Social mobility and grammar schools

Bragging - I hope you won't consider my last post as 'bragging'- what a bizarre comment.

Indeed.

I spent a term on teacher exchange in East Berlin, well Berlin a couple of years after the wall came down- in a Realschule, in the Summer term. Two of the friends of some of the kids in my class, who had made it to the Gymnasium the previous year- were told they couldn't stay as their grades were too low. They climbed to the school roof and jumped- as they felt their lives would be ruined forever. So tragic.

As a child I also lost a school friend who had failed the year and would have to 'redoubler' - he jumped into the river and was sept away.

I really feel this thread should be renamed the bragging thread!

@granjura

Oh yes! I'd forgotten about the Ugandan Asians. My son's best friend comes from a Ugandan Asian family, who originally settled in Leicester. They were highly aspirational and why shouldn't they have been? They had come from wealthy backgrounds and wanted the best for their children. The father of my son's best friend now runs a highly successful independent supermarket chain here in Essex. His daughter went to LSE and works for one of the biggest accountancy firms. His son has an offer from Oxford, which he will almost certainly be able to accept (waiting for A level results).

One of my private pupils comes from a Nigerian family and it's the same story.

Don't let anybody tell me that immigrants haven't brought energy and advantages to the UK!

Perhaps I passed the Scholarship and not the 11+ but it amounted to the same thing. We were about 40 in the junior school class divided into 3 long rows of tables. The top row, the second snd the bottom row.And then that in three classes top middle and bottom.
As I kept my place at the top table in the top class in this working class area, I worked out that I would pass the scholarship. So I was under no stress and even enjoyed it.
Some children suffered the reverse and their lives were scarred by the whole procedure

This has to be considered carefully bfore the grammarschools are brought back.

@MargaretX

I worked for a year as an assistant in a Gymnasium and attended one of the 'Konferenzen' when it was decided which pupils should 'sitzenbleiben' or be advised to go to a Realschule. It was all quite brutal.

As an English assistant, I was much in demand for 'Nachhilfestunden' with more affluent parents who wanted their children to avoid repeating a year.

@Eloethan

Great post. Not surprisingly, I agree with you.

It's also worth mentioning that the 1944 Education Act was designed for a society which no longer exists. At the time, Britain was still a manufacturing country, so it was believed that about 20-25% would go on to white collar/managerial jobs and, therefore, the liberal education provided by the grammar schools was appropriate for them.

The basic 'three Rs' plus a bit of vocational training was considered appropriate for the rest, because employers provided apprenticeships and appropriate vocational training. We also still had a tradition of 'night school' for those who wanted to develop specific work-based skills.

The world has changed. The UK no longer has 80% of its workforce engaged in manufacturing or manual labour (skilled or non-skilled). We don't actually know what current pupils will be doing in 50 or 60 years, but we do need to educate them to be flexible and to use their brains, in a way that secondary mod pupils were never taught to do.

Lillie Yes they still have sitzen bleiben and it is a life saver for boys in middle of puberty. Many famous men have repeated a year and my son in law -a self employed successful economist also put in an extra year

@Juggernaut

I really don't know what my IQ is, but as I won one of 25 places at a direct grant school out of 2000 who took the exam, I don't suppose it's that low.

One thing I did learn at school was how to be lazy. I was lucky enough to be born with whatever intelligence I have and managed to pass exams without making much effort. Having to find a job in the big wide world was all a bit of a shock! I don't think that's much of a recommendation for elitist education, which should be about much more than academic force feeding.

As I've written before, my children were the first in my family not to go to a grammar or independent school. The schools they went to were genuine comprehensives, because there are very few alternative places available in my area and most people (even those who can afford independents) send their children to the local comprehensives.

I don't know my daughter's IQ, although it's probably quite high. Her real strengths are her emotional intelligence and resilience. I know my son's CATs core is over 140, because I was working in the school where the test was administered and saw the result. I don't want to sound like a Mumsnetter and boast about his results, but he'd beat most grammar school and independent school pupils hands down. I'm more worried (but not much) about his social skills, because he's an academic nerd. At least he's had the opportunity at a comprehensive school to meet pupils less intelligent than he is, which would not have happened if he'd been at a grammar school.

Especially as it coincided with the arrival of a large number of Asians expelled by Idi Amin from Uganda- and the children bused to suburban schools so the inner City schools were not 'swamped' - interesting times indeed.

Aha! Interesting! Leicestershire was one of the first authorities to go comprehensive. A friend of my father worked for the LEA at the time and was initially full of doom and gloom about it all. The problem was the pressure from the growing number of middle class parents, who couldn't get places for their children at grammar schools.

There were all sorts of temporary solutions, such as 'grammar school streams' in the secondary mods, but the vocal parents still weren't happy, until somebody came up with the idea of abolishing grammar schools and secondary mods and sending all secondary school children to the same school.

Initially, the grammar school parents were up in arms about having to send their offspring to the same school as the 'great unwashed' but over the years Leicestershire schools started outperforming many others and the experiment was gradually adopted by most counties.

