Social mobility and grammar schools

And, yes, I am talking about the same kind of disruptive pupils. Before the 1980s/1990s, they would have been in special schools (aka approved schools or some such name) for EBD pupils. These schools were closed, mainly because they were dreadful and expensive, but very little provision was made for them in mainstream schools. Teachers didn't know how to cope with them and they were just expected to be integrated as if by magic. I am all in favour of zero tolerance of poor behaviour, but that has nothing to do with grammar schools.

@Granny2016

Independent school fees are typically about £20,000pa (more for the most prestigious schools). How many bits and pieces do you have to sell to be able to afford that? Most people don't even earn £20,000 after tax. That's why I'm critical. It really isn't a choice for the vast majority of people.

Of course they went to grammar schools, Jalima. That was the system in the 1950s and 1960s. If they had been born later, they would probably have gone to comprehensives and been in top sets, unless their parents sent them to independents. Theresa May's school apparently converted to a comprehensive while she was there.

PS. My mother (born 1931) still calls the 11+ 'the scholarship', so I guess it is a hang over. However, they were very different. The 11+ was state-funded, whereas scholarships were paid by the schools, usually from interest on endowments. They varied from one area to another, which meant their availability was patchy. That was one reason the 11+ was introduced, although it wasn't very successful in achieving that goal, because places still varied considerably between counties. There was also a huge variation between the standards achieved by the grammar schools themselves.

I don't think it's jealousy, but why should the vast majority have an inferior education? According to Liam Fox (when talking about the referendum) this is the age of the Peasants' Revolt.

There is no reason why your grandchildren shouldn't have the same opportunities in a comprehensive school. My children did.

What will happen, Juggernaut, if your grandchildren aren't very bright? Will you change your mind when they get sent to a school with the 'goats' and don't get the opportunity to study a full range of academic subjects?

PS. At least you can't accuse ME of jealousy!

This from 2011:

^From 1964-97, every British Prime Minister, from Harold Wilson to John Major, was grammar-school educated. Gordon Brown was the first university-educated Prime Minister not to go to Oxford or Cambridge. (Although, of course, the public-school, Oxbridge-educated politician never went away during those decades. Dozens of Cabinet ministers, in both parties, were from that background; they just never got the top job.)
But now the tide has well and truly turned; and it looks as if it'll remain that way. If you look at the Coalition, and the new intake of MPs, the probable successors to Cameron and Miliband are likely to come from the same gilt-edged pipeline.^
Half of the Cabinet and a third of all MPs went to private school; there are 20 Old Etonians in the Commons, eight of them in the Government. Of the 119 ministers in the Coalition, two thirds were privately educated.

Probably not - both Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn went to grammar schools, as did Tim Farron.

We still called it a scholarship in the 1950s - just a hangover from the old days I suppose.

Granjura
It was me who mentioned 'jealousy'.
What I mean is that the vast majority of people who object to Grammar schools are those who either wanted to go to a Grammar and (for whatever reason) didn't, or their children or grandchildren didn't get the chance either.
Those of us who have seen our children attend the same Grammar schools we did (although obviously I attended the girl's school, which is next door to the boys) are almost always in favour of the selective education system!
I fervently hope that the Grammar schools where we and DS and DDiL live survive and thrive, as I'd love my future grandchildren to have the same opportunity as their father and grandmother before them!

From the sublime to the ridiculous - yes one- and perhaps 'a few' will make it- but proportionally very small.

The implications for social cohesions are also huge- where kids from different education systems hardly or perhaps never meet.

Jealousy? Can't remember who said this. Certainly not me, nor DH- as we both went to Grammar schools (or equivalent for me, abroad)and on to University and great careers. Our DDs went to the local excellent comprehensives, and have achieved in education and in their careers, much better than many of their friends and relatives who went to Grammar schools, and top private or so called 'Public' schools.

Daphnedill...yes it would have been the scholarship exam for dad and I was born in the late 40.s.I remember mum telling dad that I had passed my scholarship rather than the 11 plus !
It is not a subject I asked him much about,but knowledge that we grew up with.

I could not afford the fees for my daughter,which were not terribly high,but at that point I was not an average earner either.Could I have raised it on credit ,I would have done so.
I taught several pupils who were floundering in the state system,and others assessed as dyslexic,whose parents wanted them in a closer environment.
Some sold belongings to pay fees.
How on earth can you be critical of that?

