Descending from the important questions in the Header to the nakedly partisan - apols - I wonder how a Sunak/Starmer match-up would play to the country? I haven't quite worked myself out a take on this yet. I do probably need to since he looks nailed on if and when 'it' finally happens.
Starmer's only real appeal is that he is the boring-but-competent one against the charismatic but flawed partygate buffoonery of Boris (being generous to Boris there).
Sunak would essentially occupy the same boring-but-competent territory. Which is bad for Starmer.
Except that one has a modicum of working class background and a trusted profession.
The other is the richest person in Parliament and was a banker. Replace the first letter & you have how most people view them.
lawyer who are almost as unloved as bankers.
Utterly untrue as Mike Smithson demonstrated the other day.
IPSOS MORI (One of your two permitted pollsters):
Other professions trusted by more than half of the public include museum curators, the police, lawyers, civil servants, the ordinary man/woman on the street and clergy/priests. Professions with negative net trust ratings include bankers, local councillors, business leaders, professional footballers, estate agents and journalists.
"If Old Labour had bulldozed Eton in the Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss.
"If Old Labour had not bulldozed most of the Grammar schools in the Sixties and Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools I presume
No, everyone. The presence of those from the working class in positions of power helps everyone.
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools
Yep appalling institutions
So appalling they produced the highest number of non privately educated people products in our top professions, yes even judges and lawyers had plenty of grammar school alumni. More so than the number who now come from comprehensives
If you got rid of private schools and grammar schools then 100% of our PMs, people in top professions and judges and lawyers would be from comprehensives. Explain that one.
If you got rid of Waitrose, Marks and Spencer and Sainsburys all their customers would have to shop at Tesco, Aldi or Lidl. Explain that one.
I believe in choice for parents as much as consumers
Let me break it down for you.
1. I don't believe we should abolish existing grammar schools.
2. I don't believe we should abolish private schools.
3. However, if we did, then 100% of our 'elite' would be from comprehensives.
I ask again, explain that one?
If you ban private schools, then the ‘elites’ will send their kids to school abroad - just as the elites of many other countries currently aspire to be able to send their kids to school in the UK.
Only a small minority.
My point is that HY quotes statistics without any appreciation of the other factors at play.
We know that comprehensives are better in rich areas and we know that wealth players a big part in children's prospects, regardless of whether you go to a comprehensive or a grammar school.
Therefore simply saying "ah but X% of our 'elite' went to a grammar school" tells us absolutely nothing about the benefit of grammar schools.
It's just bollocks, as usual.
Your point is you are an ideological leftwing socialist who would deny parents the choice of where to send their children and would nationalise much of industry too given the chance.
Yes indeed comprehensives are better in wealthy areas and the left destroyed the best tools of tackling that for a bright child by abolishing the grammar schools that used to exist in inner cities or ex industrial areas or poor seaside towns. So the only ones left are generally in more prosperous areas with Tory councils where comprehensive schools and academies tend to be better anyway so they are less needed.
So we still have selection in state education, just by house price and vicar's reference, not by IQ
Also, grammar schools do not select by IQ. They select by wealth. Only a fool would try to pretend that wealth does not increase your chances of passing entrance exams by better access to learning materials and private tutors.
No, private schools and the best comprehensive schools select by parental wealth or house price (or church attendance).
Grammar schools select by IQ. If you have a low IQ tutoring will not get you through a grammar school entrance exam, if you have a high IQ you will pass a grammar school entrance exam regardless of tutoring
So naïve.
You clearly are, of the realities of state education today.
Not grammar schools again, please. The only place I ever come across nostalgia for grammar schools is on PB. They are the past, not the future. Even the Tory Party has shut up about them (apart from in Epping).
UKIP wanted a "grammar school in every town". No other party is interested. Tells you all you need to know. And why? Because the evidence (educational and social mobility) that they do more harm than good is incontrovertible. Trust me.
Not sure why you'd expect anyone to 'trust you', and this post is a collection of sloppy empty clichés, of which 'they are the past not the future' is the emptiest.
Thanks for the rudeness. I've spent the last forty years working in education and educational policy, much of it on data analysis, at a high level. So while I'm pretty ignorant about much, I think I know about this. And guess what? The Tory party doesn't advocate the return of a tertiary system of secondary education.
Rish's postives are that he is smart, articulate, rich, ethnic and empathic. His negatives is that he is rich, ex Goldman Sachs, despite a vivid imagination struggles to understand what the average joe is struggling with, a bit wooden and in some respects he has not been tested as a Chancellor who was allowed to let rip in an extraordinary situation.
What I think he would bring to the government is a sense of professionalism, less blunders, less charisma and some calmness. We need that. It's time.
Andrew Marr in Newstatesman this weekend says Hunt is the one to watch. Could come through in the end as the calm, experienced, doesn't actively piss any other MP off, nothing-to-do-with-any-of-this candidate.
I would suggest Marr mentioning Hunt is more his remain side talking than realism
I have detected genuine fear among the real Brexiteers that Rishi is not hard enough on Northern Ireland, to the point they are losing the wider implications of leaving Boris in place which may will see a labour administration anyway
Sunak would need to invoke Article 16 certainly if he fails to won a majority and the DUP hold the balance of power to win them over as May did in 2017
Sunak would not need to do anything he did not want to
He would if he wanted to become PM and had failed to get a majority and the DUP held the balance of power, otherwise they would abstain and Starmer would become PM if Labour and the SNP and LDs were more than the Tories alone
I have no idea why you keep regurgitation this utter rubbish
To be honest it impresses nobody
It is not rubbish, it is reality.
If Sunak became leader and failed to retain the Tory majority and needed the DUP to stay in power and pass legislation, he would have to invoke Art 16 to get their support otherwise they would abstain and he would not be able to form a government and Starmer would form a new government instead with SNP and LD support
Lots of good points from Cyclefree, though goodness knows what quality of politician will be needed to meet all Cyclefree's demands, reasonable though they are.
Sunak's big problem is that he was and remains at the heart of a government that is discredited. The idea that there won't be anyone with a plausible dossier of anecdotes, and pictures seems unlikely. It's a risk, and the Tories can't afford another leader ending as badly as all the others.
This time they need to look outside government. For Sunak to be plausible he needed to resign after the Savile nonsense at the latest.
I think you overplay that issue. Starmer doesn't get much grief for having stuck with Corbyn now. As Major was seen to be a clear break from Thatcher despite having served as both Foreign Secretary and Chancellor under her and literally being her choice as successor. Even Brown was at least briefly seen as a break from the Blair era although I admit that didn't last.
Bottom line is a new leader can simply say they did what they had to do to keep the show on the road. Now, they will do what they *wanted* to do but *couldn't* do until they got rid of the leader.
Sunak could well surprise on the upside.
I just wanted to ask a few questions about him.
Not unreasonably.
On your first sentence, that would be a dramatic break with tradition. Who was the last PM to surprise on the upside over the full course of their premiership? I keep coming back to Alec Douglas-Home whose record was 'he was in office for eleven months and lost an election slightly less badly than his predecessor would have done.' Which isn't exactly a recommendation.
I am reminded of Enoch Powell - 'all political careers end in failure.' Similarly, all Prime Ministers in the end are removed for being duds.
Not grammar schools again, please. The only place I ever come across nostalgia for grammar schools is on PB. They are the past, not the future. Even the Tory Party has shut up about them (apart from in Epping).
UKIP wanted a "grammar school in every town". No other party is interested. Tells you all you need to know. And why? Because the evidence (educational and social mobility) that they do more harm than good is incontrovertible. Trust me.
Not sure why you'd expect anyone to 'trust you', and this post is a collection of sloppy empty clichés, of which 'they are the past not the future' is the emptiest.
Thanks for the rudeness. I've spent the last forty years working in education and educational policy, much of it on data analysis, at a high level. So while I'm pretty ignorant about much, I think I know about this. And guess what? The Tory party doesn't advocate the return of a tertiary system of secondary education.
Not at the moment, it has in the past under Major, Howard and May and likely will again in time. After all 50% of Conservative voters want to build more grammar schools and only 15% of Conservative voters want to end selection by ability. https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/survey-results/daily/2018/05/11/f9380/1
You can presently ballot to close grammars, you cannot even ballot to open new ones
Not grammar schools again, please. The only place I ever come across nostalgia for grammar schools is on PB. They are the past, not the future. Even the Tory Party has shut up about them (apart from in Epping).
UKIP wanted a "grammar school in every town". No other party is interested. Tells you all you need to know. And why? Because the evidence (educational and social mobility) that they do more harm than good is incontrovertible. Trust me.
Not sure why you'd expect anyone to 'trust you', and this post is a collection of sloppy empty clichés, of which 'they are the past not the future' is the emptiest.
Thanks for the rudeness. I've spent the last forty years working in education and educational policy, much of it on data analysis, at a high level. So while I'm pretty ignorant about much, I think I know about this. And guess what? The Tory party doesn't advocate the return of a tertiary system of secondary education.
I thought you were a civil servant?
Please don't tell me you worked at the DfE or I'll have to hate you.
Rish's postives are that he is smart, articulate, rich, ethnic and empathic. His negatives is that he is rich, ex Goldman Sachs, despite a vivid imagination struggles to understand what the average joe is struggling with, a bit wooden and in some respects he has not been tested as a Chancellor who was allowed to let rip in an extraordinary situation.
What I think he would bring to the government is a sense of professionalism, less blunders, less charisma and some calmness. We need that. It's time.
Andrew Marr in Newstatesman this weekend says Hunt is the one to watch. Could come through in the end as the calm, experienced, doesn't actively piss any other MP off, nothing-to-do-with-any-of-this candidate.
I would suggest Marr mentioning Hunt is more his remain side talking than realism
I have detected genuine fear among the real Brexiteers that Rishi is not hard enough on Northern Ireland, to the point they are losing the wider implications of leaving Boris in place which may will see a labour administration anyway
Sunak would need to invoke Article 16 certainly if he fails to won a majority and the DUP hold the balance of power to win them over as May did in 2017
Sunak would not need to do anything he did not want to
He would if he wanted to become PM and had failed to get a majority and the DUP held the balance of power, otherwise they would abstain and Starmer would become PM if Labour and the SNP and LDs were more than the Tories alone
I have no idea why you keep regurgitation this utter rubbish
To be honest it impresses nobody
It is not rubbish, it is reality.
If Sunak became leader and failed to retain the Tory majority and needed the DUP to stay in power and pass legislation, he would have to invoke Art 16 to get their support otherwise they would abstain and he would not be able to form a government and Starmer would form a new government instead with SNP and LD support
Reality and yourself are strangers as much as Boris is with the truth and lying
Not grammar schools again, please. The only place I ever come across nostalgia for grammar schools is on PB. They are the past, not the future. Even the Tory Party has shut up about them (apart from in Epping).
UKIP wanted a "grammar school in every town". No other party is interested. Tells you all you need to know. And why? Because the evidence (educational and social mobility) that they do more harm than good is incontrovertible. Trust me.
Not sure why you'd expect anyone to 'trust you', and this post is a collection of sloppy empty clichés, of which 'they are the past not the future' is the emptiest.
Thanks for the rudeness. I've spent the last forty years working in education and educational policy, much of it on data analysis, at a high level. So while I'm pretty ignorant about much, I think I know about this. And guess what? The Tory party doesn't advocate the return of a tertiary system of secondary education.
I thought you were a civil servant?
Please don't tell me you worked at the DfE or I'll have to hate you.
Not grammar schools again, please. The only place I ever come across nostalgia for grammar schools is on PB. They are the past, not the future. Even the Tory Party has shut up about them (apart from in Epping).
UKIP wanted a "grammar school in every town". No other party is interested. Tells you all you need to know. And why? Because the evidence (educational and social mobility) that they do more harm than good is incontrovertible. Trust me.
Not sure why you'd expect anyone to 'trust you', and this post is a collection of sloppy empty clichés, of which 'they are the past not the future' is the emptiest.
Thanks for the rudeness. I've spent the last forty years working in education and educational policy, much of it on data analysis, at a high level. So while I'm pretty ignorant about much, I think I know about this. And guess what? The Tory party doesn't advocate the return of a tertiary system of secondary education.
I thought you were a civil servant?
Please don't tell me you worked at the DfE or I'll have to hate you.
Not the DfE. Much worse.
Where, then?
What other department could lead to somebody being involved in education for forty years while being a civil servant? An LEA?
Descending from the important questions in the Header to the nakedly partisan - apols - I wonder how a Sunak/Starmer match-up would play to the country? I haven't quite worked myself out a take on this yet. I do probably need to since he looks nailed on if and when 'it' finally happens.
Starmer's only real appeal is that he is the boring-but-competent one against the charismatic but flawed partygate buffoonery of Boris (being generous to Boris there).
Sunak would essentially occupy the same boring-but-competent territory. Which is bad for Starmer.
Except that one has a modicum of working class background and a trusted profession.
The other is the richest person in Parliament and was a banker. Replace the first letter & you have how most people view them.
lawyer who are almost as unloved as bankers.
Utterly untrue as Mike Smithson demonstrated the other day.
IPSOS MORI (One of your two permitted pollsters):
Other professions trusted by more than half of the public include museum curators, the police, lawyers, civil servants, the ordinary man/woman on the street and clergy/priests. Professions with negative net trust ratings include bankers, local councillors, business leaders, professional footballers, estate agents and journalists.
"If Old Labour had bulldozed Eton in the Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss.
"If Old Labour had not bulldozed most of the Grammar schools in the Sixties and Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools I presume
No, everyone. The presence of those from the working class in positions of power helps everyone.
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools
Yep appalling institutions
So appalling they produced the highest number of non privately educated people products in our top professions, yes even judges and lawyers had plenty of grammar school alumni. More so than the number who now come from comprehensives
If you got rid of private schools and grammar schools then 100% of our PMs, people in top professions and judges and lawyers would be from comprehensives. Explain that one.
If you got rid of Waitrose, Marks and Spencer and Sainsburys all their customers would have to shop at Tesco, Aldi or Lidl. Explain that one.
I believe in choice for parents as much as consumers
Let me break it down for you.
1. I don't believe we should abolish existing grammar schools.
2. I don't believe we should abolish private schools.
3. However, if we did, then 100% of our 'elite' would be from comprehensives.
I ask again, explain that one?
If you ban private schools, then the ‘elites’ will send their kids to school abroad - just as the elites of many other countries currently aspire to be able to send their kids to school in the UK.
Only a small minority.
My point is that HY quotes statistics without any appreciation of the other factors at play.
We know that comprehensives are better in rich areas and we know that wealth players a big part in children's prospects, regardless of whether you go to a comprehensive or a grammar school.
Therefore simply saying "ah but X% of our 'elite' went to a grammar school" tells us absolutely nothing about the benefit of grammar schools.
It's just bollocks, as usual.
Your point is you are an ideological leftwing socialist who would deny parents the choice of where to send their children and would nationalise much of industry too given the chance.
Yes indeed comprehensives are better in wealthy areas and the left destroyed the best tools of tackling that for a bright child by abolishing the grammar schools that used to exist in inner cities or ex industrial areas or poor seaside towns. So the only ones left are generally in more prosperous areas with Tory councils where comprehensive schools and academies tend to be better anyway so they are less needed.
So we still have selection in state education, just by house price and vicar's reference, not by IQ
Also, grammar schools do not select by IQ. They select by wealth. Only a fool would try to pretend that wealth does not increase your chances of passing entrance exams by better access to learning materials and private tutors.
No, private schools and the best comprehensive schools select by parental wealth or house price (or church attendance).
Grammar schools select by IQ. If you have a low IQ tutoring will not get you through a grammar school entrance exam, if you have a high IQ you will pass a grammar school entrance exam regardless of tutoring
We have been here before also. Yes it will. You can train for IQ tests unless you are particularly dim. I gave you some examples of stuff you could do last time we had this argument. I could easily raise someone's IQ result with training and I had to administer such test for potential employees for one the large computer companies I used to work for. I guessed I could add 10 - 20 points to someone's test, but later in that discussion @rcs1000 posted a link showing the improvement could be as much as 30 points.
Here is just one of those techniques: If given a sequence of numbers and you have to find the next number and can't see it simply subtract each number from the next number in the sequence and create a new sequence. Repeat until a pattern appears. This can be done in seconds so doesn't waste time and works nearly all the time for sequences in IQ tests.
There are a few particularly dim pupils in some private schools without entrance exams.
There are no particularly dim pupils in grammar schools
Descending from the important questions in the Header to the nakedly partisan - apols - I wonder how a Sunak/Starmer match-up would play to the country? I haven't quite worked myself out a take on this yet. I do probably need to since he looks nailed on if and when 'it' finally happens.
Starmer's only real appeal is that he is the boring-but-competent one against the charismatic but flawed partygate buffoonery of Boris (being generous to Boris there).
Sunak would essentially occupy the same boring-but-competent territory. Which is bad for Starmer.
Except that one has a modicum of working class background and a trusted profession.
The other is the richest person in Parliament and was a banker. Replace the first letter & you have how most people view them.
lawyer who are almost as unloved as bankers.
Utterly untrue as Mike Smithson demonstrated the other day.
IPSOS MORI (One of your two permitted pollsters):
Other professions trusted by more than half of the public include museum curators, the police, lawyers, civil servants, the ordinary man/woman on the street and clergy/priests. Professions with negative net trust ratings include bankers, local councillors, business leaders, professional footballers, estate agents and journalists.
"If Old Labour had bulldozed Eton in the Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss.
"If Old Labour had not bulldozed most of the Grammar schools in the Sixties and Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools I presume
No, everyone. The presence of those from the working class in positions of power helps everyone.
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools
Yep appalling institutions
So appalling they produced the highest number of non privately educated people products in our top professions, yes even judges and lawyers had plenty of grammar school alumni. More so than the number who now come from comprehensives
If you got rid of private schools and grammar schools then 100% of our PMs, people in top professions and judges and lawyers would be from comprehensives. Explain that one.
If you got rid of Waitrose, Marks and Spencer and Sainsburys all their customers would have to shop at Tesco, Aldi or Lidl. Explain that one.
I believe in choice for parents as much as consumers
Let me break it down for you.
1. I don't believe we should abolish existing grammar schools.
2. I don't believe we should abolish private schools.
3. However, if we did, then 100% of our 'elite' would be from comprehensives.
I ask again, explain that one?
If you ban private schools, then the ‘elites’ will send their kids to school abroad - just as the elites of many other countries currently aspire to be able to send their kids to school in the UK.
Only a small minority.
My point is that HY quotes statistics without any appreciation of the other factors at play.
We know that comprehensives are better in rich areas and we know that wealth players a big part in children's prospects, regardless of whether you go to a comprehensive or a grammar school.
Therefore simply saying "ah but X% of our 'elite' went to a grammar school" tells us absolutely nothing about the benefit of grammar schools.
It's just bollocks, as usual.
Your point is you are an ideological leftwing socialist who would deny parents the choice of where to send their children and would nationalise much of industry too given the chance.
Yes indeed comprehensives are better in wealthy areas and the left destroyed the best tools of tackling that for a bright child by abolishing the grammar schools that used to exist in inner cities or ex industrial areas or poor seaside towns. So the only ones left are generally in more prosperous areas with Tory councils where comprehensive schools and academies tend to be better anyway so they are less needed.
So we still have selection in state education, just by house price and vicar's reference, not by IQ
Also, grammar schools do not select by IQ. They select by wealth. Only a fool would try to pretend that wealth does not increase your chances of passing entrance exams by better access to learning materials and private tutors.
No, private schools and the best comprehensive schools select by parental wealth or house price (or church attendance).
Grammar schools select by IQ. If you have a low IQ tutoring will not get you through a grammar school entrance exam, if you have a high IQ you will pass a grammar school entrance exam regardless of tutoring
We have been here before also. Yes it will. You can train for IQ tests unless you are particularly dim. I gave you some examples of stuff you could do last time we had this argument. I could easily raise someone's IQ result with training and I had to administer such test for potential employees for one the large computer companies I used to work for. I guessed I could add 10 - 20 points to someone's test, but later in that discussion @rcs1000 posted a link showing the improvement could be as much as 30 points.
Here is just one of those techniques: If given a sequence of numbers and you have to find the next number and can't see it simply subtract each number from the next number in the sequence and create a new sequence. Repeat until a pattern appears. This can be done in seconds so doesn't waste time and works nearly all the time for sequences in IQ tests.
There are a few particularly dim pupils in some private schools without entrance exams.
There are no particularly dim pupils in grammar schools
There are you know. I taught several when I was teaching in a grammar.
It was not a good place for them. They found keeping up very, very tough.
Not grammar schools again, please. The only place I ever come across nostalgia for grammar schools is on PB. They are the past, not the future. Even the Tory Party has shut up about them (apart from in Epping).
UKIP wanted a "grammar school in every town". No other party is interested. Tells you all you need to know. And why? Because the evidence (educational and social mobility) that they do more harm than good is incontrovertible. Trust me.
Not sure why you'd expect anyone to 'trust you', and this post is a collection of sloppy empty clichés, of which 'they are the past not the future' is the emptiest.
Thanks for the rudeness. I've spent the last forty years working in education and educational policy, much of it on data analysis, at a high level. So while I'm pretty ignorant about much, I think I know about this. And guess what? The Tory party doesn't advocate the return of a tertiary system of secondary education.
I thought you were a civil servant?
Please don't tell me you worked at the DfE or I'll have to hate you.
Not the DfE. Much worse.
Where, then?
What other department could lead to somebody being involved in education for forty years while being a civil servant? An LEA?
I taught and managed in FE for the first 20 years. The rest shall remain a mystery - you can message me if you really want to know.
Rish's postives are that he is smart, articulate, rich, ethnic and empathic. His negatives is that he is rich, ex Goldman Sachs, despite a vivid imagination struggles to understand what the average joe is struggling with, a bit wooden and in some respects he has not been tested as a Chancellor who was allowed to let rip in an extraordinary situation.
