Some excellent post on the last thread guys. I mean really good.
Re poor Comprehensives in deprived areas I agree, but this is probably a lot more to do with the issues of the area than anything else. The answer certainly isn't going back to Secondary Moderns.
I see @HYUFD is continuing to compare stats on Grammar schools to Comprehensives and ignoring the samples are completely different because the Grammar has selected.
If you lived in a deprived area 50 years ago you could go to a grammar school if intelligent.
Now your only choice would be a comprehensive likely to be a secondary modern in all but name if you do not have wealthy parents who can send you to private school
That doesn't answer the point.
It does. Unless you live in a wealthy suburb or rural area (or go to a comprehensive or academy where admission is based on church attendance) comprehensives are often just renamed secondary moderns effectively.
@MikeSmithson is correct. It doesn't answer the point. As usual you just raise another point and don't address the point raised. It is a moving target.
Re your point on living in a poor area and being able to go to a grammar, this is very naïve. What actually happens is the middle class and well off in surrounding areas get tutored for the test and fill the spaces. The bright kids in the poor areas don't and they still don't get in by and large.
I lived in a relatively poor large village with 2 primary schools. Only one boy got into the boys grammar school and no girls to the girls grammar school. And that boy dropped out. I have no memory of even taking a test let alone getting tutored. After O levels a whole bunch of replaced those that had dropped out. The system is crap at selection and selecting at 11 is far too soon.
There are limits on how much you can tutor for 11+ and 13+ tests which are designed to test raw iq not subject knowledge as such. Indeed very often even a few bright kids from council estates got into grammar schools even without tutors and then onto Oxbridge or other top universities and professional careers. That path is not open to them to the same extent now if they live in a deprived area and just get sent to the local very average, if that, comp.
If you were well off and had a kid who was not so bright and would not pass the 11 or 13+ you could still send them private however and still do. Most wealthy parents did not send their children to secondary moderns and do not send their children to comprehensives and certainly not comprehensives or academies which are any less than Outstanding. So the rich generally don't use comprehensives anyway while the bright but poor no longer have the opportunities grammars provided. Most grammars of course also have entries at sixth form level too
a) You can tutor for IQ tests very easily. Not sure where you got it that it was difficult. There are lots of techniques.
b) In between our posts I have been chopping wood and did a rough mental calculation of how many should have got into the grammar school from my village all other things being equal (I know how many classes there were, the size of them, the fact that our village was a 3 member ward and how many councillors there were in the borough). The answer is about 25. There was 1 and he dropped out. If that doesn't give you an idea of the disparity between poor and middle class areas nothing will.
c) If you think the well off don't send their children to Comprehensives you live in a different world. I live in a well off area now. I am wealthy by most peoples measure as are most of the people I know. Nearly all use the local comprehensive, which I grant you is good, but that is not what you were saying.
d) Moving to a Grammar at sixth form is too late. The damage has been done. Many won't go who should. Many who were at the Grammar who shouldn't have been have dropped out.
Select by subject on an ongoing basis throughout the child's education.
a) You can't. IQ test results are in part based on genetics, they are difficult to tutor for unlike subject knowledge based exams.
b) And all of them would likely have gone to a sink comprehensive otherwise, at least 1 still got to a grammar.
c) If the wealthy send their kids to a comp it will only be an Outstanding comp they have bought their kids admission to by buying a house in its catchment area, meaning there are well above average house prices for that catchment area. You buy a place at an Outstanding comp or academy much like you buy a place at private school effectively or else you go to church more regularly to get a vicar's reference for a top church school.
d) Sixth form entry for A levels and top university is fine for late developers
a) you can - just allowing children to sit a few past papers so they understand how the questions work allows children to know how to answer the questions quicker allowing them more time to concentrate on more difficult questions.
You can understand the format of the questions but it is harder to prepare for the specific questions that will come up as they are logic and reasoning based, not subject knowledge based which are more tests of memory
As someone who has got 3 of 4 children into local grammars and sent the other private, I can confirm HYUFD doesn't know what he's talking about here, as well as constantly missing the point.
Tutoring makes a massive difference to ability to tackle the 11+. You see it all the time with kids that got tutored and then struggle to keep up once they're in.
It may make a marginal difference to borderline candidates but if you have an iq of 130+ you will get into a grammar school with no tutoring at all even if you live on a council estate
@HYUFD as usual you are pontificating with certainty about something on which I am guessing you have no knowledge whatsoever. It has been pointed by many on here how you can tutor for IQ tests / 11+ not least by just practicing papers, but there are many other techniques as well. I have some experience in this (as I am sure do many others on here) as it was a requirement of a development centre of one of the largest computer companies at the time at which I was a manager to take an IQ test and score at least 130. All undergraduates on the milk round had to do so before an interview. I would interview between 20 and 30 undergraduates on the milk round each year so I was very familiar with these test.
I couldn't do anything for someone who is stupid and could probably only add a point or two to a genius, but for a reasonably bright person I could probably get 10 to 20 IQ points added. Here are some ways how:
a) Just get familiar with the tests by practicing loads and getting your timing right (basic exam technique, but not something an 11 year old without tutoring has a clue about).
b) If you get a sequence of numbers and can't see the next number start subtracting each number from the next number. If the sequence doesn't become apparent then do again until it does. This takes just seconds to do and usually results in the answer. I've not seen one on an IQ test that doesn't.
c) Another common question is an arithmetic question which is too hard to do in the time but with an multiple choice answers so estimation is required. Someone with maths knowledge can do this easily, but someone who hasn't can be given about 5 easy tricks to solve these quickly.
d) Similarly a series of shapes at IQ test level is normally fairly straightforward, but again someone without the ability can be given half a dozen things to look out for in advance.
e) If you are given a True or False tests from a short paragraph and can't get it immediately you can convert it into a logical formulae (if you know how) and these tend to be so simple you can do it very quickly. I have to say that is something I find very useful to this day as I struggle to hold a lot of words in my head but can do logical formulae easily.
I could go on.
In response to the other items on your reply to me. You said 'at least one got to the grammar school'. You obviously missed the point that 'he crashed and burned'.
You also say 6th form is ok for late developers. Where did you get that from? It certainly wasn't for me. I missed out on so much. It was worse for others who were good enough but didn't get the chance. Also what about all those who pass the 11+ and then crash and burn because it isn't appropriate?
You cannot tutor for raw IQ tests of logic and reasoning to the same level as you can tutor for subject knowledge tests. In any case a pupil with a high IQ from a council estate would easily pass an IQ test tutored or not, the fact a few average IQ middle class pupils might scrape a pass at 11 pass after being heavily tutored does not make much difference to the former.
As opposed to all pupils crashing and burning at a sink comprehensive, at least grammar schools offered those with high IQs from deprived areas a chance to get on.
Sixth form entry offers a chance for those who are late developers and do well at GCSEs the fact you hated sixth form would probably have applied whichever school you went to
Where on earth did you get the idea that I hated the 6th form grammar school? I didn't I loved it. I also had a very good secondary school prior to that. You seem to read stuff into posts that aren't there. The problem is that by selecting at 11 I missed stuff that was only available at the grammar school and the grammar school boys missed stuff that was only available at the secondary school. Pointless separation and also doesn't allow for streaming by subject properly across all the pupils.
If you don't think you can tutor for the 11+ how do you explain my example from a poor area with only 1 getting into the Grammar school whereas all things being equal it should have been 20 - 25. It is not a few, it is a lot. The idea that you think Grammar schools are not in anyway heavily biased towards well off parents is just bizarre. They are very heavily weighted against poor areas.
Why should it have been 20-25? Unless they all had high IQs. How many of those 20-25 would be high earning professionals if they did not even have a chance of a grammar school but their only choice was a sink school? Likely 0.
Why should it have been 20 - 25? See earlier post. I'm not repeating it. I did the maths.
Only one went to the Grammar school and he crashed and burned (I have said that so many times). We did not have sink schools. My Secondary school was excellent. My Grammar schools was good. I enjoyed it, but I didn't think the teachers were as good bizarrely, but I did well.
But here is the point you keep on missing: Pupils from both schools were failed by the system. I was lucky, but even I missed out on stuff, but the culture was so ingrained that many very bright pupils from the Secondary school just went on to do apprenticeships. Nothing wrong with that but many were capable of so much more. And many at the Grammar school dropped out after O Levels with just one or two who could have benefited from the Secondary school education. All because we decide the fate of a child at 11. Ridiculous.
If you live in a poor area your local school will be more likely to be a sink school.
There is also nothing wrong with apprenticeships, in fact the highest level apprentices earn more on average than most graduates except those from the Russell Group.
Germany for example has selective gymnasiums like our grammars but also high status apprenticeships too
"Hopson said: “I was talking to a [trust] chief executive who said that 40 of the midwives on their midwifery service … were saying they were not prepared to be vaccinated. Those staff, given their skills and their expertise, are not easily redeployed but they’re also extremely difficult to replace.
The trust’s chief executive “is seriously concerned about the safety of the service” because of the potential exodus of midwives.
Maternity staff quitting over compulsory jabs posed a particular challenge because of the NHS-wide shortage of midwives, Hopson said. NHS England estimates that maternity services need 2,000 more whole-time equivalent midwives, while the Royal College of Midwives (RCM) puts the figure at 2,500."
See ya.
So you'd rather have avoidable deaths in childbirth; than tolerate unvaccinated NHS staff?
If they are so selfish that they won't get vaccinated to protect not only themselves but the people they are treating, they can collect their P45s.
And we then lose a load of women and babies in childbirth. I'm happy to issue a fatwa against most people who are unvaccinated by choice. But we do need certain people to keep working.
What should have happened was what other countries have done. A campaign of public shame. Call them out for the selfish cretins they are - many would probably have Trumped and got it reluctantly.
They said this about care workers, it turns out that people need to work for a living so they quietly get vaccinated.
There is a significant difference between a midwife and a care worker...
Sure, but what else are they going to do? It's not as if they can just waltz into a job somewhere else and aiui most of the private sector healthcare companies already have no jab no job mandates.
I agree. My point was in response to Rob wanting to fire them. If it came to it that wouldn't be a good idea.
It would barely be noticeable given the changes in staff levels over the past years. You make it sound like it'd be some sort of armageddon scenario.
As we already have acute shortages of staff in some critical roles in some hospitals, it *could* be armageddon in any given hospital if "just fire them" removes a chunk of the midwifery staff as a glut of women come in. They aren't just standing around doing nothing - they are the literal difference between life and death in some births. You can't have a blanket "fire them" approach.
There's months for them to get vaccinated and I'm sure most of them will as we get closer to the date and it looks like they're out of work. Remember, it's not as if they can simply go and do something else for a living that will pay them as much.
I've just been sent the Raab on GMTV interview as he doggedly lies through his teeth insisting that the Downing Street garden party was a work meeting and allowed by the law.
Great news for people who want the Tories gone if the '22 are to leave Peppa in place until after they get demolished in the locals. We're down to only the most cultist devotees of Peppa believing the excuses. The longer this goes on, the worse it will get. For the Tories. Or they could remove Peppa and No Brain Raab and the rest of them and have a fighting chance of re-election.
The first point is debatable, I'm sure work was being discussed, but on the second point isn't he right? There was a twitter thread a few days ago demonstrating why it wasn't contrary to the regs.
If it is Work then you have a secondary question - why is Carrie in a business meeting with 2 senior Downing Street workers.
Because (a) it isn't a business meeting and (b) they're taking the absolute piss and (c) they still think people are gullible enough to accept any old crap as an excuse.
The problem is that no one has been able to ask 2 questions to get the point over.
Why were you in the Garden - business meeting
Why if it's a business meeting is Carrie there
At which point the cogs should start whirring.
Perhaps because for years people have been moaning about Carrie being involved with the business of government, so her being in a business meeting isn't that odd if we've already been told she is getting involved.
Why do you say "moaning"? Is there any sound constitutional reason for a corrupt manipulative and profoundly stupid thirty something to be involved in government on the basis of who gets to put their penis inside her?
Having read the discussion above; I must conclude that there is a deeply religious fervour about vaccination evident on this website. People believe that vaccination is the solution to the pandemic because they believe in science, and will willingly sacrifice all sorts of freedoms in support of it. Yet they overlook its obvious limitations; namely that the vaccination programme did not deliver what it promised as it did not end the pandemic; it did not prevent new variants from arising; and it does not stop people from catching and spreading the virus. The old political maxim that the masses are easy to herd is turned on its head; it turns out that actually the intellectuals are easy to herd, when it comes to certain policies. This reinforces a belief that I hold strongly, that self appointed experts and university educated people are not necessarily smarter in the end than people with no education who go through life living by their wits.
As the vaccine has smashed down the death rate I think we can call it a success.
As for your latter point, depends on what we are talking about. Is a medic much smarter than Joe Cnut who read on Facebook that actually they're all wrong because actually there is no Covid? Yes - as so many dead anti-vaxxers demonstrates.
Some excellent post on the last thread guys. I mean really good.
Re poor Comprehensives in deprived areas I agree, but this is probably a lot more to do with the issues of the area than anything else. The answer certainly isn't going back to Secondary Moderns.
I see @HYUFD is continuing to compare stats on Grammar schools to Comprehensives and ignoring the samples are completely different because the Grammar has selected.
If you lived in a deprived area 50 years ago you could go to a grammar school if intelligent.
Now your only choice would be a comprehensive likely to be a secondary modern in all but name if you do not have wealthy parents who can send you to private school
That doesn't answer the point.
It does. Unless you live in a wealthy suburb or rural area (or go to a comprehensive or academy where admission is based on church attendance) comprehensives are often just renamed secondary moderns effectively.
@MikeSmithson is correct. It doesn't answer the point. As usual you just raise another point and don't address the point raised. It is a moving target.
Re your point on living in a poor area and being able to go to a grammar, this is very naïve. What actually happens is the middle class and well off in surrounding areas get tutored for the test and fill the spaces. The bright kids in the poor areas don't and they still don't get in by and large.
I lived in a relatively poor large village with 2 primary schools. Only one boy got into the boys grammar school and no girls to the girls grammar school. And that boy dropped out. I have no memory of even taking a test let alone getting tutored. After O levels a whole bunch of replaced those that had dropped out. The system is crap at selection and selecting at 11 is far too soon.
There are limits on how much you can tutor for 11+ and 13+ tests which are designed to test raw iq not subject knowledge as such. Indeed very often even a few bright kids from council estates got into grammar schools even without tutors and then onto Oxbridge or other top universities and professional careers. That path is not open to them to the same extent now if they live in a deprived area and just get sent to the local very average, if that, comp.
If you were well off and had a kid who was not so bright and would not pass the 11 or 13+ you could still send them private however and still do. Most wealthy parents did not send their children to secondary moderns and do not send their children to comprehensives and certainly not comprehensives or academies which are any less than Outstanding. So the rich generally don't use comprehensives anyway while the bright but poor no longer have the opportunities grammars provided. Most grammars of course also have entries at sixth form level too
a) You can tutor for IQ tests very easily. Not sure where you got it that it was difficult. There are lots of techniques.
b) In between our posts I have been chopping wood and did a rough mental calculation of how many should have got into the grammar school from my village all other things being equal (I know how many classes there were, the size of them, the fact that our village was a 3 member ward and how many councillors there were in the borough). The answer is about 25. There was 1 and he dropped out. If that doesn't give you an idea of the disparity between poor and middle class areas nothing will.
c) If you think the well off don't send their children to Comprehensives you live in a different world. I live in a well off area now. I am wealthy by most peoples measure as are most of the people I know. Nearly all use the local comprehensive, which I grant you is good, but that is not what you were saying.
d) Moving to a Grammar at sixth form is too late. The damage has been done. Many won't go who should. Many who were at the Grammar who shouldn't have been have dropped out.
Select by subject on an ongoing basis throughout the child's education.
a) You can't. IQ test results are in part based on genetics, they are difficult to tutor for unlike subject knowledge based exams.
b) And all of them would likely have gone to a sink comprehensive otherwise, at least 1 still got to a grammar.
c) If the wealthy send their kids to a comp it will only be an Outstanding comp they have bought their kids admission to by buying a house in its catchment area, meaning there are well above average house prices for that catchment area. You buy a place at an Outstanding comp or academy much like you buy a place at private school effectively or else you go to church more regularly to get a vicar's reference for a top church school.
d) Sixth form entry for A levels and top university is fine for late developers
a) you can - just allowing children to sit a few past papers so they understand how the questions work allows children to know how to answer the questions quicker allowing them more time to concentrate on more difficult questions.
You can understand the format of the questions but it is harder to prepare for the specific questions that will come up as they are logic and reasoning based, not subject knowledge based which are more tests of memory
As someone who has got 3 of 4 children into local grammars and sent the other private, I can confirm HYUFD doesn't know what he's talking about here, as well as constantly missing the point.
Tutoring makes a massive difference to ability to tackle the 11+. You see it all the time with kids that got tutored and then struggle to keep up once they're in.
It may make a marginal difference to borderline candidates but if you have an iq of 130+ you will get into a grammar school with no tutoring at all even if you live on a council estate
@HYUFD as usual you are pontificating with certainty about something on which I am guessing you have no knowledge whatsoever. It has been pointed by many on here how you can tutor for IQ tests / 11+ not least by just practicing papers, but there are many other techniques as well. I have some experience in this (as I am sure do many others on here) as it was a requirement of a development centre of one of the largest computer companies at the time at which I was a manager to take an IQ test and score at least 130. All undergraduates on the milk round had to do so before an interview. I would interview between 20 and 30 undergraduates on the milk round each year so I was very familiar with these test.
I couldn't do anything for someone who is stupid and could probably only add a point or two to a genius, but for a reasonably bright person I could probably get 10 to 20 IQ points added. Here are some ways how:
a) Just get familiar with the tests by practicing loads and getting your timing right (basic exam technique, but not something an 11 year old without tutoring has a clue about).
b) If you get a sequence of numbers and can't see the next number start subtracting each number from the next number. If the sequence doesn't become apparent then do again until it does. This takes just seconds to do and usually results in the answer. I've not seen one on an IQ test that doesn't.
c) Another common question is an arithmetic question which is too hard to do in the time but with an multiple choice answers so estimation is required. Someone with maths knowledge can do this easily, but someone who hasn't can be given about 5 easy tricks to solve these quickly.
d) Similarly a series of shapes at IQ test level is normally fairly straightforward, but again someone without the ability can be given half a dozen things to look out for in advance.
e) If you are given a True or False tests from a short paragraph and can't get it immediately you can convert it into a logical formulae (if you know how) and these tend to be so simple you can do it very quickly. I have to say that is something I find very useful to this day as I struggle to hold a lot of words in my head but can do logical formulae easily.
I could go on.
In response to the other items on your reply to me. You said 'at least one got to the grammar school'. You obviously missed the point that 'he crashed and burned'.
You also say 6th form is ok for late developers. Where did you get that from? It certainly wasn't for me. I missed out on so much. It was worse for others who were good enough but didn't get the chance. Also what about all those who pass the 11+ and then crash and burn because it isn't appropriate?
You cannot tutor for raw IQ tests of logic and reasoning to the same level as you can tutor for subject knowledge tests. In any case a pupil with a high IQ from a council estate would easily pass an IQ test tutored or not, the fact a few average IQ middle class pupils might scrape a pass at 11 pass after being heavily tutored does not make much difference to the former.
As opposed to all pupils crashing and burning at a sink comprehensive, at least grammar schools offered those with high IQs from deprived areas a chance to get on.
Sixth form entry offers a chance for those who are late developers and do well at GCSEs the fact you hated sixth form would probably have applied whichever school you went to
Where on earth did you get the idea that I hated the 6th form grammar school? I didn't I loved it. I also had a very good secondary school prior to that. You seem to read stuff into posts that aren't there. The problem is that by selecting at 11 I missed stuff that was only available at the grammar school and the grammar school boys missed stuff that was only available at the secondary school. Pointless separation and also doesn't allow for streaming by subject properly across all the pupils.
If you don't think you can tutor for the 11+ how do you explain my example from a poor area with only 1 getting into the Grammar school whereas all things being equal it should have been 20 - 25. It is not a few, it is a lot. The idea that you think Grammar schools are not in anyway heavily biased towards well off parents is just bizarre. They are very heavily weighted against poor areas.
I think from this "You also say 6th form is ok for late developers. Where did you get that from? It certainly wasn't for me.".
If you read the following sentences I wrote it should be clear. That quote is taken out of context although I can see how it can be. The issue is the damage done between years 1 and 5 inclusive. I had no problem with the 6th year itself but the damage done by splitting pupils before that. That is why I challenged 6th form is ok for late developers.
Some excellent post on the last thread guys. I mean really good.
Re poor Comprehensives in deprived areas I agree, but this is probably a lot more to do with the issues of the area than anything else. The answer certainly isn't going back to Secondary Moderns.
I see @HYUFD is continuing to compare stats on Grammar schools to Comprehensives and ignoring the samples are completely different because the Grammar has selected.
If you lived in a deprived area 50 years ago you could go to a grammar school if intelligent.
Now your only choice would be a comprehensive likely to be a secondary modern in all but name if you do not have wealthy parents who can send you to private school
That doesn't answer the point.
It does. Unless you live in a wealthy suburb or rural area (or go to a comprehensive or academy where admission is based on church attendance) comprehensives are often just renamed secondary moderns effectively.
@MikeSmithson is correct. It doesn't answer the point. As usual you just raise another point and don't address the point raised. It is a moving target.
Re your point on living in a poor area and being able to go to a grammar, this is very naïve. What actually happens is the middle class and well off in surrounding areas get tutored for the test and fill the spaces. The bright kids in the poor areas don't and they still don't get in by and large.
I lived in a relatively poor large village with 2 primary schools. Only one boy got into the boys grammar school and no girls to the girls grammar school. And that boy dropped out. I have no memory of even taking a test let alone getting tutored. After O levels a whole bunch of replaced those that had dropped out. The system is crap at selection and selecting at 11 is far too soon.
There are limits on how much you can tutor for 11+ and 13+ tests which are designed to test raw iq not subject knowledge as such. Indeed very often even a few bright kids from council estates got into grammar schools even without tutors and then onto Oxbridge or other top universities and professional careers. That path is not open to them to the same extent now if they live in a deprived area and just get sent to the local very average, if that, comp.
If you were well off and had a kid who was not so bright and would not pass the 11 or 13+ you could still send them private however and still do. Most wealthy parents did not send their children to secondary moderns and do not send their children to comprehensives and certainly not comprehensives or academies which are any less than Outstanding. So the rich generally don't use comprehensives anyway while the bright but poor no longer have the opportunities grammars provided. Most grammars of course also have entries at sixth form level too
a) You can tutor for IQ tests very easily. Not sure where you got it that it was difficult. There are lots of techniques.
b) In between our posts I have been chopping wood and did a rough mental calculation of how many should have got into the grammar school from my village all other things being equal (I know how many classes there were, the size of them, the fact that our village was a 3 member ward and how many councillors there were in the borough). The answer is about 25. There was 1 and he dropped out. If that doesn't give you an idea of the disparity between poor and middle class areas nothing will.
c) If you think the well off don't send their children to Comprehensives you live in a different world. I live in a well off area now. I am wealthy by most peoples measure as are most of the people I know. Nearly all use the local comprehensive, which I grant you is good, but that is not what you were saying.
d) Moving to a Grammar at sixth form is too late. The damage has been done. Many won't go who should. Many who were at the Grammar who shouldn't have been have dropped out.
Select by subject on an ongoing basis throughout the child's education.
a) You can't. IQ test results are in part based on genetics, they are difficult to tutor for unlike subject knowledge based exams.
b) And all of them would likely have gone to a sink comprehensive otherwise, at least 1 still got to a grammar.
c) If the wealthy send their kids to a comp it will only be an Outstanding comp they have bought their kids admission to by buying a house in its catchment area, meaning there are well above average house prices for that catchment area. You buy a place at an Outstanding comp or academy much like you buy a place at private school effectively or else you go to church more regularly to get a vicar's reference for a top church school.
d) Sixth form entry for A levels and top university is fine for late developers
a) you can - just allowing children to sit a few past papers so they understand how the questions work allows children to know how to answer the questions quicker allowing them more time to concentrate on more difficult questions.
You can understand the format of the questions but it is harder to prepare for the specific questions that will come up as they are logic and reasoning based, not subject knowledge based which are more tests of memory
As someone who has got 3 of 4 children into local grammars and sent the other private, I can confirm HYUFD doesn't know what he's talking about here, as well as constantly missing the point.
Tutoring makes a massive difference to ability to tackle the 11+. You see it all the time with kids that got tutored and then struggle to keep up once they're in.
It may make a marginal difference to borderline candidates but if you have an iq of 130+ you will get into a grammar school with no tutoring at all even if you live on a council estate
@HYUFD as usual you are pontificating with certainty about something on which I am guessing you have no knowledge whatsoever. It has been pointed by many on here how you can tutor for IQ tests / 11+ not least by just practicing papers, but there are many other techniques as well. I have some experience in this (as I am sure do many others on here) as it was a requirement of a development centre of one of the largest computer companies at the time at which I was a manager to take an IQ test and score at least 130. All undergraduates on the milk round had to do so before an interview. I would interview between 20 and 30 undergraduates on the milk round each year so I was very familiar with these test.
I couldn't do anything for someone who is stupid and could probably only add a point or two to a genius, but for a reasonably bright person I could probably get 10 to 20 IQ points added. Here are some ways how:
a) Just get familiar with the tests by practicing loads and getting your timing right (basic exam technique, but not something an 11 year old without tutoring has a clue about).
b) If you get a sequence of numbers and can't see the next number start subtracting each number from the next number. If the sequence doesn't become apparent then do again until it does. This takes just seconds to do and usually results in the answer. I've not seen one on an IQ test that doesn't.
c) Another common question is an arithmetic question which is too hard to do in the time but with an multiple choice answers so estimation is required. Someone with maths knowledge can do this easily, but someone who hasn't can be given about 5 easy tricks to solve these quickly.
d) Similarly a series of shapes at IQ test level is normally fairly straightforward, but again someone without the ability can be given half a dozen things to look out for in advance.
e) If you are given a True or False tests from a short paragraph and can't get it immediately you can convert it into a logical formulae (if you know how) and these tend to be so simple you can do it very quickly. I have to say that is something I find very useful to this day as I struggle to hold a lot of words in my head but can do logical formulae easily.
I could go on.
In response to the other items on your reply to me. You said 'at least one got to the grammar school'. You obviously missed the point that 'he crashed and burned'.
You also say 6th form is ok for late developers. Where did you get that from? It certainly wasn't for me. I missed out on so much. It was worse for others who were good enough but didn't get the chance. Also what about all those who pass the 11+ and then crash and burn because it isn't appropriate?
You cannot tutor for raw IQ tests of logic and reasoning to the same level as you can tutor for subject knowledge tests. In any case a pupil with a high IQ from a council estate would easily pass an IQ test tutored or not, the fact a few average IQ middle class pupils might scrape a pass at 11 pass after being heavily tutored does not make much difference to the former.
As opposed to all pupils crashing and burning at a sink comprehensive, at least grammar schools offered those with high IQs from deprived areas a chance to get on.
Sixth form entry offers a chance for those who are late developers and do well at GCSEs the fact you hated sixth form would probably have applied whichever school you went to
Where on earth did you get the idea that I hated the 6th form grammar school? I didn't I loved it. I also had a very good secondary school prior to that. You seem to read stuff into posts that aren't there. The problem is that by selecting at 11 I missed stuff that was only available at the grammar school and the grammar school boys missed stuff that was only available at the secondary school. Pointless separation and also doesn't allow for streaming by subject properly across all the pupils.