You don,t seem to be talking about the same disruptive children as myself.
I am not referring to those with learning difficulties or recognised behavioural problems who would have gone to 'special schools' as children called them.
I am referring to deliberately unruly pupils,who have full capacity to learn and prefer to indulge in bravado.

All good comprehensives with smaller classes across the board would be excellent.
How do you envisage that happening without a large injection of funding,bearing in mind that the government are encouraging academies?

Until such time,parents will want choices,and rightly so.

Trisher
I wonder how much first hand knowledge you have of the Grammar schools of today?
Until I retired five years ago, I was the Librarian at our local Grammar school, so I'm in a very good position to know exactly how the system works! I still 'pop in' to school on occasion to see the staff, and the boys who were in year seven when I left, and in September will be sixth formers.
There are boys from 'all walks of life' at the school I worked at, so it's not me who is mistaken!
As for your comment that 'No one on a low income will make it, no matter how bright, when they are in competition with children who have seen and been coached through past papers', you couldn't be any more wrong!
Two years before I retired a boy entered year seven, we'll call him N.T., his parents were seriously poor, lived in a very tatty house, in a horrible area just on the edge of the catchment area. His uniform was provided by the school, every year they collect good condition blazers, house ties, rugby kit etc from boys who have outgrown such, or are moving up to sixth form, so will henceforth be wearing suits. Only the staff concerned with the uniform scheme, the boy and his parents are aware of where the uniform comes from, everything is dry cleaned before being given out and I'd challenge anyone to 'spot the difference' between the brand new and the used uniforms! There's also a 'fund' for helping with the cost of school trips, and all extra curricular activities, this again is all provided quietly, unless the boys choose to tell their peers, no one would ever know.
N.T. is a very bright young man, who passed the 11+ with one of the best scores of his year and he got the chance that he so richly deserved.
He's starting Uni this autumn, reading Medicine at Cambridge, which rather proves how ridiculous your statement is!

I found this article about Kent grammars schools interesting...

www.localschoolsnetwork.org.uk/2016/06/can-kent-county-council-improve-social-mobility-in-grammar-schools

This statistic is damning and shows that grammar schools don't work for the most disadvantaged:

Just 30% of Kent’s disadvantaged children achieve 5 GCSEs, compared to 37% nationally. In the rest of the country this figure is improving, in Kent it’s got worse three years in a row.

I found this section of the article really interesting...

^*Define exactly what ‘suitable for grammar school’ means*

The lack of science to the Kent Test worries me. GL Assessment who set the test mention there's a 90% confidence interval for their other cognitive reasoning tests, but they do not seem to quote a confidence figure for the eleven-plus exam. (This is hardly surprising, but there must be a figure!)

A grammar school pass uses an overall pass score based on 3 papers (320 was the pass mark last year) but a child will not pass the test if their result in any single paper is below a minimum score (this was 106 last year.) The maximum available score is 420 points. So any child who is a Maths genius might gain a score of 385 (way above the 320 pass mark) but still be judged ‘suitable for high school’ if they were bad at English and so got a score of 105 in that paper. The council publish results data on their website, and we can see some children with scores as high as 379 were judged ‘high school ability’ while children with scores as low as 297 are judged ‘grammar school ability’ due to HTA re-assessment.

I might support the HTA process if this could help my hypothetical maths genius - but a head once told me that children with messy writing are often dismissed by the panel when they look at exercise books. So in Kent this not-very-scientific eleven-plus approach appears to define "suitable for grammar school" as a child who is a good academic all-rounder with neat handwriting! Our grammar schools would be unlikely to accept an amazing poet with average maths ability, or any maths wizard with poor spelling skills; and if our young poet is left handed with messy writing they will definitely need to write an ode to secondary modern life.^

In Kent, where 33% go to grammar schools, the majority of pupils are little more than average. They are not receiving an 'appropriate' education, if grammar schools are supposed to cater for the exceptionally gifted, who probabbly make up 3-4% of a cohort. What is happening is that they are in schools where the least able and worst behaved have been removed. Maybe that's what parents want.

@Granny2016

You just said it yourself - you couldn't afford private school fees and nor can most people, however much they scrimp and save.

The answer is to make sure that EVERY comprehensive is a good school. Rather than concentrating on 20% of the most able and motivated, how about concentrating on the least motivated (and most likely to disrupt)? We used to have such schools, of course, and they were hellholes. I think many older posters possibly forget that these pupils didn't attend mainstream schools until the early 1980s, nor did pupils with severe learning difficulties.

