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Oct 2015
1:47pm, 15 Oct 2015
3,634 posts
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Doctor K
TMW -it was the Tories who first dispensed with Grammar schools
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Oct 2015
1:56pm, 15 Oct 2015
1,012 posts
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gcwenn
but it was labour who brought in the law to stop any more being opened
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Oct 2015
2:01pm, 15 Oct 2015
206 posts
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Shadowless Formless Legs
Fozzy - didn't you say somewhere that you worked in a University.
You seem to have such strong opinions against selective education that I wonder how you square that with your conscience.
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Oct 2015
2:02pm, 15 Oct 2015
5,400 posts
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Jambomo
But as I asked above, what if you are brilliant in one area and shockingly bad in another? I.e terrific in English or humanities subjects but terrible at Maths and Sciences? Which school do you go to?
If you are at the grammar school will you be out of your depth amongst your more able fellow students? If you are comprehensive school are you going to be bored/wasting your potential?
I just think that at such an early age, categorizing kids into being able and not able might hold them back a bit - i.e if you are applying to uni, will you be refused a place from some institutions because you went to a comprehensive?
With the finite resources that the government will put in, I'm not sure how you can make one school great without the other being harmed to some extent - unless they go down the private route.
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Oct 2015
2:12pm, 15 Oct 2015
11,712 posts
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ChrisHB
Just a flight of fancy here.... if you abolished private schools and scattered the pushy parents and maybe their money around the worst schools, would that be more effective than ofsted at improving them?
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Oct 2015
2:16pm, 15 Oct 2015
651 posts
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Cheg
The selective test is based on English and Maths Jambomo. It's definitely not perfect. The hope is that the kid achieves the required level in both subjects. There is the tendency for kids to specialise in one or the other.
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Oct 2015
2:22pm, 15 Oct 2015
3,635 posts
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Doctor K
It matters not who did what in the past - the current government could easily reintroduce grammar schools if they wanted to -if they thought they could get the matter passed.
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Oct 2015
2:29pm, 15 Oct 2015
7,325 posts
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rf_fozzy
SFL - you can have a "selective" system within a comprehensive system - and that doesn't just mean in academic subjects either.
Higher Education is different. Just like Primary education is different to secondary education. At the moment, most people would argue that selection at primary level is bonkers.
So the way I think it should go is Primary = totally non-selective. Secondary = selective within a school or local area (to some extent - will clarify this below). Higher (including non-university) = selective based on the individual.
What would be possible to do, if schools were allowed and encouraged to be local authority led, rather than bastardised into academies, is to allow pooling of local resources and allowing groups of schools to get together to identify and nurture talent in various disciplines. So, just off the top of my head, NE Leeds Comp schools might get together and on a Friday, rather than Key Stage 4 students working in their own schools, the best at Maths and Sciences might be pooled together to work in another school, the best at languages in another school, those that need a more help/resources or whatever at a different school and so forth.
Not a perfect idea and not complete either, but that's how think schools could begin to work together instead of being isolated units as seen by the government/ofsted.
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Oct 2015
2:31pm, 15 Oct 2015
7,326 posts
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rf_fozzy
And this squares with what I was saying earlier because every child is treated equally with equal opportunities
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Oct 2015
2:43pm, 15 Oct 2015
423 posts
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Tonybv9
Our daughter did the test for our local grammar. The queue for the test went all the way down the street. There was a large proportion of non-white people in the queue, so it's not just for middle class white kids. It's for the parents who care about education.
The competition is so fierce that kids are tutored from age eight or nine to get through the non-verbal reasoning test. I know some teachers at the school, and they say you can spot the kids who've been intensely tutored, because they often struggle with the work.
The Tories should be a bit braver and suggest re-introduction of grammar schools.
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Jul 2024