If you don't think you can tutor for the 11+ how do you explain my example from a poor area with only 1 getting into the Grammar school whereas all things being equal it should have been 20 - 25. It is not a few, it is a lot. The idea that you think Grammar schools are not in anyway heavily biased towards well off parents is just bizarre. They are very heavily weighted against poor areas.
Why should it have been 20-25? Unless they all had high IQs. How many of those 20-25 would be high earning professionals if they did not even have a chance of a grammar school but their only choice was a sink school? Likely 0.
Why should it have been 20 - 25? See earlier post. I'm not repeating it. I did the maths.
Only one went to the Grammar school and he crashed and burned (I have said that so many times). We did not have sink schools. My Secondary school was excellent. My Grammar schools was good. I enjoyed it, but I didn't think the teachers were as good bizarrely, but I did well.
But here is the point you keep on missing: Pupils from both schools were failed by the system. I was lucky, but even I missed out on stuff, but the culture was so ingrained that many very bright pupils from the Secondary school just went on to do apprenticeships. Nothing wrong with that but many were capable of so much more. And many at the Grammar school dropped out after O Levels with just one or two who could have benefited from the Secondary school education. All because we decide the fate of a child at 11. Ridiculous.
If you live in a poor area your local school will be more likely to be a sink school.
There is also nothing wrong with apprenticeships, in fact the highest level apprentices earn more on average than most graduates except those from the Russell Group.
Germany for example has selective gymnasiums like our grammars but also high status apprenticeships too
It was a Conservative administration which largely destroyed apprenticeships some years ago now. I remember how shocked my father was at the devastation (he worked in a relevant field).
Some excellent post on the last thread guys. I mean really good.
Re poor Comprehensives in deprived areas I agree, but this is probably a lot more to do with the issues of the area than anything else. The answer certainly isn't going back to Secondary Moderns.
I see @HYUFD is continuing to compare stats on Grammar schools to Comprehensives and ignoring the samples are completely different because the Grammar has selected.
If you lived in a deprived area 50 years ago you could go to a grammar school if intelligent.
Now your only choice would be a comprehensive likely to be a secondary modern in all but name if you do not have wealthy parents who can send you to private school
That doesn't answer the point.
It does. Unless you live in a wealthy suburb or rural area (or go to a comprehensive or academy where admission is based on church attendance) comprehensives are often just renamed secondary moderns effectively.
@MikeSmithson is correct. It doesn't answer the point. As usual you just raise another point and don't address the point raised. It is a moving target.
Re your point on living in a poor area and being able to go to a grammar, this is very naïve. What actually happens is the middle class and well off in surrounding areas get tutored for the test and fill the spaces. The bright kids in the poor areas don't and they still don't get in by and large.
I lived in a relatively poor large village with 2 primary schools. Only one boy got into the boys grammar school and no girls to the girls grammar school. And that boy dropped out. I have no memory of even taking a test let alone getting tutored. After O levels a whole bunch of replaced those that had dropped out. The system is crap at selection and selecting at 11 is far too soon.
There are limits on how much you can tutor for 11+ and 13+ tests which are designed to test raw iq not subject knowledge as such. Indeed very often even a few bright kids from council estates got into grammar schools even without tutors and then onto Oxbridge or other top universities and professional careers. That path is not open to them to the same extent now if they live in a deprived area and just get sent to the local very average, if that, comp.
If you were well off and had a kid who was not so bright and would not pass the 11 or 13+ you could still send them private however and still do. Most wealthy parents did not send their children to secondary moderns and do not send their children to comprehensives and certainly not comprehensives or academies which are any less than Outstanding. So the rich generally don't use comprehensives anyway while the bright but poor no longer have the opportunities grammars provided. Most grammars of course also have entries at sixth form level too
a) You can tutor for IQ tests very easily. Not sure where you got it that it was difficult. There are lots of techniques.
b) In between our posts I have been chopping wood and did a rough mental calculation of how many should have got into the grammar school from my village all other things being equal (I know how many classes there were, the size of them, the fact that our village was a 3 member ward and how many councillors there were in the borough). The answer is about 25. There was 1 and he dropped out. If that doesn't give you an idea of the disparity between poor and middle class areas nothing will.
c) If you think the well off don't send their children to Comprehensives you live in a different world. I live in a well off area now. I am wealthy by most peoples measure as are most of the people I know. Nearly all use the local comprehensive, which I grant you is good, but that is not what you were saying.
d) Moving to a Grammar at sixth form is too late. The damage has been done. Many won't go who should. Many who were at the Grammar who shouldn't have been have dropped out.
Select by subject on an ongoing basis throughout the child's education.
a) You can't. IQ test results are in part based on genetics, they are difficult to tutor for unlike subject knowledge based exams.
b) And all of them would likely have gone to a sink comprehensive otherwise, at least 1 still got to a grammar.
c) If the wealthy send their kids to a comp it will only be an Outstanding comp they have bought their kids admission to by buying a house in its catchment area, meaning there are well above average house prices for that catchment area. You buy a place at an Outstanding comp or academy much like you buy a place at private school effectively or else you go to church more regularly to get a vicar's reference for a top church school.
d) Sixth form entry for A levels and top university is fine for late developers
a) you can - just allowing children to sit a few past papers so they understand how the questions work allows children to know how to answer the questions quicker allowing them more time to concentrate on more difficult questions.
You can understand the format of the questions but it is harder to prepare for the specific questions that will come up as they are logic and reasoning based, not subject knowledge based which are more tests of memory
As someone who has got 3 of 4 children into local grammars and sent the other private, I can confirm HYUFD doesn't know what he's talking about here, as well as constantly missing the point.
Tutoring makes a massive difference to ability to tackle the 11+. You see it all the time with kids that got tutored and then struggle to keep up once they're in.
It may make a marginal difference to borderline candidates but if you have an iq of 130+ you will get into a grammar school with no tutoring at all even if you live on a council estate
@HYUFD as usual you are pontificating with certainty about something on which I am guessing you have no knowledge whatsoever. It has been pointed by many on here how you can tutor for IQ tests / 11+ not least by just practicing papers, but there are many other techniques as well. I have some experience in this (as I am sure do many others on here) as it was a requirement of a development centre of one of the largest computer companies at the time at which I was a manager to take an IQ test and score at least 130. All undergraduates on the milk round had to do so before an interview. I would interview between 20 and 30 undergraduates on the milk round each year so I was very familiar with these test.
I couldn't do anything for someone who is stupid and could probably only add a point or two to a genius, but for a reasonably bright person I could probably get 10 to 20 IQ points added. Here are some ways how:
a) Just get familiar with the tests by practicing loads and getting your timing right (basic exam technique, but not something an 11 year old without tutoring has a clue about).
b) If you get a sequence of numbers and can't see the next number start subtracting each number from the next number. If the sequence doesn't become apparent then do again until it does. This takes just seconds to do and usually results in the answer. I've not seen one on an IQ test that doesn't.
c) Another common question is an arithmetic question which is too hard to do in the time but with an multiple choice answers so estimation is required. Someone with maths knowledge can do this easily, but someone who hasn't can be given about 5 easy tricks to solve these quickly.
d) Similarly a series of shapes at IQ test level is normally fairly straightforward, but again someone without the ability can be given half a dozen things to look out for in advance.
e) If you are given a True or False tests from a short paragraph and can't get it immediately you can convert it into a logical formulae (if you know how) and these tend to be so simple you can do it very quickly. I have to say that is something I find very useful to this day as I struggle to hold a lot of words in my head but can do logical formulae easily.
I could go on.
In response to the other items on your reply to me. You said 'at least one got to the grammar school'. You obviously missed the point that 'he crashed and burned'.
You also say 6th form is ok for late developers. Where did you get that from? It certainly wasn't for me. I missed out on so much. It was worse for others who were good enough but didn't get the chance. Also what about all those who pass the 11+ and then crash and burn because it isn't appropriate?
You cannot tutor for raw IQ tests of logic and reasoning to the same level as you can tutor for subject knowledge tests. In any case a pupil with a high IQ from a council estate would easily pass an IQ test tutored or not, the fact a few average IQ middle class pupils might scrape a pass at 11 pass after being heavily tutored does not make much difference to the former.
As opposed to all pupils crashing and burning at a sink comprehensive, at least grammar schools offered those with high IQs from deprived areas a chance to get on.
Sixth form entry offers a chance for those who are late developers and do well at GCSEs the fact you hated sixth form would probably have applied whichever school you went to
Where on earth did you get the idea that I hated the 6th form grammar school? I didn't I loved it. I also had a very good secondary school prior to that. You seem to read stuff into posts that aren't there. The problem is that by selecting at 11 I missed stuff that was only available at the grammar school and the grammar school boys missed stuff that was only available at the secondary school. Pointless separation and also doesn't allow for streaming by subject properly across all the pupils.
If you don't think you can tutor for the 11+ how do you explain my example from a poor area with only 1 getting into the Grammar school whereas all things being equal it should have been 20 - 25. It is not a few, it is a lot. The idea that you think Grammar schools are not in anyway heavily biased towards well off parents is just bizarre. They are very heavily weighted against poor areas.
Why should it have been 20-25? Unless they all had high IQs. How many of those 20-25 would be high earning professionals if they did not even have a chance of a grammar school but their only choice was a sink school? Likely 0.
Why should it have been 20 - 25? See earlier post. I'm not repeating it. I did the maths.
Only one went to the Grammar school and he crashed and burned (I have said that so many times). We did not have sink schools. My Secondary school was excellent. My Grammar schools was good. I enjoyed it, but I didn't think the teachers were as good bizarrely, but I did well.
But here is the point you keep on missing: Pupils from both schools were failed by the system. I was lucky, but even I missed out on stuff, but the culture was so ingrained that many very bright pupils from the Secondary school just went on to do apprenticeships. Nothing wrong with that but many were capable of so much more. And many at the Grammar school dropped out after O Levels with just one or two who could have benefited from the Secondary school education. All because we decide the fate of a child at 11. Ridiculous.
If you live in a poor area your local school will be more likely to be a sink school.
There is also nothing wrong with apprenticeships, in fact the highest level apprentices earn more on average than most graduates except those from the Russell Group.
Germany for example has selective gymnasiums like our grammars but also high status apprenticeships too
It was a Conservative administration which largely destroyed apprenticeships some years ago now. I remember how shocked my father was at the devastation (he worked in a relevant field).
There are a lot of apprenticeships that are harder to get into than Oxford. The Microsoft and EY ones are definitely better than going to uni and pay well from day zero (although Civil service Grade 6 Apprenticeships pay more and more than most 1st graduate jobs)
Having read the discussion above; I must conclude that there is a deeply religious fervour about vaccination evident on this website. People believe that vaccination is the solution to the pandemic because they believe in science, and will willingly sacrifice all sorts of freedoms in support of it. Yet they overlook its obvious limitations; namely that the vaccination programme did not deliver what it promised as it did not end the pandemic; it did not prevent new variants from arising; and it does not stop people from catching and spreading the virus. The old political maxim that the masses are easy to herd is turned on its head; it turns out that actually the intellectuals are easy to herd, when it comes to certain policies. This reinforces a belief that I hold strongly, that self appointed experts and university educated people are not necessarily smarter in the end than people with no education who go through life living by their wits.
The vaccination program didn't promise any of those things.
"Hopson said: “I was talking to a [trust] chief executive who said that 40 of the midwives on their midwifery service … were saying they were not prepared to be vaccinated. Those staff, given their skills and their expertise, are not easily redeployed but they’re also extremely difficult to replace.
The trust’s chief executive “is seriously concerned about the safety of the service” because of the potential exodus of midwives.
Maternity staff quitting over compulsory jabs posed a particular challenge because of the NHS-wide shortage of midwives, Hopson said. NHS England estimates that maternity services need 2,000 more whole-time equivalent midwives, while the Royal College of Midwives (RCM) puts the figure at 2,500."
See ya.
So you'd rather have avoidable deaths in childbirth; than tolerate unvaccinated NHS staff?
If they are so selfish that they won't get vaccinated to protect not only themselves but the people they are treating, they can collect their P45s.
And we then lose a load of women and babies in childbirth. I'm happy to issue a fatwa against most people who are unvaccinated by choice. But we do need certain people to keep working.
What should have happened was what other countries have done. A campaign of public shame. Call them out for the selfish cretins they are - many would probably have Trumped and got it reluctantly.
They said this about care workers, it turns out that people need to work for a living so they quietly get vaccinated.
There is a significant difference between a midwife and a care worker...
Sure, but what else are they going to do? It's not as if they can just waltz into a job somewhere else and aiui most of the private sector healthcare companies already have no jab no job mandates.
I agree. My point was in response to Rob wanting to fire them. If it came to it that wouldn't be a good idea.
It would barely be noticeable given the changes in staff levels over the past years. You make it sound like it'd be some sort of armageddon scenario.
As we already have acute shortages of staff in some critical roles in some hospitals, it *could* be armageddon in any given hospital if "just fire them" removes a chunk of the midwifery staff as a glut of women come in. They aren't just standing around doing nothing - they are the literal difference between life and death in some births. You can't have a blanket "fire them" approach.
There's months for them to get vaccinated and I'm sure most of them will as we get closer to the date and it looks like they're out of work. Remember, it's not as if they can simply go and do something else for a living that will pay them as much.
Cuts both ways. Takes 2 years to train a midwife.
And if they did lose a hundred or so that wouldn't get vaccinated they'd be down to levels not seen since... oh, earlier this year.
You cannot tutor for raw IQ tests of logic and reasoning to the same level as you can tutor for subject knowledge tests. In any case a pupil with a high IQ from a council estate would easily pass an IQ test tutored or not, the fact a few average IQ middle class pupils might scrape a pass at 11 pass after being heavily tutored does not make much difference to the former.
As opposed to all pupils crashing and burning at a sink comprehensive, at least grammar schools offered those with high IQs from deprived areas a chance to get on.
Sixth form entry offers a chance for those who are late developers and do well at GCSEs the fact you hated sixth form would probably have applied whichever school you went to
That's completely and demonstrably false. IQ tests are a learnable skill like any other academic skill.
Nope, over half of IQ is determined by genetics and cannot be learnt
I'm not sure that's true. There's lots of evidence that one can get better and better at IQ tests by learning the patterns inherent in them.
That doesn't mean you're more intelligent - it means you're better at getting good scores on IQ tests.
Which reflects latest research demonstrating how the brain re-wires itself to get better at whatever it spends time doing, more quickly and more dramatically than has previously been thought. If you are blindfolded, it is now believed that your brain will start reallocating connections to improve your hearing and other senses within hours, and there’s even a theory that the purpose of dreams is to keep the visual part of your brain ticking over during the night, without which our eyesight wouldn’t get the neural priority it needs.
Similarly for anything new that you learn - eventually your brain rewires so that the basic thinking it requires becomes ‘hard wired’, requiring less conscious effort and attention.
Some excellent post on the last thread guys. I mean really good.
Re poor Comprehensives in deprived areas I agree, but this is probably a lot more to do with the issues of the area than anything else. The answer certainly isn't going back to Secondary Moderns.
I see @HYUFD is continuing to compare stats on Grammar schools to Comprehensives and ignoring the samples are completely different because the Grammar has selected.
If you lived in a deprived area 50 years ago you could go to a grammar school if intelligent.
Now your only choice would be a comprehensive likely to be a secondary modern in all but name if you do not have wealthy parents who can send you to private school
That doesn't answer the point.
It does. Unless you live in a wealthy suburb or rural area (or go to a comprehensive or academy where admission is based on church attendance) comprehensives are often just renamed secondary moderns effectively.
@MikeSmithson is correct. It doesn't answer the point. As usual you just raise another point and don't address the point raised. It is a moving target.
Re your point on living in a poor area and being able to go to a grammar, this is very naïve. What actually happens is the middle class and well off in surrounding areas get tutored for the test and fill the spaces. The bright kids in the poor areas don't and they still don't get in by and large.
I lived in a relatively poor large village with 2 primary schools. Only one boy got into the boys grammar school and no girls to the girls grammar school. And that boy dropped out. I have no memory of even taking a test let alone getting tutored. After O levels a whole bunch of replaced those that had dropped out. The system is crap at selection and selecting at 11 is far too soon.
There are limits on how much you can tutor for 11+ and 13+ tests which are designed to test raw iq not subject knowledge as such. Indeed very often even a few bright kids from council estates got into grammar schools even without tutors and then onto Oxbridge or other top universities and professional careers. That path is not open to them to the same extent now if they live in a deprived area and just get sent to the local very average, if that, comp.
If you were well off and had a kid who was not so bright and would not pass the 11 or 13+ you could still send them private however and still do. Most wealthy parents did not send their children to secondary moderns and do not send their children to comprehensives and certainly not comprehensives or academies which are any less than Outstanding. So the rich generally don't use comprehensives anyway while the bright but poor no longer have the opportunities grammars provided. Most grammars of course also have entries at sixth form level too
a) You can tutor for IQ tests very easily. Not sure where you got it that it was difficult. There are lots of techniques.
b) In between our posts I have been chopping wood and did a rough mental calculation of how many should have got into the grammar school from my village all other things being equal (I know how many classes there were, the size of them, the fact that our village was a 3 member ward and how many councillors there were in the borough). The answer is about 25. There was 1 and he dropped out. If that doesn't give you an idea of the disparity between poor and middle class areas nothing will.
c) If you think the well off don't send their children to Comprehensives you live in a different world. I live in a well off area now. I am wealthy by most peoples measure as are most of the people I know. Nearly all use the local comprehensive, which I grant you is good, but that is not what you were saying.
d) Moving to a Grammar at sixth form is too late. The damage has been done. Many won't go who should. Many who were at the Grammar who shouldn't have been have dropped out.
Select by subject on an ongoing basis throughout the child's education.
a) You can't. IQ test results are in part based on genetics, they are difficult to tutor for unlike subject knowledge based exams.
b) And all of them would likely have gone to a sink comprehensive otherwise, at least 1 still got to a grammar.
c) If the wealthy send their kids to a comp it will only be an Outstanding comp they have bought their kids admission to by buying a house in its catchment area, meaning there are well above average house prices for that catchment area. You buy a place at an Outstanding comp or academy much like you buy a place at private school effectively or else you go to church more regularly to get a vicar's reference for a top church school.
d) Sixth form entry for A levels and top university is fine for late developers
a) you can - just allowing children to sit a few past papers so they understand how the questions work allows children to know how to answer the questions quicker allowing them more time to concentrate on more difficult questions.
You can understand the format of the questions but it is harder to prepare for the specific questions that will come up as they are logic and reasoning based, not subject knowledge based which are more tests of memory
As someone who has got 3 of 4 children into local grammars and sent the other private, I can confirm HYUFD doesn't know what he's talking about here, as well as constantly missing the point.
Tutoring makes a massive difference to ability to tackle the 11+. You see it all the time with kids that got tutored and then struggle to keep up once they're in.
It may make a marginal difference to borderline candidates but if you have an iq of 130+ you will get into a grammar school with no tutoring at all even if you live on a council estate
@HYUFD as usual you are pontificating with certainty about something on which I am guessing you have no knowledge whatsoever. It has been pointed by many on here how you can tutor for IQ tests / 11+ not least by just practicing papers, but there are many other techniques as well. I have some experience in this (as I am sure do many others on here) as it was a requirement of a development centre of one of the largest computer companies at the time at which I was a manager to take an IQ test and score at least 130. All undergraduates on the milk round had to do so before an interview. I would interview between 20 and 30 undergraduates on the milk round each year so I was very familiar with these test.
I couldn't do anything for someone who is stupid and could probably only add a point or two to a genius, but for a reasonably bright person I could probably get 10 to 20 IQ points added. Here are some ways how:
a) Just get familiar with the tests by practicing loads and getting your timing right (basic exam technique, but not something an 11 year old without tutoring has a clue about).
b) If you get a sequence of numbers and can't see the next number start subtracting each number from the next number. If the sequence doesn't become apparent then do again until it does. This takes just seconds to do and usually results in the answer. I've not seen one on an IQ test that doesn't.
c) Another common question is an arithmetic question which is too hard to do in the time but with an multiple choice answers so estimation is required. Someone with maths knowledge can do this easily, but someone who hasn't can be given about 5 easy tricks to solve these quickly.
d) Similarly a series of shapes at IQ test level is normally fairly straightforward, but again someone without the ability can be given half a dozen things to look out for in advance.
e) If you are given a True or False tests from a short paragraph and can't get it immediately you can convert it into a logical formulae (if you know how) and these tend to be so simple you can do it very quickly. I have to say that is something I find very useful to this day as I struggle to hold a lot of words in my head but can do logical formulae easily.
I could go on.
In response to the other items on your reply to me. You said 'at least one got to the grammar school'. You obviously missed the point that 'he crashed and burned'.
You also say 6th form is ok for late developers. Where did you get that from? It certainly wasn't for me. I missed out on so much. It was worse for others who were good enough but didn't get the chance. Also what about all those who pass the 11+ and then crash and burn because it isn't appropriate?
You cannot tutor for raw IQ tests of logic and reasoning to the same level as you can tutor for subject knowledge tests. In any case a pupil with a high IQ from a council estate would easily pass an IQ test tutored or not, the fact a few average IQ middle class pupils might scrape a pass at 11 pass after being heavily tutored does not make much difference to the former.
As opposed to all pupils crashing and burning at a sink comprehensive, at least grammar schools offered those with high IQs from deprived areas a chance to get on.
Sixth form entry offers a chance for those who are late developers and do well at GCSEs the fact you hated sixth form would probably have applied whichever school you went to
Where on earth did you get the idea that I hated the 6th form grammar school? I didn't I loved it. I also had a very good secondary school prior to that. You seem to read stuff into posts that aren't there. The problem is that by selecting at 11 I missed stuff that was only available at the grammar school and the grammar school boys missed stuff that was only available at the secondary school. Pointless separation and also doesn't allow for streaming by subject properly across all the pupils.
If you don't think you can tutor for the 11+ how do you explain my example from a poor area with only 1 getting into the Grammar school whereas all things being equal it should have been 20 - 25. It is not a few, it is a lot. The idea that you think Grammar schools are not in anyway heavily biased towards well off parents is just bizarre. They are very heavily weighted against poor areas.
Why should it have been 20-25? Unless they all had high IQs. How many of those 20-25 would be high earning professionals if they did not even have a chance of a grammar school but their only choice was a sink school? Likely 0.
Why should it have been 20 - 25? See earlier post. I'm not repeating it. I did the maths.
Only one went to the Grammar school and he crashed and burned (I have said that so many times). We did not have sink schools. My Secondary school was excellent. My Grammar schools was good. I enjoyed it, but I didn't think the teachers were as good bizarrely, but I did well.
But here is the point you keep on missing: Pupils from both schools were failed by the system. I was lucky, but even I missed out on stuff, but the culture was so ingrained that many very bright pupils from the Secondary school just went on to do apprenticeships. Nothing wrong with that but many were capable of so much more. And many at the Grammar school dropped out after O Levels with just one or two who could have benefited from the Secondary school education. All because we decide the fate of a child at 11. Ridiculous.
If you live in a poor area your local school will be more likely to be a sink school.
There is also nothing wrong with apprenticeships, in fact the highest level apprentices earn more on average than most graduates except those from the Russell Group.
Germany for example has selective gymnasiums like our grammars but also high status apprenticeships too
It was a Conservative administration which largely destroyed apprenticeships some years ago now. I remember how shocked my father was at the devastation (he worked in a relevant field).
There are a lot of apprenticeships that are harder to get into than Oxford. The Microsoft and EY ones are definitely better than going to uni and pay well from day zero (although Civil service Grade 6 Apprenticeships pay more than most graduate jobs)
I was actually thinking of the more general industry ones in, it must be, the Thatcher and Major years - though it is good to see apprenticeships making a comeback these days.
Isn't getting 500 fans at most Scottish football matches an aspiration rather than a limit.......
Oh how we laughed
Glad you can laugh at the state of Scottish football.
What you blethering about , are you a resident of St Kilda.
The standard of Scottish football is utterly terrible. Even the big teams like Rangers and Celtic aren't competitive in Europe. Look at nobodies they get beat by in European competitions, nor are any really top class players interested in going there.
Long gone are the days when they were a formidable force against other European teams.
A bit over the top methinks. Sounds like a typical southerner viewpoint who think the EPL is great , wheras in reality it is pish apart from the small amount of teams owned by shiek's or Russian's. Rangers have qualified in Europe and have lost only about 2 games out of last 20 or so. Much better to see local players etc rather than expensive highly paid pirates who don't give a crap other than their 200K a year. At least in Scotland it is still a Scottish league unlike EPL which is full of imports. Methinks you dost protest too much.
More to the point ... it wasn't like this in the 1960s.
Celtic & Rangers were comparable (maybe better than) the best of the English league. The Scotland football team regular beat the England one.
The Scottish FA have seriously under-performed for 4 decades.
Four decades ago, the Scottish FA were interested in all of Scottish football, including the international team. Since they only became interested in Rangers and Celtic, Scottish football has deteriorated significantly.
You cannot tutor for raw IQ tests of logic and reasoning to the same level as you can tutor for subject knowledge tests. In any case a pupil with a high IQ from a council estate would easily pass an IQ test tutored or not, the fact a few average IQ middle class pupils might scrape a pass at 11 pass after being heavily tutored does not make much difference to the former.
As opposed to all pupils crashing and burning at a sink comprehensive, at least grammar schools offered those with high IQs from deprived areas a chance to get on.
Sixth form entry offers a chance for those who are late developers and do well at GCSEs the fact you hated sixth form would probably have applied whichever school you went to
That's completely and demonstrably false. IQ tests are a learnable skill like any other academic skill.
Nope, over half of IQ is determined by genetics and cannot be learnt
I'm not sure that's true. There's lots of evidence that one can get better and better at IQ tests by learning the patterns inherent in them.
That doesn't mean you're more intelligent - it means you're better at getting good scores on IQ tests.
My dad coached someone to a ten point increase in their IQ test. The second score came back with a note saying the result was going to be ignored as it was impossible to have a 10 point increase.
And of course, even if you believe HYUFDs citation (and twin studies are notoriously unreliable die to failures to control for numerous factors) there is all the percentage that is not inherited still to play for.
IQ tests are not magic, they are clearly teachable.
Absolutely rammed, car park one in one out. And without question the worst mask observance I have seen there in 2021.
The chances of new household restrictions being widely observed are nil. New restrictions now will do nothing but cause economic damage, without impacting R to any noticeable degree.
Some excellent post on the last thread guys. I mean really good.
Re poor Comprehensives in deprived areas I agree, but this is probably a lot more to do with the issues of the area than anything else. The answer certainly isn't going back to Secondary Moderns.
I see @HYUFD is continuing to compare stats on Grammar schools to Comprehensives and ignoring the samples are completely different because the Grammar has selected.
If you lived in a deprived area 50 years ago you could go to a grammar school if intelligent.
Now your only choice would be a comprehensive likely to be a secondary modern in all but name if you do not have wealthy parents who can send you to private school
That doesn't answer the point.
It does. Unless you live in a wealthy suburb or rural area (or go to a comprehensive or academy where admission is based on church attendance) comprehensives are often just renamed secondary moderns effectively.
@MikeSmithson is correct. It doesn't answer the point. As usual you just raise another point and don't address the point raised. It is a moving target.