What I think he would bring to the government is a sense of professionalism, less blunders, less charisma and some calmness. We need that. It's time.
Andrew Marr in Newstatesman this weekend says Hunt is the one to watch. Could come through in the end as the calm, experienced, doesn't actively piss any other MP off, nothing-to-do-with-any-of-this candidate.
I would suggest Marr mentioning Hunt is more his remain side talking than realism
I have detected genuine fear among the real Brexiteers that Rishi is not hard enough on Northern Ireland, to the point they are losing the wider implications of leaving Boris in place which may will see a labour administration anyway
Sunak would need to invoke Article 16 certainly if he fails to won a majority and the DUP hold the balance of power to win them over as May did in 2017
Sunak would not need to do anything he did not want to
He would if he wanted to become PM and had failed to get a majority and the DUP held the balance of power, otherwise they would abstain and Starmer would become PM if Labour and the SNP and LDs were more than the Tories alone
I have no idea why you keep regurgitation this utter rubbish
To be honest it impresses nobody
It is not rubbish, it is reality.
If Sunak became leader and failed to retain the Tory majority and needed the DUP to stay in power and pass legislation, he would have to invoke Art 16 to get their support otherwise they would abstain and he would not be able to form a government and Starmer would form a new government instead with SNP and LD support
Reality and yourself are strangers as much as Boris is with the truth and lying
You cannot deny that if Sunak became leader and failed to win a majority, his only chance of staying PM would be with DUP support as May got in 2017.
The LDs would back Starmer and not back him without a softer Brexit, which would split the party and see a resurgent RefUK
Descending from the important questions in the Header to the nakedly partisan - apols - I wonder how a Sunak/Starmer match-up would play to the country? I haven't quite worked myself out a take on this yet. I do probably need to since he looks nailed on if and when 'it' finally happens.
Starmer's only real appeal is that he is the boring-but-competent one against the charismatic but flawed partygate buffoonery of Boris (being generous to Boris there).
Sunak would essentially occupy the same boring-but-competent territory. Which is bad for Starmer.
Except that one has a modicum of working class background and a trusted profession.
The other is the richest person in Parliament and was a banker. Replace the first letter & you have how most people view them.
lawyer who are almost as unloved as bankers.
Utterly untrue as Mike Smithson demonstrated the other day.
IPSOS MORI (One of your two permitted pollsters):
Other professions trusted by more than half of the public include museum curators, the police, lawyers, civil servants, the ordinary man/woman on the street and clergy/priests. Professions with negative net trust ratings include bankers, local councillors, business leaders, professional footballers, estate agents and journalists.
"If Old Labour had bulldozed Eton in the Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss.
"If Old Labour had not bulldozed most of the Grammar schools in the Sixties and Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools I presume
No, everyone. The presence of those from the working class in positions of power helps everyone.
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools
Yep appalling institutions
So appalling they produced the highest number of non privately educated people products in our top professions, yes even judges and lawyers had plenty of grammar school alumni. More so than the number who now come from comprehensives
If you got rid of private schools and grammar schools then 100% of our PMs, people in top professions and judges and lawyers would be from comprehensives. Explain that one.
If you got rid of Waitrose, Marks and Spencer and Sainsburys all their customers would have to shop at Tesco, Aldi or Lidl. Explain that one.
I believe in choice for parents as much as consumers
Let me break it down for you.
1. I don't believe we should abolish existing grammar schools.
2. I don't believe we should abolish private schools.
3. However, if we did, then 100% of our 'elite' would be from comprehensives.
I ask again, explain that one?
If you ban private schools, then the ‘elites’ will send their kids to school abroad - just as the elites of many other countries currently aspire to be able to send their kids to school in the UK.
Only a small minority.
My point is that HY quotes statistics without any appreciation of the other factors at play.
We know that comprehensives are better in rich areas and we know that wealth players a big part in children's prospects, regardless of whether you go to a comprehensive or a grammar school.
Therefore simply saying "ah but X% of our 'elite' went to a grammar school" tells us absolutely nothing about the benefit of grammar schools.
It's just bollocks, as usual.
Your point is you are an ideological leftwing socialist who would deny parents the choice of where to send their children and would nationalise much of industry too given the chance.
Yes indeed comprehensives are better in wealthy areas and the left destroyed the best tools of tackling that for a bright child by abolishing the grammar schools that used to exist in inner cities or ex industrial areas or poor seaside towns. So the only ones left are generally in more prosperous areas with Tory councils where comprehensive schools and academies tend to be better anyway so they are less needed.
So we still have selection in state education, just by house price and vicar's reference, not by IQ
Also, grammar schools do not select by IQ. They select by wealth. Only a fool would try to pretend that wealth does not increase your chances of passing entrance exams by better access to learning materials and private tutors.
No, private schools and the best comprehensive schools select by parental wealth or house price (or church attendance).
Grammar schools select by IQ. If you have a low IQ tutoring will not get you through a grammar school entrance exam, if you have a high IQ you will pass a grammar school entrance exam regardless of tutoring
We have been here before also. Yes it will. You can train for IQ tests unless you are particularly dim. I gave you some examples of stuff you could do last time we had this argument. I could easily raise someone's IQ result with training and I had to administer such test for potential employees for one the large computer companies I used to work for. I guessed I could add 10 - 20 points to someone's test, but later in that discussion @rcs1000 posted a link showing the improvement could be as much as 30 points.
Here is just one of those techniques: If given a sequence of numbers and you have to find the next number and can't see it simply subtract each number from the next number in the sequence and create a new sequence. Repeat until a pattern appears. This can be done in seconds so doesn't waste time and works nearly all the time for sequences in IQ tests.
There are a few particularly dim pupils in some private schools without entrance exams.
There are no particularly dim pupils in grammar schools
Well, I like to think I am always on my guard against hysteria. But we can't put it all down to over-fevered imaginations. There is now too much evidence of sexual predators getting away with it in that era airily to dismiss the idea that it was also happening in the precincts of parliament. We already know – the case of the late Sir Cyril Smith – of one vile perpetrator. I'd be surprised to discover that there was a vast paedophile gang with tentacles gripping every nook and cranny of Westminster, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if it is shown that there were cases of offenders among MPs whose criminal depredations were hushed up by whips and other party managers for the usual self-serving reasons.
Not grammar schools again, please. The only place I ever come across nostalgia for grammar schools is on PB. They are the past, not the future. Even the Tory Party has shut up about them (apart from in Epping).
UKIP wanted a "grammar school in every town". No other party is interested. Tells you all you need to know. And why? Because the evidence (educational and social mobility) that they do more harm than good is incontrovertible. Trust me.
Not sure why you'd expect anyone to 'trust you', and this post is a collection of sloppy empty clichés, of which 'they are the past not the future' is the emptiest.
Thanks for the rudeness. I've spent the last forty years working in education and educational policy, much of it on data analysis, at a high level. So while I'm pretty ignorant about much, I think I know about this. And guess what? The Tory party doesn't advocate the return of a tertiary system of secondary education.
I thought you were a civil servant?
Please don't tell me you worked at the DfE or I'll have to hate you.
Not the DfE. Much worse.
Where, then?
What other department could lead to somebody being involved in education for forty years while being a civil servant? An LEA?
I taught and managed in FE for the first 20 years. The rest shall remain a mystery - you can message me if you really want to know.
Fair enough. I won't invade your privacy to that extent.
Descending from the important questions in the Header to the nakedly partisan - apols - I wonder how a Sunak/Starmer match-up would play to the country? I haven't quite worked myself out a take on this yet. I do probably need to since he looks nailed on if and when 'it' finally happens.
Starmer's only real appeal is that he is the boring-but-competent one against the charismatic but flawed partygate buffoonery of Boris (being generous to Boris there).
Sunak would essentially occupy the same boring-but-competent territory. Which is bad for Starmer.
Except that one has a modicum of working class background and a trusted profession.
The other is the richest person in Parliament and was a banker. Replace the first letter & you have how most people view them.
lawyer who are almost as unloved as bankers.
Utterly untrue as Mike Smithson demonstrated the other day.
IPSOS MORI (One of your two permitted pollsters):
Other professions trusted by more than half of the public include museum curators, the police, lawyers, civil servants, the ordinary man/woman on the street and clergy/priests. Professions with negative net trust ratings include bankers, local councillors, business leaders, professional footballers, estate agents and journalists.
"If Old Labour had bulldozed Eton in the Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss.
"If Old Labour had not bulldozed most of the Grammar schools in the Sixties and Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools I presume
No, everyone. The presence of those from the working class in positions of power helps everyone.
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools
Yep appalling institutions
So appalling they produced the highest number of non privately educated people products in our top professions, yes even judges and lawyers had plenty of grammar school alumni. More so than the number who now come from comprehensives
If you got rid of private schools and grammar schools then 100% of our PMs, people in top professions and judges and lawyers would be from comprehensives. Explain that one.
If you got rid of Waitrose, Marks and Spencer and Sainsburys all their customers would have to shop at Tesco, Aldi or Lidl. Explain that one.
I believe in choice for parents as much as consumers
Let me break it down for you.
1. I don't believe we should abolish existing grammar schools.
2. I don't believe we should abolish private schools.
3. However, if we did, then 100% of our 'elite' would be from comprehensives.
I ask again, explain that one?
If you ban private schools, then the ‘elites’ will send their kids to school abroad - just as the elites of many other countries currently aspire to be able to send their kids to school in the UK.
Only a small minority.
My point is that HY quotes statistics without any appreciation of the other factors at play.
We know that comprehensives are better in rich areas and we know that wealth players a big part in children's prospects, regardless of whether you go to a comprehensive or a grammar school.
Therefore simply saying "ah but X% of our 'elite' went to a grammar school" tells us absolutely nothing about the benefit of grammar schools.
It's just bollocks, as usual.
Your point is you are an ideological leftwing socialist who would deny parents the choice of where to send their children and would nationalise much of industry too given the chance.
Yes indeed comprehensives are better in wealthy areas and the left destroyed the best tools of tackling that for a bright child by abolishing the grammar schools that used to exist in inner cities or ex industrial areas or poor seaside towns. So the only ones left are generally in more prosperous areas with Tory councils where comprehensive schools and academies tend to be better anyway so they are less needed.
So we still have selection in state education, just by house price and vicar's reference, not by IQ
Also, grammar schools do not select by IQ. They select by wealth. Only a fool would try to pretend that wealth does not increase your chances of passing entrance exams by better access to learning materials and private tutors.
No, private schools and the best comprehensive schools select by parental wealth or house price (or church attendance).
Grammar schools select by IQ. If you have a low IQ tutoring will not get you through a grammar school entrance exam, if you have a high IQ you will pass a grammar school entrance exam regardless of tutoring
We have been here before also. Yes it will. You can train for IQ tests unless you are particularly dim. I gave you some examples of stuff you could do last time we had this argument. I could easily raise someone's IQ result with training and I had to administer such test for potential employees for one the large computer companies I used to work for. I guessed I could add 10 - 20 points to someone's test, but later in that discussion @rcs1000 posted a link showing the improvement could be as much as 30 points.
Here is just one of those techniques: If given a sequence of numbers and you have to find the next number and can't see it simply subtract each number from the next number in the sequence and create a new sequence. Repeat until a pattern appears. This can be done in seconds so doesn't waste time and works nearly all the time for sequences in IQ tests.
There are a few particularly dim pupils in some private schools without entrance exams.
There are no particularly dim pupils in grammar schools
There are you know. I taught several when I was teaching in a grammar.
It was not a good place for them. They found keeping up very, very tough.
By particularly dim we mean below average IQ, as I said there are none in grammar schools
At the risk of poking a hornet's nest, I don't think it's been remarked here yet that the Green Party have "removed Shahrar Ali from his role as party spokesperson for breaches of the Speakers’ Code of Conduct".
He was spokesperson for policing and domestic safety, and had been on the (choosing my words carefully) traditionalist side of the trans policy debate that seems to have affected the Greens more than any other party.
Descending from the important questions in the Header to the nakedly partisan - apols - I wonder how a Sunak/Starmer match-up would play to the country? I haven't quite worked myself out a take on this yet. I do probably need to since he looks nailed on if and when 'it' finally happens.
Starmer's only real appeal is that he is the boring-but-competent one against the charismatic but flawed partygate buffoonery of Boris (being generous to Boris there).
Sunak would essentially occupy the same boring-but-competent territory. Which is bad for Starmer.
Except that one has a modicum of working class background and a trusted profession.
The other is the richest person in Parliament and was a banker. Replace the first letter & you have how most people view them.
lawyer who are almost as unloved as bankers.
Utterly untrue as Mike Smithson demonstrated the other day.
IPSOS MORI (One of your two permitted pollsters):
Other professions trusted by more than half of the public include museum curators, the police, lawyers, civil servants, the ordinary man/woman on the street and clergy/priests. Professions with negative net trust ratings include bankers, local councillors, business leaders, professional footballers, estate agents and journalists.
"If Old Labour had bulldozed Eton in the Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss.
"If Old Labour had not bulldozed most of the Grammar schools in the Sixties and Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools I presume
No, everyone. The presence of those from the working class in positions of power helps everyone.
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools
Yep appalling institutions
So appalling they produced the highest number of non privately educated people products in our top professions, yes even judges and lawyers had plenty of grammar school alumni. More so than the number who now come from comprehensives
If you got rid of private schools and grammar schools then 100% of our PMs, people in top professions and judges and lawyers would be from comprehensives. Explain that one.
If you got rid of Waitrose, Marks and Spencer and Sainsburys all their customers would have to shop at Tesco, Aldi or Lidl. Explain that one.
I believe in choice for parents as much as consumers
Let me break it down for you.
1. I don't believe we should abolish existing grammar schools.
2. I don't believe we should abolish private schools.
3. However, if we did, then 100% of our 'elite' would be from comprehensives.
I ask again, explain that one?
If you ban private schools, then the ‘elites’ will send their kids to school abroad - just as the elites of many other countries currently aspire to be able to send their kids to school in the UK.
Only a small minority.
My point is that HY quotes statistics without any appreciation of the other factors at play.
We know that comprehensives are better in rich areas and we know that wealth players a big part in children's prospects, regardless of whether you go to a comprehensive or a grammar school.
Therefore simply saying "ah but X% of our 'elite' went to a grammar school" tells us absolutely nothing about the benefit of grammar schools.
It's just bollocks, as usual.
Your point is you are an ideological leftwing socialist who would deny parents the choice of where to send their children and would nationalise much of industry too given the chance.
Yes indeed comprehensives are better in wealthy areas and the left destroyed the best tools of tackling that for a bright child by abolishing the grammar schools that used to exist in inner cities or ex industrial areas or poor seaside towns. So the only ones left are generally in more prosperous areas with Tory councils where comprehensive schools and academies tend to be better anyway so they are less needed.
So we still have selection in state education, just by house price and vicar's reference, not by IQ
Also, grammar schools do not select by IQ. They select by wealth. Only a fool would try to pretend that wealth does not increase your chances of passing entrance exams by better access to learning materials and private tutors.
No, private schools and the best comprehensive schools select by parental wealth or house price (or church attendance).
Grammar schools select by IQ. If you have a low IQ tutoring will not get you through a grammar school entrance exam, if you have a high IQ you will pass a grammar school entrance exam regardless of tutoring
We have been here before also. Yes it will. You can train for IQ tests unless you are particularly dim. I gave you some examples of stuff you could do last time we had this argument. I could easily raise someone's IQ result with training and I had to administer such test for potential employees for one the large computer companies I used to work for. I guessed I could add 10 - 20 points to someone's test, but later in that discussion @rcs1000 posted a link showing the improvement could be as much as 30 points.
Here is just one of those techniques: If given a sequence of numbers and you have to find the next number and can't see it simply subtract each number from the next number in the sequence and create a new sequence. Repeat until a pattern appears. This can be done in seconds so doesn't waste time and works nearly all the time for sequences in IQ tests.
There are a few particularly dim pupils in some private schools without entrance exams.
There are no particularly dim pupils in grammar schools
There are you know. I taught several when I was teaching in a grammar.
It was not a good place for them. They found keeping up very, very tough.
By particularly dim we mean below average IQ, as I said there are none in grammar schools
Yes, there are. I taught several.
Are you saying your political beliefs trump my practical experience?
One trick incidentally was to get them in not at age 11 but for entry part way through Year 8 or 9, when others had dropped out or moved away. Because grammar schools tend to be less generously funded than other state schools, they are always desperate for money and tended not to mark the exam too harshly.
Not grammar schools again, please. The only place I ever come across nostalgia for grammar schools is on PB. They are the past, not the future. Even the Tory Party has shut up about them (apart from in Epping).
UKIP wanted a "grammar school in every town". No other party is interested. Tells you all you need to know. And why? Because the evidence (educational and social mobility) that they do more harm than good is incontrovertible. Trust me.
Not sure why you'd expect anyone to 'trust you', and this post is a collection of sloppy empty clichés, of which 'they are the past not the future' is the emptiest.
Thanks for the rudeness. I've spent the last forty years working in education and educational policy, much of it on data analysis, at a high level. So while I'm pretty ignorant about much, I think I know about this. And guess what? The Tory party doesn't advocate the return of a tertiary system of secondary education.
I thought you were a civil servant?
Please don't tell me you worked at the DfE or I'll have to hate you.
Not the DfE. Much worse.
Where, then?
What other department could lead to somebody being involved in education for forty years while being a civil servant? An LEA?
I taught and managed in FE for the first 20 years. The rest shall remain a mystery - you can message me if you really want to know.
Fair enough. I won't invade your privacy to that extent.
At least you did teach.
No problem, thanks. Surprised you haven't worked it out. And yes, I taught for 15 years in (state) sixth form and FE colleges before rising up the ranks and then joining the CS.
Descending from the important questions in the Header to the nakedly partisan - apols - I wonder how a Sunak/Starmer match-up would play to the country? I haven't quite worked myself out a take on this yet. I do probably need to since he looks nailed on if and when 'it' finally happens.
Starmer's only real appeal is that he is the boring-but-competent one against the charismatic but flawed partygate buffoonery of Boris (being generous to Boris there).
Sunak would essentially occupy the same boring-but-competent territory. Which is bad for Starmer.
Except that one has a modicum of working class background and a trusted profession.
The other is the richest person in Parliament and was a banker. Replace the first letter & you have how most people view them.
lawyer who are almost as unloved as bankers.
Utterly untrue as Mike Smithson demonstrated the other day.
IPSOS MORI (One of your two permitted pollsters):
Other professions trusted by more than half of the public include museum curators, the police, lawyers, civil servants, the ordinary man/woman on the street and clergy/priests. Professions with negative net trust ratings include bankers, local councillors, business leaders, professional footballers, estate agents and journalists.
"If Old Labour had bulldozed Eton in the Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss.
"If Old Labour had not bulldozed most of the Grammar schools in the Sixties and Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools I presume
No, everyone. The presence of those from the working class in positions of power helps everyone.
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools
Yep appalling institutions
So appalling they produced the highest number of non privately educated people products in our top professions, yes even judges and lawyers had plenty of grammar school alumni. More so than the number who now come from comprehensives
If you got rid of private schools and grammar schools then 100% of our PMs, people in top professions and judges and lawyers would be from comprehensives. Explain that one.
If you got rid of Waitrose, Marks and Spencer and Sainsburys all their customers would have to shop at Tesco, Aldi or Lidl. Explain that one.
I believe in choice for parents as much as consumers
Let me break it down for you.
1. I don't believe we should abolish existing grammar schools.
2. I don't believe we should abolish private schools.
3. However, if we did, then 100% of our 'elite' would be from comprehensives.
I ask again, explain that one?
If you ban private schools, then the ‘elites’ will send their kids to school abroad - just as the elites of many other countries currently aspire to be able to send their kids to school in the UK.
Only a small minority.
My point is that HY quotes statistics without any appreciation of the other factors at play.
We know that comprehensives are better in rich areas and we know that wealth players a big part in children's prospects, regardless of whether you go to a comprehensive or a grammar school.
Therefore simply saying "ah but X% of our 'elite' went to a grammar school" tells us absolutely nothing about the benefit of grammar schools.
It's just bollocks, as usual.
Your point is you are an ideological leftwing socialist who would deny parents the choice of where to send their children and would nationalise much of industry too given the chance.
Yes indeed comprehensives are better in wealthy areas and the left destroyed the best tools of tackling that for a bright child by abolishing the grammar schools that used to exist in inner cities or ex industrial areas or poor seaside towns. So the only ones left are generally in more prosperous areas with Tory councils where comprehensive schools and academies tend to be better anyway so they are less needed.
So we still have selection in state education, just by house price and vicar's reference, not by IQ
Also, grammar schools do not select by IQ. They select by wealth. Only a fool would try to pretend that wealth does not increase your chances of passing entrance exams by better access to learning materials and private tutors.
No, private schools and the best comprehensive schools select by parental wealth or house price (or church attendance).
Grammar schools select by IQ. If you have a low IQ tutoring will not get you through a grammar school entrance exam, if you have a high IQ you will pass a grammar school entrance exam regardless of tutoring
We have been here before also. Yes it will. You can train for IQ tests unless you are particularly dim. I gave you some examples of stuff you could do last time we had this argument. I could easily raise someone's IQ result with training and I had to administer such test for potential employees for one the large computer companies I used to work for. I guessed I could add 10 - 20 points to someone's test, but later in that discussion @rcs1000 posted a link showing the improvement could be as much as 30 points.
Here is just one of those techniques: If given a sequence of numbers and you have to find the next number and can't see it simply subtract each number from the next number in the sequence and create a new sequence. Repeat until a pattern appears. This can be done in seconds so doesn't waste time and works nearly all the time for sequences in IQ tests.
There are a few particularly dim pupils in some private schools without entrance exams.