Much of the rationale for selective education is based on a supposed "golden age" when the the educational outcomes for most (though not all) grammar/technical school children were likely to be superior to that of secondary modern pupils.

Secondary modern schools got around one-third of the resources that were allocated to grammars. Grammar schools were much more likely to have spacious, purpose built facilities and larger and better equipped sports and science facilities. The curriculum at secondary modern schools was limited and study at A Level was generally not available. The pay scale for teachers was based on a teacher's qualifications and the number of children in a school at a given age - with more points given for the oldest children. The majority of secondary modern school pupils left school at 15 and so the teacher pay scale in those schools was lower. Therefore, grammar schools tended to attract higher qualified teachers, with specialist degrees.

In the days when selective secondary education was the norm, there were also many anomalies. The availability of grammar school places varied widely according to location and, to some extent, to gender - there were fewer places for girls than boys.

It could therefore be argued that a system that was unequally administered and resourced, aside from being unfair, does not provide very reliable evidence on which to base educational policy.

Even if all these anamolies could be ironed out - and I doubt that they would be - it seems to me that to subject 10 year olds to a process whereby the majority of them will be deemed to be "failures" is one which does have a touch of the "self-fulfilling prophecy" about it.

The rationale for having a selective system is largely based on the idea that certain children are inately more academically able/intelligent. If that is truly the case, why do parents - many of whose children are more likely to benefit from educational advantages that are not available to less well off children - feel it necessary to pay for private coaching to prepare them for the 11+?

In a country that seems to be increasingly divided, is this really the time to resurrect a system that further entrenches division and limits the opportunities and aspirations of the majority of young people?

There's always M&S

oops Jalima (don't know where the 's' came from0

@Jaslima

I've learnt all the home economics, needlework and typing I need for life since leaving school. I'm very glad I didn't waste my time doing any of that stuff at school. Neither of my children did any of it at a comprehensive either.

daphnedill- your post really resonates- my second job was in a school where a Sec Mod and a Grammar S had amalgamated the previous year- with buildings next to each other. The atmosphere was poisonous- the Head and most of the Senior Staff, Heads of Dpt, were appointed from the Grammar side above the ones from the sec mod- despite many of them being much better teachers. I left after one year- it was unbearable- but things did improve with passing years and the older staff retired.

Nothing to do with jealousy or 'begrudging' others spending the money at all. We could have afforded to send our children to independent schools (as there were no Grammar Schools in Leics at all, apart from private) - we CHOSE not to.

Ana
Just a 'quicky' from the kitchen.......All the men amongst our dinner guests are ex colleagues of my DH. They worked shifts together for almost thirty years, so meal times are what they always were, odd
This 'gathering' will break up at about 2-30 a.m. tomorrow!

We didn't do needlework or home economics (which would have been very useful!)

My grammar school (which I hated) focused entirely on academic subjects. No metalwork or woodwork (not that the girls would have been allowed to do them) and only technical drawing for the boys. For the girls there was needlework and home economics (one subject) for which we made a cookery apron with cross stitching embellishment to wear when making biscuits. We must have done more but nothing comes to mind, other than moving round to a different cooker each week (there were eight, all electric) so we could cope with manufacturer's differences . I left school in early 60's when it was still the norm for girls to get a 'little job' before marrying, then having babies and being a housewife. Universities were for the boys or 'bookish' girls - not my sentiments, just how it was then.

The school was founded in 1958 so didn't have decades of tradition and considered itself forward thinking - we covered sexual reproduction by dissecting frogs! 'Rugger' was considered elitist so the boys did football in winter but the girls equivalent was lacrosse

Ana!

Goodness, you have dinner late!

daphnedill
Well, considering that DS, DDiL and I all have IQ scores in the 98th percentile, I don't think we're doing too badly!
My dinner guests are due here in less than fifteen minutes, so we'll just have to agree to disagree on Grammar schools, gifted and talented young people, and IQ tests!

That is 650,000 not needing to be accommodated in our state schools.
That is many thousands of parents paying tax towards the education budget at the same time as paying for their own DC to be educated privately, thus providing more funds for the state education of other people's children.
Nothing to complain about there.

It never ceases to amaze me that they have done well in their chosen fields - despite the school they went to.

daphnedill,

The fees were in the lower order ,certainly not £20,000.It was popular because of its size,ratio of teachers to pupils,and good exam results.There were several wealthy parents,but on the whole fairly average, a few not well off at all.We had a family of pupils from Yugoslavia,whose relatives had been murdered,so fled to the UK.They would not have coped in a large school.Many days their mother kept them home as she was afraid to let them out.
I have had experience of a low income.I pay an agent as well as the tax man and have been responsible for my daughters upbringing over many years.But at no time ever could I have begrudged another parent spending their own money on their own childs education.The fact that I was not able to do the same for mine should make no difference to their choices.
We have free education available to all children here,others have none .
Many progress to Uni ,jobs and further Ed.
Yes,of course there is much room for improvement,but it badly needs funding which is not forthcoming.
According to Wikipeadia ,650,000 children in the UK are independently educated.
That is 650,000 not needing to be accommodated in our state schools.