Re your point on living in a poor area and being able to go to a grammar, this is very naïve. What actually happens is the middle class and well off in surrounding areas get tutored for the test and fill the spaces. The bright kids in the poor areas don't and they still don't get in by and large.
I lived in a relatively poor large village with 2 primary schools. Only one boy got into the boys grammar school and no girls to the girls grammar school. And that boy dropped out. I have no memory of even taking a test let alone getting tutored. After O levels a whole bunch of replaced those that had dropped out. The system is crap at selection and selecting at 11 is far too soon.
There are limits on how much you can tutor for 11+ and 13+ tests which are designed to test raw iq not subject knowledge as such. Indeed very often even a few bright kids from council estates got into grammar schools even without tutors and then onto Oxbridge or other top universities and professional careers. That path is not open to them to the same extent now if they live in a deprived area and just get sent to the local very average, if that, comp.
If you were well off and had a kid who was not so bright and would not pass the 11 or 13+ you could still send them private however and still do. Most wealthy parents did not send their children to secondary moderns and do not send their children to comprehensives and certainly not comprehensives or academies which are any less than Outstanding. So the rich generally don't use comprehensives anyway while the bright but poor no longer have the opportunities grammars provided. Most grammars of course also have entries at sixth form level too
a) You can tutor for IQ tests very easily. Not sure where you got it that it was difficult. There are lots of techniques.
b) In between our posts I have been chopping wood and did a rough mental calculation of how many should have got into the grammar school from my village all other things being equal (I know how many classes there were, the size of them, the fact that our village was a 3 member ward and how many councillors there were in the borough). The answer is about 25. There was 1 and he dropped out. If that doesn't give you an idea of the disparity between poor and middle class areas nothing will.
c) If you think the well off don't send their children to Comprehensives you live in a different world. I live in a well off area now. I am wealthy by most peoples measure as are most of the people I know. Nearly all use the local comprehensive, which I grant you is good, but that is not what you were saying.
d) Moving to a Grammar at sixth form is too late. The damage has been done. Many won't go who should. Many who were at the Grammar who shouldn't have been have dropped out.
Select by subject on an ongoing basis throughout the child's education.
a) You can't. IQ test results are in part based on genetics, they are difficult to tutor for unlike subject knowledge based exams.
b) And all of them would likely have gone to a sink comprehensive otherwise, at least 1 still got to a grammar.
c) If the wealthy send their kids to a comp it will only be an Outstanding comp they have bought their kids admission to by buying a house in its catchment area, meaning there are well above average house prices for that catchment area. You buy a place at an Outstanding comp or academy much like you buy a place at private school effectively or else you go to church more regularly to get a vicar's reference for a top church school.
d) Sixth form entry for A levels and top university is fine for late developers
a) you can - just allowing children to sit a few past papers so they understand how the questions work allows children to know how to answer the questions quicker allowing them more time to concentrate on more difficult questions.
You can understand the format of the questions but it is harder to prepare for the specific questions that will come up as they are logic and reasoning based, not subject knowledge based which are more tests of memory
As someone who has got 3 of 4 children into local grammars and sent the other private, I can confirm HYUFD doesn't know what he's talking about here, as well as constantly missing the point.
Tutoring makes a massive difference to ability to tackle the 11+. You see it all the time with kids that got tutored and then struggle to keep up once they're in.
It may make a marginal difference to borderline candidates but if you have an iq of 130+ you will get into a grammar school with no tutoring at all even if you live on a council estate
@HYUFD as usual you are pontificating with certainty about something on which I am guessing you have no knowledge whatsoever. It has been pointed by many on here how you can tutor for IQ tests / 11+ not least by just practicing papers, but there are many other techniques as well. I have some experience in this (as I am sure do many others on here) as it was a requirement of a development centre of one of the largest computer companies at the time at which I was a manager to take an IQ test and score at least 130. All undergraduates on the milk round had to do so before an interview. I would interview between 20 and 30 undergraduates on the milk round each year so I was very familiar with these test.
I couldn't do anything for someone who is stupid and could probably only add a point or two to a genius, but for a reasonably bright person I could probably get 10 to 20 IQ points added. Here are some ways how:
a) Just get familiar with the tests by practicing loads and getting your timing right (basic exam technique, but not something an 11 year old without tutoring has a clue about).
b) If you get a sequence of numbers and can't see the next number start subtracting each number from the next number. If the sequence doesn't become apparent then do again until it does. This takes just seconds to do and usually results in the answer. I've not seen one on an IQ test that doesn't.
c) Another common question is an arithmetic question which is too hard to do in the time but with an multiple choice answers so estimation is required. Someone with maths knowledge can do this easily, but someone who hasn't can be given about 5 easy tricks to solve these quickly.
d) Similarly a series of shapes at IQ test level is normally fairly straightforward, but again someone without the ability can be given half a dozen things to look out for in advance.
e) If you are given a True or False tests from a short paragraph and can't get it immediately you can convert it into a logical formulae (if you know how) and these tend to be so simple you can do it very quickly. I have to say that is something I find very useful to this day as I struggle to hold a lot of words in my head but can do logical formulae easily.
I could go on.
In response to the other items on your reply to me. You said 'at least one got to the grammar school'. You obviously missed the point that 'he crashed and burned'.
You also say 6th form is ok for late developers. Where did you get that from? It certainly wasn't for me. I missed out on so much. It was worse for others who were good enough but didn't get the chance. Also what about all those who pass the 11+ and then crash and burn because it isn't appropriate?
You cannot tutor for raw IQ tests of logic and reasoning to the same level as you can tutor for subject knowledge tests. In any case a pupil with a high IQ from a council estate would easily pass an IQ test tutored or not, the fact a few average IQ middle class pupils might scrape a pass at 11 pass after being heavily tutored does not make much difference to the former.
As opposed to all pupils crashing and burning at a sink comprehensive, at least grammar schools offered those with high IQs from deprived areas a chance to get on.
Sixth form entry offers a chance for those who are late developers and do well at GCSEs the fact you hated sixth form would probably have applied whichever school you went to
Where on earth did you get the idea that I hated the 6th form grammar school? I didn't I loved it. I also had a very good secondary school prior to that. You seem to read stuff into posts that aren't there. The problem is that by selecting at 11 I missed stuff that was only available at the grammar school and the grammar school boys missed stuff that was only available at the secondary school. Pointless separation and also doesn't allow for streaming by subject properly across all the pupils.
If you don't think you can tutor for the 11+ how do you explain my example from a poor area with only 1 getting into the Grammar school whereas all things being equal it should have been 20 - 25. It is not a few, it is a lot. The idea that you think Grammar schools are not in anyway heavily biased towards well off parents is just bizarre. They are very heavily weighted against poor areas.
Why should it have been 20-25? Unless they all had high IQs. How many of those 20-25 would be high earning professionals if they did not even have a chance of a grammar school but their only choice was a sink school? Likely 0.
Why should it have been 20 - 25? See earlier post. I'm not repeating it. I did the maths.
Only one went to the Grammar school and he crashed and burned (I have said that so many times). We did not have sink schools. My Secondary school was excellent. My Grammar schools was good. I enjoyed it, but I didn't think the teachers were as good bizarrely, but I did well.
But here is the point you keep on missing: Pupils from both schools were failed by the system. I was lucky, but even I missed out on stuff, but the culture was so ingrained that many very bright pupils from the Secondary school just went on to do apprenticeships. Nothing wrong with that but many were capable of so much more. And many at the Grammar school dropped out after O Levels with just one or two who could have benefited from the Secondary school education. All because we decide the fate of a child at 11. Ridiculous.
If you live in a poor area your local school will be more likely to be a sink school.
There is also nothing wrong with apprenticeships, in fact the highest level apprentices earn more on average than most graduates except those from the Russell Group.
Germany for example has selective gymnasiums like our grammars but also high status apprenticeships too
It was a Conservative administration which largely destroyed apprenticeships some years ago now. I remember how shocked my father was at the devastation (he worked in a relevant field).
There are a lot of apprenticeships that are harder to get into than Oxford. The Microsoft and EY ones are definitely better than going to uni and pay well from day zero (although Civil service Grade 6 Apprenticeships pay more than most graduate jobs)
I was actually thinking of the more general industry ones in, it must be, the Thatcher and Major years - though it is good to see apprenticeships making a comeback these days.
Oh none degree level ones are still very bad - I find it scary how many are basically cheap employment schemes that give 18 year olds 1-3 years of work before they are fired and another apprentice brought in to do the easy boring work.
Isn't getting 500 fans at most Scottish football matches an aspiration rather than a limit.......
Oh how we laughed
Glad you can laugh at the state of Scottish football.
What you blethering about , are you a resident of St Kilda.
The standard of Scottish football is utterly terrible. Even the big teams like Rangers and Celtic aren't competitive in Europe. Look at nobodies they get beat by in European competitions, nor are any really top class players interested in going there.
Long gone are the days when they were a formidable force against other European teams.
A bit over the top methinks. Sounds like a typical southerner viewpoint who think the EPL is great , wheras in reality it is pish apart from the small amount of teams owned by shiek's or Russian's. Rangers have qualified in Europe and have lost only about 2 games out of last 20 or so. Much better to see local players etc rather than expensive highly paid pirates who don't give a crap other than their 200K a year. At least in Scotland it is still a Scottish league unlike EPL which is full of imports. Methinks you dost protest too much.
More to the point ... it wasn't like this in the 1960s.
Celtic & Rangers were comparable (maybe better than) the best of the English league. The Scotland football team regular beat the England one.
The Scottish FA have seriously under-performed for 4 decades.
Four decades ago, the Scottish FA were interested in all of Scottish football, including the international team. Since they only became interested in Rangers and Celtic, Scottish football has deteriorated significantly.
Also worth noting that when Celtic won the European cup in 1967(?) the whole team came from within 30 miles of Glasgow.
When football was about how good a team you could make from the players you had, rather than what mercenaries from around the world you could buy, Scottish football (all football, in fact) was in a much better place.
Some excellent post on the last thread guys. I mean really good.
Re poor Comprehensives in deprived areas I agree, but this is probably a lot more to do with the issues of the area than anything else. The answer certainly isn't going back to Secondary Moderns.
I see @HYUFD is continuing to compare stats on Grammar schools to Comprehensives and ignoring the samples are completely different because the Grammar has selected.
If you lived in a deprived area 50 years ago you could go to a grammar school if intelligent.
Now your only choice would be a comprehensive likely to be a secondary modern in all but name if you do not have wealthy parents who can send you to private school
That doesn't answer the point.
It does. Unless you live in a wealthy suburb or rural area (or go to a comprehensive or academy where admission is based on church attendance) comprehensives are often just renamed secondary moderns effectively.
@MikeSmithson is correct. It doesn't answer the point. As usual you just raise another point and don't address the point raised. It is a moving target.
Re your point on living in a poor area and being able to go to a grammar, this is very naïve. What actually happens is the middle class and well off in surrounding areas get tutored for the test and fill the spaces. The bright kids in the poor areas don't and they still don't get in by and large.
I lived in a relatively poor large village with 2 primary schools. Only one boy got into the boys grammar school and no girls to the girls grammar school. And that boy dropped out. I have no memory of even taking a test let alone getting tutored. After O levels a whole bunch of replaced those that had dropped out. The system is crap at selection and selecting at 11 is far too soon.
There are limits on how much you can tutor for 11+ and 13+ tests which are designed to test raw iq not subject knowledge as such. Indeed very often even a few bright kids from council estates got into grammar schools even without tutors and then onto Oxbridge or other top universities and professional careers. That path is not open to them to the same extent now if they live in a deprived area and just get sent to the local very average, if that, comp.
If you were well off and had a kid who was not so bright and would not pass the 11 or 13+ you could still send them private however and still do. Most wealthy parents did not send their children to secondary moderns and do not send their children to comprehensives and certainly not comprehensives or academies which are any less than Outstanding. So the rich generally don't use comprehensives anyway while the bright but poor no longer have the opportunities grammars provided. Most grammars of course also have entries at sixth form level too
a) You can tutor for IQ tests very easily. Not sure where you got it that it was difficult. There are lots of techniques.
b) In between our posts I have been chopping wood and did a rough mental calculation of how many should have got into the grammar school from my village all other things being equal (I know how many classes there were, the size of them, the fact that our village was a 3 member ward and how many councillors there were in the borough). The answer is about 25. There was 1 and he dropped out. If that doesn't give you an idea of the disparity between poor and middle class areas nothing will.
c) If you think the well off don't send their children to Comprehensives you live in a different world. I live in a well off area now. I am wealthy by most peoples measure as are most of the people I know. Nearly all use the local comprehensive, which I grant you is good, but that is not what you were saying.
d) Moving to a Grammar at sixth form is too late. The damage has been done. Many won't go who should. Many who were at the Grammar who shouldn't have been have dropped out.
Select by subject on an ongoing basis throughout the child's education.
a) You can't. IQ test results are in part based on genetics, they are difficult to tutor for unlike subject knowledge based exams.
b) And all of them would likely have gone to a sink comprehensive otherwise, at least 1 still got to a grammar.
c) If the wealthy send their kids to a comp it will only be an Outstanding comp they have bought their kids admission to by buying a house in its catchment area, meaning there are well above average house prices for that catchment area. You buy a place at an Outstanding comp or academy much like you buy a place at private school effectively or else you go to church more regularly to get a vicar's reference for a top church school.
d) Sixth form entry for A levels and top university is fine for late developers
a) you can - just allowing children to sit a few past papers so they understand how the questions work allows children to know how to answer the questions quicker allowing them more time to concentrate on more difficult questions.
You can understand the format of the questions but it is harder to prepare for the specific questions that will come up as they are logic and reasoning based, not subject knowledge based which are more tests of memory
As someone who has got 3 of 4 children into local grammars and sent the other private, I can confirm HYUFD doesn't know what he's talking about here, as well as constantly missing the point.
Tutoring makes a massive difference to ability to tackle the 11+. You see it all the time with kids that got tutored and then struggle to keep up once they're in.
It may make a marginal difference to borderline candidates but if you have an iq of 130+ you will get into a grammar school with no tutoring at all even if you live on a council estate
@HYUFD as usual you are pontificating with certainty about something on which I am guessing you have no knowledge whatsoever. It has been pointed by many on here how you can tutor for IQ tests / 11+ not least by just practicing papers, but there are many other techniques as well. I have some experience in this (as I am sure do many others on here) as it was a requirement of a development centre of one of the largest computer companies at the time at which I was a manager to take an IQ test and score at least 130. All undergraduates on the milk round had to do so before an interview. I would interview between 20 and 30 undergraduates on the milk round each year so I was very familiar with these test.
I couldn't do anything for someone who is stupid and could probably only add a point or two to a genius, but for a reasonably bright person I could probably get 10 to 20 IQ points added. Here are some ways how:
a) Just get familiar with the tests by practicing loads and getting your timing right (basic exam technique, but not something an 11 year old without tutoring has a clue about).
b) If you get a sequence of numbers and can't see the next number start subtracting each number from the next number. If the sequence doesn't become apparent then do again until it does. This takes just seconds to do and usually results in the answer. I've not seen one on an IQ test that doesn't.
c) Another common question is an arithmetic question which is too hard to do in the time but with an multiple choice answers so estimation is required. Someone with maths knowledge can do this easily, but someone who hasn't can be given about 5 easy tricks to solve these quickly.
d) Similarly a series of shapes at IQ test level is normally fairly straightforward, but again someone without the ability can be given half a dozen things to look out for in advance.
e) If you are given a True or False tests from a short paragraph and can't get it immediately you can convert it into a logical formulae (if you know how) and these tend to be so simple you can do it very quickly. I have to say that is something I find very useful to this day as I struggle to hold a lot of words in my head but can do logical formulae easily.
I could go on.
In response to the other items on your reply to me. You said 'at least one got to the grammar school'. You obviously missed the point that 'he crashed and burned'.
You also say 6th form is ok for late developers. Where did you get that from? It certainly wasn't for me. I missed out on so much. It was worse for others who were good enough but didn't get the chance. Also what about all those who pass the 11+ and then crash and burn because it isn't appropriate?
You cannot tutor for raw IQ tests of logic and reasoning to the same level as you can tutor for subject knowledge tests. In any case a pupil with a high IQ from a council estate would easily pass an IQ test tutored or not, the fact a few average IQ middle class pupils might scrape a pass at 11 pass after being heavily tutored does not make much difference to the former.
As opposed to all pupils crashing and burning at a sink comprehensive, at least grammar schools offered those with high IQs from deprived areas a chance to get on.
Sixth form entry offers a chance for those who are late developers and do well at GCSEs the fact you hated sixth form would probably have applied whichever school you went to
Where on earth did you get the idea that I hated the 6th form grammar school? I didn't I loved it. I also had a very good secondary school prior to that. You seem to read stuff into posts that aren't there. The problem is that by selecting at 11 I missed stuff that was only available at the grammar school and the grammar school boys missed stuff that was only available at the secondary school. Pointless separation and also doesn't allow for streaming by subject properly across all the pupils.
If you don't think you can tutor for the 11+ how do you explain my example from a poor area with only 1 getting into the Grammar school whereas all things being equal it should have been 20 - 25. It is not a few, it is a lot. The idea that you think Grammar schools are not in anyway heavily biased towards well off parents is just bizarre. They are very heavily weighted against poor areas.
I think from this "You also say 6th form is ok for late developers. Where did you get that from? It certainly wasn't for me.".
Some excellent post on the last thread guys. I mean really good.
Re poor Comprehensives in deprived areas I agree, but this is probably a lot more to do with the issues of the area than anything else. The answer certainly isn't going back to Secondary Moderns.
I see @HYUFD is continuing to compare stats on Grammar schools to Comprehensives and ignoring the samples are completely different because the Grammar has selected.
If you lived in a deprived area 50 years ago you could go to a grammar school if intelligent.
Now your only choice would be a comprehensive likely to be a secondary modern in all but name if you do not have wealthy parents who can send you to private school
That doesn't answer the point.
It does. Unless you live in a wealthy suburb or rural area (or go to a comprehensive or academy where admission is based on church attendance) comprehensives are often just renamed secondary moderns effectively.
@MikeSmithson is correct. It doesn't answer the point. As usual you just raise another point and don't address the point raised. It is a moving target.
Re your point on living in a poor area and being able to go to a grammar, this is very naïve. What actually happens is the middle class and well off in surrounding areas get tutored for the test and fill the spaces. The bright kids in the poor areas don't and they still don't get in by and large.
I lived in a relatively poor large village with 2 primary schools. Only one boy got into the boys grammar school and no girls to the girls grammar school. And that boy dropped out. I have no memory of even taking a test let alone getting tutored. After O levels a whole bunch of replaced those that had dropped out. The system is crap at selection and selecting at 11 is far too soon.
There are limits on how much you can tutor for 11+ and 13+ tests which are designed to test raw iq not subject knowledge as such. Indeed very often even a few bright kids from council estates got into grammar schools even without tutors and then onto Oxbridge or other top universities and professional careers. That path is not open to them to the same extent now if they live in a deprived area and just get sent to the local very average, if that, comp.
If you were well off and had a kid who was not so bright and would not pass the 11 or 13+ you could still send them private however and still do. Most wealthy parents did not send their children to secondary moderns and do not send their children to comprehensives and certainly not comprehensives or academies which are any less than Outstanding. So the rich generally don't use comprehensives anyway while the bright but poor no longer have the opportunities grammars provided. Most grammars of course also have entries at sixth form level too
a) You can tutor for IQ tests very easily. Not sure where you got it that it was difficult. There are lots of techniques.
b) In between our posts I have been chopping wood and did a rough mental calculation of how many should have got into the grammar school from my village all other things being equal (I know how many classes there were, the size of them, the fact that our village was a 3 member ward and how many councillors there were in the borough). The answer is about 25. There was 1 and he dropped out. If that doesn't give you an idea of the disparity between poor and middle class areas nothing will.
c) If you think the well off don't send their children to Comprehensives you live in a different world. I live in a well off area now. I am wealthy by most peoples measure as are most of the people I know. Nearly all use the local comprehensive, which I grant you is good, but that is not what you were saying.
d) Moving to a Grammar at sixth form is too late. The damage has been done. Many won't go who should. Many who were at the Grammar who shouldn't have been have dropped out.
Select by subject on an ongoing basis throughout the child's education.
a) You can't. IQ test results are in part based on genetics, they are difficult to tutor for unlike subject knowledge based exams.
b) And all of them would likely have gone to a sink comprehensive otherwise, at least 1 still got to a grammar.
c) If the wealthy send their kids to a comp it will only be an Outstanding comp they have bought their kids admission to by buying a house in its catchment area, meaning there are well above average house prices for that catchment area. You buy a place at an Outstanding comp or academy much like you buy a place at private school effectively or else you go to church more regularly to get a vicar's reference for a top church school.
d) Sixth form entry for A levels and top university is fine for late developers
a) you can - just allowing children to sit a few past papers so they understand how the questions work allows children to know how to answer the questions quicker allowing them more time to concentrate on more difficult questions.
You can understand the format of the questions but it is harder to prepare for the specific questions that will come up as they are logic and reasoning based, not subject knowledge based which are more tests of memory
As someone who has got 3 of 4 children into local grammars and sent the other private, I can confirm HYUFD doesn't know what he's talking about here, as well as constantly missing the point.
Tutoring makes a massive difference to ability to tackle the 11+. You see it all the time with kids that got tutored and then struggle to keep up once they're in.
It may make a marginal difference to borderline candidates but if you have an iq of 130+ you will get into a grammar school with no tutoring at all even if you live on a council estate
@HYUFD as usual you are pontificating with certainty about something on which I am guessing you have no knowledge whatsoever. It has been pointed by many on here how you can tutor for IQ tests / 11+ not least by just practicing papers, but there are many other techniques as well. I have some experience in this (as I am sure do many others on here) as it was a requirement of a development centre of one of the largest computer companies at the time at which I was a manager to take an IQ test and score at least 130. All undergraduates on the milk round had to do so before an interview. I would interview between 20 and 30 undergraduates on the milk round each year so I was very familiar with these test.
I couldn't do anything for someone who is stupid and could probably only add a point or two to a genius, but for a reasonably bright person I could probably get 10 to 20 IQ points added. Here are some ways how:
a) Just get familiar with the tests by practicing loads and getting your timing right (basic exam technique, but not something an 11 year old without tutoring has a clue about).
b) If you get a sequence of numbers and can't see the next number start subtracting each number from the next number. If the sequence doesn't become apparent then do again until it does. This takes just seconds to do and usually results in the answer. I've not seen one on an IQ test that doesn't.
c) Another common question is an arithmetic question which is too hard to do in the time but with an multiple choice answers so estimation is required. Someone with maths knowledge can do this easily, but someone who hasn't can be given about 5 easy tricks to solve these quickly.
d) Similarly a series of shapes at IQ test level is normally fairly straightforward, but again someone without the ability can be given half a dozen things to look out for in advance.
e) If you are given a True or False tests from a short paragraph and can't get it immediately you can convert it into a logical formulae (if you know how) and these tend to be so simple you can do it very quickly. I have to say that is something I find very useful to this day as I struggle to hold a lot of words in my head but can do logical formulae easily.
I could go on.
In response to the other items on your reply to me. You said 'at least one got to the grammar school'. You obviously missed the point that 'he crashed and burned'.
You also say 6th form is ok for late developers. Where did you get that from? It certainly wasn't for me. I missed out on so much. It was worse for others who were good enough but didn't get the chance. Also what about all those who pass the 11+ and then crash and burn because it isn't appropriate?
You cannot tutor for raw IQ tests of logic and reasoning to the same level as you can tutor for subject knowledge tests. In any case a pupil with a high IQ from a council estate would easily pass an IQ test tutored or not, the fact a few average IQ middle class pupils might scrape a pass at 11 pass after being heavily tutored does not make much difference to the former.
As opposed to all pupils crashing and burning at a sink comprehensive, at least grammar schools offered those with high IQs from deprived areas a chance to get on.
Sixth form entry offers a chance for those who are late developers and do well at GCSEs the fact you hated sixth form would probably have applied whichever school you went to
Where on earth did you get the idea that I hated the 6th form grammar school? I didn't I loved it. I also had a very good secondary school prior to that. You seem to read stuff into posts that aren't there. The problem is that by selecting at 11 I missed stuff that was only available at the grammar school and the grammar school boys missed stuff that was only available at the secondary school. Pointless separation and also doesn't allow for streaming by subject properly across all the pupils.
If you don't think you can tutor for the 11+ how do you explain my example from a poor area with only 1 getting into the Grammar school whereas all things being equal it should have been 20 - 25. It is not a few, it is a lot. The idea that you think Grammar schools are not in anyway heavily biased towards well off parents is just bizarre. They are very heavily weighted against poor areas.
I think from this "You also say 6th form is ok for late developers. Where did you get that from? It certainly wasn't for me.".
Anecdote Alert/Grammar School alert.
The Council house kids almost always ended up in the B stream in my Grammar and were considered "less able students" due to being in the "lowest" academic class in the school. So those who failed the 11 plus were stigmatised as we're half of those who passed.
Some excellent post on the last thread guys. I mean really good.
Re poor Comprehensives in deprived areas I agree, but this is probably a lot more to do with the issues of the area than anything else. The answer certainly isn't going back to Secondary Moderns.
I see @HYUFD is continuing to compare stats on Grammar schools to Comprehensives and ignoring the samples are completely different because the Grammar has selected.
If you lived in a deprived area 50 years ago you could go to a grammar school if intelligent.
Now your only choice would be a comprehensive likely to be a secondary modern in all but name if you do not have wealthy parents who can send you to private school
That doesn't answer the point.
It does. Unless you live in a wealthy suburb or rural area (or go to a comprehensive or academy where admission is based on church attendance) comprehensives are often just renamed secondary moderns effectively.
@MikeSmithson is correct. It doesn't answer the point. As usual you just raise another point and don't address the point raised. It is a moving target.
Re your point on living in a poor area and being able to go to a grammar, this is very naïve. What actually happens is the middle class and well off in surrounding areas get tutored for the test and fill the spaces. The bright kids in the poor areas don't and they still don't get in by and large.
I lived in a relatively poor large village with 2 primary schools. Only one boy got into the boys grammar school and no girls to the girls grammar school. And that boy dropped out. I have no memory of even taking a test let alone getting tutored. After O levels a whole bunch of replaced those that had dropped out. The system is crap at selection and selecting at 11 is far too soon.
There are limits on how much you can tutor for 11+ and 13+ tests which are designed to test raw iq not subject knowledge as such. Indeed very often even a few bright kids from council estates got into grammar schools even without tutors and then onto Oxbridge or other top universities and professional careers. That path is not open to them to the same extent now if they live in a deprived area and just get sent to the local very average, if that, comp.
If you were well off and had a kid who was not so bright and would not pass the 11 or 13+ you could still send them private however and still do. Most wealthy parents did not send their children to secondary moderns and do not send their children to comprehensives and certainly not comprehensives or academies which are any less than Outstanding. So the rich generally don't use comprehensives anyway while the bright but poor no longer have the opportunities grammars provided. Most grammars of course also have entries at sixth form level too
a) You can tutor for IQ tests very easily. Not sure where you got it that it was difficult. There are lots of techniques.
b) In between our posts I have been chopping wood and did a rough mental calculation of how many should have got into the grammar school from my village all other things being equal (I know how many classes there were, the size of them, the fact that our village was a 3 member ward and how many councillors there were in the borough). The answer is about 25. There was 1 and he dropped out. If that doesn't give you an idea of the disparity between poor and middle class areas nothing will.
c) If you think the well off don't send their children to Comprehensives you live in a different world. I live in a well off area now. I am wealthy by most peoples measure as are most of the people I know. Nearly all use the local comprehensive, which I grant you is good, but that is not what you were saying.
d) Moving to a Grammar at sixth form is too late. The damage has been done. Many won't go who should. Many who were at the Grammar who shouldn't have been have dropped out.