There are no particularly dim pupils in grammar schools
There are you know. I taught several when I was teaching in a grammar.
It was not a good place for them. They found keeping up very, very tough.
By particularly dim we mean below average IQ, as I said there are none in grammar schools
Yes, there are. I taught several.
Are you saying your political beliefs trump my practical experience?
One trick incidentally was to get them in not at age 11 but for entry part way through Year 8 or 9, when others had dropped out or moved away. Because grammar schools tend to be less generously funded than other state schools, they are always desperate for money and tended not to mark the exam too harshly.
I can guarantee if you did an IQ test for them, none of those pupils would have an IQ below the national average.
A few might not have had as high an IQ as most of their peers at their grammar school but that is not the same thing
Not grammar schools again, please. The only place I ever come across nostalgia for grammar schools is on PB. They are the past, not the future. Even the Tory Party has shut up about them (apart from in Epping).
UKIP wanted a "grammar school in every town". No other party is interested. Tells you all you need to know. And why? Because the evidence (educational and social mobility) that they do more harm than good is incontrovertible. Trust me.
Not sure why you'd expect anyone to 'trust you', and this post is a collection of sloppy empty clichés, of which 'they are the past not the future' is the emptiest.
Thanks for the rudeness. I've spent the last forty years working in education and educational policy, much of it on data analysis, at a high level. So while I'm pretty ignorant about much, I think I know about this. And guess what? The Tory party doesn't advocate the return of a tertiary system of secondary education.
I thought you were a civil servant?
Please don't tell me you worked at the DfE or I'll have to hate you.
Not the DfE. Much worse.
Where, then?
What other department could lead to somebody being involved in education for forty years while being a civil servant? An LEA?
I taught and managed in FE for the first 20 years. The rest shall remain a mystery - you can message me if you really want to know.
Fair enough. I won't invade your privacy to that extent.
At least you did teach.
No problem, thanks. Surprised you haven't worked it out. And yes, I taught for 15 years in (state) sixth form and FE colleges before rising up the ranks and then joining the CS.
I've managed 10. Don't think I'll go much further, partly because of the egregious nature of the organisation you have (presumably) just left. Curiously, have been looking at options in the Civil Service myself, although how I would manage that given my disdain for its workforce is a different question.
Rish's postives are that he is smart, articulate, rich, ethnic and empathic. His negatives is that he is rich, ex Goldman Sachs, despite a vivid imagination struggles to understand what the average joe is struggling with, a bit wooden and in some respects he has not been tested as a Chancellor who was allowed to let rip in an extraordinary situation.
What I think he would bring to the government is a sense of professionalism, less blunders, less charisma and some calmness. We need that. It's time.
Andrew Marr in Newstatesman this weekend says Hunt is the one to watch. Could come through in the end as the calm, experienced, doesn't actively piss any other MP off, nothing-to-do-with-any-of-this candidate.
I would suggest Marr mentioning Hunt is more his remain side talking than realism
I have detected genuine fear among the real Brexiteers that Rishi is not hard enough on Northern Ireland, to the point they are losing the wider implications of leaving Boris in place which may will see a labour administration anyway
Sunak would need to invoke Article 16 certainly if he fails to won a majority and the DUP hold the balance of power to win them over as May did in 2017
Sunak would not need to do anything he did not want to
He would if he wanted to become PM and had failed to get a majority and the DUP held the balance of power, otherwise they would abstain and Starmer would become PM if Labour and the SNP and LDs were more than the Tories alone
I have no idea why you keep regurgitation this utter rubbish
To be honest it impresses nobody
It is not rubbish, it is reality.
If Sunak became leader and failed to retain the Tory majority and needed the DUP to stay in power and pass legislation, he would have to invoke Art 16 to get their support otherwise they would abstain and he would not be able to form a government and Starmer would form a new government instead with SNP and LD support
Reality and yourself are strangers as much as Boris is with the truth and lying
You cannot deny that if Sunak became leader and failed to win a majority, his only chance of staying PM would be with DUP support as May got in 2017.
The LDs would back Starmer and not back him without a softer Brexit, which would split the party and see a resurgent RefUK
He would need to resign and invite Starmer to form a government
Descending from the important questions in the Header to the nakedly partisan - apols - I wonder how a Sunak/Starmer match-up would play to the country? I haven't quite worked myself out a take on this yet. I do probably need to since he looks nailed on if and when 'it' finally happens.
Starmer's only real appeal is that he is the boring-but-competent one against the charismatic but flawed partygate buffoonery of Boris (being generous to Boris there).
Sunak would essentially occupy the same boring-but-competent territory. Which is bad for Starmer.
Except that one has a modicum of working class background and a trusted profession.
The other is the richest person in Parliament and was a banker. Replace the first letter & you have how most people view them.
lawyer who are almost as unloved as bankers.
Utterly untrue as Mike Smithson demonstrated the other day.
IPSOS MORI (One of your two permitted pollsters):
Other professions trusted by more than half of the public include museum curators, the police, lawyers, civil servants, the ordinary man/woman on the street and clergy/priests. Professions with negative net trust ratings include bankers, local councillors, business leaders, professional footballers, estate agents and journalists.
"If Old Labour had bulldozed Eton in the Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss.
"If Old Labour had not bulldozed most of the Grammar schools in the Sixties and Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools I presume
No, everyone. The presence of those from the working class in positions of power helps everyone.
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools
Yep appalling institutions
So appalling they produced the highest number of non privately educated people products in our top professions, yes even judges and lawyers had plenty of grammar school alumni. More so than the number who now come from comprehensives
If you got rid of private schools and grammar schools then 100% of our PMs, people in top professions and judges and lawyers would be from comprehensives. Explain that one.
If you got rid of Waitrose, Marks and Spencer and Sainsburys all their customers would have to shop at Tesco, Aldi or Lidl. Explain that one.
I believe in choice for parents as much as consumers
Let me break it down for you.
1. I don't believe we should abolish existing grammar schools.
2. I don't believe we should abolish private schools.
3. However, if we did, then 100% of our 'elite' would be from comprehensives.
I ask again, explain that one?
If you ban private schools, then the ‘elites’ will send their kids to school abroad - just as the elites of many other countries currently aspire to be able to send their kids to school in the UK.
Only a small minority.
My point is that HY quotes statistics without any appreciation of the other factors at play.
We know that comprehensives are better in rich areas and we know that wealth players a big part in children's prospects, regardless of whether you go to a comprehensive or a grammar school.
Therefore simply saying "ah but X% of our 'elite' went to a grammar school" tells us absolutely nothing about the benefit of grammar schools.
It's just bollocks, as usual.
Your point is you are an ideological leftwing socialist who would deny parents the choice of where to send their children and would nationalise much of industry too given the chance.
Yes indeed comprehensives are better in wealthy areas and the left destroyed the best tools of tackling that for a bright child by abolishing the grammar schools that used to exist in inner cities or ex industrial areas or poor seaside towns. So the only ones left are generally in more prosperous areas with Tory councils where comprehensive schools and academies tend to be better anyway so they are less needed.
So we still have selection in state education, just by house price and vicar's reference, not by IQ
Also, grammar schools do not select by IQ. They select by wealth. Only a fool would try to pretend that wealth does not increase your chances of passing entrance exams by better access to learning materials and private tutors.
No, private schools and the best comprehensive schools select by parental wealth or house price (or church attendance).
Grammar schools select by IQ. If you have a low IQ tutoring will not get you through a grammar school entrance exam, if you have a high IQ you will pass a grammar school entrance exam regardless of tutoring
We have been here before also. Yes it will. You can train for IQ tests unless you are particularly dim. I gave you some examples of stuff you could do last time we had this argument. I could easily raise someone's IQ result with training and I had to administer such test for potential employees for one the large computer companies I used to work for. I guessed I could add 10 - 20 points to someone's test, but later in that discussion @rcs1000 posted a link showing the improvement could be as much as 30 points.
Here is just one of those techniques: If given a sequence of numbers and you have to find the next number and can't see it simply subtract each number from the next number in the sequence and create a new sequence. Repeat until a pattern appears. This can be done in seconds so doesn't waste time and works nearly all the time for sequences in IQ tests.
There are a few particularly dim pupils in some private schools without entrance exams.
There are no particularly dim pupils in grammar schools
There are you know. I taught several when I was teaching in a grammar.
It was not a good place for them. They found keeping up very, very tough.
By particularly dim we mean below average IQ, as I said there are none in grammar schools
Yes, there are. I taught several.
Are you saying your political beliefs trump my practical experience?
One trick incidentally was to get them in not at age 11 but for entry part way through Year 8 or 9, when others had dropped out or moved away. Because grammar schools tend to be less generously funded than other state schools, they are always desperate for money and tended not to mark the exam too harshly.
I can guarantee if you did an IQ test for them, none of those pupils would have an IQ below the national average.
A few might not have had as high an IQ as most of their peers at their grammar school but that is not the same thing
They did. As I proved by, er, testing them. They were below the average across the national cohort.
You are simply wrong. You are basing your views on a system that ceased to exist sixty years ago. If there are vacancies in a school, even a selective school, they take the ones who apply, not the ones who are the brightest.
I'm reminded of that time you lectured @Richard_Tyndall on the requirements to be an engineer.
Rish's postives are that he is smart, articulate, rich, ethnic and empathic. His negatives is that he is rich, ex Goldman Sachs, despite a vivid imagination struggles to understand what the average joe is struggling with, a bit wooden and in some respects he has not been tested as a Chancellor who was allowed to let rip in an extraordinary situation.
What I think he would bring to the government is a sense of professionalism, less blunders, less charisma and some calmness. We need that. It's time.
Andrew Marr in Newstatesman this weekend says Hunt is the one to watch. Could come through in the end as the calm, experienced, doesn't actively piss any other MP off, nothing-to-do-with-any-of-this candidate.
I would suggest Marr mentioning Hunt is more his remain side talking than realism
I have detected genuine fear among the real Brexiteers that Rishi is not hard enough on Northern Ireland, to the point they are losing the wider implications of leaving Boris in place which may will see a labour administration anyway
Sunak would need to invoke Article 16 certainly if he fails to won a majority and the DUP hold the balance of power to win them over as May did in 2017
Sunak would not need to do anything he did not want to
He would if he wanted to become PM and had failed to get a majority and the DUP held the balance of power, otherwise they would abstain and Starmer would become PM if Labour and the SNP and LDs were more than the Tories alone
I have no idea why you keep regurgitation this utter rubbish
To be honest it impresses nobody
It is not rubbish, it is reality.
If Sunak became leader and failed to retain the Tory majority and needed the DUP to stay in power and pass legislation, he would have to invoke Art 16 to get their support otherwise they would abstain and he would not be able to form a government and Starmer would form a new government instead with SNP and LD support
Reality and yourself are strangers as much as Boris is with the truth and lying
You cannot deny that if Sunak became leader and failed to win a majority, his only chance of staying PM would be with DUP support as May got in 2017.
The LDs would back Starmer and not back him without a softer Brexit, which would split the party and see a resurgent RefUK
He would need to resign and invite Starmer to form a government
Which he would then have to do and the Queen would invite Starmer to form a government if the Tories had lost their majority and the DUP refused to back the Tories either
Not grammar schools again, please. The only place I ever come across nostalgia for grammar schools is on PB. They are the past, not the future. Even the Tory Party has shut up about them (apart from in Epping).
UKIP wanted a "grammar school in every town". No other party is interested. Tells you all you need to know. And why? Because the evidence (educational and social mobility) that they do more harm than good is incontrovertible. Trust me.
Not sure why you'd expect anyone to 'trust you', and this post is a collection of sloppy empty clichés, of which 'they are the past not the future' is the emptiest.
Thanks for the rudeness. I've spent the last forty years working in education and educational policy, much of it on data analysis, at a high level. So while I'm pretty ignorant about much, I think I know about this. And guess what? The Tory party doesn't advocate the return of a tertiary system of secondary education.
I thought you were a civil servant?
Please don't tell me you worked at the DfE or I'll have to hate you.
Not the DfE. Much worse.
Where, then?
What other department could lead to somebody being involved in education for forty years while being a civil servant? An LEA?
I taught and managed in FE for the first 20 years. The rest shall remain a mystery - you can message me if you really want to know.
Fair enough. I won't invade your privacy to that extent.
At least you did teach.
No problem, thanks. Surprised you haven't worked it out. And yes, I taught for 15 years in (state) sixth form and FE colleges before rising up the ranks and then joining the CS.
I've managed 10. Don't think I'll go much further, partly because of the egregious nature of the organisation you have (presumably) just left. Curiously, have been looking at options in the Civil Service myself, although how I would manage that given my disdain for its workforce is a different question.
There's other parts of the Civil Service than the DfE, that may be of more interest to you.
Descending from the important questions in the Header to the nakedly partisan - apols - I wonder how a Sunak/Starmer match-up would play to the country? I haven't quite worked myself out a take on this yet. I do probably need to since he looks nailed on if and when 'it' finally happens.
Starmer's only real appeal is that he is the boring-but-competent one against the charismatic but flawed partygate buffoonery of Boris (being generous to Boris there).
Sunak would essentially occupy the same boring-but-competent territory. Which is bad for Starmer.
Except that one has a modicum of working class background and a trusted profession.
The other is the richest person in Parliament and was a banker. Replace the first letter & you have how most people view them.
lawyer who are almost as unloved as bankers.
Utterly untrue as Mike Smithson demonstrated the other day.
IPSOS MORI (One of your two permitted pollsters):
Other professions trusted by more than half of the public include museum curators, the police, lawyers, civil servants, the ordinary man/woman on the street and clergy/priests. Professions with negative net trust ratings include bankers, local councillors, business leaders, professional footballers, estate agents and journalists.
"If Old Labour had bulldozed Eton in the Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss.
"If Old Labour had not bulldozed most of the Grammar schools in the Sixties and Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools I presume
No, everyone. The presence of those from the working class in positions of power helps everyone.
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools
Yep appalling institutions
So appalling they produced the highest number of non privately educated people products in our top professions, yes even judges and lawyers had plenty of grammar school alumni. More so than the number who now come from comprehensives
If you got rid of private schools and grammar schools then 100% of our PMs, people in top professions and judges and lawyers would be from comprehensives. Explain that one.
If you got rid of Waitrose, Marks and Spencer and Sainsburys all their customers would have to shop at Tesco, Aldi or Lidl. Explain that one.
I believe in choice for parents as much as consumers
Let me break it down for you.
1. I don't believe we should abolish existing grammar schools.
2. I don't believe we should abolish private schools.
3. However, if we did, then 100% of our 'elite' would be from comprehensives.
I ask again, explain that one?
If you ban private schools, then the ‘elites’ will send their kids to school abroad - just as the elites of many other countries currently aspire to be able to send their kids to school in the UK.
Only a small minority.
My point is that HY quotes statistics without any appreciation of the other factors at play.
We know that comprehensives are better in rich areas and we know that wealth players a big part in children's prospects, regardless of whether you go to a comprehensive or a grammar school.
Therefore simply saying "ah but X% of our 'elite' went to a grammar school" tells us absolutely nothing about the benefit of grammar schools.
It's just bollocks, as usual.
Your point is you are an ideological leftwing socialist who would deny parents the choice of where to send their children and would nationalise much of industry too given the chance.
Yes indeed comprehensives are better in wealthy areas and the left destroyed the best tools of tackling that for a bright child by abolishing the grammar schools that used to exist in inner cities or ex industrial areas or poor seaside towns. So the only ones left are generally in more prosperous areas with Tory councils where comprehensive schools and academies tend to be better anyway so they are less needed.
So we still have selection in state education, just by house price and vicar's reference, not by IQ
Also, grammar schools do not select by IQ. They select by wealth. Only a fool would try to pretend that wealth does not increase your chances of passing entrance exams by better access to learning materials and private tutors.
No, private schools and the best comprehensive schools select by parental wealth or house price (or church attendance).
Grammar schools select by IQ. If you have a low IQ tutoring will not get you through a grammar school entrance exam, if you have a high IQ you will pass a grammar school entrance exam regardless of tutoring
We have been here before also. Yes it will. You can train for IQ tests unless you are particularly dim. I gave you some examples of stuff you could do last time we had this argument. I could easily raise someone's IQ result with training and I had to administer such test for potential employees for one the large computer companies I used to work for. I guessed I could add 10 - 20 points to someone's test, but later in that discussion @rcs1000 posted a link showing the improvement could be as much as 30 points.
Here is just one of those techniques: If given a sequence of numbers and you have to find the next number and can't see it simply subtract each number from the next number in the sequence and create a new sequence. Repeat until a pattern appears. This can be done in seconds so doesn't waste time and works nearly all the time for sequences in IQ tests.
There are a few particularly dim pupils in some private schools without entrance exams.
There are no particularly dim pupils in grammar schools
There are you know. I taught several when I was teaching in a grammar.
It was not a good place for them. They found keeping up very, very tough.
Probably better though than equally dim kids in nearby Secondary Moderns.
Some have nostalgia for grammar schools, but no one calls nostalgically for the return of Secondary Moderns.
Descending from the important questions in the Header to the nakedly partisan - apols - I wonder how a Sunak/Starmer match-up would play to the country? I haven't quite worked myself out a take on this yet. I do probably need to since he looks nailed on if and when 'it' finally happens.
Starmer's only real appeal is that he is the boring-but-competent one against the charismatic but flawed partygate buffoonery of Boris (being generous to Boris there).
Sunak would essentially occupy the same boring-but-competent territory. Which is bad for Starmer.
Except that one has a modicum of working class background and a trusted profession.
The other is the richest person in Parliament and was a banker. Replace the first letter & you have how most people view them.
lawyer who are almost as unloved as bankers.
Utterly untrue as Mike Smithson demonstrated the other day.
IPSOS MORI (One of your two permitted pollsters):
Other professions trusted by more than half of the public include museum curators, the police, lawyers, civil servants, the ordinary man/woman on the street and clergy/priests. Professions with negative net trust ratings include bankers, local councillors, business leaders, professional footballers, estate agents and journalists.
"If Old Labour had bulldozed Eton in the Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss.
"If Old Labour had not bulldozed most of the Grammar schools in the Sixties and Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools I presume
No, everyone. The presence of those from the working class in positions of power helps everyone.
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools
Yep appalling institutions
So appalling they produced the highest number of non privately educated people products in our top professions, yes even judges and lawyers had plenty of grammar school alumni. More so than the number who now come from comprehensives
If you got rid of private schools and grammar schools then 100% of our PMs, people in top professions and judges and lawyers would be from comprehensives. Explain that one.
If you got rid of Waitrose, Marks and Spencer and Sainsburys all their customers would have to shop at Tesco, Aldi or Lidl. Explain that one.
I believe in choice for parents as much as consumers
Let me break it down for you.
1. I don't believe we should abolish existing grammar schools.
2. I don't believe we should abolish private schools.
3. However, if we did, then 100% of our 'elite' would be from comprehensives.
I ask again, explain that one?
If you ban private schools, then the ‘elites’ will send their kids to school abroad - just as the elites of many other countries currently aspire to be able to send their kids to school in the UK.
Only a small minority.
My point is that HY quotes statistics without any appreciation of the other factors at play.
We know that comprehensives are better in rich areas and we know that wealth players a big part in children's prospects, regardless of whether you go to a comprehensive or a grammar school.
Therefore simply saying "ah but X% of our 'elite' went to a grammar school" tells us absolutely nothing about the benefit of grammar schools.
It's just bollocks, as usual.
Your point is you are an ideological leftwing socialist who would deny parents the choice of where to send their children and would nationalise much of industry too given the chance.
Yes indeed comprehensives are better in wealthy areas and the left destroyed the best tools of tackling that for a bright child by abolishing the grammar schools that used to exist in inner cities or ex industrial areas or poor seaside towns. So the only ones left are generally in more prosperous areas with Tory councils where comprehensive schools and academies tend to be better anyway so they are less needed.
So we still have selection in state education, just by house price and vicar's reference, not by IQ
Also, grammar schools do not select by IQ. They select by wealth. Only a fool would try to pretend that wealth does not increase your chances of passing entrance exams by better access to learning materials and private tutors.
No, private schools and the best comprehensive schools select by parental wealth or house price (or church attendance).
Grammar schools select by IQ. If you have a low IQ tutoring will not get you through a grammar school entrance exam, if you have a high IQ you will pass a grammar school entrance exam regardless of tutoring
We have been here before also. Yes it will. You can train for IQ tests unless you are particularly dim. I gave you some examples of stuff you could do last time we had this argument. I could easily raise someone's IQ result with training and I had to administer such test for potential employees for one the large computer companies I used to work for. I guessed I could add 10 - 20 points to someone's test, but later in that discussion @rcs1000 posted a link showing the improvement could be as much as 30 points.
Here is just one of those techniques: If given a sequence of numbers and you have to find the next number and can't see it simply subtract each number from the next number in the sequence and create a new sequence. Repeat until a pattern appears. This can be done in seconds so doesn't waste time and works nearly all the time for sequences in IQ tests.
There are a few particularly dim pupils in some private schools without entrance exams.
There are no particularly dim pupils in grammar schools
There are you know. I taught several when I was teaching in a grammar.
It was not a good place for them. They found keeping up very, very tough.
By particularly dim we mean below average IQ, as I said there are none in grammar schools
Yes, there are. I taught several.
Are you saying your political beliefs trump my practical experience?
One trick incidentally was to get them in not at age 11 but for entry part way through Year 8 or 9, when others had dropped out or moved away. Because grammar schools tend to be less generously funded than other state schools, they are always desperate for money and tended not to mark the exam too harshly.
I can guarantee if you did an IQ test for them, none of those pupils would have an IQ below the national average.
A few might not have had as high an IQ as most of their peers at their grammar school but that is not the same thing
They did. As I proved by, er, testing them. They were below the average across the national cohort.
You are simply wrong. You are basing your views on a system that ceased to exist sixty years ago. If there are vacancies in a school, even a selective school, they take the ones who apply, not the ones who are the brightest.
