-educating their children these days then?

There does seem to be a dissatisfaction about state education generally among a lot of parents - not saying more Grammar Schools would solve the problem, but the comprehensive system obviously isn't working for all.

When someone manages to call for the return of secondary modern schools then I might think there was some point but it is always, always, always, the return of the grammar school when 75% won't get one.
Why would parents want to swap a comprehensive for a secondary modern school? I certainly wouldn't and can't think of one good reason.

I can't think that it will get anywhere.
People seem to forget that the system was highly unpopular which is why we went comprehensive.
I know far more families that had children in both grammar and sec mod than one or the other- including twins who were split.
If something isn't good enough for people's children then it isn't good enough for anyone else's children either. We want an excellent education for ALL children and not a second class one for 'so called' failures' when they are only 10 yrs old!! That is not an education fit for 21st century.
Why are only the academic supposed to be socially mobile? Are the rest just supposed to know their place and stay there?!

I think I am right in saying that Wales does not have any grammar schools or academies. Or "free schools". One of the unexpected benefits of devolution.

sorry, should have said thanks Sue
I think it is devolved in Wales too.

I was wondering what is happening in Wales SueDonim where the DGC live.

In the 1950s/60s Adams Grammar School was a voluntary-aided school; however, it started out as a Haberdasher's centuries ago.
It is now a selective state school (boarding and day).

One problem is that many or most people form their opinion from their own experience. Personally i went to a public school and then a grammar school - both were rubbish academically. The O level and A level results at my grammar school were appalling considering it was selective. The comprehensives i have taught in were in my opinion much better s chools and certainly the results were far better overall allowing for the fact that they incuded all abilities. Also my children went to comprehensives, and got top marks and went to top universities. So I strongly disapprove of grammar. schools.

Jalima education is devolved to Scotland so Mrs May's policy won't apply here. However, the Scottish govt is now talking about meddling with our system again.

Mrs May said that JC was "harking back to the 50s" in PMQs, but I don't believe even her own side have any idea why that isn't exactly what her plans do. She did, after all, say today that the Grammar Schools were what got her and Corbyn where they are today. These where the Grammars of the 1950s and succeeding years so she seems to be defeating her own argument.

Why, oh why does she believe that we do not need success in all areas: vocational, technical and academic and a all the ways in which these so successfully cross in the world of business.