Select by subject on an ongoing basis throughout the child's education.
a) You can't. IQ test results are in part based on genetics, they are difficult to tutor for unlike subject knowledge based exams.
b) And all of them would likely have gone to a sink comprehensive otherwise, at least 1 still got to a grammar.
c) If the wealthy send their kids to a comp it will only be an Outstanding comp they have bought their kids admission to by buying a house in its catchment area, meaning there are well above average house prices for that catchment area. You buy a place at an Outstanding comp or academy much like you buy a place at private school effectively or else you go to church more regularly to get a vicar's reference for a top church school.
d) Sixth form entry for A levels and top university is fine for late developers
a) you can - just allowing children to sit a few past papers so they understand how the questions work allows children to know how to answer the questions quicker allowing them more time to concentrate on more difficult questions.
You can understand the format of the questions but it is harder to prepare for the specific questions that will come up as they are logic and reasoning based, not subject knowledge based which are more tests of memory
As someone who has got 3 of 4 children into local grammars and sent the other private, I can confirm HYUFD doesn't know what he's talking about here, as well as constantly missing the point.
Tutoring makes a massive difference to ability to tackle the 11+. You see it all the time with kids that got tutored and then struggle to keep up once they're in.
It may make a marginal difference to borderline candidates but if you have an iq of 130+ you will get into a grammar school with no tutoring at all even if you live on a council estate
@HYUFD as usual you are pontificating with certainty about something on which I am guessing you have no knowledge whatsoever. It has been pointed by many on here how you can tutor for IQ tests / 11+ not least by just practicing papers, but there are many other techniques as well. I have some experience in this (as I am sure do many others on here) as it was a requirement of a development centre of one of the largest computer companies at the time at which I was a manager to take an IQ test and score at least 130. All undergraduates on the milk round had to do so before an interview. I would interview between 20 and 30 undergraduates on the milk round each year so I was very familiar with these test.
I couldn't do anything for someone who is stupid and could probably only add a point or two to a genius, but for a reasonably bright person I could probably get 10 to 20 IQ points added. Here are some ways how:
a) Just get familiar with the tests by practicing loads and getting your timing right (basic exam technique, but not something an 11 year old without tutoring has a clue about).
b) If you get a sequence of numbers and can't see the next number start subtracting each number from the next number. If the sequence doesn't become apparent then do again until it does. This takes just seconds to do and usually results in the answer. I've not seen one on an IQ test that doesn't.
c) Another common question is an arithmetic question which is too hard to do in the time but with an multiple choice answers so estimation is required. Someone with maths knowledge can do this easily, but someone who hasn't can be given about 5 easy tricks to solve these quickly.
d) Similarly a series of shapes at IQ test level is normally fairly straightforward, but again someone without the ability can be given half a dozen things to look out for in advance.
e) If you are given a True or False tests from a short paragraph and can't get it immediately you can convert it into a logical formulae (if you know how) and these tend to be so simple you can do it very quickly. I have to say that is something I find very useful to this day as I struggle to hold a lot of words in my head but can do logical formulae easily.
I could go on.
In response to the other items on your reply to me. You said 'at least one got to the grammar school'. You obviously missed the point that 'he crashed and burned'.
You also say 6th form is ok for late developers. Where did you get that from? It certainly wasn't for me. I missed out on so much. It was worse for others who were good enough but didn't get the chance. Also what about all those who pass the 11+ and then crash and burn because it isn't appropriate?
You cannot tutor for raw IQ tests of logic and reasoning to the same level as you can tutor for subject knowledge tests. In any case a pupil with a high IQ from a council estate would easily pass an IQ test tutored or not, the fact a few average IQ middle class pupils might scrape a pass at 11 pass after being heavily tutored does not make much difference to the former.
As opposed to all pupils crashing and burning at a sink comprehensive, at least grammar schools offered those with high IQs from deprived areas a chance to get on.
Sixth form entry offers a chance for those who are late developers and do well at GCSEs the fact you hated sixth form would probably have applied whichever school you went to
Where on earth did you get the idea that I hated the 6th form grammar school? I didn't I loved it. I also had a very good secondary school prior to that. You seem to read stuff into posts that aren't there. The problem is that by selecting at 11 I missed stuff that was only available at the grammar school and the grammar school boys missed stuff that was only available at the secondary school. Pointless separation and also doesn't allow for streaming by subject properly across all the pupils.
If you don't think you can tutor for the 11+ how do you explain my example from a poor area with only 1 getting into the Grammar school whereas all things being equal it should have been 20 - 25. It is not a few, it is a lot. The idea that you think Grammar schools are not in anyway heavily biased towards well off parents is just bizarre. They are very heavily weighted against poor areas.
Why should it have been 20-25? Unless they all had high IQs. How many of those 20-25 would be high earning professionals if they did not even have a chance of a grammar school but their only choice was a sink school? Likely 0.
Why should it have been 20 - 25? See earlier post. I'm not repeating it. I did the maths.
Only one went to the Grammar school and he crashed and burned (I have said that so many times). We did not have sink schools. My Secondary school was excellent. My Grammar schools was good. I enjoyed it, but I didn't think the teachers were as good bizarrely, but I did well.
But here is the point you keep on missing: Pupils from both schools were failed by the system. I was lucky, but even I missed out on stuff, but the culture was so ingrained that many very bright pupils from the Secondary school just went on to do apprenticeships. Nothing wrong with that but many were capable of so much more. And many at the Grammar school dropped out after O Levels with just one or two who could have benefited from the Secondary school education. All because we decide the fate of a child at 11. Ridiculous.
If you live in a poor area your local school will be more likely to be a sink school.
There is also nothing wrong with apprenticeships, in fact the highest level apprentices earn more on average than most graduates except those from the Russell Group.
Germany for example has selective gymnasiums like our grammars but also high status apprenticeships too
It was a Conservative administration which largely destroyed apprenticeships some years ago now. I remember how shocked my father was at the devastation (he worked in a relevant field).
There are a lot of apprenticeships that are harder to get into than Oxford. The Microsoft and EY ones are definitely better than going to uni and pay well from day zero (although Civil service Grade 6 Apprenticeships pay more than most graduate jobs)
I was actually thinking of the more general industry ones in, it must be, the Thatcher and Major years - though it is good to see apprenticeships making a comeback these days.
Oh none degree level ones are still very bad - I find it scary how many are basically cheap employment schemes that give 18 year olds 1-3 years of work before they are fired and another apprentice brought in to do the easy boring work.
That's a shame - like the Ragged Trousered Philanthropists novel portrayed in the Depression IIRC.
Having read the discussion above; I must conclude that there is a deeply religious fervour about vaccination evident on this website. People believe that vaccination is the solution to the pandemic because they believe in science, and will willingly sacrifice all sorts of freedoms in support of it. Yet they overlook its obvious limitations; namely that the vaccination programme did not deliver what it promised as it did not end the pandemic; it did not prevent new variants from arising; and it does not stop people from catching and spreading the virus. The old political maxim that the masses are easy to herd is turned on its head; it turns out that actually the intellectuals are easy to herd, when it comes to certain policies. This reinforces a belief that I hold strongly, that self appointed experts and university educated people are not necessarily smarter in the end than people with no education who go through life living by their wits.
The vaccination program didn't promise any of those things.
Also, you can't argue that the vaccination programme hasn't worked when material numbers of people are still refusing to get jabbed.
"Hopson said: “I was talking to a [trust] chief executive who said that 40 of the midwives on their midwifery service … were saying they were not prepared to be vaccinated. Those staff, given their skills and their expertise, are not easily redeployed but they’re also extremely difficult to replace.
The trust’s chief executive “is seriously concerned about the safety of the service” because of the potential exodus of midwives.
Maternity staff quitting over compulsory jabs posed a particular challenge because of the NHS-wide shortage of midwives, Hopson said. NHS England estimates that maternity services need 2,000 more whole-time equivalent midwives, while the Royal College of Midwives (RCM) puts the figure at 2,500."
See ya.
So you'd rather have avoidable deaths in childbirth; than tolerate unvaccinated NHS staff?
If they are so selfish that they won't get vaccinated to protect not only themselves but the people they are treating, they can collect their P45s.
And we then lose a load of women and babies in childbirth. I'm happy to issue a fatwa against most people who are unvaccinated by choice. But we do need certain people to keep working.
What should have happened was what other countries have done. A campaign of public shame. Call them out for the selfish cretins they are - many would probably have Trumped and got it reluctantly.
They said this about care workers, it turns out that people need to work for a living so they quietly get vaccinated.
There is a significant difference between a midwife and a care worker...
Sure, but what else are they going to do? It's not as if they can just waltz into a job somewhere else and aiui most of the private sector healthcare companies already have no jab no job mandates.
I agree. My point was in response to Rob wanting to fire them. If it came to it that wouldn't be a good idea.
It would barely be noticeable given the changes in staff levels over the past years. You make it sound like it'd be some sort of armageddon scenario.
As we already have acute shortages of staff in some critical roles in some hospitals, it *could* be armageddon in any given hospital if "just fire them" removes a chunk of the midwifery staff as a glut of women come in. They aren't just standing around doing nothing - they are the literal difference between life and death in some births. You can't have a blanket "fire them" approach.
There's months for them to get vaccinated and I'm sure most of them will as we get closer to the date and it looks like they're out of work. Remember, it's not as if they can simply go and do something else for a living that will pay them as much.
Cuts both ways. Takes 2 years to train a midwife.
And if they did lose a hundred or so that wouldn't get vaccinated they'd be down to levels not seen since... oh, earlier this year.
Right. So if there are more midwives now than there were earlier this year, is it more likely that we recruited more because they were needed, or because the NHS decided to splurge money on an excess of midwives for fun/as a fashion statement?
Appalling Con splits in the new Redfield & Wilton poll:
NE Lab 61% Con 22% NW Lab 51% Con 28% W Midlands Lab 47% Con 37% E Midlands Lab 41% Con 35%
Not necessarily, the Tories can win without the North provided they win the South and Midlands.
Those Midlands numbers are not so far behind midterm they cannot be caught up
I would go and look at the Lib Dem figures in the breakdowns.
E Midlands have 14% compared to 8% in the W Midlands.
I would say both W Midlands and E Midlands are nearer 47% Lab, 36% Tory.
And if you look at the South East - those figures should be given Tory MPs a nightmare as I suspect the Labour / Lib Dem votes will be a lot more efficient than those figures make out.
I concur.
The geographical breakdown is looking like the makings of a perfect storm. These May locals are going to be delicious. Any markets up?
"Hopson said: “I was talking to a [trust] chief executive who said that 40 of the midwives on their midwifery service … were saying they were not prepared to be vaccinated. Those staff, given their skills and their expertise, are not easily redeployed but they’re also extremely difficult to replace.
The trust’s chief executive “is seriously concerned about the safety of the service” because of the potential exodus of midwives.
Maternity staff quitting over compulsory jabs posed a particular challenge because of the NHS-wide shortage of midwives, Hopson said. NHS England estimates that maternity services need 2,000 more whole-time equivalent midwives, while the Royal College of Midwives (RCM) puts the figure at 2,500."
See ya.
So you'd rather have avoidable deaths in childbirth; than tolerate unvaccinated NHS staff?
If they are so selfish that they won't get vaccinated to protect not only themselves but the people they are treating, they can collect their P45s.
And we then lose a load of women and babies in childbirth. I'm happy to issue a fatwa against most people who are unvaccinated by choice. But we do need certain people to keep working.
What should have happened was what other countries have done. A campaign of public shame. Call them out for the selfish cretins they are - many would probably have Trumped and got it reluctantly.
They said this about care workers, it turns out that people need to work for a living so they quietly get vaccinated.
There is a significant difference between a midwife and a care worker...
Sure, but what else are they going to do? It's not as if they can just waltz into a job somewhere else and aiui most of the private sector healthcare companies already have no jab no job mandates.
I agree. My point was in response to Rob wanting to fire them. If it came to it that wouldn't be a good idea.
It would barely be noticeable given the changes in staff levels over the past years. You make it sound like it'd be some sort of armageddon scenario.
As we already have acute shortages of staff in some critical roles in some hospitals, it *could* be armageddon in any given hospital if "just fire them" removes a chunk of the midwifery staff as a glut of women come in. They aren't just standing around doing nothing - they are the literal difference between life and death in some births. You can't have a blanket "fire them" approach.
There's months for them to get vaccinated and I'm sure most of them will as we get closer to the date and it looks like they're out of work. Remember, it's not as if they can simply go and do something else for a living that will pay them as much.
Cuts both ways. Takes 2 years to train a midwife.
And if they did lose a hundred or so that wouldn't get vaccinated they'd be down to levels not seen since... oh, earlier this year.
Right. So if there are more midwives now than there were earlier this year, is it more likely that we recruited more because they were needed, or because the NHS decided to splurge money on an excess of midwives for fun/as a fashion statement?
This is the NHS we are talking about. So it's probably the latter.
I All genuine F1 fans will condemn this abuse, Latifi doesn't deserve it, Michael Masi on the other hand....
I did have a moment of wondering the other day what the reaction would have been like had it been an Alpha Tauri in the wall rather than a Mercedes-engined car.
I'd have called Whinger Spice a pound shop Flavio Briatore.
Some excellent post on the last thread guys. I mean really good.
Re poor Comprehensives in deprived areas I agree, but this is probably a lot more to do with the issues of the area than anything else. The answer certainly isn't going back to Secondary Moderns.
I see @HYUFD is continuing to compare stats on Grammar schools to Comprehensives and ignoring the samples are completely different because the Grammar has selected.
If you lived in a deprived area 50 years ago you could go to a grammar school if intelligent.
Now your only choice would be a comprehensive likely to be a secondary modern in all but name if you do not have wealthy parents who can send you to private school
That doesn't answer the point.
It does. Unless you live in a wealthy suburb or rural area (or go to a comprehensive or academy where admission is based on church attendance) comprehensives are often just renamed secondary moderns effectively.
@MikeSmithson is correct. It doesn't answer the point. As usual you just raise another point and don't address the point raised. It is a moving target.
Re your point on living in a poor area and being able to go to a grammar, this is very naïve. What actually happens is the middle class and well off in surrounding areas get tutored for the test and fill the spaces. The bright kids in the poor areas don't and they still don't get in by and large.
I lived in a relatively poor large village with 2 primary schools. Only one boy got into the boys grammar school and no girls to the girls grammar school. And that boy dropped out. I have no memory of even taking a test let alone getting tutored. After O levels a whole bunch of replaced those that had dropped out. The system is crap at selection and selecting at 11 is far too soon.
There are limits on how much you can tutor for 11+ and 13+ tests which are designed to test raw iq not subject knowledge as such. Indeed very often even a few bright kids from council estates got into grammar schools even without tutors and then onto Oxbridge or other top universities and professional careers. That path is not open to them to the same extent now if they live in a deprived area and just get sent to the local very average, if that, comp.
If you were well off and had a kid who was not so bright and would not pass the 11 or 13+ you could still send them private however and still do. Most wealthy parents did not send their children to secondary moderns and do not send their children to comprehensives and certainly not comprehensives or academies which are any less than Outstanding. So the rich generally don't use comprehensives anyway while the bright but poor no longer have the opportunities grammars provided. Most grammars of course also have entries at sixth form level too
a) You can tutor for IQ tests very easily. Not sure where you got it that it was difficult. There are lots of techniques.
b) In between our posts I have been chopping wood and did a rough mental calculation of how many should have got into the grammar school from my village all other things being equal (I know how many classes there were, the size of them, the fact that our village was a 3 member ward and how many councillors there were in the borough). The answer is about 25. There was 1 and he dropped out. If that doesn't give you an idea of the disparity between poor and middle class areas nothing will.
c) If you think the well off don't send their children to Comprehensives you live in a different world. I live in a well off area now. I am wealthy by most peoples measure as are most of the people I know. Nearly all use the local comprehensive, which I grant you is good, but that is not what you were saying.
d) Moving to a Grammar at sixth form is too late. The damage has been done. Many won't go who should. Many who were at the Grammar who shouldn't have been have dropped out.
Select by subject on an ongoing basis throughout the child's education.
a) You can't. IQ test results are in part based on genetics, they are difficult to tutor for unlike subject knowledge based exams.
b) And all of them would likely have gone to a sink comprehensive otherwise, at least 1 still got to a grammar.
c) If the wealthy send their kids to a comp it will only be an Outstanding comp they have bought their kids admission to by buying a house in its catchment area, meaning there are well above average house prices for that catchment area. You buy a place at an Outstanding comp or academy much like you buy a place at private school effectively or else you go to church more regularly to get a vicar's reference for a top church school.
d) Sixth form entry for A levels and top university is fine for late developers
a) you can - just allowing children to sit a few past papers so they understand how the questions work allows children to know how to answer the questions quicker allowing them more time to concentrate on more difficult questions.
You can understand the format of the questions but it is harder to prepare for the specific questions that will come up as they are logic and reasoning based, not subject knowledge based which are more tests of memory
As someone who has got 3 of 4 children into local grammars and sent the other private, I can confirm HYUFD doesn't know what he's talking about here, as well as constantly missing the point.
Tutoring makes a massive difference to ability to tackle the 11+. You see it all the time with kids that got tutored and then struggle to keep up once they're in.
It may make a marginal difference to borderline candidates but if you have an iq of 130+ you will get into a grammar school with no tutoring at all even if you live on a council estate
@HYUFD as usual you are pontificating with certainty about something on which I am guessing you have no knowledge whatsoever. It has been pointed by many on here how you can tutor for IQ tests / 11+ not least by just practicing papers, but there are many other techniques as well. I have some experience in this (as I am sure do many others on here) as it was a requirement of a development centre of one of the largest computer companies at the time at which I was a manager to take an IQ test and score at least 130. All undergraduates on the milk round had to do so before an interview. I would interview between 20 and 30 undergraduates on the milk round each year so I was very familiar with these test.
I couldn't do anything for someone who is stupid and could probably only add a point or two to a genius, but for a reasonably bright person I could probably get 10 to 20 IQ points added. Here are some ways how:
a) Just get familiar with the tests by practicing loads and getting your timing right (basic exam technique, but not something an 11 year old without tutoring has a clue about).
b) If you get a sequence of numbers and can't see the next number start subtracting each number from the next number. If the sequence doesn't become apparent then do again until it does. This takes just seconds to do and usually results in the answer. I've not seen one on an IQ test that doesn't.
c) Another common question is an arithmetic question which is too hard to do in the time but with an multiple choice answers so estimation is required. Someone with maths knowledge can do this easily, but someone who hasn't can be given about 5 easy tricks to solve these quickly.
d) Similarly a series of shapes at IQ test level is normally fairly straightforward, but again someone without the ability can be given half a dozen things to look out for in advance.
e) If you are given a True or False tests from a short paragraph and can't get it immediately you can convert it into a logical formulae (if you know how) and these tend to be so simple you can do it very quickly. I have to say that is something I find very useful to this day as I struggle to hold a lot of words in my head but can do logical formulae easily.
I could go on.
In response to the other items on your reply to me. You said 'at least one got to the grammar school'. You obviously missed the point that 'he crashed and burned'.
You also say 6th form is ok for late developers. Where did you get that from? It certainly wasn't for me. I missed out on so much. It was worse for others who were good enough but didn't get the chance. Also what about all those who pass the 11+ and then crash and burn because it isn't appropriate?
You cannot tutor for raw IQ tests of logic and reasoning to the same level as you can tutor for subject knowledge tests. In any case a pupil with a high IQ from a council estate would easily pass an IQ test tutored or not, the fact a few average IQ middle class pupils might scrape a pass at 11 pass after being heavily tutored does not make much difference to the former.
As opposed to all pupils crashing and burning at a sink comprehensive, at least grammar schools offered those with high IQs from deprived areas a chance to get on.
Sixth form entry offers a chance for those who are late developers and do well at GCSEs the fact you hated sixth form would probably have applied whichever school you went to
Where on earth did you get the idea that I hated the 6th form grammar school? I didn't I loved it. I also had a very good secondary school prior to that. You seem to read stuff into posts that aren't there. The problem is that by selecting at 11 I missed stuff that was only available at the grammar school and the grammar school boys missed stuff that was only available at the secondary school. Pointless separation and also doesn't allow for streaming by subject properly across all the pupils.
If you don't think you can tutor for the 11+ how do you explain my example from a poor area with only 1 getting into the Grammar school whereas all things being equal it should have been 20 - 25. It is not a few, it is a lot. The idea that you think Grammar schools are not in anyway heavily biased towards well off parents is just bizarre. They are very heavily weighted against poor areas.
Why should it have been 20-25? Unless they all had high IQs. How many of those 20-25 would be high earning professionals if they did not even have a chance of a grammar school but their only choice was a sink school? Likely 0.
Why should it have been 20 - 25? See earlier post. I'm not repeating it. I did the maths.
Only one went to the Grammar school and he crashed and burned (I have said that so many times). We did not have sink schools. My Secondary school was excellent. My Grammar schools was good. I enjoyed it, but I didn't think the teachers were as good bizarrely, but I did well.
But here is the point you keep on missing: Pupils from both schools were failed by the system. I was lucky, but even I missed out on stuff, but the culture was so ingrained that many very bright pupils from the Secondary school just went on to do apprenticeships. Nothing wrong with that but many were capable of so much more. And many at the Grammar school dropped out after O Levels with just one or two who could have benefited from the Secondary school education. All because we decide the fate of a child at 11. Ridiculous.
If you live in a poor area your local school will be more likely to be a sink school.
There is also nothing wrong with apprenticeships, in fact the highest level apprentices earn more on average than most graduates except those from the Russell Group.
Germany for example has selective gymnasiums like our grammars but also high status apprenticeships too
I never said there was anything wrong with apprenticeships. In fact I specifically went out of my way to say so in plain English, quote 'Nothing wrong with that...'. Sometimes a conversation with you is a challenge! Try reading the 2nd half of that sentence '...but many were capable of so much more.' Eg me. I was lucky, many weren't.
Re poor areas having sink schools. Yes, but not always, particularly if the poor areas are pockets. I was brought up in Surrey, which is not renowned for being poor, but there are poor areas. So it is very easy to see how the 11+ failed pupils. All the Grammar school kids came from the middle class areas and none from the poor areas. I wonder why? I think most of us know.
IQ tests clearly measure SOMETHING and whatever it is, it is closely related to what we generally think of as intelligence. If you speak to someone with an IQ of 60 and then speak to someone with an IQ of 140 the latter will obviously be much more “intelligent” than the former
Quicker, smarter, better with words and ideas. Faster on the uptake. Able to do difficult tasks at speed.
“Speed of successful information processing” is, in fact, a pretty good definition of “intelligence”
And it is commonly reckoned genetics accounts for about half of this faculty
I All genuine F1 fans will condemn this abuse, Latifi doesn't deserve it, Michael Masi on the other hand....
I did have a moment of wondering the other day what the reaction would have been like had it been an Alpha Tauri in the wall rather than a Mercedes-engined car.
I'd have called Whinger Spice a pound shop Flavio Briatore.
IQ tests clearly measure SOMETHING and whatever it is, it is closely related to what we generally think of as intelligence. If you speak to someone with an IQ of 60 and then speak to someone with an IQ of 140 the latter will obviously be much more “intelligent” than the former
Quicker, smarter, better with words and ideas. Faster on the uptake. Able to do difficult tasks at speed.
“Speed of successful information processing” is, in fact, a pretty good definition of “intelligence”
And it is commonly reckoned genetics accounts for about half of this faculty
"Hopson said: “I was talking to a [trust] chief executive who said that 40 of the midwives on their midwifery service … were saying they were not prepared to be vaccinated. Those staff, given their skills and their expertise, are not easily redeployed but they’re also extremely difficult to replace.
The trust’s chief executive “is seriously concerned about the safety of the service” because of the potential exodus of midwives.
Maternity staff quitting over compulsory jabs posed a particular challenge because of the NHS-wide shortage of midwives, Hopson said. NHS England estimates that maternity services need 2,000 more whole-time equivalent midwives, while the Royal College of Midwives (RCM) puts the figure at 2,500."
See ya.
So you'd rather have avoidable deaths in childbirth; than tolerate unvaccinated NHS staff?
If they are so selfish that they won't get vaccinated to protect not only themselves but the people they are treating, they can collect their P45s.
And we then lose a load of women and babies in childbirth. I'm happy to issue a fatwa against most people who are unvaccinated by choice. But we do need certain people to keep working.
What should have happened was what other countries have done. A campaign of public shame. Call them out for the selfish cretins they are - many would probably have Trumped and got it reluctantly.
They said this about care workers, it turns out that people need to work for a living so they quietly get vaccinated.
There is a significant difference between a midwife and a care worker...
Sure, but what else are they going to do? It's not as if they can just waltz into a job somewhere else and aiui most of the private sector healthcare companies already have no jab no job mandates.
I agree. My point was in response to Rob wanting to fire them. If it came to it that wouldn't be a good idea.
It would barely be noticeable given the changes in staff levels over the past years. You make it sound like it'd be some sort of armageddon scenario.
As we already have acute shortages of staff in some critical roles in some hospitals, it *could* be armageddon in any given hospital if "just fire them" removes a chunk of the midwifery staff as a glut of women come in. They aren't just standing around doing nothing - they are the literal difference between life and death in some births. You can't have a blanket "fire them" approach.
There's months for them to get vaccinated and I'm sure most of them will as we get closer to the date and it looks like they're out of work. Remember, it's not as if they can simply go and do something else for a living that will pay them as much.
Cuts both ways. Takes 2 years to train a midwife.
And if they did lose a hundred or so that wouldn't get vaccinated they'd be down to levels not seen since... oh, earlier this year.
Right. So if there are more midwives now than there were earlier this year, is it more likely that we recruited more because they were needed, or because the NHS decided to splurge money on an excess of midwives for fun/as a fashion statement?
Appalling Con splits in the new Redfield & Wilton poll:
NE Lab 61% Con 22% NW Lab 51% Con 28% W Midlands Lab 47% Con 37% E Midlands Lab 41% Con 35%
Not necessarily, the Tories can win without the North provided they win the South and Midlands.
Those Midlands numbers are not so far behind midterm they cannot be caught up
Well they are getting absolutely tonked in the West Midlands according the R and W., so where exactly in the Midlands did you have in mind?
5% behind in the East Midlands, 10% behind in the West Midlands is about the amount the Tories trail nationally, so if the Tories regain the lead nationally they will also regain the lead in the Midlands
I see the E. Midlands as easy pickings, but in the W.Midlands the Cons. look quite comprehensively behind at 10%.
Don't forget on top of all this we are facing an economic Armageddon for the next two years, which is never a good look for the incumbent.
Well if we face an economic Armageddon for the next decade even if Starmer did get in he would probably be out again within 5 years and the Tories back again
Not if we bring in PR. And Scotland stays in the UK.
According to my calculations (which are SOMETIMES correct!), the "Progressive Alliance" easily, er, "won" GE 2019!
"What is you on about, Sunil?" I hear you cry!