I'm reminded of that time you lectured @Richard_Tyndall on the requirements to be an engineer.
In what? Every subject. In which case how on earth did they manage to pass an entrance exam to a grammar school if they were below average IQ?
Even if they did that is not an argument against grammar schools, it is an argument for ensuring tougher grammar school entrance exams at every age of entry to it. You cannot just apply to a grammar even at 13 plus, you have to pass an entrance exam and 16+ entry to grammars is generally only given to those getting mainly As and A*s at GCSE ie well above average grades
Descending from the important questions in the Header to the nakedly partisan - apols - I wonder how a Sunak/Starmer match-up would play to the country? I haven't quite worked myself out a take on this yet. I do probably need to since he looks nailed on if and when 'it' finally happens.
Starmer's only real appeal is that he is the boring-but-competent one against the charismatic but flawed partygate buffoonery of Boris (being generous to Boris there).
Sunak would essentially occupy the same boring-but-competent territory. Which is bad for Starmer.
Except that one has a modicum of working class background and a trusted profession.
The other is the richest person in Parliament and was a banker. Replace the first letter & you have how most people view them.
lawyer who are almost as unloved as bankers.
Utterly untrue as Mike Smithson demonstrated the other day.
IPSOS MORI (One of your two permitted pollsters):
Other professions trusted by more than half of the public include museum curators, the police, lawyers, civil servants, the ordinary man/woman on the street and clergy/priests. Professions with negative net trust ratings include bankers, local councillors, business leaders, professional footballers, estate agents and journalists.
"If Old Labour had bulldozed Eton in the Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss.
"If Old Labour had not bulldozed most of the Grammar schools in the Sixties and Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools I presume
No, everyone. The presence of those from the working class in positions of power helps everyone.
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools
Yep appalling institutions
So appalling they produced the highest number of non privately educated people products in our top professions, yes even judges and lawyers had plenty of grammar school alumni. More so than the number who now come from comprehensives
If you got rid of private schools and grammar schools then 100% of our PMs, people in top professions and judges and lawyers would be from comprehensives. Explain that one.
If you got rid of Waitrose, Marks and Spencer and Sainsburys all their customers would have to shop at Tesco, Aldi or Lidl. Explain that one.
I believe in choice for parents as much as consumers
Let me break it down for you.
1. I don't believe we should abolish existing grammar schools.
2. I don't believe we should abolish private schools.
3. However, if we did, then 100% of our 'elite' would be from comprehensives.
I ask again, explain that one?
If you ban private schools, then the ‘elites’ will send their kids to school abroad - just as the elites of many other countries currently aspire to be able to send their kids to school in the UK.
Only a small minority.
My point is that HY quotes statistics without any appreciation of the other factors at play.
We know that comprehensives are better in rich areas and we know that wealth players a big part in children's prospects, regardless of whether you go to a comprehensive or a grammar school.
Therefore simply saying "ah but X% of our 'elite' went to a grammar school" tells us absolutely nothing about the benefit of grammar schools.
It's just bollocks, as usual.
Your point is you are an ideological leftwing socialist who would deny parents the choice of where to send their children and would nationalise much of industry too given the chance.
Yes indeed comprehensives are better in wealthy areas and the left destroyed the best tools of tackling that for a bright child by abolishing the grammar schools that used to exist in inner cities or ex industrial areas or poor seaside towns. So the only ones left are generally in more prosperous areas with Tory councils where comprehensive schools and academies tend to be better anyway so they are less needed.
So we still have selection in state education, just by house price and vicar's reference, not by IQ
Also, grammar schools do not select by IQ. They select by wealth. Only a fool would try to pretend that wealth does not increase your chances of passing entrance exams by better access to learning materials and private tutors.
No, private schools and the best comprehensive schools select by parental wealth or house price (or church attendance).
Grammar schools select by IQ. If you have a low IQ tutoring will not get you through a grammar school entrance exam, if you have a high IQ you will pass a grammar school entrance exam regardless of tutoring
We have been here before also. Yes it will. You can train for IQ tests unless you are particularly dim. I gave you some examples of stuff you could do last time we had this argument. I could easily raise someone's IQ result with training and I had to administer such test for potential employees for one the large computer companies I used to work for. I guessed I could add 10 - 20 points to someone's test, but later in that discussion @rcs1000 posted a link showing the improvement could be as much as 30 points.
Here is just one of those techniques: If given a sequence of numbers and you have to find the next number and can't see it simply subtract each number from the next number in the sequence and create a new sequence. Repeat until a pattern appears. This can be done in seconds so doesn't waste time and works nearly all the time for sequences in IQ tests.
There are a few particularly dim pupils in some private schools without entrance exams.
There are no particularly dim pupils in grammar schools
There are you know. I taught several when I was teaching in a grammar.
It was not a good place for them. They found keeping up very, very tough.
Probably better though than equally dim kids in nearby Secondary Moderns.
Some have nostalgia for grammar schools, but no one calls nostalgically for the return of Secondary Moderns.
They tended to be better behaved. That in itself may have helped them a bit. The helpful thing about being in a grammar school is that in many a comp you get singled out if you work hard. In a grammar school you get singled out and not in a good way fi you don't.
Now that could lead to problems of its own, but give me a class of 32 in a girls' grammar ahead of a class of 16 year nines in a bottom set in an inner city comp any day of the week, especially Friday afternoon.
Descending from the important questions in the Header to the nakedly partisan - apols - I wonder how a Sunak/Starmer match-up would play to the country? I haven't quite worked myself out a take on this yet. I do probably need to since he looks nailed on if and when 'it' finally happens.
Starmer's only real appeal is that he is the boring-but-competent one against the charismatic but flawed partygate buffoonery of Boris (being generous to Boris there).
Sunak would essentially occupy the same boring-but-competent territory. Which is bad for Starmer.
Except that one has a modicum of working class background and a trusted profession.
The other is the richest person in Parliament and was a banker. Replace the first letter & you have how most people view them.
lawyer who are almost as unloved as bankers.
Utterly untrue as Mike Smithson demonstrated the other day.
IPSOS MORI (One of your two permitted pollsters):
Other professions trusted by more than half of the public include museum curators, the police, lawyers, civil servants, the ordinary man/woman on the street and clergy/priests. Professions with negative net trust ratings include bankers, local councillors, business leaders, professional footballers, estate agents and journalists.
"If Old Labour had bulldozed Eton in the Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss.
"If Old Labour had not bulldozed most of the Grammar schools in the Sixties and Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools I presume
No, everyone. The presence of those from the working class in positions of power helps everyone.
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools
Yep appalling institutions
So appalling they produced the highest number of non privately educated people products in our top professions, yes even judges and lawyers had plenty of grammar school alumni. More so than the number who now come from comprehensives
If you got rid of private schools and grammar schools then 100% of our PMs, people in top professions and judges and lawyers would be from comprehensives. Explain that one.
If you got rid of Waitrose, Marks and Spencer and Sainsburys all their customers would have to shop at Tesco, Aldi or Lidl. Explain that one.
I believe in choice for parents as much as consumers
Let me break it down for you.
1. I don't believe we should abolish existing grammar schools.
2. I don't believe we should abolish private schools.
3. However, if we did, then 100% of our 'elite' would be from comprehensives.
I ask again, explain that one?
If you ban private schools, then the ‘elites’ will send their kids to school abroad - just as the elites of many other countries currently aspire to be able to send their kids to school in the UK.
Only a small minority.
My point is that HY quotes statistics without any appreciation of the other factors at play.
We know that comprehensives are better in rich areas and we know that wealth players a big part in children's prospects, regardless of whether you go to a comprehensive or a grammar school.
Therefore simply saying "ah but X% of our 'elite' went to a grammar school" tells us absolutely nothing about the benefit of grammar schools.
It's just bollocks, as usual.
Your point is you are an ideological leftwing socialist who would deny parents the choice of where to send their children and would nationalise much of industry too given the chance.
Yes indeed comprehensives are better in wealthy areas and the left destroyed the best tools of tackling that for a bright child by abolishing the grammar schools that used to exist in inner cities or ex industrial areas or poor seaside towns. So the only ones left are generally in more prosperous areas with Tory councils where comprehensive schools and academies tend to be better anyway so they are less needed.
So we still have selection in state education, just by house price and vicar's reference, not by IQ
Also, grammar schools do not select by IQ. They select by wealth. Only a fool would try to pretend that wealth does not increase your chances of passing entrance exams by better access to learning materials and private tutors.
No, private schools and the best comprehensive schools select by parental wealth or house price (or church attendance).
Grammar schools select by IQ. If you have a low IQ tutoring will not get you through a grammar school entrance exam, if you have a high IQ you will pass a grammar school entrance exam regardless of tutoring
We have been here before also. Yes it will. You can train for IQ tests unless you are particularly dim. I gave you some examples of stuff you could do last time we had this argument. I could easily raise someone's IQ result with training and I had to administer such test for potential employees for one the large computer companies I used to work for. I guessed I could add 10 - 20 points to someone's test, but later in that discussion @rcs1000 posted a link showing the improvement could be as much as 30 points.
Here is just one of those techniques: If given a sequence of numbers and you have to find the next number and can't see it simply subtract each number from the next number in the sequence and create a new sequence. Repeat until a pattern appears. This can be done in seconds so doesn't waste time and works nearly all the time for sequences in IQ tests.
There are a few particularly dim pupils in some private schools without entrance exams.
There are no particularly dim pupils in grammar schools
There are you know. I taught several when I was teaching in a grammar.
It was not a good place for them. They found keeping up very, very tough.
By particularly dim we mean below average IQ, as I said there are none in grammar schools
Yes, there are. I taught several.
Are you saying your political beliefs trump my practical experience?
One trick incidentally was to get them in not at age 11 but for entry part way through Year 8 or 9, when others had dropped out or moved away. Because grammar schools tend to be less generously funded than other state schools, they are always desperate for money and tended not to mark the exam too harshly.
I can guarantee if you did an IQ test for them, none of those pupils would have an IQ below the national average.
A few might not have had as high an IQ as most of their peers at their grammar school but that is not the same thing
So you are disputing you can train for an IQ test even after the evidence I and @rcs1000 provided to you previously. Previously I gave you a whole lot of techniques and @rcs1000 gave you a link to evidence of such. I could easily raise the IQ score of someone who has never taken a test from 100 to 110 or 120.
Sunak could be one of 3 Tory leadership hopefuls. At best he would be the next John Major, who narrowly wins another term for the Tories after ten years in power. Alternatively he could be the next Douglas Home, who narrowly lost a general election after ten years in power but made it closer than expected so Wilson only got a majority of 4. At worst he would be the next David Miliband or Michael Portillo and fail to even become leader, let alone win a general election.
If Sunak wants to be the first, like Major he needs to connect with the average voter. That means focusing on low taxes but also a commitment to public services and while opposed to socialism not getting too close to the laissez faire wing of the City and large corporations and the libertarian wing of the Tory right.
Now Brexit has got done austerity and deregulation will not keep the redwall. While any form of wealth tax would be as disastrous as May's dementia tax proved with Tory leaning swing voters.
I also disagree all alternatives to Boris would be better. Other than maybe Sunak most would probably poll worse than Boris with the public in the end
A new John Major is the best you now have to hope for, pal.
Fair enough but when have Labour ever won a fourth or fifth consecutive general election? Never. The best they managed was 3 consecutive general election wins under Blair
If the great HY is now falling back on consoling himself with past glories, we truly are approaching the end of days…
How long do you think your lot will be in opposition?
His idea of the conservative party, hopefully permanently
I rather imagine than when the party finally emerges from its next molecular readjustment, he’ll still be there in love with its new image…
I have voted and campaigned for Hague, IDS, Howard, Cameron, May and Boris.
Unlike BigG, who voted for New Labour twice, I am loyal to the party regardless
Loyalty to a party isn’t the virtue you think it is.
Sometimes, loyalty needs to be questioned. I have been loyal to the SNP since 1974; through thick and thin. The party has recently changed so much that it looks unlikely that I will be voting for them in May. I would argue that the Conservative Party has changed so much under Johnson that you need to question whether it still deserves your loyalty, unless you can change it. Would you truly prefer Johnson to Sunak leading your party?
Descending from the important questions in the Header to the nakedly partisan - apols - I wonder how a Sunak/Starmer match-up would play to the country? I haven't quite worked myself out a take on this yet. I do probably need to since he looks nailed on if and when 'it' finally happens.
Starmer's only real appeal is that he is the boring-but-competent one against the charismatic but flawed partygate buffoonery of Boris (being generous to Boris there).
Sunak would essentially occupy the same boring-but-competent territory. Which is bad for Starmer.
Except that one has a modicum of working class background and a trusted profession.
The other is the richest person in Parliament and was a banker. Replace the first letter & you have how most people view them.
lawyer who are almost as unloved as bankers.
Utterly untrue as Mike Smithson demonstrated the other day.
IPSOS MORI (One of your two permitted pollsters):
Other professions trusted by more than half of the public include museum curators, the police, lawyers, civil servants, the ordinary man/woman on the street and clergy/priests. Professions with negative net trust ratings include bankers, local councillors, business leaders, professional footballers, estate agents and journalists.
"If Old Labour had bulldozed Eton in the Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss.
"If Old Labour had not bulldozed most of the Grammar schools in the Sixties and Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools I presume
No, everyone. The presence of those from the working class in positions of power helps everyone.
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools
Yep appalling institutions
So appalling they produced the highest number of non privately educated people products in our top professions, yes even judges and lawyers had plenty of grammar school alumni. More so than the number who now come from comprehensives
If you got rid of private schools and grammar schools then 100% of our PMs, people in top professions and judges and lawyers would be from comprehensives. Explain that one.
If you got rid of Waitrose, Marks and Spencer and Sainsburys all their customers would have to shop at Tesco, Aldi or Lidl. Explain that one.
I believe in choice for parents as much as consumers
Let me break it down for you.
1. I don't believe we should abolish existing grammar schools.
2. I don't believe we should abolish private schools.
3. However, if we did, then 100% of our 'elite' would be from comprehensives.
I ask again, explain that one?
If you ban private schools, then the ‘elites’ will send their kids to school abroad - just as the elites of many other countries currently aspire to be able to send their kids to school in the UK.
Only a small minority.
My point is that HY quotes statistics without any appreciation of the other factors at play.
We know that comprehensives are better in rich areas and we know that wealth players a big part in children's prospects, regardless of whether you go to a comprehensive or a grammar school.
Therefore simply saying "ah but X% of our 'elite' went to a grammar school" tells us absolutely nothing about the benefit of grammar schools.
It's just bollocks, as usual.
Your point is you are an ideological leftwing socialist who would deny parents the choice of where to send their children and would nationalise much of industry too given the chance.
Yes indeed comprehensives are better in wealthy areas and the left destroyed the best tools of tackling that for a bright child by abolishing the grammar schools that used to exist in inner cities or ex industrial areas or poor seaside towns. So the only ones left are generally in more prosperous areas with Tory councils where comprehensive schools and academies tend to be better anyway so they are less needed.
So we still have selection in state education, just by house price and vicar's reference, not by IQ
Also, grammar schools do not select by IQ. They select by wealth. Only a fool would try to pretend that wealth does not increase your chances of passing entrance exams by better access to learning materials and private tutors.
No, private schools and the best comprehensive schools select by parental wealth or house price (or church attendance).
Grammar schools select by IQ. If you have a low IQ tutoring will not get you through a grammar school entrance exam, if you have a high IQ you will pass a grammar school entrance exam regardless of tutoring
We have been here before also. Yes it will. You can train for IQ tests unless you are particularly dim. I gave you some examples of stuff you could do last time we had this argument. I could easily raise someone's IQ result with training and I had to administer such test for potential employees for one the large computer companies I used to work for. I guessed I could add 10 - 20 points to someone's test, but later in that discussion @rcs1000 posted a link showing the improvement could be as much as 30 points.
Here is just one of those techniques: If given a sequence of numbers and you have to find the next number and can't see it simply subtract each number from the next number in the sequence and create a new sequence. Repeat until a pattern appears. This can be done in seconds so doesn't waste time and works nearly all the time for sequences in IQ tests.
There are a few particularly dim pupils in some private schools without entrance exams.
There are no particularly dim pupils in grammar schools
There are you know. I taught several when I was teaching in a grammar.
It was not a good place for them. They found keeping up very, very tough.
By particularly dim we mean below average IQ, as I said there are none in grammar schools
Yes, there are. I taught several.
Are you saying your political beliefs trump my practical experience?
One trick incidentally was to get them in not at age 11 but for entry part way through Year 8 or 9, when others had dropped out or moved away. Because grammar schools tend to be less generously funded than other state schools, they are always desperate for money and tended not to mark the exam too harshly.
I can guarantee if you did an IQ test for them, none of those pupils would have an IQ below the national average.
A few might not have had as high an IQ as most of their peers at their grammar school but that is not the same thing
They did. As I proved by, er, testing them. They were below the average across the national cohort.
You are simply wrong. You are basing your views on a system that ceased to exist sixty years ago. If there are vacancies in a school, even a selective school, they take the ones who apply, not the ones who are the brightest.
I'm reminded of that time you lectured @Richard_Tyndall on the requirements to be an engineer.
In what? Every subject. In which case how on earth did they manage to pass an entrance exam to a grammar school if they were below average IQ?
Even if they did that is not an argument against grammar schools, it is an argument for ensuring tougher grammar school entrance exams at every age of entry to it. You cannot just apply to a grammar even at 13 plus, you have to pass an entrance exam and 16+ entry to grammars is generally only given to those getting mainly As and A*s at GCSE ie well above average grades
Hyufd, I did explain that in a post two stages above. Could you at least read what I've written before arguing with me?
"If Old Labour had bulldozed Eton in the Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss.
"If Old Labour had not bulldozed most of the Grammar schools in the Sixties and Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools I presume
No, everyone. The presence of those from the working class in positions of power helps everyone.
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools
Yep appalling institutions
Could you explain why selection according to ability to afford a house in the right catchment/postcode area is more fair and progressive than the previous system?
Not grammar schools again, please. The only place I ever come across nostalgia for grammar schools is on PB. They are the past, not the future. Even the Tory Party has shut up about them (apart from in Epping).
UKIP wanted a "grammar school in every town". No other party is interested. Tells you all you need to know. And why? Because the evidence (educational and social mobility) that they do more harm than good is incontrovertible. Trust me.
Not sure why you'd expect anyone to 'trust you', and this post is a collection of sloppy empty clichés, of which 'they are the past not the future' is the emptiest.
Thanks for the rudeness. I've spent the last forty years working in education and educational policy, much of it on data analysis, at a high level. So while I'm pretty ignorant about much, I think I know about this. And guess what? The Tory party doesn't advocate the return of a tertiary system of secondary education.
I thought you were a civil servant?
Please don't tell me you worked at the DfE or I'll have to hate you.
Not the DfE. Much worse.
Where, then?
What other department could lead to somebody being involved in education for forty years while being a civil servant? An LEA?
I taught and managed in FE for the first 20 years. The rest shall remain a mystery - you can message me if you really want to know.
Fair enough. I won't invade your privacy to that extent.
At least you did teach.
No problem, thanks. Surprised you haven't worked it out. And yes, I taught for 15 years in (state) sixth form and FE colleges before rising up the ranks and then joining the CS.
I've managed 10. Don't think I'll go much further, partly because of the egregious nature of the organisation you have (presumably) just left. Curiously, have been looking at options in the Civil Service myself, although how I would manage that given my disdain for its workforce is a different question.
It's not nessecarily a problem. I have had a long and successful career in a teaching hospital despite not liking doctors, being a therapeutic nihilist and considering modern educational theory wrong.
Not grammar schools again, please. The only place I ever come across nostalgia for grammar schools is on PB. They are the past, not the future. Even the Tory Party has shut up about them (apart from in Epping).
UKIP wanted a "grammar school in every town". No other party is interested. Tells you all you need to know. And why? Because the evidence (educational and social mobility) that they do more harm than good is incontrovertible. Trust me.
Not sure why you'd expect anyone to 'trust you', and this post is a collection of sloppy empty clichés, of which 'they are the past not the future' is the emptiest.
Thanks for the rudeness. I've spent the last forty years working in education and educational policy, much of it on data analysis, at a high level. So while I'm pretty ignorant about much, I think I know about this. And guess what? The Tory party doesn't advocate the return of a tertiary system of secondary education.
Any time. I am sure that you have a great deal of knowledge on the subject, but you claimed 'incontrevertible evidence' that grammar schools have done more harm than good. If you have such evidence, why not present it?
Regarding fairness: In this country your life outcomes are likely to depend on a) whether or not you have wealth behind you, and b) your temprament and life choices.
In some ways this reflects the inherent unfairness of life, but the consequential social inequality has been exacerbated by changes in the housing market, particularly in the south east of england, over the last 20 years. If the average wage is 20k, and rent is £1k per month or a basic property is £250k to buy, then the situation is no good - hopeless if you are disabled, on a really low income, have lots of children etc.
In the end the problems to do with fairness largely go down to housing policy and house prices, and lack of supply particularly in terms of social housing. But we know that the tories won't ever do anything significant about it, and nor will the lib dems; as the experience in Chesham and Amersham shows. See the subsequent shelving of planning reform.
The dynamics within the conservative party, of which we have learnt much of over the last 2 years, indicate that the initiative to solve this problem is very unlikely to come from any future leader, including Sunak. I think it will ultimately have to come from the Labour party.
Descending from the important questions in the Header to the nakedly partisan - apols - I wonder how a Sunak/Starmer match-up would play to the country? I haven't quite worked myself out a take on this yet. I do probably need to since he looks nailed on if and when 'it' finally happens.
Starmer's only real appeal is that he is the boring-but-competent one against the charismatic but flawed partygate buffoonery of Boris (being generous to Boris there).