@Granny2016

I'm a bit confused about your Dad's age. The 11+ was introduced after the 1944 Education Act, so your Dad must have been born after 1934.

You then say that you did a degree in the 60s, so you must have been born in the 40s or very early 50s.

Are you sure he did the 11+ or did he do a scholarship exam, which was the system before 1944?

Both my parents went to grammar school. My mother passed and won a scholarship, so her parents didn't have to pay fees. My father passed the entrance exam, but didn't win a scholarship, so his parents paid the fees. It was the latter group who gained from the 1944 Education Act - children who passed the entrance exam, but whose parents would have had to pay fees for them to attend.

The other big group who gained were those pupils who gained a place at a direct grant school. These were independent schools, but had to reserve at least 25% of their places for state-funded pupils, who were selected by the 11+, not the schools' entrance exams.

I was one of those pupils and had the most appropriate education available at the time. However, my children went to a comprehensive and received an education far superior to mine, academically and socially.

Funding is a political and social choice, and the UK trails behind most European countries- it also has a much higher proportion of private schools- one of the main attraction of which is ... small class size.

The problem with private education being an alternative for the most affluent and influent - is that those who do have influence just do no longer fight for the education system- and a great education for all.

Where I live, and where I was born and 'bred' - there are/were NO private schools. All the kids went to the same school- and the affluent/influent 'elites' ensured that the funding and systems benefited the education of their children, AND that of all. It makes a massive difference.

Granjura,
The changeover occurred between myself and younger sister.
She did very well in the comp.It had been a grammar and was bilateral.
We are without state grammars here and I had not realised that there are clusters in some counties.
Classes of 30 are far too large in any school ,but there seems to be little chance of the additional funding required to resolve a widespread and ongoing problem.

The over riding worry for me in the comprehensive system is that it is considered to be an equal educational opportunity for all pupils.
It is not,and intake areas do play a large part.
I moved from a good catchment area to one with social problems because the housing was affordable following a divorce.
I found work teaching part time in a private school.My own daughter asked if she could enrol and I explained that I could not afford the fees.
I was not aware that my 14 year old was truanting as she was being seriously bullied,even in the classroom.
It was revealed to our GP when she lost a dramatic amount of weight.
Thankfully,she was moved to the school in our previous area and was very happy.
Her original school was overwhelmed with problems and bullying was rife.

Re your GS.
I would not criticise any parent who pays for education.Many go without for years to fund it.
At the end of the day,it is ones own children that matters.

btw, I taught in great comprehensives since 1982 (mature student)- and all were very well organised- and with staff that worked so ahrd to ensure all kids acheived their potential- at whatever level. But the greatest handicap to achieving this was class size- and there was nothing we could do about that.

In one school I taught at, which was very popular and with much new building going on- we had to take 30 pupils per class in reception up to the end of June - and by September, with new families moving in- we ended up having 32 to 33 per class. Setting was made very difficult due to this- as described above. All classes were built and furnished for 30 max per class. WE often had to play the numbers' game- and children who would have had the ability to be in set 1, would have to stay in set 2, with knock on effect down the line- as it was physically impossible to put more than 33 in any one class- and yet SEN needed to be in a class of 15 max.

15 being the normal class size here where I live now. Teachers here would go balistic if they had to teach a class of more than 20! (Switzerland).

Granny16- most areas of the UK went comprehensive a very long ago... so the option is not available for most children in the UK. The problem with comprehensives is not the system per se, but lack of funding which create huge class sizes. You don't have to go back to Grammar and Sec Mods to address this. If the GVT forces schools to have intakes of 30 per class- that means that when setting, in order to allow for smaller class size for SN groups- you have to have 33+ in top sets. At our school- we couldn't physically sit the children at desks in some classes - with some students having to sit at the end of desks! Just a question of funding! Same for apprenticeships, etc.

My GS is 10 and lives in an area where the division still exists- and yes, due to poor funding and large class sizes- DD and SIL are paying for him to get private tuition to prepare him for the entrance exams. They both went to good comprehensives, and have done VERY well- they disapprove of the system, but feel they have little choice.

Iam64.

For some years I taught City and Guilds and Open College students.I am very pleased to see that the college now offers an extensive number of apprenticeship courses,they are extremely valuable.

We do not know for sure if the grammar schools will be extended but I feel that it is 'on the cards' for discussion.
As you say,80% of pupils now,do not attend a grammar school.I am pretty sure that most pupils at a comprehensives currently find it quite the acceptable way to be educated,it being the overwhelming majority.Many areas do not have grammar schools.