Well, the Progressive Parties won 52.20% of the popular vote, the Right-wing Reactionaries won only 46.83%, and others and independents won 0.97%.
"Show your workings".
OK:
Labour 32.08 LDs 11.55 SNP 3.88 Greens (all UK sections) 2.70 SF 0.57 PC 0.48 APNI 0.42 SDLP 0.37 Yorks 0.09 (yes, they are down as centre-left) TIGs 0.03 PBP 0.02 Northeast 0.01(yes, they are down as centre-left) Mebyon Kernow 0.01
"Hopson said: “I was talking to a [trust] chief executive who said that 40 of the midwives on their midwifery service … were saying they were not prepared to be vaccinated. Those staff, given their skills and their expertise, are not easily redeployed but they’re also extremely difficult to replace.
The trust’s chief executive “is seriously concerned about the safety of the service” because of the potential exodus of midwives.
Maternity staff quitting over compulsory jabs posed a particular challenge because of the NHS-wide shortage of midwives, Hopson said. NHS England estimates that maternity services need 2,000 more whole-time equivalent midwives, while the Royal College of Midwives (RCM) puts the figure at 2,500."
See ya.
So you'd rather have avoidable deaths in childbirth; than tolerate unvaccinated NHS staff?
If they are so selfish that they won't get vaccinated to protect not only themselves but the people they are treating, they can collect their P45s.
And we then lose a load of women and babies in childbirth. I'm happy to issue a fatwa against most people who are unvaccinated by choice. But we do need certain people to keep working.
What should have happened was what other countries have done. A campaign of public shame. Call them out for the selfish cretins they are - many would probably have Trumped and got it reluctantly.
They said this about care workers, it turns out that people need to work for a living so they quietly get vaccinated.
There is a significant difference between a midwife and a care worker...
Sure, but what else are they going to do? It's not as if they can just waltz into a job somewhere else and aiui most of the private sector healthcare companies already have no jab no job mandates.
I agree. My point was in response to Rob wanting to fire them. If it came to it that wouldn't be a good idea.
It would barely be noticeable given the changes in staff levels over the past years. You make it sound like it'd be some sort of armageddon scenario.
As we already have acute shortages of staff in some critical roles in some hospitals, it *could* be armageddon in any given hospital if "just fire them" removes a chunk of the midwifery staff as a glut of women come in. They aren't just standing around doing nothing - they are the literal difference between life and death in some births. You can't have a blanket "fire them" approach.
There's months for them to get vaccinated and I'm sure most of them will as we get closer to the date and it looks like they're out of work. Remember, it's not as if they can simply go and do something else for a living that will pay them as much.
Cuts both ways. Takes 2 years to train a midwife.
And if they did lose a hundred or so that wouldn't get vaccinated they'd be down to levels not seen since... oh, earlier this year.
Right. So if there are more midwives now than there were earlier this year, is it more likely that we recruited more because they were needed, or because the NHS decided to splurge money on an excess of midwives for fun/as a fashion statement?
Neither. The NHS doesn't automatically have exactly the right number of midwives needed at any given time, because that's impossible to manage. The point is that losing a hundred is immaterial in the grand scheme of things, and is unlikely to affect function.
Appalling Con splits in the new Redfield & Wilton poll:
NE Lab 61% Con 22% NW Lab 51% Con 28% W Midlands Lab 47% Con 37% E Midlands Lab 41% Con 35%
Not necessarily, the Tories can win without the North provided they win the South and Midlands.
Those Midlands numbers are not so far behind midterm they cannot be caught up
I would go and look at the Lib Dem figures in the breakdowns.
E Midlands have 14% compared to 8% in the W Midlands.
I would say both W Midlands and E Midlands are nearer 47% Lab, 36% Tory.
And if you look at the South East - those figures should be given Tory MPs a nightmare as I suspect the Labour / Lib Dem votes will be a lot more efficient than those figures make out.
I concur.
The geographical breakdown is looking like the makings of a perfect storm. These May locals are going to be delicious. Any markets up?
The recent local council by-elections in the SE (I know, I know) have been pointing very firmly that way for a few weeks now.
You cannot tutor for raw IQ tests of logic and reasoning to the same level as you can tutor for subject knowledge tests. In any case a pupil with a high IQ from a council estate would easily pass an IQ test tutored or not, the fact a few average IQ middle class pupils might scrape a pass at 11 pass after being heavily tutored does not make much difference to the former.
As opposed to all pupils crashing and burning at a sink comprehensive, at least grammar schools offered those with high IQs from deprived areas a chance to get on.
Sixth form entry offers a chance for those who are late developers and do well at GCSEs the fact you hated sixth form would probably have applied whichever school you went to
That's completely and demonstrably false. IQ tests are a learnable skill like any other academic skill.
Nope, over half of IQ is determined by genetics and cannot be learnt
I'm not sure that's true. There's lots of evidence that one can get better and better at IQ tests by learning the patterns inherent in them.
That doesn't mean you're more intelligent - it means you're better at getting good scores on IQ tests.
Which reflects latest research demonstrating how the brain re-wires itself to get better at whatever it spends time doing, more quickly and more dramatically than has previously been thought. If you are blindfolded, it is now believed that your brain will start reallocating connections to improve your hearing and other senses within hours, and there’s even a theory that the purpose of dreams is to keep the visual part of your brain ticking over during the night, without which our eyesight wouldn’t get the neural priority it needs.
Similarly for anything new that you learn - eventually your brain rewires so that the basic thinking it requires becomes ‘hard wired’, requiring less conscious effort and attention.
Which is also the mechanism and evolutionary reason for habits - by hardwiring processes used very frequently, it frees up attention bandwidth to focus on more novel, pressing situations, which saving the brain energy usage.
Isn't getting 500 fans at most Scottish football matches an aspiration rather than a limit.......
Oh how we laughed
Glad you can laugh at the state of Scottish football.
What you blethering about , are you a resident of St Kilda.
The standard of Scottish football is utterly terrible. Even the big teams like Rangers and Celtic aren't competitive in Europe. Look at nobodies they get beat by in European competitions, nor are any really top class players interested in going there.
Long gone are the days when they were a formidable force against other European teams.
A bit over the top methinks. Sounds like a typical southerner viewpoint who think the EPL is great , wheras in reality it is pish apart from the small amount of teams owned by shiek's or Russian's. Rangers have qualified in Europe and have lost only about 2 games out of last 20 or so. Much better to see local players etc rather than expensive highly paid pirates who don't give a crap other than their 200K a year. At least in Scotland it is still a Scottish league unlike EPL which is full of imports. Methinks you dost protest too much.
More to the point ... it wasn't like this in the 1960s.
Celtic & Rangers were comparable (maybe better than) the best of the English league. The Scotland football team regular beat the England one.
The Scottish FA have seriously under-performed for 4 decades.
Four decades ago, the Scottish FA were interested in all of Scottish football, including the international team. Since they only became interested in Rangers and Celtic, Scottish football has deteriorated significantly.
It's nice to see PBers of such intelligence and discernment are still available.
Appalling Con splits in the new Redfield & Wilton poll:
NE Lab 61% Con 22% NW Lab 51% Con 28% W Midlands Lab 47% Con 37% E Midlands Lab 41% Con 35%
Not necessarily, the Tories can win without the North provided they win the South and Midlands.
Those Midlands numbers are not so far behind midterm they cannot be caught up
I would go and look at the Lib Dem figures in the breakdowns.
E Midlands have 14% compared to 8% in the W Midlands.
I would say both W Midlands and E Midlands are nearer 47% Lab, 36% Tory.
And if you look at the South East - those figures should be given Tory MPs a nightmare as I suspect the Labour / Lib Dem votes will be a lot more efficient than those figures make out.
I concur.
The geographical breakdown is looking like the makings of a perfect storm. These May locals are going to be delicious. Any markets up?
The recent local council by-elections in the SE (I know, I know) have been pointing very firmly that way for a few weeks now.
I must admit my degree of nerdness hasn’t got that far yet. Any easily digestible stats about?
"Hopson said: “I was talking to a [trust] chief executive who said that 40 of the midwives on their midwifery service … were saying they were not prepared to be vaccinated. Those staff, given their skills and their expertise, are not easily redeployed but they’re also extremely difficult to replace.
The trust’s chief executive “is seriously concerned about the safety of the service” because of the potential exodus of midwives.
Maternity staff quitting over compulsory jabs posed a particular challenge because of the NHS-wide shortage of midwives, Hopson said. NHS England estimates that maternity services need 2,000 more whole-time equivalent midwives, while the Royal College of Midwives (RCM) puts the figure at 2,500."
See ya.
So you'd rather have avoidable deaths in childbirth; than tolerate unvaccinated NHS staff?
If they are so selfish that they won't get vaccinated to protect not only themselves but the people they are treating, they can collect their P45s.
And we then lose a load of women and babies in childbirth. I'm happy to issue a fatwa against most people who are unvaccinated by choice. But we do need certain people to keep working.
What should have happened was what other countries have done. A campaign of public shame. Call them out for the selfish cretins they are - many would probably have Trumped and got it reluctantly.
They said this about care workers, it turns out that people need to work for a living so they quietly get vaccinated.
There is a significant difference between a midwife and a care worker...
Sure, but what else are they going to do? It's not as if they can just waltz into a job somewhere else and aiui most of the private sector healthcare companies already have no jab no job mandates.
I agree. My point was in response to Rob wanting to fire them. If it came to it that wouldn't be a good idea.
It would barely be noticeable given the changes in staff levels over the past years. You make it sound like it'd be some sort of armageddon scenario.
As we already have acute shortages of staff in some critical roles in some hospitals, it *could* be armageddon in any given hospital if "just fire them" removes a chunk of the midwifery staff as a glut of women come in. They aren't just standing around doing nothing - they are the literal difference between life and death in some births. You can't have a blanket "fire them" approach.
There's months for them to get vaccinated and I'm sure most of them will as we get closer to the date and it looks like they're out of work. Remember, it's not as if they can simply go and do something else for a living that will pay them as much.
Cuts both ways. Takes 2 years to train a midwife.
And if they did lose a hundred or so that wouldn't get vaccinated they'd be down to levels not seen since... oh, earlier this year.
Right. So if there are more midwives now than there were earlier this year, is it more likely that we recruited more because they were needed, or because the NHS decided to splurge money on an excess of midwives for fun/as a fashion statement?
Neither. The NHS doesn't automatically have exactly the right number of midwives needed at any given time, because that's impossible to manage. The point is that losing a hundred is immaterial in the grand scheme of things, and is unlikely to affect function.
Yes. "A hundred or so" was a figure plucked from someone's arse precisely in order to minimise the problem.
IQ tests clearly measure SOMETHING and whatever it is, it is closely related to what we generally think of as intelligence. If you speak to someone with an IQ of 60 and then speak to someone with an IQ of 140 the latter will obviously be much more “intelligent” than the former
Quicker, smarter, better with words and ideas. Faster on the uptake. Able to do difficult tasks at speed.
“Speed of successful information processing” is, in fact, a pretty good definition of “intelligence”
And it is commonly reckoned genetics accounts for about half of this faculty
Presumably you'd be over 9000 on the IQ scale
If you sum up all his alternative personalities, 90,000 ...
Some excellent post on the last thread guys. I mean really good.
Re poor Comprehensives in deprived areas I agree, but this is probably a lot more to do with the issues of the area than anything else. The answer certainly isn't going back to Secondary Moderns.
I see @HYUFD is continuing to compare stats on Grammar schools to Comprehensives and ignoring the samples are completely different because the Grammar has selected.
If you lived in a deprived area 50 years ago you could go to a grammar school if intelligent.
Now your only choice would be a comprehensive likely to be a secondary modern in all but name if you do not have wealthy parents who can send you to private school
That doesn't answer the point.
It does. Unless you live in a wealthy suburb or rural area (or go to a comprehensive or academy where admission is based on church attendance) comprehensives are often just renamed secondary moderns effectively.
@MikeSmithson is correct. It doesn't answer the point. As usual you just raise another point and don't address the point raised. It is a moving target.
Re your point on living in a poor area and being able to go to a grammar, this is very naïve. What actually happens is the middle class and well off in surrounding areas get tutored for the test and fill the spaces. The bright kids in the poor areas don't and they still don't get in by and large.
I lived in a relatively poor large village with 2 primary schools. Only one boy got into the boys grammar school and no girls to the girls grammar school. And that boy dropped out. I have no memory of even taking a test let alone getting tutored. After O levels a whole bunch of replaced those that had dropped out. The system is crap at selection and selecting at 11 is far too soon.
There are limits on how much you can tutor for 11+ and 13+ tests which are designed to test raw iq not subject knowledge as such. Indeed very often even a few bright kids from council estates got into grammar schools even without tutors and then onto Oxbridge or other top universities and professional careers. That path is not open to them to the same extent now if they live in a deprived area and just get sent to the local very average, if that, comp.
If you were well off and had a kid who was not so bright and would not pass the 11 or 13+ you could still send them private however and still do. Most wealthy parents did not send their children to secondary moderns and do not send their children to comprehensives and certainly not comprehensives or academies which are any less than Outstanding. So the rich generally don't use comprehensives anyway while the bright but poor no longer have the opportunities grammars provided. Most grammars of course also have entries at sixth form level too
a) You can tutor for IQ tests very easily. Not sure where you got it that it was difficult. There are lots of techniques.
b) In between our posts I have been chopping wood and did a rough mental calculation of how many should have got into the grammar school from my village all other things being equal (I know how many classes there were, the size of them, the fact that our village was a 3 member ward and how many councillors there were in the borough). The answer is about 25. There was 1 and he dropped out. If that doesn't give you an idea of the disparity between poor and middle class areas nothing will.
c) If you think the well off don't send their children to Comprehensives you live in a different world. I live in a well off area now. I am wealthy by most peoples measure as are most of the people I know. Nearly all use the local comprehensive, which I grant you is good, but that is not what you were saying.
d) Moving to a Grammar at sixth form is too late. The damage has been done. Many won't go who should. Many who were at the Grammar who shouldn't have been have dropped out.
Select by subject on an ongoing basis throughout the child's education.
a) You can't. IQ test results are in part based on genetics, they are difficult to tutor for unlike subject knowledge based exams.
b) And all of them would likely have gone to a sink comprehensive otherwise, at least 1 still got to a grammar.
c) If the wealthy send their kids to a comp it will only be an Outstanding comp they have bought their kids admission to by buying a house in its catchment area, meaning there are well above average house prices for that catchment area. You buy a place at an Outstanding comp or academy much like you buy a place at private school effectively or else you go to church more regularly to get a vicar's reference for a top church school.
d) Sixth form entry for A levels and top university is fine for late developers
a) you can - just allowing children to sit a few past papers so they understand how the questions work allows children to know how to answer the questions quicker allowing them more time to concentrate on more difficult questions.
You can understand the format of the questions but it is harder to prepare for the specific questions that will come up as they are logic and reasoning based, not subject knowledge based which are more tests of memory
As someone who has got 3 of 4 children into local grammars and sent the other private, I can confirm HYUFD doesn't know what he's talking about here, as well as constantly missing the point.
Tutoring makes a massive difference to ability to tackle the 11+. You see it all the time with kids that got tutored and then struggle to keep up once they're in.
It may make a marginal difference to borderline candidates but if you have an iq of 130+ you will get into a grammar school with no tutoring at all even if you live on a council estate
@HYUFD as usual you are pontificating with certainty about something on which I am guessing you have no knowledge whatsoever. It has been pointed by many on here how you can tutor for IQ tests / 11+ not least by just practicing papers, but there are many other techniques as well. I have some experience in this (as I am sure do many others on here) as it was a requirement of a development centre of one of the largest computer companies at the time at which I was a manager to take an IQ test and score at least 130. All undergraduates on the milk round had to do so before an interview. I would interview between 20 and 30 undergraduates on the milk round each year so I was very familiar with these test.
I couldn't do anything for someone who is stupid and could probably only add a point or two to a genius, but for a reasonably bright person I could probably get 10 to 20 IQ points added. Here are some ways how:
a) Just get familiar with the tests by practicing loads and getting your timing right (basic exam technique, but not something an 11 year old without tutoring has a clue about).
b) If you get a sequence of numbers and can't see the next number start subtracting each number from the next number. If the sequence doesn't become apparent then do again until it does. This takes just seconds to do and usually results in the answer. I've not seen one on an IQ test that doesn't.
c) Another common question is an arithmetic question which is too hard to do in the time but with an multiple choice answers so estimation is required. Someone with maths knowledge can do this easily, but someone who hasn't can be given about 5 easy tricks to solve these quickly.
d) Similarly a series of shapes at IQ test level is normally fairly straightforward, but again someone without the ability can be given half a dozen things to look out for in advance.
e) If you are given a True or False tests from a short paragraph and can't get it immediately you can convert it into a logical formulae (if you know how) and these tend to be so simple you can do it very quickly. I have to say that is something I find very useful to this day as I struggle to hold a lot of words in my head but can do logical formulae easily.
I could go on.
In response to the other items on your reply to me. You said 'at least one got to the grammar school'. You obviously missed the point that 'he crashed and burned'.
You also say 6th form is ok for late developers. Where did you get that from? It certainly wasn't for me. I missed out on so much. It was worse for others who were good enough but didn't get the chance. Also what about all those who pass the 11+ and then crash and burn because it isn't appropriate?
You cannot tutor for raw IQ tests of logic and reasoning to the same level as you can tutor for subject knowledge tests. In any case a pupil with a high IQ from a council estate would easily pass an IQ test tutored or not, the fact a few average IQ middle class pupils might scrape a pass at 11 pass after being heavily tutored does not make much difference to the former.
As opposed to all pupils crashing and burning at a sink comprehensive, at least grammar schools offered those with high IQs from deprived areas a chance to get on.
Sixth form entry offers a chance for those who are late developers and do well at GCSEs the fact you hated sixth form would probably have applied whichever school you went to
Where on earth did you get the idea that I hated the 6th form grammar school? I didn't I loved it. I also had a very good secondary school prior to that. You seem to read stuff into posts that aren't there. The problem is that by selecting at 11 I missed stuff that was only available at the grammar school and the grammar school boys missed stuff that was only available at the secondary school. Pointless separation and also doesn't allow for streaming by subject properly across all the pupils.
If you don't think you can tutor for the 11+ how do you explain my example from a poor area with only 1 getting into the Grammar school whereas all things being equal it should have been 20 - 25. It is not a few, it is a lot. The idea that you think Grammar schools are not in anyway heavily biased towards well off parents is just bizarre. They are very heavily weighted against poor areas.
Why should it have been 20-25? Unless they all had high IQs. How many of those 20-25 would be high earning professionals if they did not even have a chance of a grammar school but their only choice was a sink school? Likely 0.
Why should it have been 20 - 25? See earlier post. I'm not repeating it. I did the maths.
Only one went to the Grammar school and he crashed and burned (I have said that so many times). We did not have sink schools. My Secondary school was excellent. My Grammar schools was good. I enjoyed it, but I didn't think the teachers were as good bizarrely, but I did well.
But here is the point you keep on missing: Pupils from both schools were failed by the system. I was lucky, but even I missed out on stuff, but the culture was so ingrained that many very bright pupils from the Secondary school just went on to do apprenticeships. Nothing wrong with that but many were capable of so much more. And many at the Grammar school dropped out after O Levels with just one or two who could have benefited from the Secondary school education. All because we decide the fate of a child at 11. Ridiculous.
If you live in a poor area your local school will be more likely to be a sink school.
There is also nothing wrong with apprenticeships, in fact the highest level apprentices earn more on average than most graduates except those from the Russell Group.
Germany for example has selective gymnasiums like our grammars but also high status apprenticeships too
I never said there was anything wrong with apprenticeships. In fact I specifically went out of my way to say so in plain English, quote 'Nothing wrong with that...'. Sometimes a conversation with you is a challenge! Try reading the 2nd half of that sentence '...but many were capable of so much more.' Eg me. I was lucky, many weren't.
Re poor areas having sink schools. Yes, but not always, particularly if the poor areas are pockets. I was brought up in Surrey, which is not renowned for being poor, but there are poor areas. So it is very easy to see how the 11+ failed pupils. All the Grammar school kids came from the middle class areas and none from the poor areas. I wonder why? I think most of us know.
Can I answer that for HYUFD - the children from poor areas weren't bright enough - after all you don't gain any advantage from a few practice papers.
"Hopson said: “I was talking to a [trust] chief executive who said that 40 of the midwives on their midwifery service … were saying they were not prepared to be vaccinated. Those staff, given their skills and their expertise, are not easily redeployed but they’re also extremely difficult to replace.
The trust’s chief executive “is seriously concerned about the safety of the service” because of the potential exodus of midwives.
Maternity staff quitting over compulsory jabs posed a particular challenge because of the NHS-wide shortage of midwives, Hopson said. NHS England estimates that maternity services need 2,000 more whole-time equivalent midwives, while the Royal College of Midwives (RCM) puts the figure at 2,500."
See ya.
So you'd rather have avoidable deaths in childbirth; than tolerate unvaccinated NHS staff?
If they are so selfish that they won't get vaccinated to protect not only themselves but the people they are treating, they can collect their P45s.
And we then lose a load of women and babies in childbirth. I'm happy to issue a fatwa against most people who are unvaccinated by choice. But we do need certain people to keep working.
What should have happened was what other countries have done. A campaign of public shame. Call them out for the selfish cretins they are - many would probably have Trumped and got it reluctantly.
They said this about care workers, it turns out that people need to work for a living so they quietly get vaccinated.
There is a significant difference between a midwife and a care worker...
Sure, but what else are they going to do? It's not as if they can just waltz into a job somewhere else and aiui most of the private sector healthcare companies already have no jab no job mandates.
I agree. My point was in response to Rob wanting to fire them. If it came to it that wouldn't be a good idea.
It would barely be noticeable given the changes in staff levels over the past years. You make it sound like it'd be some sort of armageddon scenario.
As we already have acute shortages of staff in some critical roles in some hospitals, it *could* be armageddon in any given hospital if "just fire them" removes a chunk of the midwifery staff as a glut of women come in. They aren't just standing around doing nothing - they are the literal difference between life and death in some births. You can't have a blanket "fire them" approach.
There's months for them to get vaccinated and I'm sure most of them will as we get closer to the date and it looks like they're out of work. Remember, it's not as if they can simply go and do something else for a living that will pay them as much.
Cuts both ways. Takes 2 years to train a midwife.
And if they did lose a hundred or so that wouldn't get vaccinated they'd be down to levels not seen since... oh, earlier this year.
Right. So if there are more midwives now than there were earlier this year, is it more likely that we recruited more because they were needed, or because the NHS decided to splurge money on an excess of midwives for fun/as a fashion statement?
Neither. The NHS doesn't automatically have exactly the right number of midwives needed at any given time, because that's impossible to manage. The point is that losing a hundred is immaterial in the grand scheme of things, and is unlikely to affect function.
Yes. "A hundred or so" was a figure plucked from someone's arse precisely in order to minimise the problem.
Having read the discussion above; I must conclude that there is a deeply religious fervour about vaccination evident on this website. People believe that vaccination is the solution to the pandemic because they believe in science, and will willingly sacrifice all sorts of freedoms in support of it. Yet they overlook its obvious limitations; namely that the vaccination programme did not deliver what it promised as it did not end the pandemic; it did not prevent new variants from arising; and it does not stop people from catching and spreading the virus. The old political maxim that the masses are easy to herd is turned on its head; it turns out that actually the intellectuals are easy to herd, when it comes to certain policies. This reinforces a belief that I hold strongly, that self appointed experts and university educated people are not necessarily smarter in the end than people with no education who go through life living by their wits.
The vaccination program didn't promise any of those things.
Well, quite. The vaccination programme was about saving lives (with help from masks and lockdowns at the peak), and to an impressive degree it's done the job.
The debate now is more about the importance of reducing widespread illness vs the importance of being free to be out and about. It actually should be a less heated debate.
IQ tests clearly measure SOMETHING and whatever it is, it is closely related to what we generally think of as intelligence. If you speak to someone with an IQ of 60 and then speak to someone with an IQ of 140 the latter will obviously be much more “intelligent” than the former
Quicker, smarter, better with words and ideas. Faster on the uptake. Able to do difficult tasks at speed.
“Speed of successful information processing” is, in fact, a pretty good definition of “intelligence”
And it is commonly reckoned genetics accounts for about half of this faculty
Yes they do, but we are not talking about the absolute IQ level but the difference between an 11 year old who has never seen a test before and an 11 year old who has been tutored in them. Nothing more than those two very limited subsets.
Having read the discussion above; I must conclude that there is a deeply religious fervour about vaccination evident on this website. People believe that vaccination is the solution to the pandemic because they believe in science, and will willingly sacrifice all sorts of freedoms in support of it. Yet they overlook its obvious limitations; namely that the vaccination programme did not deliver what it promised as it did not end the pandemic; it did not prevent new variants from arising; and it does not stop people from catching and spreading the virus. The old political maxim that the masses are easy to herd is turned on its head; it turns out that actually the intellectuals are easy to herd, when it comes to certain policies. This reinforces a belief that I hold strongly, that self appointed experts and university educated people are not necessarily smarter in the end than people with no education who go through life living by their wits.
It stops people from dying from it, or clogging up the hospitals. Much like vaccination for other diseases.
OK. But so does not smoking, giving up alcohol and drugs, being a healthy weight, and avoiding dangerous sports. All those things are choices that people can make. Why not present vaccination against COVID in the same light and tell the truth about it, which is that you should get vaccinated to avoid a nasty premature death? Wouldn't that be a better way to get people to embrace vaccination?
IQ tests clearly measure SOMETHING and whatever it is, it is closely related to what we generally think of as intelligence. If you speak to someone with an IQ of 60 and then speak to someone with an IQ of 140 the latter will obviously be much more “intelligent” than the former
Quicker, smarter, better with words and ideas. Faster on the uptake. Able to do difficult tasks at speed.
“Speed of successful information processing” is, in fact, a pretty good definition of “intelligence”
And it is commonly reckoned genetics accounts for about half of this faculty
I don't question any of that. I question the ludicrous assertion that you can't train someone to do well at IQ tests. As if they are some magic oracle completely void of learnable material.
Looking at the UK COVID dashboard, a thought struck me. For all that we fulminate against those eligible but who have not yet been vaccinated, were you to have told me that one year into the vaccine's availability, 90% of those eligible would have had at least one jab, I'd have thought that that was an amazing achievement, and beyond what I would have thought possible, period.
It is tempting to focus on what more could have been done (and that is a valuable trait in those seeking progress), but in doing so, we sometimes lose sight of what has been accomplished and how before the event we'd have been very pleased with what we now have.
Having read the discussion above; I must conclude that there is a deeply religious fervour about vaccination evident on this website. People believe that vaccination is the solution to the pandemic because they believe in science, and will willingly sacrifice all sorts of freedoms in support of it. Yet they overlook its obvious limitations; namely that the vaccination programme did not deliver what it promised as it did not end the pandemic; it did not prevent new variants from arising; and it does not stop people from catching and spreading the virus. The old political maxim that the masses are easy to herd is turned on its head; it turns out that actually the intellectuals are easy to herd, when it comes to certain policies. This reinforces a belief that I hold strongly, that self appointed experts and university educated people are not necessarily smarter in the end than people with no education who go through life living by their wits.
It stops people from dying from it, or clogging up the hospitals. Much like vaccination for other diseases.