Sunak would essentially occupy the same boring-but-competent territory. Which is bad for Starmer.
Except that one has a modicum of working class background and a trusted profession.
The other is the richest person in Parliament and was a banker. Replace the first letter & you have how most people view them.
lawyer who are almost as unloved as bankers.
Utterly untrue as Mike Smithson demonstrated the other day.
IPSOS MORI (One of your two permitted pollsters):
Other professions trusted by more than half of the public include museum curators, the police, lawyers, civil servants, the ordinary man/woman on the street and clergy/priests. Professions with negative net trust ratings include bankers, local councillors, business leaders, professional footballers, estate agents and journalists.
"If Old Labour had bulldozed Eton in the Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss.
"If Old Labour had not bulldozed most of the Grammar schools in the Sixties and Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools I presume
No, everyone. The presence of those from the working class in positions of power helps everyone.
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools
Yep appalling institutions
So appalling they produced the highest number of non privately educated people products in our top professions, yes even judges and lawyers had plenty of grammar school alumni. More so than the number who now come from comprehensives
If you got rid of private schools and grammar schools then 100% of our PMs, people in top professions and judges and lawyers would be from comprehensives. Explain that one.
If you got rid of Waitrose, Marks and Spencer and Sainsburys all their customers would have to shop at Tesco, Aldi or Lidl. Explain that one.
I believe in choice for parents as much as consumers
Let me break it down for you.
1. I don't believe we should abolish existing grammar schools.
2. I don't believe we should abolish private schools.
3. However, if we did, then 100% of our 'elite' would be from comprehensives.
I ask again, explain that one?
If you ban private schools, then the ‘elites’ will send their kids to school abroad - just as the elites of many other countries currently aspire to be able to send their kids to school in the UK.
Only a small minority.
My point is that HY quotes statistics without any appreciation of the other factors at play.
We know that comprehensives are better in rich areas and we know that wealth players a big part in children's prospects, regardless of whether you go to a comprehensive or a grammar school.
Therefore simply saying "ah but X% of our 'elite' went to a grammar school" tells us absolutely nothing about the benefit of grammar schools.
It's just bollocks, as usual.
Your point is you are an ideological leftwing socialist who would deny parents the choice of where to send their children and would nationalise much of industry too given the chance.
Yes indeed comprehensives are better in wealthy areas and the left destroyed the best tools of tackling that for a bright child by abolishing the grammar schools that used to exist in inner cities or ex industrial areas or poor seaside towns. So the only ones left are generally in more prosperous areas with Tory councils where comprehensive schools and academies tend to be better anyway so they are less needed.
So we still have selection in state education, just by house price and vicar's reference, not by IQ
Also, grammar schools do not select by IQ. They select by wealth. Only a fool would try to pretend that wealth does not increase your chances of passing entrance exams by better access to learning materials and private tutors.
No, private schools and the best comprehensive schools select by parental wealth or house price (or church attendance).
Grammar schools select by IQ. If you have a low IQ tutoring will not get you through a grammar school entrance exam, if you have a high IQ you will pass a grammar school entrance exam regardless of tutoring
We have been here before also. Yes it will. You can train for IQ tests unless you are particularly dim. I gave you some examples of stuff you could do last time we had this argument. I could easily raise someone's IQ result with training and I had to administer such test for potential employees for one the large computer companies I used to work for. I guessed I could add 10 - 20 points to someone's test, but later in that discussion @rcs1000 posted a link showing the improvement could be as much as 30 points.
Here is just one of those techniques: If given a sequence of numbers and you have to find the next number and can't see it simply subtract each number from the next number in the sequence and create a new sequence. Repeat until a pattern appears. This can be done in seconds so doesn't waste time and works nearly all the time for sequences in IQ tests.
There are a few particularly dim pupils in some private schools without entrance exams.
There are no particularly dim pupils in grammar schools
There are you know. I taught several when I was teaching in a grammar.
It was not a good place for them. They found keeping up very, very tough.
By particularly dim we mean below average IQ, as I said there are none in grammar schools
Yes, there are. I taught several.
Are you saying your political beliefs trump my practical experience?
One trick incidentally was to get them in not at age 11 but for entry part way through Year 8 or 9, when others had dropped out or moved away. Because grammar schools tend to be less generously funded than other state schools, they are always desperate for money and tended not to mark the exam too harshly.
I can guarantee if you did an IQ test for them, none of those pupils would have an IQ below the national average.
A few might not have had as high an IQ as most of their peers at their grammar school but that is not the same thing
Depends on the nature of the Grammar School system. Grammar schools in Essex (where it's a handful of schools serving the super-elite) are a different kettle of fish to Lincolnshire (where about a third of pupils go to grammar schools in some bits of the county. Bottom of top third on one test might well be just below average on another).
Leaving aside the wider social effects, and the fact that it's the State choosing pupils, you can't measure IQ that reliably.
Not grammar schools again, please. The only place I ever come across nostalgia for grammar schools is on PB. They are the past, not the future. Even the Tory Party has shut up about them (apart from in Epping).
UKIP wanted a "grammar school in every town". No other party is interested. Tells you all you need to know. And why? Because the evidence (educational and social mobility) that they do more harm than good is incontrovertible. Trust me.
Not sure why you'd expect anyone to 'trust you', and this post is a collection of sloppy empty clichés, of which 'they are the past not the future' is the emptiest.
Thanks for the rudeness. I've spent the last forty years working in education and educational policy, much of it on data analysis, at a high level. So while I'm pretty ignorant about much, I think I know about this. And guess what? The Tory party doesn't advocate the return of a tertiary system of secondary education.
I thought you were a civil servant?
Please don't tell me you worked at the DfE or I'll have to hate you.
Not the DfE. Much worse.
Where, then?
What other department could lead to somebody being involved in education for forty years while being a civil servant? An LEA?
I taught and managed in FE for the first 20 years. The rest shall remain a mystery - you can message me if you really want to know.
Fair enough. I won't invade your privacy to that extent.
At least you did teach.
No problem, thanks. Surprised you haven't worked it out. And yes, I taught for 15 years in (state) sixth form and FE colleges before rising up the ranks and then joining the CS.
I've managed 10. Don't think I'll go much further, partly because of the egregious nature of the organisation you have (presumably) just left. Curiously, have been looking at options in the Civil Service myself, although how I would manage that given my disdain for its workforce is a different question.
It's not nessecarily a problem. I have had a long and successful career in a teaching hospital despite not liking doctors, being a therapeutic nihilist and considering modern educational theory wrong.
So taking your example, if I sit on a teams meeting and suddenly burst out with 'you're all ignorant, stupid ****s' there will be no problem?
Descending from the important questions in the Header to the nakedly partisan - apols - I wonder how a Sunak/Starmer match-up would play to the country? I haven't quite worked myself out a take on this yet. I do probably need to since he looks nailed on if and when 'it' finally happens.
Starmer's only real appeal is that he is the boring-but-competent one against the charismatic but flawed partygate buffoonery of Boris (being generous to Boris there).
Sunak would essentially occupy the same boring-but-competent territory. Which is bad for Starmer.
Except that one has a modicum of working class background and a trusted profession.
The other is the richest person in Parliament and was a banker. Replace the first letter & you have how most people view them.
lawyer who are almost as unloved as bankers.
Utterly untrue as Mike Smithson demonstrated the other day.
IPSOS MORI (One of your two permitted pollsters):
Other professions trusted by more than half of the public include museum curators, the police, lawyers, civil servants, the ordinary man/woman on the street and clergy/priests. Professions with negative net trust ratings include bankers, local councillors, business leaders, professional footballers, estate agents and journalists.
"If Old Labour had bulldozed Eton in the Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss.
"If Old Labour had not bulldozed most of the Grammar schools in the Sixties and Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools I presume
No, everyone. The presence of those from the working class in positions of power helps everyone.
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools
Yep appalling institutions
So appalling they produced the highest number of non privately educated people products in our top professions, yes even judges and lawyers had plenty of grammar school alumni. More so than the number who now come from comprehensives
If you got rid of private schools and grammar schools then 100% of our PMs, people in top professions and judges and lawyers would be from comprehensives. Explain that one.
If you got rid of Waitrose, Marks and Spencer and Sainsburys all their customers would have to shop at Tesco, Aldi or Lidl. Explain that one.
I believe in choice for parents as much as consumers
Let me break it down for you.
1. I don't believe we should abolish existing grammar schools.
2. I don't believe we should abolish private schools.
3. However, if we did, then 100% of our 'elite' would be from comprehensives.
I ask again, explain that one?
If you ban private schools, then the ‘elites’ will send their kids to school abroad - just as the elites of many other countries currently aspire to be able to send their kids to school in the UK.
Only a small minority.
My point is that HY quotes statistics without any appreciation of the other factors at play.
We know that comprehensives are better in rich areas and we know that wealth players a big part in children's prospects, regardless of whether you go to a comprehensive or a grammar school.
Therefore simply saying "ah but X% of our 'elite' went to a grammar school" tells us absolutely nothing about the benefit of grammar schools.
It's just bollocks, as usual.
Your point is you are an ideological leftwing socialist who would deny parents the choice of where to send their children and would nationalise much of industry too given the chance.
Yes indeed comprehensives are better in wealthy areas and the left destroyed the best tools of tackling that for a bright child by abolishing the grammar schools that used to exist in inner cities or ex industrial areas or poor seaside towns. So the only ones left are generally in more prosperous areas with Tory councils where comprehensive schools and academies tend to be better anyway so they are less needed.
So we still have selection in state education, just by house price and vicar's reference, not by IQ
Also, grammar schools do not select by IQ. They select by wealth. Only a fool would try to pretend that wealth does not increase your chances of passing entrance exams by better access to learning materials and private tutors.
No, private schools and the best comprehensive schools select by parental wealth or house price (or church attendance).
Grammar schools select by IQ. If you have a low IQ tutoring will not get you through a grammar school entrance exam, if you have a high IQ you will pass a grammar school entrance exam regardless of tutoring
We have been here before also. Yes it will. You can train for IQ tests unless you are particularly dim. I gave you some examples of stuff you could do last time we had this argument. I could easily raise someone's IQ result with training and I had to administer such test for potential employees for one the large computer companies I used to work for. I guessed I could add 10 - 20 points to someone's test, but later in that discussion @rcs1000 posted a link showing the improvement could be as much as 30 points.
Here is just one of those techniques: If given a sequence of numbers and you have to find the next number and can't see it simply subtract each number from the next number in the sequence and create a new sequence. Repeat until a pattern appears. This can be done in seconds so doesn't waste time and works nearly all the time for sequences in IQ tests.
There are a few particularly dim pupils in some private schools without entrance exams.
There are no particularly dim pupils in grammar schools
There are you know. I taught several when I was teaching in a grammar.
It was not a good place for them. They found keeping up very, very tough.
By particularly dim we mean below average IQ, as I said there are none in grammar schools
Yet another subject about which you clearly know nothing.
Descending from the important questions in the Header to the nakedly partisan - apols - I wonder how a Sunak/Starmer match-up would play to the country? I haven't quite worked myself out a take on this yet. I do probably need to since he looks nailed on if and when 'it' finally happens.
Starmer's only real appeal is that he is the boring-but-competent one against the charismatic but flawed partygate buffoonery of Boris (being generous to Boris there).
Sunak would essentially occupy the same boring-but-competent territory. Which is bad for Starmer.
Except that one has a modicum of working class background and a trusted profession.
The other is the richest person in Parliament and was a banker. Replace the first letter & you have how most people view them.
lawyer who are almost as unloved as bankers.
Utterly untrue as Mike Smithson demonstrated the other day.
IPSOS MORI (One of your two permitted pollsters):
Other professions trusted by more than half of the public include museum curators, the police, lawyers, civil servants, the ordinary man/woman on the street and clergy/priests. Professions with negative net trust ratings include bankers, local councillors, business leaders, professional footballers, estate agents and journalists.
"If Old Labour had bulldozed Eton in the Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss.
"If Old Labour had not bulldozed most of the Grammar schools in the Sixties and Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools I presume
No, everyone. The presence of those from the working class in positions of power helps everyone.
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools
Yep appalling institutions
So appalling they produced the highest number of non privately educated people products in our top professions, yes even judges and lawyers had plenty of grammar school alumni. More so than the number who now come from comprehensives
If you got rid of private schools and grammar schools then 100% of our PMs, people in top professions and judges and lawyers would be from comprehensives. Explain that one.
If you got rid of Waitrose, Marks and Spencer and Sainsburys all their customers would have to shop at Tesco, Aldi or Lidl. Explain that one.
I believe in choice for parents as much as consumers
Let me break it down for you.
1. I don't believe we should abolish existing grammar schools.
2. I don't believe we should abolish private schools.
3. However, if we did, then 100% of our 'elite' would be from comprehensives.
I ask again, explain that one?
If you ban private schools, then the ‘elites’ will send their kids to school abroad - just as the elites of many other countries currently aspire to be able to send their kids to school in the UK.
Only a small minority.
My point is that HY quotes statistics without any appreciation of the other factors at play.
We know that comprehensives are better in rich areas and we know that wealth players a big part in children's prospects, regardless of whether you go to a comprehensive or a grammar school.
Therefore simply saying "ah but X% of our 'elite' went to a grammar school" tells us absolutely nothing about the benefit of grammar schools.
It's just bollocks, as usual.
Your point is you are an ideological leftwing socialist who would deny parents the choice of where to send their children and would nationalise much of industry too given the chance.
Yes indeed comprehensives are better in wealthy areas and the left destroyed the best tools of tackling that for a bright child by abolishing the grammar schools that used to exist in inner cities or ex industrial areas or poor seaside towns. So the only ones left are generally in more prosperous areas with Tory councils where comprehensive schools and academies tend to be better anyway so they are less needed.
So we still have selection in state education, just by house price and vicar's reference, not by IQ
Also, grammar schools do not select by IQ. They select by wealth. Only a fool would try to pretend that wealth does not increase your chances of passing entrance exams by better access to learning materials and private tutors.
No, private schools and the best comprehensive schools select by parental wealth or house price (or church attendance).
Grammar schools select by IQ. If you have a low IQ tutoring will not get you through a grammar school entrance exam, if you have a high IQ you will pass a grammar school entrance exam regardless of tutoring
We have been here before also. Yes it will. You can train for IQ tests unless you are particularly dim. I gave you some examples of stuff you could do last time we had this argument. I could easily raise someone's IQ result with training and I had to administer such test for potential employees for one the large computer companies I used to work for. I guessed I could add 10 - 20 points to someone's test, but later in that discussion @rcs1000 posted a link showing the improvement could be as much as 30 points.
Here is just one of those techniques: If given a sequence of numbers and you have to find the next number and can't see it simply subtract each number from the next number in the sequence and create a new sequence. Repeat until a pattern appears. This can be done in seconds so doesn't waste time and works nearly all the time for sequences in IQ tests.
There are a few particularly dim pupils in some private schools without entrance exams.
There are no particularly dim pupils in grammar schools
There are you know. I taught several when I was teaching in a grammar.
It was not a good place for them. They found keeping up very, very tough.
By particularly dim we mean below average IQ, as I said there are none in grammar schools
Yes, there are. I taught several.
Are you saying your political beliefs trump my practical experience?
One trick incidentally was to get them in not at age 11 but for entry part way through Year 8 or 9, when others had dropped out or moved away. Because grammar schools tend to be less generously funded than other state schools, they are always desperate for money and tended not to mark the exam too harshly.
I can guarantee if you did an IQ test for them, none of those pupils would have an IQ below the national average.
A few might not have had as high an IQ as most of their peers at their grammar school but that is not the same thing
So you are disputing you can train for an IQ test even after the evidence I and @rcs1000 provided to you previously. Previously I gave you a whole lot of techniques and @rcs1000 gave you a link to evidence of such. I could easily raise the IQ score of someone who has never taken a test from 100 to 110 or 120.
We are talking people below 100 IQ.
If a few people of 100 IQ ie average, get tutored to the nth degree to scrape into a grammar it will still not stop someone with a 130+IQ easily passing the entrance exam even without a single tutorial session
Descending from the important questions in the Header to the nakedly partisan - apols - I wonder how a Sunak/Starmer match-up would play to the country? I haven't quite worked myself out a take on this yet. I do probably need to since he looks nailed on if and when 'it' finally happens.
Starmer's only real appeal is that he is the boring-but-competent one against the charismatic but flawed partygate buffoonery of Boris (being generous to Boris there).
Sunak would essentially occupy the same boring-but-competent territory. Which is bad for Starmer.
Except that one has a modicum of working class background and a trusted profession.
The other is the richest person in Parliament and was a banker. Replace the first letter & you have how most people view them.
lawyer who are almost as unloved as bankers.
Utterly untrue as Mike Smithson demonstrated the other day.
IPSOS MORI (One of your two permitted pollsters):
Other professions trusted by more than half of the public include museum curators, the police, lawyers, civil servants, the ordinary man/woman on the street and clergy/priests. Professions with negative net trust ratings include bankers, local councillors, business leaders, professional footballers, estate agents and journalists.
"If Old Labour had bulldozed Eton in the Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss.
"If Old Labour had not bulldozed most of the Grammar schools in the Sixties and Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools I presume
No, everyone. The presence of those from the working class in positions of power helps everyone.
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools
Yep appalling institutions
So appalling they produced the highest number of non privately educated people products in our top professions, yes even judges and lawyers had plenty of grammar school alumni. More so than the number who now come from comprehensives
If you got rid of private schools and grammar schools then 100% of our PMs, people in top professions and judges and lawyers would be from comprehensives. Explain that one.
If you got rid of Waitrose, Marks and Spencer and Sainsburys all their customers would have to shop at Tesco, Aldi or Lidl. Explain that one.
I believe in choice for parents as much as consumers
Let me break it down for you.
1. I don't believe we should abolish existing grammar schools.
2. I don't believe we should abolish private schools.
3. However, if we did, then 100% of our 'elite' would be from comprehensives.
I ask again, explain that one?
If you ban private schools, then the ‘elites’ will send their kids to school abroad - just as the elites of many other countries currently aspire to be able to send their kids to school in the UK.
Only a small minority.
My point is that HY quotes statistics without any appreciation of the other factors at play.
We know that comprehensives are better in rich areas and we know that wealth players a big part in children's prospects, regardless of whether you go to a comprehensive or a grammar school.
Therefore simply saying "ah but X% of our 'elite' went to a grammar school" tells us absolutely nothing about the benefit of grammar schools.
It's just bollocks, as usual.
Your point is you are an ideological leftwing socialist who would deny parents the choice of where to send their children and would nationalise much of industry too given the chance.
Yes indeed comprehensives are better in wealthy areas and the left destroyed the best tools of tackling that for a bright child by abolishing the grammar schools that used to exist in inner cities or ex industrial areas or poor seaside towns. So the only ones left are generally in more prosperous areas with Tory councils where comprehensive schools and academies tend to be better anyway so they are less needed.
So we still have selection in state education, just by house price and vicar's reference, not by IQ
Also, grammar schools do not select by IQ. They select by wealth. Only a fool would try to pretend that wealth does not increase your chances of passing entrance exams by better access to learning materials and private tutors.
No, private schools and the best comprehensive schools select by parental wealth or house price (or church attendance).
Grammar schools select by IQ. If you have a low IQ tutoring will not get you through a grammar school entrance exam, if you have a high IQ you will pass a grammar school entrance exam regardless of tutoring
We have been here before also. Yes it will. You can train for IQ tests unless you are particularly dim. I gave you some examples of stuff you could do last time we had this argument. I could easily raise someone's IQ result with training and I had to administer such test for potential employees for one the large computer companies I used to work for. I guessed I could add 10 - 20 points to someone's test, but later in that discussion @rcs1000 posted a link showing the improvement could be as much as 30 points.
Here is just one of those techniques: If given a sequence of numbers and you have to find the next number and can't see it simply subtract each number from the next number in the sequence and create a new sequence. Repeat until a pattern appears. This can be done in seconds so doesn't waste time and works nearly all the time for sequences in IQ tests.
There are a few particularly dim pupils in some private schools without entrance exams.
There are no particularly dim pupils in grammar schools
Thankfully I have missed most of your new nonsensical grammar school mumblings.
At the Grammar School I went to in the late 1970s there were two streams in each year. Bear in mind everyone passed the 11 plus (except me, I arrived aged 14). There was the A stream of clever kids and the B stream of what some teachers referred to as "less able" students. The 100% pass rate in optional subjects like chemistry was retained by weeding out those who might fail at 14 and the remainder who might fail at some stage before O level.
Descending from the important questions in the Header to the nakedly partisan - apols - I wonder how a Sunak/Starmer match-up would play to the country? I haven't quite worked myself out a take on this yet. I do probably need to since he looks nailed on if and when 'it' finally happens.
Starmer's only real appeal is that he is the boring-but-competent one against the charismatic but flawed partygate buffoonery of Boris (being generous to Boris there).
Sunak would essentially occupy the same boring-but-competent territory. Which is bad for Starmer.
Except that one has a modicum of working class background and a trusted profession.
The other is the richest person in Parliament and was a banker. Replace the first letter & you have how most people view them.
lawyer who are almost as unloved as bankers.
Utterly untrue as Mike Smithson demonstrated the other day.
IPSOS MORI (One of your two permitted pollsters):
Other professions trusted by more than half of the public include museum curators, the police, lawyers, civil servants, the ordinary man/woman on the street and clergy/priests. Professions with negative net trust ratings include bankers, local councillors, business leaders, professional footballers, estate agents and journalists.
"If Old Labour had bulldozed Eton in the Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss.
"If Old Labour had not bulldozed most of the Grammar schools in the Sixties and Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools I presume
No, everyone. The presence of those from the working class in positions of power helps everyone.