I could see the problems you mention occurring,if there was to be an extensive number of new grammars ,and the ratio was greatly reduced between the two types of schools.
The cost would be enormous,and there would be much opposition to it from within the profession /unions.
I wonder what current pupils /students think of it?
Many of us commenting were a part of the old system.

Apprenticeships have also changed.
I was talking to someone yesterday whose graduate son was very pleased to have started an apprenticeship in Jaguar Landrover. Most schemes in technical industries require A levels. And they would be looking for science and maths at that.

*Juggernaut8 all history and a bit outdated. If you imagine there are 'all walks of life' in today's grammar schools you are mistaken. And extra tuition is now the norm. No one on a low income will make it no matter how bright, when they are in competition with children who have seen and been coached through past papers.

Jealousy?

I went to a Grammar school, DH was at a Secondary Modern, I went on to further education, whereas DH signed on as an apprentice engineer at 16. He has always earned more than me, so ultimately our differing education means nothing.
Our DS went to a Grammar school, because we live in the catchment area and he passed his 11+. We didn't move to the area because of the school system, in fact we bought our house from DH's parents, they were moving and we were engaged and looking to buy!
DS is still in contact with his friends from infant/junior school who went to the Secondary Mod, they didn't lose touch because of being at different schools.
We also made sure that he never thought of himself as in any way superior because he was a 'Grammar School Boy'!
Our DDiL went to a Comprehensive, but went to the same Uni as our DS, in fact that's how they met.
Our DS was not tutored to pass his 11+, he was always expected to pass anyway, but I believe tutoring to pass the exam is cruel. If the child is tutored and doesn't pass, they may feel as though they're a complete failure, and if they only pass due to being tutored, they may struggle when they actually get to the Grammar school.
If DS hadn't passed the 11+, he'd have gone to the Secondary Mod, better to shine in a Secondary Mod, than struggle to keep up in a Grammar!
Some of the boys our DS was at school with were pompous little a**es, but they can be found anywhere, most of them were just normal kids, sweaty teenaged lads!
There were boys in his year from all walks of life, some of them lived in houses worth well over the million mark, others came from a council estate.
The late, great Harold Wilson was a Grammar school boy, passing the 11+ and being educated at Royds Hall Grammar school in Huddersfield, followed by his sixth form years at Wirral Grammar School for Boys, where he became the school's first Head Boy!
Some people have entirely the wrong idea of Grammar schools, it doesn't matter whether the parents are wealthy or not, it's just a way for bright, gifted and talented kids to get the best education for them, their economic background doesn't, and shouldn't matter!
If we in this country lose our Grammar schools, it will be a tragedy, but I suppose jealousy will always be a part of life. It's not a case of 'have and have nots', it's more a matter of 'I can't have, so nor should you'!

So right Trisher, my grandson was in the top stream for maths age 11, younger granddaughter was in fourth grade , struggling with maths age 11, she worked up the grades and is now sitting A levels maths, if she had sat the 11+ she would have failed because of the problems with maths , elder granddaughter was great at maths age eleven, she too worked through the the grades , has finished her first year in university and last week attended a presentation at her old high school for her outstanding achievements in history . If she had sat the 11+ she too would have failed . Both girls would had their education limited if there had been the 11+. Elder grand daughter received 97% in her end of first year studies in university

Yes trisher, true.

Daphnedill....my dad passed his 11 plus but didn,t go to a grammar school.Grandparents could not afford uniforms and equipment needed and wanted him to go to work earlier.
Dad had a full time manual job,and mum worked a twilight shift. They never had a car and rented the house.
Both parents were extremely keen on our education and we had many books in the house.
I did a degree in the 60,s and my sister in the 70,s....we both had fellow students from working class backgrounds,including my 'husband' whose parents worked in hosiery and car mechanics.

Of course,there were plenty of students from more comfortable backgrounds too, It didn,t feel unequal,but I don,t think we considered it much either.

No one is suggesting that people who went to grammar school aren't sane, just is it the best way of educating children and of course it isn't. Children develop at different rates and have different abilities. Some will excel at all subjects and in a comprehensive system will be in the top stream for everything, some will have particular talents and particular difficulties and will be placed in the relevant stream for these. There is space to progress up if a child develops their skills and down if they require more help. The only way to truly bring about social mobility is to make sure that every child is offered the same opportunities, anything else is discrimination.