OK. But so does not smoking, giving up alcohol and drugs, being a healthy weight, and avoiding dangerous sports. All those things are choices that people can make. Why not present vaccination against COVID in the same light and tell the truth about it, which is that you should get vaccinated to avoid a nasty premature death? Wouldn't that be a better way to get people to embrace vaccination?
People are often required not to smoke at work, or be drunk at work, or come to work with a positive drug test. People can do what they want, but it will have implications for what they can and cannot do in other areas.
Have any R4 Today listeners heard Amol Rajan on there since the Royals TV documentary he did? I'm pretty sure I haven't, and I'd not be surprised to find out that his documentary and his absence were related somehow.
Some excellent post on the last thread guys. I mean really good.
Re poor Comprehensives in deprived areas I agree, but this is probably a lot more to do with the issues of the area than anything else. The answer certainly isn't going back to Secondary Moderns.
I see @HYUFD is continuing to compare stats on Grammar schools to Comprehensives and ignoring the samples are completely different because the Grammar has selected.
If you lived in a deprived area 50 years ago you could go to a grammar school if intelligent.
Now your only choice would be a comprehensive likely to be a secondary modern in all but name if you do not have wealthy parents who can send you to private school
That doesn't answer the point.
It does. Unless you live in a wealthy suburb or rural area (or go to a comprehensive or academy where admission is based on church attendance) comprehensives are often just renamed secondary moderns effectively.
@MikeSmithson is correct. It doesn't answer the point. As usual you just raise another point and don't address the point raised. It is a moving target.
Re your point on living in a poor area and being able to go to a grammar, this is very naïve. What actually happens is the middle class and well off in surrounding areas get tutored for the test and fill the spaces. The bright kids in the poor areas don't and they still don't get in by and large.
I lived in a relatively poor large village with 2 primary schools. Only one boy got into the boys grammar school and no girls to the girls grammar school. And that boy dropped out. I have no memory of even taking a test let alone getting tutored. After O levels a whole bunch of replaced those that had dropped out. The system is crap at selection and selecting at 11 is far too soon.
There are limits on how much you can tutor for 11+ and 13+ tests which are designed to test raw iq not subject knowledge as such. Indeed very often even a few bright kids from council estates got into grammar schools even without tutors and then onto Oxbridge or other top universities and professional careers. That path is not open to them to the same extent now if they live in a deprived area and just get sent to the local very average, if that, comp.
If you were well off and had a kid who was not so bright and would not pass the 11 or 13+ you could still send them private however and still do. Most wealthy parents did not send their children to secondary moderns and do not send their children to comprehensives and certainly not comprehensives or academies which are any less than Outstanding. So the rich generally don't use comprehensives anyway while the bright but poor no longer have the opportunities grammars provided. Most grammars of course also have entries at sixth form level too
a) You can tutor for IQ tests very easily. Not sure where you got it that it was difficult. There are lots of techniques.
b) In between our posts I have been chopping wood and did a rough mental calculation of how many should have got into the grammar school from my village all other things being equal (I know how many classes there were, the size of them, the fact that our village was a 3 member ward and how many councillors there were in the borough). The answer is about 25. There was 1 and he dropped out. If that doesn't give you an idea of the disparity between poor and middle class areas nothing will.
c) If you think the well off don't send their children to Comprehensives you live in a different world. I live in a well off area now. I am wealthy by most peoples measure as are most of the people I know. Nearly all use the local comprehensive, which I grant you is good, but that is not what you were saying.
d) Moving to a Grammar at sixth form is too late. The damage has been done. Many won't go who should. Many who were at the Grammar who shouldn't have been have dropped out.
Select by subject on an ongoing basis throughout the child's education.
a) You can't. IQ test results are in part based on genetics, they are difficult to tutor for unlike subject knowledge based exams.
b) And all of them would likely have gone to a sink comprehensive otherwise, at least 1 still got to a grammar.
c) If the wealthy send their kids to a comp it will only be an Outstanding comp they have bought their kids admission to by buying a house in its catchment area, meaning there are well above average house prices for that catchment area. You buy a place at an Outstanding comp or academy much like you buy a place at private school effectively or else you go to church more regularly to get a vicar's reference for a top church school.
d) Sixth form entry for A levels and top university is fine for late developers
a) you can - just allowing children to sit a few past papers so they understand how the questions work allows children to know how to answer the questions quicker allowing them more time to concentrate on more difficult questions.
You can understand the format of the questions but it is harder to prepare for the specific questions that will come up as they are logic and reasoning based, not subject knowledge based which are more tests of memory
As someone who has got 3 of 4 children into local grammars and sent the other private, I can confirm HYUFD doesn't know what he's talking about here, as well as constantly missing the point.
Tutoring makes a massive difference to ability to tackle the 11+. You see it all the time with kids that got tutored and then struggle to keep up once they're in.
It may make a marginal difference to borderline candidates but if you have an iq of 130+ you will get into a grammar school with no tutoring at all even if you live on a council estate
@HYUFD as usual you are pontificating with certainty about something on which I am guessing you have no knowledge whatsoever. It has been pointed by many on here how you can tutor for IQ tests / 11+ not least by just practicing papers, but there are many other techniques as well. I have some experience in this (as I am sure do many others on here) as it was a requirement of a development centre of one of the largest computer companies at the time at which I was a manager to take an IQ test and score at least 130. All undergraduates on the milk round had to do so before an interview. I would interview between 20 and 30 undergraduates on the milk round each year so I was very familiar with these test.
I couldn't do anything for someone who is stupid and could probably only add a point or two to a genius, but for a reasonably bright person I could probably get 10 to 20 IQ points added. Here are some ways how:
a) Just get familiar with the tests by practicing loads and getting your timing right (basic exam technique, but not something an 11 year old without tutoring has a clue about).
b) If you get a sequence of numbers and can't see the next number start subtracting each number from the next number. If the sequence doesn't become apparent then do again until it does. This takes just seconds to do and usually results in the answer. I've not seen one on an IQ test that doesn't.
c) Another common question is an arithmetic question which is too hard to do in the time but with an multiple choice answers so estimation is required. Someone with maths knowledge can do this easily, but someone who hasn't can be given about 5 easy tricks to solve these quickly.
d) Similarly a series of shapes at IQ test level is normally fairly straightforward, but again someone without the ability can be given half a dozen things to look out for in advance.
e) If you are given a True or False tests from a short paragraph and can't get it immediately you can convert it into a logical formulae (if you know how) and these tend to be so simple you can do it very quickly. I have to say that is something I find very useful to this day as I struggle to hold a lot of words in my head but can do logical formulae easily.
I could go on.
In response to the other items on your reply to me. You said 'at least one got to the grammar school'. You obviously missed the point that 'he crashed and burned'.
You also say 6th form is ok for late developers. Where did you get that from? It certainly wasn't for me. I missed out on so much. It was worse for others who were good enough but didn't get the chance. Also what about all those who pass the 11+ and then crash and burn because it isn't appropriate?
You cannot tutor for raw IQ tests of logic and reasoning to the same level as you can tutor for subject knowledge tests. In any case a pupil with a high IQ from a council estate would easily pass an IQ test tutored or not, the fact a few average IQ middle class pupils might scrape a pass at 11 pass after being heavily tutored does not make much difference to the former.
As opposed to all pupils crashing and burning at a sink comprehensive, at least grammar schools offered those with high IQs from deprived areas a chance to get on.
Sixth form entry offers a chance for those who are late developers and do well at GCSEs the fact you hated sixth form would probably have applied whichever school you went to
Where on earth did you get the idea that I hated the 6th form grammar school? I didn't I loved it. I also had a very good secondary school prior to that. You seem to read stuff into posts that aren't there. The problem is that by selecting at 11 I missed stuff that was only available at the grammar school and the grammar school boys missed stuff that was only available at the secondary school. Pointless separation and also doesn't allow for streaming by subject properly across all the pupils.
If you don't think you can tutor for the 11+ how do you explain my example from a poor area with only 1 getting into the Grammar school whereas all things being equal it should have been 20 - 25. It is not a few, it is a lot. The idea that you think Grammar schools are not in anyway heavily biased towards well off parents is just bizarre. They are very heavily weighted against poor areas.
Why should it have been 20-25? Unless they all had high IQs. How many of those 20-25 would be high earning professionals if they did not even have a chance of a grammar school but their only choice was a sink school? Likely 0.
Why should it have been 20 - 25? See earlier post. I'm not repeating it. I did the maths.
Only one went to the Grammar school and he crashed and burned (I have said that so many times). We did not have sink schools. My Secondary school was excellent. My Grammar schools was good. I enjoyed it, but I didn't think the teachers were as good bizarrely, but I did well.
But here is the point you keep on missing: Pupils from both schools were failed by the system. I was lucky, but even I missed out on stuff, but the culture was so ingrained that many very bright pupils from the Secondary school just went on to do apprenticeships. Nothing wrong with that but many were capable of so much more. And many at the Grammar school dropped out after O Levels with just one or two who could have benefited from the Secondary school education. All because we decide the fate of a child at 11. Ridiculous.
If you live in a poor area your local school will be more likely to be a sink school.
There is also nothing wrong with apprenticeships, in fact the highest level apprentices earn more on average than most graduates except those from the Russell Group.
Germany for example has selective gymnasiums like our grammars but also high status apprenticeships too
I never said there was anything wrong with apprenticeships. In fact I specifically went out of my way to say so in plain English, quote 'Nothing wrong with that...'. Sometimes a conversation with you is a challenge! Try reading the 2nd half of that sentence '...but many were capable of so much more.' Eg me. I was lucky, many weren't.
Re poor areas having sink schools. Yes, but not always, particularly if the poor areas are pockets. I was brought up in Surrey, which is not renowned for being poor, but there are poor areas. So it is very easy to see how the 11+ failed pupils. All the Grammar school kids came from the middle class areas and none from the poor areas. I wonder why? I think most of us know.
Can I answer that for HYUFD - the children from poor areas weren't bright enough - after all you don't gain any advantage from a few practice papers.
Now I know you are talking on behalf of HYUFD and not yourself so in answer to HYUFD - It is funny how at 16 lots of them suddenly got brighter and transferred to the Grammar school and a lot of the Grammar school kids got dimmer and dropped out.
Have any R4 Today listeners heard Amol Rajan on there since the Royals TV documentary he did? I'm pretty sure I haven't, and I'd not be surprised to find out that his documentary and his absence were related somehow.
Talking of radio, for those who just can't get enough of GB News, they will be broadcasting their output via their own radio station in the new year. Seems a bit excessive for the 5 people who might be interested.
Some excellent post on the last thread guys. I mean really good.
Re poor Comprehensives in deprived areas I agree, but this is probably a lot more to do with the issues of the area than anything else. The answer certainly isn't going back to Secondary Moderns.
I see @HYUFD is continuing to compare stats on Grammar schools to Comprehensives and ignoring the samples are completely different because the Grammar has selected.
If you lived in a deprived area 50 years ago you could go to a grammar school if intelligent.
Now your only choice would be a comprehensive likely to be a secondary modern in all but name if you do not have wealthy parents who can send you to private school
That doesn't answer the point.
It does. Unless you live in a wealthy suburb or rural area (or go to a comprehensive or academy where admission is based on church attendance) comprehensives are often just renamed secondary moderns effectively.
@MikeSmithson is correct. It doesn't answer the point. As usual you just raise another point and don't address the point raised. It is a moving target.
Re your point on living in a poor area and being able to go to a grammar, this is very naïve. What actually happens is the middle class and well off in surrounding areas get tutored for the test and fill the spaces. The bright kids in the poor areas don't and they still don't get in by and large.
I lived in a relatively poor large village with 2 primary schools. Only one boy got into the boys grammar school and no girls to the girls grammar school. And that boy dropped out. I have no memory of even taking a test let alone getting tutored. After O levels a whole bunch of replaced those that had dropped out. The system is crap at selection and selecting at 11 is far too soon.
There are limits on how much you can tutor for 11+ and 13+ tests which are designed to test raw iq not subject knowledge as such. Indeed very often even a few bright kids from council estates got into grammar schools even without tutors and then onto Oxbridge or other top universities and professional careers. That path is not open to them to the same extent now if they live in a deprived area and just get sent to the local very average, if that, comp.
If you were well off and had a kid who was not so bright and would not pass the 11 or 13+ you could still send them private however and still do. Most wealthy parents did not send their children to secondary moderns and do not send their children to comprehensives and certainly not comprehensives or academies which are any less than Outstanding. So the rich generally don't use comprehensives anyway while the bright but poor no longer have the opportunities grammars provided. Most grammars of course also have entries at sixth form level too
a) You can tutor for IQ tests very easily. Not sure where you got it that it was difficult. There are lots of techniques.
b) In between our posts I have been chopping wood and did a rough mental calculation of how many should have got into the grammar school from my village all other things being equal (I know how many classes there were, the size of them, the fact that our village was a 3 member ward and how many councillors there were in the borough). The answer is about 25. There was 1 and he dropped out. If that doesn't give you an idea of the disparity between poor and middle class areas nothing will.
c) If you think the well off don't send their children to Comprehensives you live in a different world. I live in a well off area now. I am wealthy by most peoples measure as are most of the people I know. Nearly all use the local comprehensive, which I grant you is good, but that is not what you were saying.
d) Moving to a Grammar at sixth form is too late. The damage has been done. Many won't go who should. Many who were at the Grammar who shouldn't have been have dropped out.
Select by subject on an ongoing basis throughout the child's education.
a) You can't. IQ test results are in part based on genetics, they are difficult to tutor for unlike subject knowledge based exams.
b) And all of them would likely have gone to a sink comprehensive otherwise, at least 1 still got to a grammar.
c) If the wealthy send their kids to a comp it will only be an Outstanding comp they have bought their kids admission to by buying a house in its catchment area, meaning there are well above average house prices for that catchment area. You buy a place at an Outstanding comp or academy much like you buy a place at private school effectively or else you go to church more regularly to get a vicar's reference for a top church school.
d) Sixth form entry for A levels and top university is fine for late developers
a) you can - just allowing children to sit a few past papers so they understand how the questions work allows children to know how to answer the questions quicker allowing them more time to concentrate on more difficult questions.
Indeed and that is what is taught in junior schools in Grammar areas.
Our local junior school (quite charming in its way but run by a rather lefty head who doesn't believe in selective education, despite working in a selective authority) refuses to teach for the 11+. She is far from atypical, although it is well known which junior schools do teach the 11+ (you can't choose to go there, of course - it's down to postcode alone). The private schools all teach the 11+, of course, because they do what parents want rather than what the teachers want. Consequently, tutoring is almost universal amongst the middle classes in Trafford. You don't tend to get it so much over the border in Manchester or Cheshire, though it does exist of course - simply because most people go to the local comp. It's not an issue for so many people.
Much like the vaccination debate, you should not make policy on the basis that some fanatics are too stupid to realise the damage they are doing. People like that should not be in teaching as they put politics ahead of the good of the kids.
Some excellent post on the last thread guys. I mean really good.
Re poor Comprehensives in deprived areas I agree, but this is probably a lot more to do with the issues of the area than anything else. The answer certainly isn't going back to Secondary Moderns.
I see @HYUFD is continuing to compare stats on Grammar schools to Comprehensives and ignoring the samples are completely different because the Grammar has selected.
If you lived in a deprived area 50 years ago you could go to a grammar school if intelligent.
Now your only choice would be a comprehensive likely to be a secondary modern in all but name if you do not have wealthy parents who can send you to private school
That doesn't answer the point.
It does. Unless you live in a wealthy suburb or rural area (or go to a comprehensive or academy where admission is based on church attendance) comprehensives are often just renamed secondary moderns effectively.
@MikeSmithson is correct. It doesn't answer the point. As usual you just raise another point and don't address the point raised. It is a moving target.
Re your point on living in a poor area and being able to go to a grammar, this is very naïve. What actually happens is the middle class and well off in surrounding areas get tutored for the test and fill the spaces. The bright kids in the poor areas don't and they still don't get in by and large.
I lived in a relatively poor large village with 2 primary schools. Only one boy got into the boys grammar school and no girls to the girls grammar school. And that boy dropped out. I have no memory of even taking a test let alone getting tutored. After O levels a whole bunch of replaced those that had dropped out. The system is crap at selection and selecting at 11 is far too soon.
There are limits on how much you can tutor for 11+ and 13+ tests which are designed to test raw iq not subject knowledge as such. Indeed very often even a few bright kids from council estates got into grammar schools even without tutors and then onto Oxbridge or other top universities and professional careers. That path is not open to them to the same extent now if they live in a deprived area and just get sent to the local very average, if that, comp.
If you were well off and had a kid who was not so bright and would not pass the 11 or 13+ you could still send them private however and still do. Most wealthy parents did not send their children to secondary moderns and do not send their children to comprehensives and certainly not comprehensives or academies which are any less than Outstanding. So the rich generally don't use comprehensives anyway while the bright but poor no longer have the opportunities grammars provided. Most grammars of course also have entries at sixth form level too
a) You can tutor for IQ tests very easily. Not sure where you got it that it was difficult. There are lots of techniques.
b) In between our posts I have been chopping wood and did a rough mental calculation of how many should have got into the grammar school from my village all other things being equal (I know how many classes there were, the size of them, the fact that our village was a 3 member ward and how many councillors there were in the borough). The answer is about 25. There was 1 and he dropped out. If that doesn't give you an idea of the disparity between poor and middle class areas nothing will.
c) If you think the well off don't send their children to Comprehensives you live in a different world. I live in a well off area now. I am wealthy by most peoples measure as are most of the people I know. Nearly all use the local comprehensive, which I grant you is good, but that is not what you were saying.
d) Moving to a Grammar at sixth form is too late. The damage has been done. Many won't go who should. Many who were at the Grammar who shouldn't have been have dropped out.
Select by subject on an ongoing basis throughout the child's education.
a) You can't. IQ test results are in part based on genetics, they are difficult to tutor for unlike subject knowledge based exams.
b) And all of them would likely have gone to a sink comprehensive otherwise, at least 1 still got to a grammar.
c) If the wealthy send their kids to a comp it will only be an Outstanding comp they have bought their kids admission to by buying a house in its catchment area, meaning there are well above average house prices for that catchment area. You buy a place at an Outstanding comp or academy much like you buy a place at private school effectively or else you go to church more regularly to get a vicar's reference for a top church school.
d) Sixth form entry for A levels and top university is fine for late developers
a) you can - just allowing children to sit a few past papers so they understand how the questions work allows children to know how to answer the questions quicker allowing them more time to concentrate on more difficult questions.
You can understand the format of the questions but it is harder to prepare for the specific questions that will come up as they are logic and reasoning based, not subject knowledge based which are more tests of memory
As someone who has got 3 of 4 children into local grammars and sent the other private, I can confirm HYUFD doesn't know what he's talking about here, as well as constantly missing the point.
Tutoring makes a massive difference to ability to tackle the 11+. You see it all the time with kids that got tutored and then struggle to keep up once they're in.
It may make a marginal difference to borderline candidates but if you have an iq of 130+ you will get into a grammar school with no tutoring at all even if you live on a council estate
@HYUFD as usual you are pontificating with certainty about something on which I am guessing you have no knowledge whatsoever. It has been pointed by many on here how you can tutor for IQ tests / 11+ not least by just practicing papers, but there are many other techniques as well. I have some experience in this (as I am sure do many others on here) as it was a requirement of a development centre of one of the largest computer companies at the time at which I was a manager to take an IQ test and score at least 130. All undergraduates on the milk round had to do so before an interview. I would interview between 20 and 30 undergraduates on the milk round each year so I was very familiar with these test.
I couldn't do anything for someone who is stupid and could probably only add a point or two to a genius, but for a reasonably bright person I could probably get 10 to 20 IQ points added. Here are some ways how:
a) Just get familiar with the tests by practicing loads and getting your timing right (basic exam technique, but not something an 11 year old without tutoring has a clue about).
b) If you get a sequence of numbers and can't see the next number start subtracting each number from the next number. If the sequence doesn't become apparent then do again until it does. This takes just seconds to do and usually results in the answer. I've not seen one on an IQ test that doesn't.
c) Another common question is an arithmetic question which is too hard to do in the time but with an multiple choice answers so estimation is required. Someone with maths knowledge can do this easily, but someone who hasn't can be given about 5 easy tricks to solve these quickly.
d) Similarly a series of shapes at IQ test level is normally fairly straightforward, but again someone without the ability can be given half a dozen things to look out for in advance.
e) If you are given a True or False tests from a short paragraph and can't get it immediately you can convert it into a logical formulae (if you know how) and these tend to be so simple you can do it very quickly. I have to say that is something I find very useful to this day as I struggle to hold a lot of words in my head but can do logical formulae easily.
I could go on.
In response to the other items on your reply to me. You said 'at least one got to the grammar school'. You obviously missed the point that 'he crashed and burned'.
You also say 6th form is ok for late developers. Where did you get that from? It certainly wasn't for me. I missed out on so much. It was worse for others who were good enough but didn't get the chance. Also what about all those who pass the 11+ and then crash and burn because it isn't appropriate?
You cannot tutor for raw IQ tests of logic and reasoning to the same level as you can tutor for subject knowledge tests. In any case a pupil with a high IQ from a council estate would easily pass an IQ test tutored or not, the fact a few average IQ middle class pupils might scrape a pass at 11 pass after being heavily tutored does not make much difference to the former.
As opposed to all pupils crashing and burning at a sink comprehensive, at least grammar schools offered those with high IQs from deprived areas a chance to get on.
Sixth form entry offers a chance for those who are late developers and do well at GCSEs the fact you hated sixth form would probably have applied whichever school you went to
Where on earth did you get the idea that I hated the 6th form grammar school? I didn't I loved it. I also had a very good secondary school prior to that. You seem to read stuff into posts that aren't there. The problem is that by selecting at 11 I missed stuff that was only available at the grammar school and the grammar school boys missed stuff that was only available at the secondary school. Pointless separation and also doesn't allow for streaming by subject properly across all the pupils.
If you don't think you can tutor for the 11+ how do you explain my example from a poor area with only 1 getting into the Grammar school whereas all things being equal it should have been 20 - 25. It is not a few, it is a lot. The idea that you think Grammar schools are not in anyway heavily biased towards well off parents is just bizarre. They are very heavily weighted against poor areas.
Why should it have been 20-25? Unless they all had high IQs. How many of those 20-25 would be high earning professionals if they did not even have a chance of a grammar school but their only choice was a sink school? Likely 0.
Why should it have been 20 - 25? See earlier post. I'm not repeating it. I did the maths.
Only one went to the Grammar school and he crashed and burned (I have said that so many times). We did not have sink schools. My Secondary school was excellent. My Grammar schools was good. I enjoyed it, but I didn't think the teachers were as good bizarrely, but I did well.
But here is the point you keep on missing: Pupils from both schools were failed by the system. I was lucky, but even I missed out on stuff, but the culture was so ingrained that many very bright pupils from the Secondary school just went on to do apprenticeships. Nothing wrong with that but many were capable of so much more. And many at the Grammar school dropped out after O Levels with just one or two who could have benefited from the Secondary school education. All because we decide the fate of a child at 11. Ridiculous.
If you live in a poor area your local school will be more likely to be a sink school.
There is also nothing wrong with apprenticeships, in fact the highest level apprentices earn more on average than most graduates except those from the Russell Group.
Germany for example has selective gymnasiums like our grammars but also high status apprenticeships too
I never said there was anything wrong with apprenticeships. In fact I specifically went out of my way to say so in plain English, quote 'Nothing wrong with that...'. Sometimes a conversation with you is a challenge! Try reading the 2nd half of that sentence '...but many were capable of so much more.' Eg me. I was lucky, many weren't.
Re poor areas having sink schools. Yes, but not always, particularly if the poor areas are pockets. I was brought up in Surrey, which is not renowned for being poor, but there are poor areas. So it is very easy to see how the 11+ failed pupils. All the Grammar school kids came from the middle class areas and none from the poor areas. I wonder why? I think most of us know.
Can I answer that for HYUFD - the children from poor areas weren't bright enough - after all you don't gain any advantage from a few practice papers.
I'm also wondering when someone on this thread will actually go and claim that grammar and "public" school children are genetically superior because they are so much more intelligent.
Some excellent post on the last thread guys. I mean really good.
Re poor Comprehensives in deprived areas I agree, but this is probably a lot more to do with the issues of the area than anything else. The answer certainly isn't going back to Secondary Moderns.
I see @HYUFD is continuing to compare stats on Grammar schools to Comprehensives and ignoring the samples are completely different because the Grammar has selected.
If you lived in a deprived area 50 years ago you could go to a grammar school if intelligent.
Now your only choice would be a comprehensive likely to be a secondary modern in all but name if you do not have wealthy parents who can send you to private school
That doesn't answer the point.
It does. Unless you live in a wealthy suburb or rural area (or go to a comprehensive or academy where admission is based on church attendance) comprehensives are often just renamed secondary moderns effectively.
@MikeSmithson is correct. It doesn't answer the point. As usual you just raise another point and don't address the point raised. It is a moving target.
Re your point on living in a poor area and being able to go to a grammar, this is very naïve. What actually happens is the middle class and well off in surrounding areas get tutored for the test and fill the spaces. The bright kids in the poor areas don't and they still don't get in by and large.
I lived in a relatively poor large village with 2 primary schools. Only one boy got into the boys grammar school and no girls to the girls grammar school. And that boy dropped out. I have no memory of even taking a test let alone getting tutored. After O levels a whole bunch of replaced those that had dropped out. The system is crap at selection and selecting at 11 is far too soon.
There are limits on how much you can tutor for 11+ and 13+ tests which are designed to test raw iq not subject knowledge as such. Indeed very often even a few bright kids from council estates got into grammar schools even without tutors and then onto Oxbridge or other top universities and professional careers. That path is not open to them to the same extent now if they live in a deprived area and just get sent to the local very average, if that, comp.
If you were well off and had a kid who was not so bright and would not pass the 11 or 13+ you could still send them private however and still do. Most wealthy parents did not send their children to secondary moderns and do not send their children to comprehensives and certainly not comprehensives or academies which are any less than Outstanding. So the rich generally don't use comprehensives anyway while the bright but poor no longer have the opportunities grammars provided. Most grammars of course also have entries at sixth form level too
a) You can tutor for IQ tests very easily. Not sure where you got it that it was difficult. There are lots of techniques.
b) In between our posts I have been chopping wood and did a rough mental calculation of how many should have got into the grammar school from my village all other things being equal (I know how many classes there were, the size of them, the fact that our village was a 3 member ward and how many councillors there were in the borough). The answer is about 25. There was 1 and he dropped out. If that doesn't give you an idea of the disparity between poor and middle class areas nothing will.
c) If you think the well off don't send their children to Comprehensives you live in a different world. I live in a well off area now. I am wealthy by most peoples measure as are most of the people I know. Nearly all use the local comprehensive, which I grant you is good, but that is not what you were saying.
d) Moving to a Grammar at sixth form is too late. The damage has been done. Many won't go who should. Many who were at the Grammar who shouldn't have been have dropped out.
Select by subject on an ongoing basis throughout the child's education.
a) You can't. IQ test results are in part based on genetics, they are difficult to tutor for unlike subject knowledge based exams.
b) And all of them would likely have gone to a sink comprehensive otherwise, at least 1 still got to a grammar.
c) If the wealthy send their kids to a comp it will only be an Outstanding comp they have bought their kids admission to by buying a house in its catchment area, meaning there are well above average house prices for that catchment area. You buy a place at an Outstanding comp or academy much like you buy a place at private school effectively or else you go to church more regularly to get a vicar's reference for a top church school.
d) Sixth form entry for A levels and top university is fine for late developers
a) you can - just allowing children to sit a few past papers so they understand how the questions work allows children to know how to answer the questions quicker allowing them more time to concentrate on more difficult questions.