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools
Yep appalling institutions
So appalling they produced the highest number of non privately educated people products in our top professions, yes even judges and lawyers had plenty of grammar school alumni. More so than the number who now come from comprehensives
If you got rid of private schools and grammar schools then 100% of our PMs, people in top professions and judges and lawyers would be from comprehensives. Explain that one.
If you got rid of Waitrose, Marks and Spencer and Sainsburys all their customers would have to shop at Tesco, Aldi or Lidl. Explain that one.
I believe in choice for parents as much as consumers
Let me break it down for you.
1. I don't believe we should abolish existing grammar schools.
2. I don't believe we should abolish private schools.
3. However, if we did, then 100% of our 'elite' would be from comprehensives.
I ask again, explain that one?
If you ban private schools, then the ‘elites’ will send their kids to school abroad - just as the elites of many other countries currently aspire to be able to send their kids to school in the UK.
Only a small minority.
My point is that HY quotes statistics without any appreciation of the other factors at play.
We know that comprehensives are better in rich areas and we know that wealth players a big part in children's prospects, regardless of whether you go to a comprehensive or a grammar school.
Therefore simply saying "ah but X% of our 'elite' went to a grammar school" tells us absolutely nothing about the benefit of grammar schools.
It's just bollocks, as usual.
Your point is you are an ideological leftwing socialist who would deny parents the choice of where to send their children and would nationalise much of industry too given the chance.
Yes indeed comprehensives are better in wealthy areas and the left destroyed the best tools of tackling that for a bright child by abolishing the grammar schools that used to exist in inner cities or ex industrial areas or poor seaside towns. So the only ones left are generally in more prosperous areas with Tory councils where comprehensive schools and academies tend to be better anyway so they are less needed.
So we still have selection in state education, just by house price and vicar's reference, not by IQ
Also, grammar schools do not select by IQ. They select by wealth. Only a fool would try to pretend that wealth does not increase your chances of passing entrance exams by better access to learning materials and private tutors.
No, private schools and the best comprehensive schools select by parental wealth or house price (or church attendance).
Grammar schools select by IQ. If you have a low IQ tutoring will not get you through a grammar school entrance exam, if you have a high IQ you will pass a grammar school entrance exam regardless of tutoring
We have been here before also. Yes it will. You can train for IQ tests unless you are particularly dim. I gave you some examples of stuff you could do last time we had this argument. I could easily raise someone's IQ result with training and I had to administer such test for potential employees for one the large computer companies I used to work for. I guessed I could add 10 - 20 points to someone's test, but later in that discussion @rcs1000 posted a link showing the improvement could be as much as 30 points.
Here is just one of those techniques: If given a sequence of numbers and you have to find the next number and can't see it simply subtract each number from the next number in the sequence and create a new sequence. Repeat until a pattern appears. This can be done in seconds so doesn't waste time and works nearly all the time for sequences in IQ tests.
There are a few particularly dim pupils in some private schools without entrance exams.
There are no particularly dim pupils in grammar schools
There are you know. I taught several when I was teaching in a grammar.
It was not a good place for them. They found keeping up very, very tough.
By particularly dim we mean below average IQ, as I said there are none in grammar schools
Yet another subject about which you clearly know nothing.
But I'll leave it there.
Sorry but you are just not worth it.
Back to someone more interesting ...
Oh I know nothing because I don't accord to your left liberal ideological agenda, well tough I do not care less
Descending from the important questions in the Header to the nakedly partisan - apols - I wonder how a Sunak/Starmer match-up would play to the country? I haven't quite worked myself out a take on this yet. I do probably need to since he looks nailed on if and when 'it' finally happens.
Starmer's only real appeal is that he is the boring-but-competent one against the charismatic but flawed partygate buffoonery of Boris (being generous to Boris there).
Sunak would essentially occupy the same boring-but-competent territory. Which is bad for Starmer.
Except that one has a modicum of working class background and a trusted profession.
The other is the richest person in Parliament and was a banker. Replace the first letter & you have how most people view them.
lawyer who are almost as unloved as bankers.
Utterly untrue as Mike Smithson demonstrated the other day.
IPSOS MORI (One of your two permitted pollsters):
Other professions trusted by more than half of the public include museum curators, the police, lawyers, civil servants, the ordinary man/woman on the street and clergy/priests. Professions with negative net trust ratings include bankers, local councillors, business leaders, professional footballers, estate agents and journalists.
"If Old Labour had bulldozed Eton in the Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss.
"If Old Labour had not bulldozed most of the Grammar schools in the Sixties and Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools I presume
No, everyone. The presence of those from the working class in positions of power helps everyone.
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools
Yep appalling institutions
So appalling they produced the highest number of non privately educated people products in our top professions, yes even judges and lawyers had plenty of grammar school alumni. More so than the number who now come from comprehensives
If you got rid of private schools and grammar schools then 100% of our PMs, people in top professions and judges and lawyers would be from comprehensives. Explain that one.
If you got rid of Waitrose, Marks and Spencer and Sainsburys all their customers would have to shop at Tesco, Aldi or Lidl. Explain that one.
I believe in choice for parents as much as consumers
Let me break it down for you.
1. I don't believe we should abolish existing grammar schools.
2. I don't believe we should abolish private schools.
3. However, if we did, then 100% of our 'elite' would be from comprehensives.
I ask again, explain that one?
If you ban private schools, then the ‘elites’ will send their kids to school abroad - just as the elites of many other countries currently aspire to be able to send their kids to school in the UK.
Only a small minority.
My point is that HY quotes statistics without any appreciation of the other factors at play.
We know that comprehensives are better in rich areas and we know that wealth players a big part in children's prospects, regardless of whether you go to a comprehensive or a grammar school.
Therefore simply saying "ah but X% of our 'elite' went to a grammar school" tells us absolutely nothing about the benefit of grammar schools.
It's just bollocks, as usual.
Your point is you are an ideological leftwing socialist who would deny parents the choice of where to send their children and would nationalise much of industry too given the chance.
Yes indeed comprehensives are better in wealthy areas and the left destroyed the best tools of tackling that for a bright child by abolishing the grammar schools that used to exist in inner cities or ex industrial areas or poor seaside towns. So the only ones left are generally in more prosperous areas with Tory councils where comprehensive schools and academies tend to be better anyway so they are less needed.
So we still have selection in state education, just by house price and vicar's reference, not by IQ
Also, grammar schools do not select by IQ. They select by wealth. Only a fool would try to pretend that wealth does not increase your chances of passing entrance exams by better access to learning materials and private tutors.
No, private schools and the best comprehensive schools select by parental wealth or house price (or church attendance).
Grammar schools select by IQ. If you have a low IQ tutoring will not get you through a grammar school entrance exam, if you have a high IQ you will pass a grammar school entrance exam regardless of tutoring
We have been here before also. Yes it will. You can train for IQ tests unless you are particularly dim. I gave you some examples of stuff you could do last time we had this argument. I could easily raise someone's IQ result with training and I had to administer such test for potential employees for one the large computer companies I used to work for. I guessed I could add 10 - 20 points to someone's test, but later in that discussion @rcs1000 posted a link showing the improvement could be as much as 30 points.
Here is just one of those techniques: If given a sequence of numbers and you have to find the next number and can't see it simply subtract each number from the next number in the sequence and create a new sequence. Repeat until a pattern appears. This can be done in seconds so doesn't waste time and works nearly all the time for sequences in IQ tests.
There are a few particularly dim pupils in some private schools without entrance exams.
There are no particularly dim pupils in grammar schools
There are you know. I taught several when I was teaching in a grammar.
It was not a good place for them. They found keeping up very, very tough.
By particularly dim we mean below average IQ, as I said there are none in grammar schools
Yes, there are. I taught several.
Are you saying your political beliefs trump my practical experience?
One trick incidentally was to get them in not at age 11 but for entry part way through Year 8 or 9, when others had dropped out or moved away. Because grammar schools tend to be less generously funded than other state schools, they are always desperate for money and tended not to mark the exam too harshly.
I can guarantee if you did an IQ test for them, none of those pupils would have an IQ below the national average.
A few might not have had as high an IQ as most of their peers at their grammar school but that is not the same thing
They did. As I proved by, er, testing them. They were below the average across the national cohort.
You are simply wrong. You are basing your views on a system that ceased to exist sixty years ago. If there are vacancies in a school, even a selective school, they take the ones who apply, not the ones who are the brightest.
I'm reminded of that time you lectured @Richard_Tyndall on the requirements to be an engineer.
In what? Every subject. In which case how on earth did they manage to pass an entrance exam to a grammar school if they were below average IQ?
Even if they did that is not an argument against grammar schools, it is an argument for ensuring tougher grammar school entrance exams at every age of entry to it. You cannot just apply to a grammar even at 13 plus, you have to pass an entrance exam and 16+ entry to grammars is generally only given to those getting mainly As and A*s at GCSE ie well above average grades
Hyufd, I did explain that in a post two stages above. Could you at least read what I've written before arguing with me?
Sadly he only has his opinion and that is set in tablets of stone no matter how ridiculous he looks
This alone is why Boris Johnson needs to go, he is turning into Britain Trump.
The mood has turned further against Johnson in recent days after he criticised Sir Keir Starmer in the Commons on Monday for failing to prosecute the child abuser Jimmy Savile during his time as director of public prosecutions. The baseless attack on the opposition leader led to the resignation on Thursday of Johnson’s longtime aide and head of policy at No 10, Munira Mirza, who had demanded that Johnson apologise, which he failed to do.
Investigations by the Observer show that the unfounded claims about Starmer were being promoted, before Johnson aired them, by far-right groups including the UK branch of Proud Boys, a violent white nationalist organisation labelled a terrorist entity.
After Johnson made the comments in the Commons, other notorious far-right groups, including football hooligans linked to the anti-Muslim English Defence League as well as the nationalist organisation the Traditional Britain Group, lauded him.
The allegation appears to have roots in the far right’s obsession with the unfounded suggestion that the establishment is protecting paedophiles.
I have to say that I'm surprised Johnson's chief advisor chose to resign over the Saville slur. Though unpleasant it doesn't seem measurably worse than other things he's said and done over the last 14 years. I wonder if it was something else. She must have known how significant her resignation would be.
Not grammar schools again, please. The only place I ever come across nostalgia for grammar schools is on PB. They are the past, not the future. Even the Tory Party has shut up about them (apart from in Epping).
UKIP wanted a "grammar school in every town". No other party is interested. Tells you all you need to know. And why? Because the evidence (educational and social mobility) that they do more harm than good is incontrovertible. Trust me.
Not sure why you'd expect anyone to 'trust you', and this post is a collection of sloppy empty clichés, of which 'they are the past not the future' is the emptiest.
Thanks for the rudeness. I've spent the last forty years working in education and educational policy, much of it on data analysis, at a high level. So while I'm pretty ignorant about much, I think I know about this. And guess what? The Tory party doesn't advocate the return of a tertiary system of secondary education.
Any time. I am sure that you have a great deal of knowledge on the subject, but you claimed 'incontrevertible evidence' that grammar schools have done more harm than good. If you have such evidence, why not present it?
Disadvantaged kids do worse in Kent than elsewhere in England, because they end up going to Secondary Moderns, and it's blooming hard to make Secondary Modern Schools work.
Not grammar schools again, please. The only place I ever come across nostalgia for grammar schools is on PB. They are the past, not the future. Even the Tory Party has shut up about them (apart from in Epping).
UKIP wanted a "grammar school in every town". No other party is interested. Tells you all you need to know. And why? Because the evidence (educational and social mobility) that they do more harm than good is incontrovertible. Trust me.
Not sure why you'd expect anyone to 'trust you', and this post is a collection of sloppy empty clichés, of which 'they are the past not the future' is the emptiest.
Thanks for the rudeness. I've spent the last forty years working in education and educational policy, much of it on data analysis, at a high level. So while I'm pretty ignorant about much, I think I know about this. And guess what? The Tory party doesn't advocate the return of a tertiary system of secondary education.
Any time. I am sure that you have a great deal of knowledge on the subject, but you claimed 'incontrevertible evidence' that grammar schools have done more harm than good. If you have such evidence, why not present it?
Because the evidence base is huge and varied, and can't be reduced to a simple 'told you so' on an an internet blog. Do your own research. You could start by looking at the value-added data for pupil progress in LAs that still have grammar schools, and comparing it with the same data for fully comprehensive LAs. In short - the average pupil in grammar school areas makes less progress than in non-grammar school areas.
Descending from the important questions in the Header to the nakedly partisan - apols - I wonder how a Sunak/Starmer match-up would play to the country? I haven't quite worked myself out a take on this yet. I do probably need to since he looks nailed on if and when 'it' finally happens.
Starmer's only real appeal is that he is the boring-but-competent one against the charismatic but flawed partygate buffoonery of Boris (being generous to Boris there).
Sunak would essentially occupy the same boring-but-competent territory. Which is bad for Starmer.
Except that one has a modicum of working class background and a trusted profession.
The other is the richest person in Parliament and was a banker. Replace the first letter & you have how most people view them.
lawyer who are almost as unloved as bankers.
Utterly untrue as Mike Smithson demonstrated the other day.
IPSOS MORI (One of your two permitted pollsters):
Other professions trusted by more than half of the public include museum curators, the police, lawyers, civil servants, the ordinary man/woman on the street and clergy/priests. Professions with negative net trust ratings include bankers, local councillors, business leaders, professional footballers, estate agents and journalists.
"If Old Labour had bulldozed Eton in the Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss.
"If Old Labour had not bulldozed most of the Grammar schools in the Sixties and Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools I presume
No, everyone. The presence of those from the working class in positions of power helps everyone.
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools
Yep appalling institutions
So appalling they produced the highest number of non privately educated people products in our top professions, yes even judges and lawyers had plenty of grammar school alumni. More so than the number who now come from comprehensives
If you got rid of private schools and grammar schools then 100% of our PMs, people in top professions and judges and lawyers would be from comprehensives. Explain that one.
If you got rid of Waitrose, Marks and Spencer and Sainsburys all their customers would have to shop at Tesco, Aldi or Lidl. Explain that one.
I believe in choice for parents as much as consumers
Let me break it down for you.
1. I don't believe we should abolish existing grammar schools.
2. I don't believe we should abolish private schools.
3. However, if we did, then 100% of our 'elite' would be from comprehensives.
I ask again, explain that one?
If you ban private schools, then the ‘elites’ will send their kids to school abroad - just as the elites of many other countries currently aspire to be able to send their kids to school in the UK.
Only a small minority.
My point is that HY quotes statistics without any appreciation of the other factors at play.
We know that comprehensives are better in rich areas and we know that wealth players a big part in children's prospects, regardless of whether you go to a comprehensive or a grammar school.
Therefore simply saying "ah but X% of our 'elite' went to a grammar school" tells us absolutely nothing about the benefit of grammar schools.
It's just bollocks, as usual.
Your point is you are an ideological leftwing socialist who would deny parents the choice of where to send their children and would nationalise much of industry too given the chance.
Yes indeed comprehensives are better in wealthy areas and the left destroyed the best tools of tackling that for a bright child by abolishing the grammar schools that used to exist in inner cities or ex industrial areas or poor seaside towns. So the only ones left are generally in more prosperous areas with Tory councils where comprehensive schools and academies tend to be better anyway so they are less needed.
So we still have selection in state education, just by house price and vicar's reference, not by IQ
Also, grammar schools do not select by IQ. They select by wealth. Only a fool would try to pretend that wealth does not increase your chances of passing entrance exams by better access to learning materials and private tutors.
No, private schools and the best comprehensive schools select by parental wealth or house price (or church attendance).
Grammar schools select by IQ. If you have a low IQ tutoring will not get you through a grammar school entrance exam, if you have a high IQ you will pass a grammar school entrance exam regardless of tutoring
We have been here before also. Yes it will. You can train for IQ tests unless you are particularly dim. I gave you some examples of stuff you could do last time we had this argument. I could easily raise someone's IQ result with training and I had to administer such test for potential employees for one the large computer companies I used to work for. I guessed I could add 10 - 20 points to someone's test, but later in that discussion @rcs1000 posted a link showing the improvement could be as much as 30 points.
Here is just one of those techniques: If given a sequence of numbers and you have to find the next number and can't see it simply subtract each number from the next number in the sequence and create a new sequence. Repeat until a pattern appears. This can be done in seconds so doesn't waste time and works nearly all the time for sequences in IQ tests.
There are a few particularly dim pupils in some private schools without entrance exams.
There are no particularly dim pupils in grammar schools
There are you know. I taught several when I was teaching in a grammar.
It was not a good place for them. They found keeping up very, very tough.
By particularly dim we mean below average IQ, as I said there are none in grammar schools
Yes, there are. I taught several.
Are you saying your political beliefs trump my practical experience?
One trick incidentally was to get them in not at age 11 but for entry part way through Year 8 or 9, when others had dropped out or moved away. Because grammar schools tend to be less generously funded than other state schools, they are always desperate for money and tended not to mark the exam too harshly.
I can guarantee if you did an IQ test for them, none of those pupils would have an IQ below the national average.
A few might not have had as high an IQ as most of their peers at their grammar school but that is not the same thing
They did. As I proved by, er, testing them. They were below the average across the national cohort.
You are simply wrong. You are basing your views on a system that ceased to exist sixty years ago. If there are vacancies in a school, even a selective school, they take the ones who apply, not the ones who are the brightest.
I'm reminded of that time you lectured @Richard_Tyndall on the requirements to be an engineer.
In what? Every subject. In which case how on earth did they manage to pass an entrance exam to a grammar school if they were below average IQ?
Even if they did that is not an argument against grammar schools, it is an argument for ensuring tougher grammar school entrance exams at every age of entry to it. You cannot just apply to a grammar even at 13 plus, you have to pass an entrance exam and 16+ entry to grammars is generally only given to those getting mainly As and A*s at GCSE ie well above average grades
Hyufd, I did explain that in a post two stages above. Could you at least read what I've written before arguing with me?
Sadly he only has his opinion and that is set in tablets of stone no matter how ridiculous he looks
Descending from the important questions in the Header to the nakedly partisan - apols - I wonder how a Sunak/Starmer match-up would play to the country? I haven't quite worked myself out a take on this yet. I do probably need to since he looks nailed on if and when 'it' finally happens.
Starmer's only real appeal is that he is the boring-but-competent one against the charismatic but flawed partygate buffoonery of Boris (being generous to Boris there).
Sunak would essentially occupy the same boring-but-competent territory. Which is bad for Starmer.
Except that one has a modicum of working class background and a trusted profession.
The other is the richest person in Parliament and was a banker. Replace the first letter & you have how most people view them.
lawyer who are almost as unloved as bankers.
Utterly untrue as Mike Smithson demonstrated the other day.
IPSOS MORI (One of your two permitted pollsters):
Other professions trusted by more than half of the public include museum curators, the police, lawyers, civil servants, the ordinary man/woman on the street and clergy/priests. Professions with negative net trust ratings include bankers, local councillors, business leaders, professional footballers, estate agents and journalists.
"If Old Labour had bulldozed Eton in the Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss.
"If Old Labour had not bulldozed most of the Grammar schools in the Sixties and Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools I presume
No, everyone. The presence of those from the working class in positions of power helps everyone.
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools
Yep appalling institutions
So appalling they produced the highest number of non privately educated people products in our top professions, yes even judges and lawyers had plenty of grammar school alumni. More so than the number who now come from comprehensives
If you got rid of private schools and grammar schools then 100% of our PMs, people in top professions and judges and lawyers would be from comprehensives. Explain that one.
If you got rid of Waitrose, Marks and Spencer and Sainsburys all their customers would have to shop at Tesco, Aldi or Lidl. Explain that one.
I believe in choice for parents as much as consumers
Let me break it down for you.
1. I don't believe we should abolish existing grammar schools.
2. I don't believe we should abolish private schools.
3. However, if we did, then 100% of our 'elite' would be from comprehensives.
I ask again, explain that one?
If you ban private schools, then the ‘elites’ will send their kids to school abroad - just as the elites of many other countries currently aspire to be able to send their kids to school in the UK.
Only a small minority.
My point is that HY quotes statistics without any appreciation of the other factors at play.
We know that comprehensives are better in rich areas and we know that wealth players a big part in children's prospects, regardless of whether you go to a comprehensive or a grammar school.
Therefore simply saying "ah but X% of our 'elite' went to a grammar school" tells us absolutely nothing about the benefit of grammar schools.
It's just bollocks, as usual.
Your point is you are an ideological leftwing socialist who would deny parents the choice of where to send their children and would nationalise much of industry too given the chance.
Yes indeed comprehensives are better in wealthy areas and the left destroyed the best tools of tackling that for a bright child by abolishing the grammar schools that used to exist in inner cities or ex industrial areas or poor seaside towns. So the only ones left are generally in more prosperous areas with Tory councils where comprehensive schools and academies tend to be better anyway so they are less needed.
So we still have selection in state education, just by house price and vicar's reference, not by IQ
Also, grammar schools do not select by IQ. They select by wealth. Only a fool would try to pretend that wealth does not increase your chances of passing entrance exams by better access to learning materials and private tutors.
No, private schools and the best comprehensive schools select by parental wealth or house price (or church attendance).
Grammar schools select by IQ. If you have a low IQ tutoring will not get you through a grammar school entrance exam, if you have a high IQ you will pass a grammar school entrance exam regardless of tutoring
We have been here before also. Yes it will. You can train for IQ tests unless you are particularly dim. I gave you some examples of stuff you could do last time we had this argument. I could easily raise someone's IQ result with training and I had to administer such test for potential employees for one the large computer companies I used to work for. I guessed I could add 10 - 20 points to someone's test, but later in that discussion @rcs1000 posted a link showing the improvement could be as much as 30 points.
Here is just one of those techniques: If given a sequence of numbers and you have to find the next number and can't see it simply subtract each number from the next number in the sequence and create a new sequence. Repeat until a pattern appears. This can be done in seconds so doesn't waste time and works nearly all the time for sequences in IQ tests.
There are a few particularly dim pupils in some private schools without entrance exams.
There are no particularly dim pupils in grammar schools
There are you know. I taught several when I was teaching in a grammar.
It was not a good place for them. They found keeping up very, very tough.
By particularly dim we mean below average IQ, as I said there are none in grammar schools
Yes, there are. I taught several.
Are you saying your political beliefs trump my practical experience?
One trick incidentally was to get them in not at age 11 but for entry part way through Year 8 or 9, when others had dropped out or moved away. Because grammar schools tend to be less generously funded than other state schools, they are always desperate for money and tended not to mark the exam too harshly.
I can guarantee if you did an IQ test for them, none of those pupils would have an IQ below the national average.
A few might not have had as high an IQ as most of their peers at their grammar school but that is not the same thing
They did. As I proved by, er, testing them. They were below the average across the national cohort.
You are simply wrong. You are basing your views on a system that ceased to exist sixty years ago. If there are vacancies in a school, even a selective school, they take the ones who apply, not the ones who are the brightest.
I'm reminded of that time you lectured @Richard_Tyndall on the requirements to be an engineer.
In what? Every subject. In which case how on earth did they manage to pass an entrance exam to a grammar school if they were below average IQ?
Even if they did that is not an argument against grammar schools, it is an argument for ensuring tougher grammar school entrance exams at every age of entry to it. You cannot just apply to a grammar even at 13 plus, you have to pass an entrance exam and 16+ entry to grammars is generally only given to those getting mainly As and A*s at GCSE ie well above average grades
Hyufd, I did explain that in a post two stages above. Could you at least read what I've written before arguing with me?
Sadly he only has his opinion and that is set in tablets of stone no matter how ridiculous he looks
I have Conservative opinions on most subjects across the board and will anchor them, you are a wishy washy vaguely One Nation Tory but happy to sometimes vote Labour or LD person willing to float with the tide
Descending from the important questions in the Header to the nakedly partisan - apols - I wonder how a Sunak/Starmer match-up would play to the country? I haven't quite worked myself out a take on this yet. I do probably need to since he looks nailed on if and when 'it' finally happens.
Starmer's only real appeal is that he is the boring-but-competent one against the charismatic but flawed partygate buffoonery of Boris (being generous to Boris there).
Sunak would essentially occupy the same boring-but-competent territory. Which is bad for Starmer.
Except that one has a modicum of working class background and a trusted profession.
The other is the richest person in Parliament and was a banker. Replace the first letter & you have how most people view them.
lawyer who are almost as unloved as bankers.
Utterly untrue as Mike Smithson demonstrated the other day.
IPSOS MORI (One of your two permitted pollsters):
Other professions trusted by more than half of the public include museum curators, the police, lawyers, civil servants, the ordinary man/woman on the street and clergy/priests. Professions with negative net trust ratings include bankers, local councillors, business leaders, professional footballers, estate agents and journalists.
"If Old Labour had bulldozed Eton in the Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss.
"If Old Labour had not bulldozed most of the Grammar schools in the Sixties and Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools I presume
No, everyone. The presence of those from the working class in positions of power helps everyone.
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools
Yep appalling institutions
So appalling they produced the highest number of non privately educated people products in our top professions, yes even judges and lawyers had plenty of grammar school alumni. More so than the number who now come from comprehensives
If you got rid of private schools and grammar schools then 100% of our PMs, people in top professions and judges and lawyers would be from comprehensives. Explain that one.
If you got rid of Waitrose, Marks and Spencer and Sainsburys all their customers would have to shop at Tesco, Aldi or Lidl. Explain that one.
I believe in choice for parents as much as consumers
Let me break it down for you.
1. I don't believe we should abolish existing grammar schools.
2. I don't believe we should abolish private schools.
3. However, if we did, then 100% of our 'elite' would be from comprehensives.
I ask again, explain that one?
If you ban private schools, then the ‘elites’ will send their kids to school abroad - just as the elites of many other countries currently aspire to be able to send their kids to school in the UK.
Only a small minority.
My point is that HY quotes statistics without any appreciation of the other factors at play.
We know that comprehensives are better in rich areas and we know that wealth players a big part in children's prospects, regardless of whether you go to a comprehensive or a grammar school.
Therefore simply saying "ah but X% of our 'elite' went to a grammar school" tells us absolutely nothing about the benefit of grammar schools.
It's just bollocks, as usual.
Your point is you are an ideological leftwing socialist who would deny parents the choice of where to send their children and would nationalise much of industry too given the chance.
Yes indeed comprehensives are better in wealthy areas and the left destroyed the best tools of tackling that for a bright child by abolishing the grammar schools that used to exist in inner cities or ex industrial areas or poor seaside towns. So the only ones left are generally in more prosperous areas with Tory councils where comprehensive schools and academies tend to be better anyway so they are less needed.
So we still have selection in state education, just by house price and vicar's reference, not by IQ
Also, grammar schools do not select by IQ. They select by wealth. Only a fool would try to pretend that wealth does not increase your chances of passing entrance exams by better access to learning materials and private tutors.
No, private schools and the best comprehensive schools select by parental wealth or house price (or church attendance).
Grammar schools select by IQ. If you have a low IQ tutoring will not get you through a grammar school entrance exam, if you have a high IQ you will pass a grammar school entrance exam regardless of tutoring
We have been here before also. Yes it will. You can train for IQ tests unless you are particularly dim. I gave you some examples of stuff you could do last time we had this argument. I could easily raise someone's IQ result with training and I had to administer such test for potential employees for one the large computer companies I used to work for. I guessed I could add 10 - 20 points to someone's test, but later in that discussion @rcs1000 posted a link showing the improvement could be as much as 30 points.
Here is just one of those techniques: If given a sequence of numbers and you have to find the next number and can't see it simply subtract each number from the next number in the sequence and create a new sequence. Repeat until a pattern appears. This can be done in seconds so doesn't waste time and works nearly all the time for sequences in IQ tests.
There are a few particularly dim pupils in some private schools without entrance exams.
There are no particularly dim pupils in grammar schools
Thankfully I have missed most of your new nonsensical grammar school mumblings.
At the Grammar School I went to in the late 1970s there were two streams in each year. Bear in mind everyone passed the 11 plus (except me, I arrived aged 14). There was the A stream of clever kids and the B stream of what some teachers referred to as "less able" students. The 100% pass rate in optional subjects like chemistry was retained by weeding out those who might fail at 14 and the remainder who might fail at some stage before O level.
This alone is why Boris Johnson needs to go, he is turning into Britain Trump.
The mood has turned further against Johnson in recent days after he criticised Sir Keir Starmer in the Commons on Monday for failing to prosecute the child abuser Jimmy Savile during his time as director of public prosecutions. The baseless attack on the opposition leader led to the resignation on Thursday of Johnson’s longtime aide and head of policy at No 10, Munira Mirza, who had demanded that Johnson apologise, which he failed to do.
Investigations by the Observer show that the unfounded claims about Starmer were being promoted, before Johnson aired them, by far-right groups including the UK branch of Proud Boys, a violent white nationalist organisation labelled a terrorist entity.
After Johnson made the comments in the Commons, other notorious far-right groups, including football hooligans linked to the anti-Muslim English Defence League as well as the nationalist organisation the Traditional Britain Group, lauded him.
The allegation appears to have roots in the far right’s obsession with the unfounded suggestion that the establishment is protecting paedophiles.
I have to say that I'm surprised Johnson's chief advisor chose to resign over the Saville slur. Though unpleasant it doesn't seem measurably worse than other things he's said and done over the last 14 years. I wonder if it was something else. She must have known how significant her resignation would be.
Consider to whom she is married, for whom he works, and who else is, erm, a potential replacement for Mr Johnson.
Of course, it's all such a SMALL WORLD that it might be coincidence.
Descending from the important questions in the Header to the nakedly partisan - apols - I wonder how a Sunak/Starmer match-up would play to the country? I haven't quite worked myself out a take on this yet. I do probably need to since he looks nailed on if and when 'it' finally happens.
Starmer's only real appeal is that he is the boring-but-competent one against the charismatic but flawed partygate buffoonery of Boris (being generous to Boris there).
Sunak would essentially occupy the same boring-but-competent territory. Which is bad for Starmer.
Except that one has a modicum of working class background and a trusted profession.
The other is the richest person in Parliament and was a banker. Replace the first letter & you have how most people view them.
lawyer who are almost as unloved as bankers.
Utterly untrue as Mike Smithson demonstrated the other day.
IPSOS MORI (One of your two permitted pollsters):
Other professions trusted by more than half of the public include museum curators, the police, lawyers, civil servants, the ordinary man/woman on the street and clergy/priests. Professions with negative net trust ratings include bankers, local councillors, business leaders, professional footballers, estate agents and journalists.
"If Old Labour had bulldozed Eton in the Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss.
"If Old Labour had not bulldozed most of the Grammar schools in the Sixties and Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools I presume
No, everyone. The presence of those from the working class in positions of power helps everyone.
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools
Yep appalling institutions
So appalling they produced the highest number of non privately educated people products in our top professions, yes even judges and lawyers had plenty of grammar school alumni. More so than the number who now come from comprehensives
If you got rid of private schools and grammar schools then 100% of our PMs, people in top professions and judges and lawyers would be from comprehensives. Explain that one.
If you got rid of Waitrose, Marks and Spencer and Sainsburys all their customers would have to shop at Tesco, Aldi or Lidl. Explain that one.
I believe in choice for parents as much as consumers
Let me break it down for you.
1. I don't believe we should abolish existing grammar schools.
2. I don't believe we should abolish private schools.
3. However, if we did, then 100% of our 'elite' would be from comprehensives.
I ask again, explain that one?
If you ban private schools, then the ‘elites’ will send their kids to school abroad - just as the elites of many other countries currently aspire to be able to send their kids to school in the UK.
Only a small minority.
My point is that HY quotes statistics without any appreciation of the other factors at play.
We know that comprehensives are better in rich areas and we know that wealth players a big part in children's prospects, regardless of whether you go to a comprehensive or a grammar school.
Therefore simply saying "ah but X% of our 'elite' went to a grammar school" tells us absolutely nothing about the benefit of grammar schools.
It's just bollocks, as usual.
Your point is you are an ideological leftwing socialist who would deny parents the choice of where to send their children and would nationalise much of industry too given the chance.
Yes indeed comprehensives are better in wealthy areas and the left destroyed the best tools of tackling that for a bright child by abolishing the grammar schools that used to exist in inner cities or ex industrial areas or poor seaside towns. So the only ones left are generally in more prosperous areas with Tory councils where comprehensive schools and academies tend to be better anyway so they are less needed.
So we still have selection in state education, just by house price and vicar's reference, not by IQ
Also, grammar schools do not select by IQ. They select by wealth. Only a fool would try to pretend that wealth does not increase your chances of passing entrance exams by better access to learning materials and private tutors.
No, private schools and the best comprehensive schools select by parental wealth or house price (or church attendance).
Grammar schools select by IQ. If you have a low IQ tutoring will not get you through a grammar school entrance exam, if you have a high IQ you will pass a grammar school entrance exam regardless of tutoring
We have been here before also. Yes it will. You can train for IQ tests unless you are particularly dim. I gave you some examples of stuff you could do last time we had this argument. I could easily raise someone's IQ result with training and I had to administer such test for potential employees for one the large computer companies I used to work for. I guessed I could add 10 - 20 points to someone's test, but later in that discussion @rcs1000 posted a link showing the improvement could be as much as 30 points.
Here is just one of those techniques: If given a sequence of numbers and you have to find the next number and can't see it simply subtract each number from the next number in the sequence and create a new sequence. Repeat until a pattern appears. This can be done in seconds so doesn't waste time and works nearly all the time for sequences in IQ tests.
There are a few particularly dim pupils in some private schools without entrance exams.
There are no particularly dim pupils in grammar schools
Thankfully I have missed most of your new nonsensical grammar school mumblings.
At the Grammar School I went to in the late 1970s there were two streams in each year. Bear in mind everyone passed the 11 plus (except me, I arrived aged 14). There was the A stream of clever kids and the B stream of what some teachers referred to as "less able" students. The 100% pass rate in optional subjects like chemistry was retained by weeding out those who might fail at 14 and the remainder who might fail at some stage before O level.
Stop talking nonsense!
Hm, but my incination would be to side with HYUFD here. I don't know EVERY child at grammar schools. But my daughter's experience at a grammar school in Trafford would tend to suggest that the very broad statement that 'there are no particularly dim pupils in grammar schools' is not obviously incorrect. In my very, very limited, but current, experience - there just aren't. I can't deny the possibility that there are some in either her school or the many other grammar schools in the country that I am not aware of.
Not grammar schools again, please. The only place I ever come across nostalgia for grammar schools is on PB. They are the past, not the future. Even the Tory Party has shut up about them (apart from in Epping).
UKIP wanted a "grammar school in every town". No other party is interested. Tells you all you need to know. And why? Because the evidence (educational and social mobility) that they do more harm than good is incontrovertible. Trust me.
Not sure why you'd expect anyone to 'trust you', and this post is a collection of sloppy empty clichés, of which 'they are the past not the future' is the emptiest.
Thanks for the rudeness. I've spent the last forty years working in education and educational policy, much of it on data analysis, at a high level. So while I'm pretty ignorant about much, I think I know about this. And guess what? The Tory party doesn't advocate the return of a tertiary system of secondary education.
I thought you were a civil servant?
Please don't tell me you worked at the DfE or I'll have to hate you.
Not the DfE. Much worse.
Where, then?
What other department could lead to somebody being involved in education for forty years while being a civil servant? An LEA?
I taught and managed in FE for the first 20 years. The rest shall remain a mystery - you can message me if you really want to know.
Fair enough. I won't invade your privacy to that extent.
At least you did teach.
No problem, thanks. Surprised you haven't worked it out. And yes, I taught for 15 years in (state) sixth form and FE colleges before rising up the ranks and then joining the CS.
I've managed 10. Don't think I'll go much further, partly because of the egregious nature of the organisation you have (presumably) just left. Curiously, have been looking at options in the Civil Service myself, although how I would manage that given my disdain for its workforce is a different question.
It's not nessecarily a problem. I have had a long and successful career in a teaching hospital despite not liking doctors, being a therapeutic nihilist and considering modern educational theory wrong.
So taking your example, if I sit on a teams meeting and suddenly burst out with 'you're all ignorant, stupid ****s' there will be no problem?
Dom Cummings made a reasonable career out of it for a while.
This alone is why Boris Johnson needs to go, he is turning into Britain Trump.
The mood has turned further against Johnson in recent days after he criticised Sir Keir Starmer in the Commons on Monday for failing to prosecute the child abuser Jimmy Savile during his time as director of public prosecutions. The baseless attack on the opposition leader led to the resignation on Thursday of Johnson’s longtime aide and head of policy at No 10, Munira Mirza, who had demanded that Johnson apologise, which he failed to do.
Investigations by the Observer show that the unfounded claims about Starmer were being promoted, before Johnson aired them, by far-right groups including the UK branch of Proud Boys, a violent white nationalist organisation labelled a terrorist entity.
After Johnson made the comments in the Commons, other notorious far-right groups, including football hooligans linked to the anti-Muslim English Defence League as well as the nationalist organisation the Traditional Britain Group, lauded him.
The allegation appears to have roots in the far right’s obsession with the unfounded suggestion that the establishment is protecting paedophiles.
I have to say that I'm surprised Johnson's chief advisor chose to resign over the Saville slur. Though unpleasant it doesn't seem measurably worse than other things he's said and done over the last 14 years. I wonder if it was something else. She must have known how significant her resignation would be.
She likely jumped before she was pushed, and wanted to do so in such a way that appealed to the PMs many enemies, so as to protect her own reputation.
Not grammar schools again, please. The only place I ever come across nostalgia for grammar schools is on PB. They are the past, not the future. Even the Tory Party has shut up about them (apart from in Epping).
UKIP wanted a "grammar school in every town". No other party is interested. Tells you all you need to know. And why? Because the evidence (educational and social mobility) that they do more harm than good is incontrovertible. Trust me.
Not sure why you'd expect anyone to 'trust you', and this post is a collection of sloppy empty clichés, of which 'they are the past not the future' is the emptiest.
Thanks for the rudeness. I've spent the last forty years working in education and educational policy, much of it on data analysis, at a high level. So while I'm pretty ignorant about much, I think I know about this. And guess what? The Tory party doesn't advocate the return of a tertiary system of secondary education.
Any time. I am sure that you have a great deal of knowledge on the subject, but you claimed 'incontrevertible evidence' that grammar schools have done more harm than good. If you have such evidence, why not present it?
Disadvantaged kids do worse in Kent than elsewhere in England, because they end up going to Secondary Moderns, and it's blooming hard to make Secondary Modern Schools work.
Ignoring Trafford, Bucks etc which are fully selective and have above average GCSE results across the board, including in their high schools
"If Old Labour had bulldozed Eton in the Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss.
Clem bottled it.
In truth, I'm not a radical - I'm no more in favour of outlawing private schooling as I am scrapping private healthcare - but when one contemplates the calamitous careers of Johnson and Cameron it does give one pause for thought as to whether slipping a few extra aces into the hands of entitled chancers from the serried ranks of England's imbecilic upper class is really such a good idea...
I particularly enjoyed this description of Eton:
"A sort of Hogwarts for wankers where you get taught Latin and tax avoidance whilst wearing full evening dress" is the moment where this went from good to [expletive] great."
Descending from the important questions in the Header to the nakedly partisan - apols - I wonder how a Sunak/Starmer match-up would play to the country? I haven't quite worked myself out a take on this yet. I do probably need to since he looks nailed on if and when 'it' finally happens.
Starmer's only real appeal is that he is the boring-but-competent one against the charismatic but flawed partygate buffoonery of Boris (being generous to Boris there).
Sunak would essentially occupy the same boring-but-competent territory. Which is bad for Starmer.
Except that one has a modicum of working class background and a trusted profession.
The other is the richest person in Parliament and was a banker. Replace the first letter & you have how most people view them.
lawyer who are almost as unloved as bankers.
Utterly untrue as Mike Smithson demonstrated the other day.
IPSOS MORI (One of your two permitted pollsters):
Other professions trusted by more than half of the public include museum curators, the police, lawyers, civil servants, the ordinary man/woman on the street and clergy/priests. Professions with negative net trust ratings include bankers, local councillors, business leaders, professional footballers, estate agents and journalists.
"If Old Labour had bulldozed Eton in the Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss.
"If Old Labour had not bulldozed most of the Grammar schools in the Sixties and Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools I presume
No, everyone. The presence of those from the working class in positions of power helps everyone.
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools
Yep appalling institutions
So appalling they produced the highest number of non privately educated people products in our top professions, yes even judges and lawyers had plenty of grammar school alumni. More so than the number who now come from comprehensives
If you got rid of private schools and grammar schools then 100% of our PMs, people in top professions and judges and lawyers would be from comprehensives. Explain that one.
If you got rid of Waitrose, Marks and Spencer and Sainsburys all their customers would have to shop at Tesco, Aldi or Lidl. Explain that one.
I believe in choice for parents as much as consumers
Let me break it down for you.
1. I don't believe we should abolish existing grammar schools.
2. I don't believe we should abolish private schools.
3. However, if we did, then 100% of our 'elite' would be from comprehensives.
I ask again, explain that one?
If you ban private schools, then the ‘elites’ will send their kids to school abroad - just as the elites of many other countries currently aspire to be able to send their kids to school in the UK.
Only a small minority.
My point is that HY quotes statistics without any appreciation of the other factors at play.
We know that comprehensives are better in rich areas and we know that wealth players a big part in children's prospects, regardless of whether you go to a comprehensive or a grammar school.
Therefore simply saying "ah but X% of our 'elite' went to a grammar school" tells us absolutely nothing about the benefit of grammar schools.
It's just bollocks, as usual.
Your point is you are an ideological leftwing socialist who would deny parents the choice of where to send their children and would nationalise much of industry too given the chance.
Yes indeed comprehensives are better in wealthy areas and the left destroyed the best tools of tackling that for a bright child by abolishing the grammar schools that used to exist in inner cities or ex industrial areas or poor seaside towns. So the only ones left are generally in more prosperous areas with Tory councils where comprehensive schools and academies tend to be better anyway so they are less needed.
So we still have selection in state education, just by house price and vicar's reference, not by IQ
Also, grammar schools do not select by IQ. They select by wealth. Only a fool would try to pretend that wealth does not increase your chances of passing entrance exams by better access to learning materials and private tutors.
No, private schools and the best comprehensive schools select by parental wealth or house price (or church attendance).
Grammar schools select by IQ. If you have a low IQ tutoring will not get you through a grammar school entrance exam, if you have a high IQ you will pass a grammar school entrance exam regardless of tutoring
We have been here before also. Yes it will. You can train for IQ tests unless you are particularly dim. I gave you some examples of stuff you could do last time we had this argument. I could easily raise someone's IQ result with training and I had to administer such test for potential employees for one the large computer companies I used to work for. I guessed I could add 10 - 20 points to someone's test, but later in that discussion @rcs1000 posted a link showing the improvement could be as much as 30 points.
Here is just one of those techniques: If given a sequence of numbers and you have to find the next number and can't see it simply subtract each number from the next number in the sequence and create a new sequence. Repeat until a pattern appears. This can be done in seconds so doesn't waste time and works nearly all the time for sequences in IQ tests.
There are a few particularly dim pupils in some private schools without entrance exams.
There are no particularly dim pupils in grammar schools
There are you know. I taught several when I was teaching in a grammar.
It was not a good place for them. They found keeping up very, very tough.
By particularly dim we mean below average IQ, as I said there are none in grammar schools
Yes, there are. I taught several.
Are you saying your political beliefs trump my practical experience?