You can understand the format of the questions but it is harder to prepare for the specific questions that will come up as they are logic and reasoning based, not subject knowledge based which are more tests of memory
As someone who has got 3 of 4 children into local grammars and sent the other private, I can confirm HYUFD doesn't know what he's talking about here, as well as constantly missing the point.
Tutoring makes a massive difference to ability to tackle the 11+. You see it all the time with kids that got tutored and then struggle to keep up once they're in.
It may make a marginal difference to borderline candidates but if you have an iq of 130+ you will get into a grammar school with no tutoring at all even if you live on a council estate
@HYUFD as usual you are pontificating with certainty about something on which I am guessing you have no knowledge whatsoever. It has been pointed by many on here how you can tutor for IQ tests / 11+ not least by just practicing papers, but there are many other techniques as well. I have some experience in this (as I am sure do many others on here) as it was a requirement of a development centre of one of the largest computer companies at the time at which I was a manager to take an IQ test and score at least 130. All undergraduates on the milk round had to do so before an interview. I would interview between 20 and 30 undergraduates on the milk round each year so I was very familiar with these test.
I couldn't do anything for someone who is stupid and could probably only add a point or two to a genius, but for a reasonably bright person I could probably get 10 to 20 IQ points added. Here are some ways how:
a) Just get familiar with the tests by practicing loads and getting your timing right (basic exam technique, but not something an 11 year old without tutoring has a clue about).
b) If you get a sequence of numbers and can't see the next number start subtracting each number from the next number. If the sequence doesn't become apparent then do again until it does. This takes just seconds to do and usually results in the answer. I've not seen one on an IQ test that doesn't.
c) Another common question is an arithmetic question which is too hard to do in the time but with an multiple choice answers so estimation is required. Someone with maths knowledge can do this easily, but someone who hasn't can be given about 5 easy tricks to solve these quickly.
d) Similarly a series of shapes at IQ test level is normally fairly straightforward, but again someone without the ability can be given half a dozen things to look out for in advance.
e) If you are given a True or False tests from a short paragraph and can't get it immediately you can convert it into a logical formulae (if you know how) and these tend to be so simple you can do it very quickly. I have to say that is something I find very useful to this day as I struggle to hold a lot of words in my head but can do logical formulae easily.
I could go on.
In response to the other items on your reply to me. You said 'at least one got to the grammar school'. You obviously missed the point that 'he crashed and burned'.
You also say 6th form is ok for late developers. Where did you get that from? It certainly wasn't for me. I missed out on so much. It was worse for others who were good enough but didn't get the chance. Also what about all those who pass the 11+ and then crash and burn because it isn't appropriate?
You cannot tutor for raw IQ tests of logic and reasoning to the same level as you can tutor for subject knowledge tests. In any case a pupil with a high IQ from a council estate would easily pass an IQ test tutored or not, the fact a few average IQ middle class pupils might scrape a pass at 11 pass after being heavily tutored does not make much difference to the former.
As opposed to all pupils crashing and burning at a sink comprehensive, at least grammar schools offered those with high IQs from deprived areas a chance to get on.
Sixth form entry offers a chance for those who are late developers and do well at GCSEs the fact you hated sixth form would probably have applied whichever school you went to
Where on earth did you get the idea that I hated the 6th form grammar school? I didn't I loved it. I also had a very good secondary school prior to that. You seem to read stuff into posts that aren't there. The problem is that by selecting at 11 I missed stuff that was only available at the grammar school and the grammar school boys missed stuff that was only available at the secondary school. Pointless separation and also doesn't allow for streaming by subject properly across all the pupils.
If you don't think you can tutor for the 11+ how do you explain my example from a poor area with only 1 getting into the Grammar school whereas all things being equal it should have been 20 - 25. It is not a few, it is a lot. The idea that you think Grammar schools are not in anyway heavily biased towards well off parents is just bizarre. They are very heavily weighted against poor areas.
Why should it have been 20-25? Unless they all had high IQs. How many of those 20-25 would be high earning professionals if they did not even have a chance of a grammar school but their only choice was a sink school? Likely 0.
Why should it have been 20 - 25? See earlier post. I'm not repeating it. I did the maths.
Only one went to the Grammar school and he crashed and burned (I have said that so many times). We did not have sink schools. My Secondary school was excellent. My Grammar schools was good. I enjoyed it, but I didn't think the teachers were as good bizarrely, but I did well.
But here is the point you keep on missing: Pupils from both schools were failed by the system. I was lucky, but even I missed out on stuff, but the culture was so ingrained that many very bright pupils from the Secondary school just went on to do apprenticeships. Nothing wrong with that but many were capable of so much more. And many at the Grammar school dropped out after O Levels with just one or two who could have benefited from the Secondary school education. All because we decide the fate of a child at 11. Ridiculous.
If you live in a poor area your local school will be more likely to be a sink school.
There is also nothing wrong with apprenticeships, in fact the highest level apprentices earn more on average than most graduates except those from the Russell Group.
Germany for example has selective gymnasiums like our grammars but also high status apprenticeships too
I never said there was anything wrong with apprenticeships. In fact I specifically went out of my way to say so in plain English, quote 'Nothing wrong with that...'. Sometimes a conversation with you is a challenge! Try reading the 2nd half of that sentence '...but many were capable of so much more.' Eg me. I was lucky, many weren't.
Re poor areas having sink schools. Yes, but not always, particularly if the poor areas are pockets. I was brought up in Surrey, which is not renowned for being poor, but there are poor areas. So it is very easy to see how the 11+ failed pupils. All the Grammar school kids came from the middle class areas and none from the poor areas. I wonder why? I think most of us know.
Can I answer that for HYUFD - the children from poor areas weren't bright enough - after all you don't gain any advantage from a few practice papers.
Now I know you are talking on behalf of HYUFD and not yourself so in answer to HYUFD - It is funny how at 16 lots of them suddenly got brighter and transferred to the Grammar school and a lot of the Grammar school kids got dimmer and dropped out.
Hormones and puberty. Edit: just thought I'd better make clear this is not a serious post.
Absolutely rammed, car park one in one out. And without question the worst mask observance I have seen there in 2021.
The chances of new household restrictions being widely observed are nil. New restrictions now will do nothing but cause economic damage, without impacting R to any noticeable degree.
Not my Waitrose experience. 95% or higher masking since the law changed. Same today.
Some excellent post on the last thread guys. I mean really good.
Re poor Comprehensives in deprived areas I agree, but this is probably a lot more to do with the issues of the area than anything else. The answer certainly isn't going back to Secondary Moderns.
I see @HYUFD is continuing to compare stats on Grammar schools to Comprehensives and ignoring the samples are completely different because the Grammar has selected.
If you lived in a deprived area 50 years ago you could go to a grammar school if intelligent.
Now your only choice would be a comprehensive likely to be a secondary modern in all but name if you do not have wealthy parents who can send you to private school
That doesn't answer the point.
It does. Unless you live in a wealthy suburb or rural area (or go to a comprehensive or academy where admission is based on church attendance) comprehensives are often just renamed secondary moderns effectively.
@MikeSmithson is correct. It doesn't answer the point. As usual you just raise another point and don't address the point raised. It is a moving target.
Re your point on living in a poor area and being able to go to a grammar, this is very naïve. What actually happens is the middle class and well off in surrounding areas get tutored for the test and fill the spaces. The bright kids in the poor areas don't and they still don't get in by and large.
I lived in a relatively poor large village with 2 primary schools. Only one boy got into the boys grammar school and no girls to the girls grammar school. And that boy dropped out. I have no memory of even taking a test let alone getting tutored. After O levels a whole bunch of replaced those that had dropped out. The system is crap at selection and selecting at 11 is far too soon.
There are limits on how much you can tutor for 11+ and 13+ tests which are designed to test raw iq not subject knowledge as such. Indeed very often even a few bright kids from council estates got into grammar schools even without tutors and then onto Oxbridge or other top universities and professional careers. That path is not open to them to the same extent now if they live in a deprived area and just get sent to the local very average, if that, comp.
If you were well off and had a kid who was not so bright and would not pass the 11 or 13+ you could still send them private however and still do. Most grammars of course also have entries at sixth form level too
Um no there isn't - otherwise you wouldn't see the disparity you get between KS2 stats and Grammar school selection in places like Kent and Buckingshire.
All schools will have a yearly example where the intelligent child whose parents couldn't afford test tuition fails to get in.
What disparity? The key stat is how many high performers at KS2 as a percentage of intake get top grade A levels and places at Russell Group universities at grammars compared to at comprehensives
The point is, the poor oiks don't get into the grammar school to compete with the rich children. That's a feature not a bug.
Utter rubbish. Plenty of bright but poor kids go to grammars, plenty of rich but thick kids go to Stowe
Not enough though.
For a different example - the Buckinghamshire Grammar schools are now Academic Trusts which mean that when I travel from my Parents into London I see 200 or so pupils traveling from outside Bucks to Dominic Raab's (and my) old school
Those parents are paying £1000 or so a year on train fares to get their children into their preferred school while stealing the place of someone local.
Aylesbury grammar school admissions policy for example is:
'Where qualifying applications for admission exceed the number of places available, places will be allocated in the following order of priority: 5.1.1. Looked after boys and previously looked after boys . 1 2 5.1.2. Boys who are eligible for free school meals as at the application deadline. 3 5.1.3. Siblings of boys who will be on roll of Aylesbury Grammar School at the date of the 4 applicant boy's entry to Year 7 in September. 5.1.4. Siblings (as defined above) of girls who will be on roll of Aylesbury High School at the date of the applicant boy's entry to Year 7 in September. 5.1.5. Siblings (as defined above) of boys who have previously been on the roll of Aylesbury Grammar School. 1 A 'looked after boy' is a boy who is in the care of a local authority, or being provided with accommodation by a local authority in the exercise of their social services functions. 2 A 'previously looked after boy' is a boy who was looked after, but ceased to be so because they were adopted or became subject to a child arrangements order or special guardianship order. 3 For the purposes of this policy, entitlement to Free School Meals on 31 October in the year before entry to Year 7 is sought needs to be demonstrated. 4 A 'sibling' is a full brother (sharing both parents), half-brother (sharing one parent), adopted brother (sharing one or both parents), foster brother, or step brother (where one's parent is married to the other's parent) and the son of the cohabiting partner of the applicant boy's parent, and in all cases who permanently live at the applicant boy's home address (as defined by this policy) and are being brought up as part of the same core family unit as siblings. For the avoidance of doubt, the sons of extended family members (e.g. cousins) and friends will not be 'siblings' for the purpose of this policy, even where they permanently live at the same home address as the applicant boy. Page 3 5.1.6. Boys who have exceptional medical or social needs which can only be met at Aylesbury Grammar School, and no other school, where their application for admission is supported by written evidence from a doctor, social worker, educational welfare officer or other appropriately qualified person confirming this. 5.1.7. Boys living in the catchment area of the school as at and continuously from 31 October of the year preceding entry to Year 7 in September. 5.1.8. All other boys'
That's a bog standard admissions policy - and incredibly easy to game.
Also Aylesbury isn't the schools I know about - try those in Chesham, Amersham, High Wycombe and Beaconsfield all of whom are the closest Grammar schools to none Grammar school areas.
Although it's nice to see you doing some research even though you clearly don't know the Geography well enough to see the flaw within it.
You also miss the fact that where qualifying admissions are above the intake - this is the logic we use.
That stops the local child with 89% getting in (due to him being ill on the day of the single exam that is now used) while the distant child with 90% gets in as the out of area child take the pass mark up a single point.
All of them will still prioritise those in the catchment area who pass their entrance exam first before opening places to those who pass the exam outside their catchment area until they are full
And again you miss the point.
The child with 89% no longer has a place in that Grammar school because the out of area children scored 90% and pushed the pass mark / entry mark to 90% rather than 89%.
No, I don't think that's right. In Sale, for example, Sale Grammar School sets the pass mark. Anyone who passes the pass mark from within the catchment area (which is either Sale and Altrincham or the whole of Trafford, I forget which) is offered a place. Remaining places are then made up from applicants from out of cathcment.
In practice, I believe about one third of pupils are from out of catchment (though this belies the experience of my daughter who has just started there, who appears to have met hardly anyone not from Sale or Altrincham). Now this is a bit of a nuisance for Trafford as a whole, which is woefully squeezed on secondary school places. They could address this at a stroke simply by lowering the pass mark, which would mean more pupils from within Trafford get places, which would mean fewer from outside of Trafford (no matter how well they score). But that's a separate issue: the point is no matter how well someone from outside of the catchment area does, they can't displace a sufficiently good person within the catchment. Someone who passes the pass mark - which is known in advance - and is from within catchment - will get in.
Edit: of course, that's just here! Things may differ elsewhere.
That is the way it is in Lincolnshire as well. Kids in the Catchment area get first choice so long as they passed. Indeed where I am there is a choice of 3 different Grammars. Only once those places have been filled does anyone from outside the catchment area get a chance.
Yes, there is a choice of grammars here too.
Though as I was saying elsewhere, I would rather that the pass rate was lower so kids from Trafford didn't get pushed out by kids from Manchester and Cheshire East. Competition is fierce here: there are thousands and thousands of out-of-authority kids within travel to school distance of Trafford schools. Parents from Manchester and Cheshire East: if you want a grammar school education, live in a selective authority!
Or - radical idea - lets not have selective education. Binned off your life chances aged 11 by means of quotas is not the risk that any parent should want for their child. And what happens as the bright kids who just missed the cut get brighter? In a normal school ability is streamed and you can move up and down. You can't get promoted to Grammar School...
Actually you can. The system is designed for entry at a later stage to cope with later developers.
Look at the share. 30% for the Tories is absolutely dire.
I suspect in a few months the Tories will be looking at the polls and dreaming of the days past when they were on 30%.
It's all downhill from here - a perfect storm of worldwide inflationary pressures.
Would that were the case but I fear not.
There are people who will support the Conservatives however bad they are. I don't know why but they exist. "I've always been a Tory" they will say on the doorstep, give you a whole lot of left-wing opinions and then swear blind they are Tories.
Look at the share. 30% for the Tories is absolutely dire.
I cannot believe the failure to understand the direness of the tories' position. I expected them to hold NS by a couple of thousand and that would be a disaster in reality, but a hold is a hold. They have lost 90% of the former tories on this site. They have also lost the shire bumpkin vote, specifically over the hunting issue, because what is the point of an 80 seat majority if you can't overturn the Hunting Act? Nobody who isn't a shire bumpkin understands this point because they think the foxhunting community was a tiny minority, whereas in shire bumpkin terms it's bloody everybody. Lab maj 5/1 is the deal of the century.
Absolutely rammed, car park one in one out. And without question the worst mask observance I have seen there in 2021.
The chances of new household restrictions being widely observed are nil. New restrictions now will do nothing but cause economic damage, without impacting R to any noticeable degree.
Not my Waitrose experience. 95% or higher masking since the law changed. Same today.
Same at mine where I've just been. And only two under-the-nose idiots out of about fifty.
Look at the share. 30% for the Tories is absolutely dire.
I suspect in a few months the Tories will be looking at the polls and dreaming of the days past when they were on 30%.
It's all downhill from here - a perfect storm of worldwide inflationary pressures.
Would that were the case but I fear not.
There are people who will support the Conservatives however bad they are. I don't know why but they exist. "I've always been a Tory" they will say on the doorstep, give you a whole lot of left-wing opinions and then swear blind they are Tories.
Go figure...
Nope. They have found their floor, and plunged straight through it.
Have any R4 Today listeners heard Amol Rajan on there since the Royals TV documentary he did? I'm pretty sure I haven't, and I'd not be surprised to find out that his documentary and his absence were related somehow.
Some excellent post on the last thread guys. I mean really good.
Re poor Comprehensives in deprived areas I agree, but this is probably a lot more to do with the issues of the area than anything else. The answer certainly isn't going back to Secondary Moderns.
I see @HYUFD is continuing to compare stats on Grammar schools to Comprehensives and ignoring the samples are completely different because the Grammar has selected.
If you lived in a deprived area 50 years ago you could go to a grammar school if intelligent.
Now your only choice would be a comprehensive likely to be a secondary modern in all but name if you do not have wealthy parents who can send you to private school
That doesn't answer the point.
It does. Unless you live in a wealthy suburb or rural area (or go to a comprehensive or academy where admission is based on church attendance) comprehensives are often just renamed secondary moderns effectively.
@MikeSmithson is correct. It doesn't answer the point. As usual you just raise another point and don't address the point raised. It is a moving target.
Re your point on living in a poor area and being able to go to a grammar, this is very naïve. What actually happens is the middle class and well off in surrounding areas get tutored for the test and fill the spaces. The bright kids in the poor areas don't and they still don't get in by and large.
I lived in a relatively poor large village with 2 primary schools. Only one boy got into the boys grammar school and no girls to the girls grammar school. And that boy dropped out. I have no memory of even taking a test let alone getting tutored. After O levels a whole bunch of replaced those that had dropped out. The system is crap at selection and selecting at 11 is far too soon.
There are limits on how much you can tutor for 11+ and 13+ tests which are designed to test raw iq not subject knowledge as such. Indeed very often even a few bright kids from council estates got into grammar schools even without tutors and then onto Oxbridge or other top universities and professional careers. That path is not open to them to the same extent now if they live in a deprived area and just get sent to the local very average, if that, comp.
If you were well off and had a kid who was not so bright and would not pass the 11 or 13+ you could still send them private however and still do. Most wealthy parents did not send their children to secondary moderns and do not send their children to comprehensives and certainly not comprehensives or academies which are any less than Outstanding. So the rich generally don't use comprehensives anyway while the bright but poor no longer have the opportunities grammars provided. Most grammars of course also have entries at sixth form level too
a) You can tutor for IQ tests very easily. Not sure where you got it that it was difficult. There are lots of techniques.
b) In between our posts I have been chopping wood and did a rough mental calculation of how many should have got into the grammar school from my village all other things being equal (I know how many classes there were, the size of them, the fact that our village was a 3 member ward and how many councillors there were in the borough). The answer is about 25. There was 1 and he dropped out. If that doesn't give you an idea of the disparity between poor and middle class areas nothing will.
c) If you think the well off don't send their children to Comprehensives you live in a different world. I live in a well off area now. I am wealthy by most peoples measure as are most of the people I know. Nearly all use the local comprehensive, which I grant you is good, but that is not what you were saying.
d) Moving to a Grammar at sixth form is too late. The damage has been done. Many won't go who should. Many who were at the Grammar who shouldn't have been have dropped out.
Select by subject on an ongoing basis throughout the child's education.
a) You can't. IQ test results are in part based on genetics, they are difficult to tutor for unlike subject knowledge based exams.
b) And all of them would likely have gone to a sink comprehensive otherwise, at least 1 still got to a grammar.
c) If the wealthy send their kids to a comp it will only be an Outstanding comp they have bought their kids admission to by buying a house in its catchment area, meaning there are well above average house prices for that catchment area. You buy a place at an Outstanding comp or academy much like you buy a place at private school effectively or else you go to church more regularly to get a vicar's reference for a top church school.
d) Sixth form entry for A levels and top university is fine for late developers
a) you can - just allowing children to sit a few past papers so they understand how the questions work allows children to know how to answer the questions quicker allowing them more time to concentrate on more difficult questions.
You can understand the format of the questions but it is harder to prepare for the specific questions that will come up as they are logic and reasoning based, not subject knowledge based which are more tests of memory
As someone who has got 3 of 4 children into local grammars and sent the other private, I can confirm HYUFD doesn't know what he's talking about here, as well as constantly missing the point.
Tutoring makes a massive difference to ability to tackle the 11+. You see it all the time with kids that got tutored and then struggle to keep up once they're in.
It may make a marginal difference to borderline candidates but if you have an iq of 130+ you will get into a grammar school with no tutoring at all even if you live on a council estate
@HYUFD as usual you are pontificating with certainty about something on which I am guessing you have no knowledge whatsoever. It has been pointed by many on here how you can tutor for IQ tests / 11+ not least by just practicing papers, but there are many other techniques as well. I have some experience in this (as I am sure do many others on here) as it was a requirement of a development centre of one of the largest computer companies at the time at which I was a manager to take an IQ test and score at least 130. All undergraduates on the milk round had to do so before an interview. I would interview between 20 and 30 undergraduates on the milk round each year so I was very familiar with these test.
I couldn't do anything for someone who is stupid and could probably only add a point or two to a genius, but for a reasonably bright person I could probably get 10 to 20 IQ points added. Here are some ways how:
a) Just get familiar with the tests by practicing loads and getting your timing right (basic exam technique, but not something an 11 year old without tutoring has a clue about).
b) If you get a sequence of numbers and can't see the next number start subtracting each number from the next number. If the sequence doesn't become apparent then do again until it does. This takes just seconds to do and usually results in the answer. I've not seen one on an IQ test that doesn't.
c) Another common question is an arithmetic question which is too hard to do in the time but with an multiple choice answers so estimation is required. Someone with maths knowledge can do this easily, but someone who hasn't can be given about 5 easy tricks to solve these quickly.
d) Similarly a series of shapes at IQ test level is normally fairly straightforward, but again someone without the ability can be given half a dozen things to look out for in advance.
e) If you are given a True or False tests from a short paragraph and can't get it immediately you can convert it into a logical formulae (if you know how) and these tend to be so simple you can do it very quickly. I have to say that is something I find very useful to this day as I struggle to hold a lot of words in my head but can do logical formulae easily.
I could go on.
In response to the other items on your reply to me. You said 'at least one got to the grammar school'. You obviously missed the point that 'he crashed and burned'.
You also say 6th form is ok for late developers. Where did you get that from? It certainly wasn't for me. I missed out on so much. It was worse for others who were good enough but didn't get the chance. Also what about all those who pass the 11+ and then crash and burn because it isn't appropriate?
You cannot tutor for raw IQ tests of logic and reasoning to the same level as you can tutor for subject knowledge tests. In any case a pupil with a high IQ from a council estate would easily pass an IQ test tutored or not, the fact a few average IQ middle class pupils might scrape a pass at 11 pass after being heavily tutored does not make much difference to the former.
As opposed to all pupils crashing and burning at a sink comprehensive, at least grammar schools offered those with high IQs from deprived areas a chance to get on.
Sixth form entry offers a chance for those who are late developers and do well at GCSEs the fact you hated sixth form would probably have applied whichever school you went to
Where on earth did you get the idea that I hated the 6th form grammar school? I didn't I loved it. I also had a very good secondary school prior to that. You seem to read stuff into posts that aren't there. The problem is that by selecting at 11 I missed stuff that was only available at the grammar school and the grammar school boys missed stuff that was only available at the secondary school. Pointless separation and also doesn't allow for streaming by subject properly across all the pupils.
If you don't think you can tutor for the 11+ how do you explain my example from a poor area with only 1 getting into the Grammar school whereas all things being equal it should have been 20 - 25. It is not a few, it is a lot. The idea that you think Grammar schools are not in anyway heavily biased towards well off parents is just bizarre. They are very heavily weighted against poor areas.
Why should it have been 20-25? Unless they all had high IQs. How many of those 20-25 would be high earning professionals if they did not even have a chance of a grammar school but their only choice was a sink school? Likely 0.
Why should it have been 20 - 25? See earlier post. I'm not repeating it. I did the maths.
Only one went to the Grammar school and he crashed and burned (I have said that so many times). We did not have sink schools. My Secondary school was excellent. My Grammar schools was good. I enjoyed it, but I didn't think the teachers were as good bizarrely, but I did well.
But here is the point you keep on missing: Pupils from both schools were failed by the system. I was lucky, but even I missed out on stuff, but the culture was so ingrained that many very bright pupils from the Secondary school just went on to do apprenticeships. Nothing wrong with that but many were capable of so much more. And many at the Grammar school dropped out after O Levels with just one or two who could have benefited from the Secondary school education. All because we decide the fate of a child at 11. Ridiculous.
If you live in a poor area your local school will be more likely to be a sink school.
There is also nothing wrong with apprenticeships, in fact the highest level apprentices earn more on average than most graduates except those from the Russell Group.
Germany for example has selective gymnasiums like our grammars but also high status apprenticeships too
I never said there was anything wrong with apprenticeships. In fact I specifically went out of my way to say so in plain English, quote 'Nothing wrong with that...'. Sometimes a conversation with you is a challenge! Try reading the 2nd half of that sentence '...but many were capable of so much more.' Eg me. I was lucky, many weren't.
Re poor areas having sink schools. Yes, but not always, particularly if the poor areas are pockets. I was brought up in Surrey, which is not renowned for being poor, but there are poor areas. So it is very easy to see how the 11+ failed pupils. All the Grammar school kids came from the middle class areas and none from the poor areas. I wonder why? I think most of us know.
Can I answer that for HYUFD - the children from poor areas weren't bright enough - after all you don't gain any advantage from a few practice papers.
I'm also wondering when someone on this thread will actually go and claim that grammar and "public" school children are genetically superior because they are so much more intelligent.
If you read HYUFD's post this afternoon I think he already did.
But every time I read a HYUFD post I fear a few brain cells die and I've probably killed enough today.
Having read the discussion above; I must conclude that there is a deeply religious fervour about vaccination evident on this website. People believe that vaccination is the solution to the pandemic because they believe in science, and will willingly sacrifice all sorts of freedoms in support of it. Yet they overlook its obvious limitations; namely that the vaccination programme did not deliver what it promised as it did not end the pandemic; it did not prevent new variants from arising; and it does not stop people from catching and spreading the virus. The old political maxim that the masses are easy to herd is turned on its head; it turns out that actually the intellectuals are easy to herd, when it comes to certain policies. This reinforces a belief that I hold strongly, that self appointed experts and university educated people are not necessarily smarter in the end than people with no education who go through life living by their wits.
As the vaccine has smashed down the death rate I think we can call it a success.
As for your latter point, depends on what we are talking about. Is a medic much smarter than Joe Cnut who read on Facebook that actually they're all wrong because actually there is no Covid? Yes - as so many dead anti-vaxxers demonstrates.
And if we could have reached the 90%+ rate that instills herd immunity quickly then the new variants might have never arisen, although that would have required a much better job of getting the sufficient early vaccine supply out to the poorer countries where the variants have tended to arisen.
Some excellent post on the last thread guys. I mean really good.
Re poor Comprehensives in deprived areas I agree, but this is probably a lot more to do with the issues of the area than anything else. The answer certainly isn't going back to Secondary Moderns.
I see @HYUFD is continuing to compare stats on Grammar schools to Comprehensives and ignoring the samples are completely different because the Grammar has selected.
If you lived in a deprived area 50 years ago you could go to a grammar school if intelligent.
Now your only choice would be a comprehensive likely to be a secondary modern in all but name if you do not have wealthy parents who can send you to private school
That doesn't answer the point.
It does. Unless you live in a wealthy suburb or rural area (or go to a comprehensive or academy where admission is based on church attendance) comprehensives are often just renamed secondary moderns effectively.
@MikeSmithson is correct. It doesn't answer the point. As usual you just raise another point and don't address the point raised. It is a moving target.
Re your point on living in a poor area and being able to go to a grammar, this is very naïve. What actually happens is the middle class and well off in surrounding areas get tutored for the test and fill the spaces. The bright kids in the poor areas don't and they still don't get in by and large.
I lived in a relatively poor large village with 2 primary schools. Only one boy got into the boys grammar school and no girls to the girls grammar school. And that boy dropped out. I have no memory of even taking a test let alone getting tutored. After O levels a whole bunch of replaced those that had dropped out. The system is crap at selection and selecting at 11 is far too soon.
There are limits on how much you can tutor for 11+ and 13+ tests which are designed to test raw iq not subject knowledge as such. Indeed very often even a few bright kids from council estates got into grammar schools even without tutors and then onto Oxbridge or other top universities and professional careers. That path is not open to them to the same extent now if they live in a deprived area and just get sent to the local very average, if that, comp.
If you were well off and had a kid who was not so bright and would not pass the 11 or 13+ you could still send them private however and still do. Most wealthy parents did not send their children to secondary moderns and do not send their children to comprehensives and certainly not comprehensives or academies which are any less than Outstanding. So the rich generally don't use comprehensives anyway while the bright but poor no longer have the opportunities grammars provided. Most grammars of course also have entries at sixth form level too
a) You can tutor for IQ tests very easily. Not sure where you got it that it was difficult. There are lots of techniques.
b) In between our posts I have been chopping wood and did a rough mental calculation of how many should have got into the grammar school from my village all other things being equal (I know how many classes there were, the size of them, the fact that our village was a 3 member ward and how many councillors there were in the borough). The answer is about 25. There was 1 and he dropped out. If that doesn't give you an idea of the disparity between poor and middle class areas nothing will.
c) If you think the well off don't send their children to Comprehensives you live in a different world. I live in a well off area now. I am wealthy by most peoples measure as are most of the people I know. Nearly all use the local comprehensive, which I grant you is good, but that is not what you were saying.
d) Moving to a Grammar at sixth form is too late. The damage has been done. Many won't go who should. Many who were at the Grammar who shouldn't have been have dropped out.
Select by subject on an ongoing basis throughout the child's education.
a) You can't. IQ test results are in part based on genetics, they are difficult to tutor for unlike subject knowledge based exams.
b) And all of them would likely have gone to a sink comprehensive otherwise, at least 1 still got to a grammar.
c) If the wealthy send their kids to a comp it will only be an Outstanding comp they have bought their kids admission to by buying a house in its catchment area, meaning there are well above average house prices for that catchment area. You buy a place at an Outstanding comp or academy much like you buy a place at private school effectively or else you go to church more regularly to get a vicar's reference for a top church school.
d) Sixth form entry for A levels and top university is fine for late developers
a) you can - just allowing children to sit a few past papers so they understand how the questions work allows children to know how to answer the questions quicker allowing them more time to concentrate on more difficult questions.
You can understand the format of the questions but it is harder to prepare for the specific questions that will come up as they are logic and reasoning based, not subject knowledge based which are more tests of memory
As someone who has got 3 of 4 children into local grammars and sent the other private, I can confirm HYUFD doesn't know what he's talking about here, as well as constantly missing the point.
Tutoring makes a massive difference to ability to tackle the 11+. You see it all the time with kids that got tutored and then struggle to keep up once they're in.
It may make a marginal difference to borderline candidates but if you have an iq of 130+ you will get into a grammar school with no tutoring at all even if you live on a council estate
@HYUFD as usual you are pontificating with certainty about something on which I am guessing you have no knowledge whatsoever. It has been pointed by many on here how you can tutor for IQ tests / 11+ not least by just practicing papers, but there are many other techniques as well. I have some experience in this (as I am sure do many others on here) as it was a requirement of a development centre of one of the largest computer companies at the time at which I was a manager to take an IQ test and score at least 130. All undergraduates on the milk round had to do so before an interview. I would interview between 20 and 30 undergraduates on the milk round each year so I was very familiar with these test.
I couldn't do anything for someone who is stupid and could probably only add a point or two to a genius, but for a reasonably bright person I could probably get 10 to 20 IQ points added. Here are some ways how:
a) Just get familiar with the tests by practicing loads and getting your timing right (basic exam technique, but not something an 11 year old without tutoring has a clue about).
b) If you get a sequence of numbers and can't see the next number start subtracting each number from the next number. If the sequence doesn't become apparent then do again until it does. This takes just seconds to do and usually results in the answer. I've not seen one on an IQ test that doesn't.
c) Another common question is an arithmetic question which is too hard to do in the time but with an multiple choice answers so estimation is required. Someone with maths knowledge can do this easily, but someone who hasn't can be given about 5 easy tricks to solve these quickly.
d) Similarly a series of shapes at IQ test level is normally fairly straightforward, but again someone without the ability can be given half a dozen things to look out for in advance.
e) If you are given a True or False tests from a short paragraph and can't get it immediately you can convert it into a logical formulae (if you know how) and these tend to be so simple you can do it very quickly. I have to say that is something I find very useful to this day as I struggle to hold a lot of words in my head but can do logical formulae easily.
I could go on.
In response to the other items on your reply to me. You said 'at least one got to the grammar school'. You obviously missed the point that 'he crashed and burned'.
You also say 6th form is ok for late developers. Where did you get that from? It certainly wasn't for me. I missed out on so much. It was worse for others who were good enough but didn't get the chance. Also what about all those who pass the 11+ and then crash and burn because it isn't appropriate?
You cannot tutor for raw IQ tests of logic and reasoning to the same level as you can tutor for subject knowledge tests. In any case a pupil with a high IQ from a council estate would easily pass an IQ test tutored or not, the fact a few average IQ middle class pupils might scrape a pass at 11 pass after being heavily tutored does not make much difference to the former.
As opposed to all pupils crashing and burning at a sink comprehensive, at least grammar schools offered those with high IQs from deprived areas a chance to get on.
Sixth form entry offers a chance for those who are late developers and do well at GCSEs the fact you hated sixth form would probably have applied whichever school you went to
Where on earth did you get the idea that I hated the 6th form grammar school? I didn't I loved it. I also had a very good secondary school prior to that. You seem to read stuff into posts that aren't there. The problem is that by selecting at 11 I missed stuff that was only available at the grammar school and the grammar school boys missed stuff that was only available at the secondary school. Pointless separation and also doesn't allow for streaming by subject properly across all the pupils.
If you don't think you can tutor for the 11+ how do you explain my example from a poor area with only 1 getting into the Grammar school whereas all things being equal it should have been 20 - 25. It is not a few, it is a lot. The idea that you think Grammar schools are not in anyway heavily biased towards well off parents is just bizarre. They are very heavily weighted against poor areas.
Why should it have been 20-25? Unless they all had high IQs. How many of those 20-25 would be high earning professionals if they did not even have a chance of a grammar school but their only choice was a sink school? Likely 0.
Why should it have been 20 - 25? See earlier post. I'm not repeating it. I did the maths.
Only one went to the Grammar school and he crashed and burned (I have said that so many times). We did not have sink schools. My Secondary school was excellent. My Grammar schools was good. I enjoyed it, but I didn't think the teachers were as good bizarrely, but I did well.
But here is the point you keep on missing: Pupils from both schools were failed by the system. I was lucky, but even I missed out on stuff, but the culture was so ingrained that many very bright pupils from the Secondary school just went on to do apprenticeships. Nothing wrong with that but many were capable of so much more. And many at the Grammar school dropped out after O Levels with just one or two who could have benefited from the Secondary school education. All because we decide the fate of a child at 11. Ridiculous.
If you live in a poor area your local school will be more likely to be a sink school.
There is also nothing wrong with apprenticeships, in fact the highest level apprentices earn more on average than most graduates except those from the Russell Group.
Germany for example has selective gymnasiums like our grammars but also high status apprenticeships too
I never said there was anything wrong with apprenticeships. In fact I specifically went out of my way to say so in plain English, quote 'Nothing wrong with that...'. Sometimes a conversation with you is a challenge! Try reading the 2nd half of that sentence '...but many were capable of so much more.' Eg me. I was lucky, many weren't.
Re poor areas having sink schools. Yes, but not always, particularly if the poor areas are pockets. I was brought up in Surrey, which is not renowned for being poor, but there are poor areas. So it is very easy to see how the 11+ failed pupils. All the Grammar school kids came from the middle class areas and none from the poor areas. I wonder why? I think most of us know.
Can I answer that for HYUFD - the children from poor areas weren't bright enough - after all you don't gain any advantage from a few practice papers.
I'm also wondering when someone on this thread will actually go and claim that grammar and "public" school children are genetically superior because they are so much more intelligent.
If you read HYUFD's post this afternoon I think he already did.
But every time I read a HYUFD post I fear a few brain cells die and I've probably killed enough today.
Or maybe it is the other way round ... anyway night all, the sea bass is grilling.
Have any R4 Today listeners heard Amol Rajan on there since the Royals TV documentary he did? I'm pretty sure I haven't, and I'd not be surprised to find out that his documentary and his absence were related somehow.
Apparently some issues.
Does Her Maj listen to Today?
"I can't bear that awful man and his dreadful glottal stops"
IQ tests clearly measure SOMETHING and whatever it is, it is closely related to what we generally think of as intelligence. If you speak to someone with an IQ of 60 and then speak to someone with an IQ of 140 the latter will obviously be much more “intelligent” than the former
Quicker, smarter, better with words and ideas. Faster on the uptake. Able to do difficult tasks at speed.
“Speed of successful information processing” is, in fact, a pretty good definition of “intelligence”
And it is commonly reckoned genetics accounts for about half of this faculty
I don't question any of that. I question the ludicrous assertion that you can't train someone to do well at IQ tests. As if they are some magic oracle completely void of learnable material.
There are a lot of interests in preserving the idea that IQ is an completely objective test, but my suspicion is that you are right.
I would guess that it is essentially a matter of practice. You would eventually speed up in being able to answer the questions, meaning that you answer more and get a higher score. However, I doubt that you could go from a really low to a really high score.
I think there is a real danger in assuming that IQ is an absolute measure of intelligence. People can be intelligent in ways that are not picked up in an IQ test. Similarly, people with supposedly high IQs are as susceptible as everyone else to doing stupid things. Some people with high IQs do nothing of significance with their lives. Trying to stratify people by IQ level is a very bad idea.
Malmesbury Monoliths to prompt us it’s time for cocktails are looking particularly beautiful this afternoon.
Have you considered a career in Data Science? It is a dry field and could do with some immaginative descriptive language?
I have worked in a cocktail bar, and in a pub. I don’t know what my next attempt at a career is going to be yet.
Are data scientists those who never die – they just get broken down by age?
That took me a second but…chapeau
Indeed.
Plus I would say that mixology and data science are strongly related. One involves dangerously mixing things around and the other involves.... alcohol?
Some excellent post on the last thread guys. I mean really good.
Re poor Comprehensives in deprived areas I agree, but this is probably a lot more to do with the issues of the area than anything else. The answer certainly isn't going back to Secondary Moderns.
I see @HYUFD is continuing to compare stats on Grammar schools to Comprehensives and ignoring the samples are completely different because the Grammar has selected.
If you lived in a deprived area 50 years ago you could go to a grammar school if intelligent.
Now your only choice would be a comprehensive likely to be a secondary modern in all but name if you do not have wealthy parents who can send you to private school
That doesn't answer the point.
It does. Unless you live in a wealthy suburb or rural area (or go to a comprehensive or academy where admission is based on church attendance) comprehensives are often just renamed secondary moderns effectively.
@MikeSmithson is correct. It doesn't answer the point. As usual you just raise another point and don't address the point raised. It is a moving target.
Re your point on living in a poor area and being able to go to a grammar, this is very naïve. What actually happens is the middle class and well off in surrounding areas get tutored for the test and fill the spaces. The bright kids in the poor areas don't and they still don't get in by and large.
I lived in a relatively poor large village with 2 primary schools. Only one boy got into the boys grammar school and no girls to the girls grammar school. And that boy dropped out. I have no memory of even taking a test let alone getting tutored. After O levels a whole bunch of replaced those that had dropped out. The system is crap at selection and selecting at 11 is far too soon.
There are limits on how much you can tutor for 11+ and 13+ tests which are designed to test raw iq not subject knowledge as such. Indeed very often even a few bright kids from council estates got into grammar schools even without tutors and then onto Oxbridge or other top universities and professional careers. That path is not open to them to the same extent now if they live in a deprived area and just get sent to the local very average, if that, comp.
If you were well off and had a kid who was not so bright and would not pass the 11 or 13+ you could still send them private however and still do. Most wealthy parents did not send their children to secondary moderns and do not send their children to comprehensives and certainly not comprehensives or academies which are any less than Outstanding. So the rich generally don't use comprehensives anyway while the bright but poor no longer have the opportunities grammars provided. Most grammars of course also have entries at sixth form level too
a) You can tutor for IQ tests very easily. Not sure where you got it that it was difficult. There are lots of techniques.
b) In between our posts I have been chopping wood and did a rough mental calculation of how many should have got into the grammar school from my village all other things being equal (I know how many classes there were, the size of them, the fact that our village was a 3 member ward and how many councillors there were in the borough). The answer is about 25. There was 1 and he dropped out. If that doesn't give you an idea of the disparity between poor and middle class areas nothing will.
c) If you think the well off don't send their children to Comprehensives you live in a different world. I live in a well off area now. I am wealthy by most peoples measure as are most of the people I know. Nearly all use the local comprehensive, which I grant you is good, but that is not what you were saying.
d) Moving to a Grammar at sixth form is too late. The damage has been done. Many won't go who should. Many who were at the Grammar who shouldn't have been have dropped out.
Select by subject on an ongoing basis throughout the child's education.
a) You can't. IQ test results are in part based on genetics, they are difficult to tutor for unlike subject knowledge based exams.
b) And all of them would likely have gone to a sink comprehensive otherwise, at least 1 still got to a grammar.
c) If the wealthy send their kids to a comp it will only be an Outstanding comp they have bought their kids admission to by buying a house in its catchment area, meaning there are well above average house prices for that catchment area. You buy a place at an Outstanding comp or academy much like you buy a place at private school effectively or else you go to church more regularly to get a vicar's reference for a top church school. I notice you did not send your kids to a sink school the bright but poor have little choice but to go to!
d) Sixth form entry for A levels and top university is fine for late developers
I am absolutely minted and our kids go to the local comp (it is an academy but most secondaries in London are). Rated good not outstanding. Plenty of other parents similar to us, judging from how posh some of our kids' friends talk. House prices are high it's true but that's more because they're nice houses. But half the housing in the catchment, I'm guessing, is social housing so it's far from true that most of the kids at the school have bought their way in somehow. Proportion of minorities and with English as an additional language much higher than average; those on pupil premium broadly average. If actual GCSE grades match the predictions after my eldest's mocks I'll be very happy, but let's see in June.
So still a good school not a crap school even then. If however you live on a council estate and your local comp is inadequate or requires improvement you would have no choice but to attend it even if you were bright enough to get into a grammar school.
Middle class parents however would move to the catchment area of a Good or Outstanding school even if more expensive. Or else start going to church more regularly to gets their children into an Outstanding church school
Most comps are rated good or outstanding. Those that aren't need to be improved. Most gifted working class kids didn't pass the 11 plus when we had grammars, plenty of average middle class kids did. Secondary moderns, where most working class kids went, were often dreadful schools. Very few parents want to see them brought back. Let's focus on improving standards and find a way of breaking the culture of low expectations that affects too many kids, not try to resurrect the failed, divisive policies of the past. I think I'm done on this subject, my substandard comprehensive-schooled brain is growing weary!
No, most gifted working class kids with high IQs easily passed the 11 plus, a few average middle class pupils may also have scraped a pass but that did not hold back high iq working class pupils.
Now if you are poor but high IQ avoiding a requires improvement or inadequate school is a lottery dependent on where your parents live. You would almost certainly have got into a grammar though whereever you lived.
If you are middle class though your parents will buy your education either via private schools or the catchment area of good or outstanding schools. Or they will go to church more regularly for a vicar's reference for a top church school
Why are you continuing to post bullshit without any evidence to back it up when multiple posters have provided examples that show your ideas to be completely and utterly incorrect?
They haven't, they have just used ideological anecdote which I ideologically disagree with.
Plenty on here like Richard Tyndall and Pagan agree with me on grammars
Nope Richard Tyndall posted something that Cookie then showed to be completely regional as I had already argued.
And what does that have to do with it? If that is the case (and I think you are wrong by the way due to your pre conceived bias) then the regions that do not run things the same way as I said should change to it rather than scrap the whole Grammar system. Indeed if I had the choice (which of course I never will) then the selective system would be back for all parts of England. Instead of condemning most children to the third rate education system that exists in most of the country.
Look at the share. 30% for the Tories is absolutely dire.
I suspect in a few months the Tories will be looking at the polls and dreaming of the days past when they were on 30%.
It's all downhill from here - a perfect storm of worldwide inflationary pressures.
Would that were the case but I fear not.
There are people who will support the Conservatives however bad they are. I don't know why but they exist. "I've always been a Tory" they will say on the doorstep, give you a whole lot of left-wing opinions and then swear blind they are Tories.
Go figure...
No different from red wall Labour types giving a load of right-wing opinions then voting for the metropolitan liberal elite… until recently.
On the cratering Tory % share, I made this prediction in May 2020.
Looks like I will be right, but out by a year.
You da man
Or you would be had not another poster, I forget who, called Hartlepool as Peak Boris on the day after the by election. Calling the top with that degree of precision...
You cannot tutor for raw IQ tests of logic and reasoning to the same level as you can tutor for subject knowledge tests. In any case a pupil with a high IQ from a council estate would easily pass an IQ test tutored or not, the fact a few average IQ middle class pupils might scrape a pass at 11 pass after being heavily tutored does not make much difference to the former.
As opposed to all pupils crashing and burning at a sink comprehensive, at least grammar schools offered those with high IQs from deprived areas a chance to get on.
Sixth form entry offers a chance for those who are late developers and do well at GCSEs the fact you hated sixth form would probably have applied whichever school you went to
That's completely and demonstrably false. IQ tests are a learnable skill like any other academic skill.
Nope, over half of IQ is determined by genetics and cannot be learnt
I'm not sure that's true. There's lots of evidence that one can get better and better at IQ tests by learning the patterns inherent in them.
That doesn't mean you're more intelligent - it means you're better at getting good scores on IQ tests.
Mrs J attended a top school in her home country. That country ranks all students at their equivalent of A-levels, so you end up with a number from 1 to ~700,000. She ended up ~200 out of that ~700,000.
I'm not saying this to brag (*), but for this reason: her best friend took the same classes. And ended up one position ahead of her.
They didn't cheat: but they studied and revised closely together. Two students at the same school ended up with adjacent places, out of hundreds of thousands.
What you are taught matters massively. Training for tests matters. The same goes for IQ tests, which Mrs J is very sniffy about.
She likes to rub her results in, because I really mucked up my A-levels. Not that that's really something that's sent me into the gutter...
(*) though she is hyper-intelligent with a high IQ, and she is also a bit of a muppet.
IQ tests clearly measure SOMETHING and whatever it is, it is closely related to what we generally think of as intelligence. If you speak to someone with an IQ of 60 and then speak to someone with an IQ of 140 the latter will obviously be much more “intelligent” than the former
Quicker, smarter, better with words and ideas. Faster on the uptake. Able to do difficult tasks at speed.
“Speed of successful information processing” is, in fact, a pretty good definition of “intelligence”
And it is commonly reckoned genetics accounts for about half of this faculty
Presumably you'd be over 9000 on the IQ scale
If you sum up all his alternative personalities, 90,000 ...
90,000 on verbal reasoning, probably, but the scores on analytical thinking and numerical reasoning would barely get off the ground.
I'm also wondering when someone on this thread will actually go and claim that grammar and "public" school children are genetically superior because they are so much more intelligent.
Privately educated people are the best, intelligence and academically, and in so many other ways. WeThey are off the charts as well on the modest self effacing ways.
Have any R4 Today listeners heard Amol Rajan on there since the Royals TV documentary he did? I'm pretty sure I haven't, and I'd not be surprised to find out that his documentary and his absence were related somehow.
Apparently some issues.
Does Her Maj listen to Today?
"I can't bear that awful man and his dreadful glottal stops"
I suspect she does.
I too hate the way Rajan speaks - it sounds so disinterested and superior. That aside though he's not so bad. There's not a chance in hell he got onto the Today programme without being an ok guy.
Absolutely rammed, car park one in one out. And without question the worst mask observance I have seen there in 2021.
The chances of new household restrictions being widely observed are nil. New restrictions now will do nothing but cause economic damage, without impacting R to any noticeable degree.
Anecdotage over the last couple of days … mask observation pretty good in Leeds; dismal in Manchester.
Look at the share. 30% for the Tories is absolutely dire.
I suspect in a few months the Tories will be looking at the polls and dreaming of the days past when they were on 30%.
It's all downhill from here - a perfect storm of worldwide inflationary pressures.
Would that were the case but I fear not.
There are people who will support the Conservatives however bad they are. I don't know why but they exist. "I've always been a Tory" they will say on the doorstep, give you a whole lot of left-wing opinions and then swear blind they are Tories.
Go figure...
Nope. They have found their floor, and plunged straight through it.
The missing fanboy from your list is of course @HYUFD. Suspect he will be supporting Boris right up until the results of first vote of the June leadership contest.
IQ tests clearly measure SOMETHING and whatever it is, it is closely related to what we generally think of as intelligence. If you speak to someone with an IQ of 60 and then speak to someone with an IQ of 140 the latter will obviously be much more “intelligent” than the former
Quicker, smarter, better with words and ideas. Faster on the uptake. Able to do difficult tasks at speed.
“Speed of successful information processing” is, in fact, a pretty good definition of “intelligence”
And it is commonly reckoned genetics accounts for about half of this faculty
Presumably you'd be over 9000 on the IQ scale
If you sum up all his alternative personalities, 90,000 ...
90,000 on verbal reasoning, probably, but the scores on analytical thinking and numerical reasoning would barely get off the ground.
Off the ground? He'd be finding new tin deposits in his native land ...
Comments
There is also nothing wrong with apprenticeships, in fact the highest level apprentices earn more on average than most graduates except those from the Russell Group.
Germany for example has selective gymnasiums like our grammars but also high status apprenticeships too
(Do find some railway tales again soon.)
As for your latter point, depends on what we are talking about. Is a medic much smarter than Joe Cnut who read on Facebook that actually they're all wrong because actually there is no Covid? Yes - as so many dead anti-vaxxers demonstrates.
Similarly for anything new that you learn - eventually your brain rewires so that the basic thinking it requires becomes ‘hard wired’, requiring less conscious effort and attention.
And of course, even if you believe HYUFDs citation (and twin studies are notoriously unreliable die to failures to control for numerous factors) there is all the percentage that is not inherited still to play for.
IQ tests are not magic, they are clearly teachable.
Absolutely rammed, car park one in one out. And without question the worst mask observance I have seen there in 2021.
The chances of new household restrictions being widely observed are nil. New restrictions now will do nothing but cause economic damage, without impacting R to any noticeable degree.
When football was about how good a team you could make from the players you had, rather than what mercenaries from around the world you could buy, Scottish football (all football, in fact) was in a much better place.
The Council house kids almost always ended up in the B stream in my Grammar and were considered "less able students" due to being in the "lowest" academic class in the school.
So those who failed the 11 plus were stigmatised as we're half of those who passed.
Quite how he could and has fucked up so monumentally escapes me.
The geographical breakdown is looking like the makings of a perfect storm. These May locals are going to be delicious. Any markets up?
St Georges ?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_Oliveira
Okay, they were 13 when they met, so I guess it’s not too bad.
Re poor areas having sink schools. Yes, but not always, particularly if the poor areas are pockets. I was brought up in Surrey, which is not renowned for being poor, but there are poor areas. So it is very easy to see how the 11+ failed pupils. All the Grammar school kids came from the middle class areas and none from the poor areas. I wonder why? I think most of us know.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQk6rKrKoNY&t=5s
Does he not have a speech writer for these things?
Quicker, smarter, better with words and ideas. Faster on the uptake. Able to do difficult tasks at speed.
“Speed of successful information processing” is, in fact, a pretty good definition of “intelligence”
And it is commonly reckoned genetics accounts for about half of this faculty
Good the cabinet have taken back control
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/nov/28/uk-health-trusts-suspend-home-birth-services-midwives-shortage
He'd have lost against Khan, that's why he left before he did
Yep it's not quite a Labour Majority but its definitely a Labour Government.
It also shows how well the Tories do under the new boundaries there it's Tories 251, Labour 305.
https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/fcgi-bin/usercode.py?scotcontrol=Y&CON=30&LAB=38&LIB=10&Reform=7&Green=10&UKIP=&TVCON=&TVLAB=&TVLIB=&TVReform=&TVGreen=&TVUKIP=&SCOTCON=20.5&SCOTLAB=19&SCOTLIB=6.5&SCOTReform=1&SCOTGreen=1.5&SCOTUKIP=&SCOTNAT=48&display=AllChanged&regorseat=(none)&boundary=2019nbbase
https://twitter.com/REWearmouth/status/1473358926418694152
BJO Isam BigG DavidL?
The debate now is more about the importance of reducing widespread illness vs the importance of being free to be out and about. It actually should be a less heated debate.
30% for the Tories is absolutely dire.
It is tempting to focus on what more could have been done (and that is a valuable trait in those seeking progress), but in doing so, we sometimes lose sight of what has been accomplished and how before the event we'd have been very pleased with what we now have.
Edit to add: plus didn’t the SDLP used to take the Labour whip? Do they still do?
It's all downhill from here - a perfect storm of worldwide inflationary pressures.
There are people who will support the Conservatives however bad they are. I don't know why but they exist. "I've always been a Tory" they will say on the doorstep, give you a whole lot of left-wing opinions and then swear blind they are Tories.
Go figure...
But every time I read a HYUFD post I fear a few brain cells die and I've probably killed enough today.
Looks like I will be right, but out by a year.
"I can't bear that awful man and his dreadful glottal stops"
I would guess that it is essentially a matter of practice. You would eventually speed up in being able to answer the questions, meaning that you answer more and get a higher score. However, I doubt that you could go from a really low to a really high score.
I think there is a real danger in assuming that IQ is an absolute measure of intelligence. People can be intelligent in ways that are not picked up in an IQ test. Similarly, people with supposedly high IQs are as susceptible as everyone else to doing stupid things. Some people with high IQs do nothing of significance with their lives. Trying to stratify people by IQ level is a very bad idea.
Plus I would say that mixology and data science are strongly related. One involves dangerously mixing things around and the other involves.... alcohol?
Or you would be had not another poster, I forget who, called Hartlepool as Peak Boris on the day after the by election. Calling the top with that degree of precision...
I'm not saying this to brag (*), but for this reason: her best friend took the same classes. And ended up one position ahead of her.
They didn't cheat: but they studied and revised closely together. Two students at the same school ended up with adjacent places, out of hundreds of thousands.
What you are taught matters massively. Training for tests matters. The same goes for IQ tests, which Mrs J is very sniffy about.
She likes to rub her results in, because I really mucked up my A-levels. Not that that's really something that's sent me into the gutter...
(*) though she is hyper-intelligent with a high IQ, and she is also a bit of a muppet.
I too hate the way Rajan speaks - it sounds so disinterested and superior. That aside though he's not so bad. There's not a chance in hell he got onto the Today programme without being an ok guy.
The Tories polled in the low 20% consistently.
@isam is still banned AIUI.
The missing fanboy from your list is of course @HYUFD. Suspect he will be supporting Boris right up until the results of first vote of the June leadership contest.
Make of that what you will.