One trick incidentally was to get them in not at age 11 but for entry part way through Year 8 or 9, when others had dropped out or moved away. Because grammar schools tend to be less generously funded than other state schools, they are always desperate for money and tended not to mark the exam too harshly.
I can guarantee if you did an IQ test for them, none of those pupils would have an IQ below the national average.
A few might not have had as high an IQ as most of their peers at their grammar school but that is not the same thing
They did. As I proved by, er, testing them. They were below the average across the national cohort.
You are simply wrong. You are basing your views on a system that ceased to exist sixty years ago. If there are vacancies in a school, even a selective school, they take the ones who apply, not the ones who are the brightest.
I'm reminded of that time you lectured @Richard_Tyndall on the requirements to be an engineer.
In what? Every subject. In which case how on earth did they manage to pass an entrance exam to a grammar school if they were below average IQ?
Even if they did that is not an argument against grammar schools, it is an argument for ensuring tougher grammar school entrance exams at every age of entry to it. You cannot just apply to a grammar even at 13 plus, you have to pass an entrance exam and 16+ entry to grammars is generally only given to those getting mainly As and A*s at GCSE ie well above average grades
Hyufd, I did explain that in a post two stages above. Could you at least read what I've written before arguing with me?
Sadly he only has his opinion and that is set in tablets of stone no matter how ridiculous he looks
I have Conservative opinions on most subjects across the board and will anchor them, you are a wishy washy vaguely One Nation Tory but happy to sometimes vote Labour or LD person willing to float with the tide
Mind, Big G does have his principles (misguided as they are). He just won't vote PC despite their fitting with his sentiments on many areas. You on the other hand ...
Descending from the important questions in the Header to the nakedly partisan - apols - I wonder how a Sunak/Starmer match-up would play to the country? I haven't quite worked myself out a take on this yet. I do probably need to since he looks nailed on if and when 'it' finally happens.
Starmer's only real appeal is that he is the boring-but-competent one against the charismatic but flawed partygate buffoonery of Boris (being generous to Boris there).
Sunak would essentially occupy the same boring-but-competent territory. Which is bad for Starmer.
Except that one has a modicum of working class background and a trusted profession.
The other is the richest person in Parliament and was a banker. Replace the first letter & you have how most people view them.
lawyer who are almost as unloved as bankers.
Utterly untrue as Mike Smithson demonstrated the other day.
IPSOS MORI (One of your two permitted pollsters):
Other professions trusted by more than half of the public include museum curators, the police, lawyers, civil servants, the ordinary man/woman on the street and clergy/priests. Professions with negative net trust ratings include bankers, local councillors, business leaders, professional footballers, estate agents and journalists.
"If Old Labour had bulldozed Eton in the Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss.
"If Old Labour had not bulldozed most of the Grammar schools in the Sixties and Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools I presume
No, everyone. The presence of those from the working class in positions of power helps everyone.
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools
Yep appalling institutions
So appalling they produced the highest number of non privately educated people products in our top professions, yes even judges and lawyers had plenty of grammar school alumni. More so than the number who now come from comprehensives
If you got rid of private schools and grammar schools then 100% of our PMs, people in top professions and judges and lawyers would be from comprehensives. Explain that one.
If you got rid of Waitrose, Marks and Spencer and Sainsburys all their customers would have to shop at Tesco, Aldi or Lidl. Explain that one.
I believe in choice for parents as much as consumers
Let me break it down for you.
1. I don't believe we should abolish existing grammar schools.
2. I don't believe we should abolish private schools.
3. However, if we did, then 100% of our 'elite' would be from comprehensives.
I ask again, explain that one?
If you ban private schools, then the ‘elites’ will send their kids to school abroad - just as the elites of many other countries currently aspire to be able to send their kids to school in the UK.
Only a small minority.
My point is that HY quotes statistics without any appreciation of the other factors at play.
We know that comprehensives are better in rich areas and we know that wealth players a big part in children's prospects, regardless of whether you go to a comprehensive or a grammar school.
Therefore simply saying "ah but X% of our 'elite' went to a grammar school" tells us absolutely nothing about the benefit of grammar schools.
It's just bollocks, as usual.
Your point is you are an ideological leftwing socialist who would deny parents the choice of where to send their children and would nationalise much of industry too given the chance.
Yes indeed comprehensives are better in wealthy areas and the left destroyed the best tools of tackling that for a bright child by abolishing the grammar schools that used to exist in inner cities or ex industrial areas or poor seaside towns. So the only ones left are generally in more prosperous areas with Tory councils where comprehensive schools and academies tend to be better anyway so they are less needed.
So we still have selection in state education, just by house price and vicar's reference, not by IQ
Also, grammar schools do not select by IQ. They select by wealth. Only a fool would try to pretend that wealth does not increase your chances of passing entrance exams by better access to learning materials and private tutors.
No, private schools and the best comprehensive schools select by parental wealth or house price (or church attendance).
Grammar schools select by IQ. If you have a low IQ tutoring will not get you through a grammar school entrance exam, if you have a high IQ you will pass a grammar school entrance exam regardless of tutoring
We have been here before also. Yes it will. You can train for IQ tests unless you are particularly dim. I gave you some examples of stuff you could do last time we had this argument. I could easily raise someone's IQ result with training and I had to administer such test for potential employees for one the large computer companies I used to work for. I guessed I could add 10 - 20 points to someone's test, but later in that discussion @rcs1000 posted a link showing the improvement could be as much as 30 points.
Here is just one of those techniques: If given a sequence of numbers and you have to find the next number and can't see it simply subtract each number from the next number in the sequence and create a new sequence. Repeat until a pattern appears. This can be done in seconds so doesn't waste time and works nearly all the time for sequences in IQ tests.
There are a few particularly dim pupils in some private schools without entrance exams.
There are no particularly dim pupils in grammar schools
There are you know. I taught several when I was teaching in a grammar.
It was not a good place for them. They found keeping up very, very tough.
By particularly dim we mean below average IQ, as I said there are none in grammar schools
Yes, there are. I taught several.
Are you saying your political beliefs trump my practical experience?
One trick incidentally was to get them in not at age 11 but for entry part way through Year 8 or 9, when others had dropped out or moved away. Because grammar schools tend to be less generously funded than other state schools, they are always desperate for money and tended not to mark the exam too harshly.
I can guarantee if you did an IQ test for them, none of those pupils would have an IQ below the national average.
A few might not have had as high an IQ as most of their peers at their grammar school but that is not the same thing
They did. As I proved by, er, testing them. They were below the average across the national cohort.
You are simply wrong. You are basing your views on a system that ceased to exist sixty years ago. If there are vacancies in a school, even a selective school, they take the ones who apply, not the ones who are the brightest.
I'm reminded of that time you lectured @Richard_Tyndall on the requirements to be an engineer.
In what? Every subject. In which case how on earth did they manage to pass an entrance exam to a grammar school if they were below average IQ?
Even if they did that is not an argument against grammar schools, it is an argument for ensuring tougher grammar school entrance exams at every age of entry to it. You cannot just apply to a grammar even at 13 plus, you have to pass an entrance exam and 16+ entry to grammars is generally only given to those getting mainly As and A*s at GCSE ie well above average grades
Hyufd, I did explain that in a post two stages above. Could you at least read what I've written before arguing with me?
Sadly he only has his opinion and that is set in tablets of stone no matter how ridiculous he looks
I have Conservative opinions on most subjects across the board and will anchor them, you are a wishy washy vaguely One Nation Tory but happy to sometimes vote Labour or LD person willing to float with the tide
I do not have a closed mind and apologise when I am wrong, which I did directly to you a couple of days ago
Descending from the important questions in the Header to the nakedly partisan - apols - I wonder how a Sunak/Starmer match-up would play to the country? I haven't quite worked myself out a take on this yet. I do probably need to since he looks nailed on if and when 'it' finally happens.
Starmer's only real appeal is that he is the boring-but-competent one against the charismatic but flawed partygate buffoonery of Boris (being generous to Boris there).
Sunak would essentially occupy the same boring-but-competent territory. Which is bad for Starmer.
Except that one has a modicum of working class background and a trusted profession.
The other is the richest person in Parliament and was a banker. Replace the first letter & you have how most people view them.
lawyer who are almost as unloved as bankers.
Utterly untrue as Mike Smithson demonstrated the other day.
IPSOS MORI (One of your two permitted pollsters):
Other professions trusted by more than half of the public include museum curators, the police, lawyers, civil servants, the ordinary man/woman on the street and clergy/priests. Professions with negative net trust ratings include bankers, local councillors, business leaders, professional footballers, estate agents and journalists.
"If Old Labour had bulldozed Eton in the Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss.
"If Old Labour had not bulldozed most of the Grammar schools in the Sixties and Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools I presume
No, everyone. The presence of those from the working class in positions of power helps everyone.
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools
Yep appalling institutions
So appalling they produced the highest number of non privately educated people products in our top professions, yes even judges and lawyers had plenty of grammar school alumni. More so than the number who now come from comprehensives
If you got rid of private schools and grammar schools then 100% of our PMs, people in top professions and judges and lawyers would be from comprehensives. Explain that one.
If you got rid of Waitrose, Marks and Spencer and Sainsburys all their customers would have to shop at Tesco, Aldi or Lidl. Explain that one.
I believe in choice for parents as much as consumers
Let me break it down for you.
1. I don't believe we should abolish existing grammar schools.
2. I don't believe we should abolish private schools.
3. However, if we did, then 100% of our 'elite' would be from comprehensives.
I ask again, explain that one?
If you ban private schools, then the ‘elites’ will send their kids to school abroad - just as the elites of many other countries currently aspire to be able to send their kids to school in the UK.
Only a small minority.
My point is that HY quotes statistics without any appreciation of the other factors at play.
We know that comprehensives are better in rich areas and we know that wealth players a big part in children's prospects, regardless of whether you go to a comprehensive or a grammar school.
Therefore simply saying "ah but X% of our 'elite' went to a grammar school" tells us absolutely nothing about the benefit of grammar schools.
It's just bollocks, as usual.
Your point is you are an ideological leftwing socialist who would deny parents the choice of where to send their children and would nationalise much of industry too given the chance.
Yes indeed comprehensives are better in wealthy areas and the left destroyed the best tools of tackling that for a bright child by abolishing the grammar schools that used to exist in inner cities or ex industrial areas or poor seaside towns. So the only ones left are generally in more prosperous areas with Tory councils where comprehensive schools and academies tend to be better anyway so they are less needed.
So we still have selection in state education, just by house price and vicar's reference, not by IQ
Also, grammar schools do not select by IQ. They select by wealth. Only a fool would try to pretend that wealth does not increase your chances of passing entrance exams by better access to learning materials and private tutors.
No, private schools and the best comprehensive schools select by parental wealth or house price (or church attendance).
Grammar schools select by IQ. If you have a low IQ tutoring will not get you through a grammar school entrance exam, if you have a high IQ you will pass a grammar school entrance exam regardless of tutoring
We have been here before also. Yes it will. You can train for IQ tests unless you are particularly dim. I gave you some examples of stuff you could do last time we had this argument. I could easily raise someone's IQ result with training and I had to administer such test for potential employees for one the large computer companies I used to work for. I guessed I could add 10 - 20 points to someone's test, but later in that discussion @rcs1000 posted a link showing the improvement could be as much as 30 points.
Here is just one of those techniques: If given a sequence of numbers and you have to find the next number and can't see it simply subtract each number from the next number in the sequence and create a new sequence. Repeat until a pattern appears. This can be done in seconds so doesn't waste time and works nearly all the time for sequences in IQ tests.
There are a few particularly dim pupils in some private schools without entrance exams.
There are no particularly dim pupils in grammar schools
Thankfully I have missed most of your new nonsensical grammar school mumblings.
At the Grammar School I went to in the late 1970s there were two streams in each year. Bear in mind everyone passed the 11 plus (except me, I arrived aged 14). There was the A stream of clever kids and the B stream of what some teachers referred to as "less able" students. The 100% pass rate in optional subjects like chemistry was retained by weeding out those who might fail at 14 and the remainder who might fail at some stage before O level.
Stop talking nonsense!
Exactly the same as my private school i taught in up to my retirement.
Descending from the important questions in the Header to the nakedly partisan - apols - I wonder how a Sunak/Starmer match-up would play to the country? I haven't quite worked myself out a take on this yet. I do probably need to since he looks nailed on if and when 'it' finally happens.
Starmer's only real appeal is that he is the boring-but-competent one against the charismatic but flawed partygate buffoonery of Boris (being generous to Boris there).
Sunak would essentially occupy the same boring-but-competent territory. Which is bad for Starmer.
Except that one has a modicum of working class background and a trusted profession.
The other is the richest person in Parliament and was a banker. Replace the first letter & you have how most people view them.
lawyer who are almost as unloved as bankers.
Utterly untrue as Mike Smithson demonstrated the other day.
IPSOS MORI (One of your two permitted pollsters):
Other professions trusted by more than half of the public include museum curators, the police, lawyers, civil servants, the ordinary man/woman on the street and clergy/priests. Professions with negative net trust ratings include bankers, local councillors, business leaders, professional footballers, estate agents and journalists.
"If Old Labour had bulldozed Eton in the Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss.
"If Old Labour had not bulldozed most of the Grammar schools in the Sixties and Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools I presume
No, everyone. The presence of those from the working class in positions of power helps everyone.
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools
Yep appalling institutions
So appalling they produced the highest number of non privately educated people products in our top professions, yes even judges and lawyers had plenty of grammar school alumni. More so than the number who now come from comprehensives
If you got rid of private schools and grammar schools then 100% of our PMs, people in top professions and judges and lawyers would be from comprehensives. Explain that one.
If you got rid of Waitrose, Marks and Spencer and Sainsburys all their customers would have to shop at Tesco, Aldi or Lidl. Explain that one.
I believe in choice for parents as much as consumers
Let me break it down for you.
1. I don't believe we should abolish existing grammar schools.
2. I don't believe we should abolish private schools.
3. However, if we did, then 100% of our 'elite' would be from comprehensives.
I ask again, explain that one?
If you ban private schools, then the ‘elites’ will send their kids to school abroad - just as the elites of many other countries currently aspire to be able to send their kids to school in the UK.
Only a small minority.
My point is that HY quotes statistics without any appreciation of the other factors at play.
We know that comprehensives are better in rich areas and we know that wealth players a big part in children's prospects, regardless of whether you go to a comprehensive or a grammar school.
Therefore simply saying "ah but X% of our 'elite' went to a grammar school" tells us absolutely nothing about the benefit of grammar schools.
It's just bollocks, as usual.
Your point is you are an ideological leftwing socialist who would deny parents the choice of where to send their children and would nationalise much of industry too given the chance.
Yes indeed comprehensives are better in wealthy areas and the left destroyed the best tools of tackling that for a bright child by abolishing the grammar schools that used to exist in inner cities or ex industrial areas or poor seaside towns. So the only ones left are generally in more prosperous areas with Tory councils where comprehensive schools and academies tend to be better anyway so they are less needed.
So we still have selection in state education, just by house price and vicar's reference, not by IQ
Also, grammar schools do not select by IQ. They select by wealth. Only a fool would try to pretend that wealth does not increase your chances of passing entrance exams by better access to learning materials and private tutors.
No, private schools and the best comprehensive schools select by parental wealth or house price (or church attendance).
Grammar schools select by IQ. If you have a low IQ tutoring will not get you through a grammar school entrance exam, if you have a high IQ you will pass a grammar school entrance exam regardless of tutoring
We have been here before also. Yes it will. You can train for IQ tests unless you are particularly dim. I gave you some examples of stuff you could do last time we had this argument. I could easily raise someone's IQ result with training and I had to administer such test for potential employees for one the large computer companies I used to work for. I guessed I could add 10 - 20 points to someone's test, but later in that discussion @rcs1000 posted a link showing the improvement could be as much as 30 points.
Here is just one of those techniques: If given a sequence of numbers and you have to find the next number and can't see it simply subtract each number from the next number in the sequence and create a new sequence. Repeat until a pattern appears. This can be done in seconds so doesn't waste time and works nearly all the time for sequences in IQ tests.
There are a few particularly dim pupils in some private schools without entrance exams.
There are no particularly dim pupils in grammar schools
Thankfully I have missed most of your new nonsensical grammar school mumblings.
At the Grammar School I went to in the late 1970s there were two streams in each year. Bear in mind everyone passed the 11 plus (except me, I arrived aged 14). There was the A stream of clever kids and the B stream of what some teachers referred to as "less able" students. The 100% pass rate in optional subjects like chemistry was retained by weeding out those who might fail at 14 and the remainder who might fail at some stage before O level.
Stop talking nonsense!
Exactly the same as my private school i taught in up to my retirement.
Some very interesting comments about those grammar school thingies this evening, I must say.
Descending from the important questions in the Header to the nakedly partisan - apols - I wonder how a Sunak/Starmer match-up would play to the country? I haven't quite worked myself out a take on this yet. I do probably need to since he looks nailed on if and when 'it' finally happens.
Starmer's only real appeal is that he is the boring-but-competent one against the charismatic but flawed partygate buffoonery of Boris (being generous to Boris there).
Sunak would essentially occupy the same boring-but-competent territory. Which is bad for Starmer.
Except that one has a modicum of working class background and a trusted profession.
The other is the richest person in Parliament and was a banker. Replace the first letter & you have how most people view them.
lawyer who are almost as unloved as bankers.
Utterly untrue as Mike Smithson demonstrated the other day.
IPSOS MORI (One of your two permitted pollsters):
Other professions trusted by more than half of the public include museum curators, the police, lawyers, civil servants, the ordinary man/woman on the street and clergy/priests. Professions with negative net trust ratings include bankers, local councillors, business leaders, professional footballers, estate agents and journalists.
"If Old Labour had bulldozed Eton in the Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss.
"If Old Labour had not bulldozed most of the Grammar schools in the Sixties and Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools I presume
No, everyone. The presence of those from the working class in positions of power helps everyone.
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools
Yep appalling institutions
So appalling they produced the highest number of non privately educated people products in our top professions, yes even judges and lawyers had plenty of grammar school alumni. More so than the number who now come from comprehensives
If you got rid of private schools and grammar schools then 100% of our PMs, people in top professions and judges and lawyers would be from comprehensives. Explain that one.
If you got rid of Waitrose, Marks and Spencer and Sainsburys all their customers would have to shop at Tesco, Aldi or Lidl. Explain that one.
I believe in choice for parents as much as consumers
Let me break it down for you.
1. I don't believe we should abolish existing grammar schools.
2. I don't believe we should abolish private schools.
3. However, if we did, then 100% of our 'elite' would be from comprehensives.
I ask again, explain that one?
If you ban private schools, then the ‘elites’ will send their kids to school abroad - just as the elites of many other countries currently aspire to be able to send their kids to school in the UK.
Only a small minority.
My point is that HY quotes statistics without any appreciation of the other factors at play.
We know that comprehensives are better in rich areas and we know that wealth players a big part in children's prospects, regardless of whether you go to a comprehensive or a grammar school.
Therefore simply saying "ah but X% of our 'elite' went to a grammar school" tells us absolutely nothing about the benefit of grammar schools.
It's just bollocks, as usual.
Your point is you are an ideological leftwing socialist who would deny parents the choice of where to send their children and would nationalise much of industry too given the chance.
Yes indeed comprehensives are better in wealthy areas and the left destroyed the best tools of tackling that for a bright child by abolishing the grammar schools that used to exist in inner cities or ex industrial areas or poor seaside towns. So the only ones left are generally in more prosperous areas with Tory councils where comprehensive schools and academies tend to be better anyway so they are less needed.
So we still have selection in state education, just by house price and vicar's reference, not by IQ
Also, grammar schools do not select by IQ. They select by wealth. Only a fool would try to pretend that wealth does not increase your chances of passing entrance exams by better access to learning materials and private tutors.
No, private schools and the best comprehensive schools select by parental wealth or house price (or church attendance).
Grammar schools select by IQ. If you have a low IQ tutoring will not get you through a grammar school entrance exam, if you have a high IQ you will pass a grammar school entrance exam regardless of tutoring
We have been here before also. Yes it will. You can train for IQ tests unless you are particularly dim. I gave you some examples of stuff you could do last time we had this argument. I could easily raise someone's IQ result with training and I had to administer such test for potential employees for one the large computer companies I used to work for. I guessed I could add 10 - 20 points to someone's test, but later in that discussion @rcs1000 posted a link showing the improvement could be as much as 30 points.
Here is just one of those techniques: If given a sequence of numbers and you have to find the next number and can't see it simply subtract each number from the next number in the sequence and create a new sequence. Repeat until a pattern appears. This can be done in seconds so doesn't waste time and works nearly all the time for sequences in IQ tests.
There are a few particularly dim pupils in some private schools without entrance exams.
There are no particularly dim pupils in grammar schools
There are you know. I taught several when I was teaching in a grammar.
It was not a good place for them. They found keeping up very, very tough.
By particularly dim we mean below average IQ, as I said there are none in grammar schools
Yet another subject about which you clearly know nothing.
But I'll leave it there.
Sorry but you are just not worth it.
Back to someone more interesting ...
Oh I know nothing because I don't accord to your left liberal ideological agenda, well tough I do not care less
Hyufd, it's not that you know nothing. You do know lots of things. Your knowledge of polling is unrivalled. And invaluable.
But at the same time, you do like to pontificate on subjects you don't know much about, and make mistakes as a result. Which isn't illegal. I can think of many posters who would accuse me of doing much the same, quite possibly starting with you (certainly your banned alter ego Justin would). The issue is that you almost never correct mistakes when they're pointed out to you. Which means, you (a) never learn from them and (b) look absolutely ridiculous as a result of your efforts to warp the facts to fit your misconceptions.
As I said before, I didn't find this anything other than irritating when we knew each other in person and I withdrew from your society as a result. Others found it funny. In fact my flatmate (another Simon) got a sort of bizarre pleasure out of trolling you and would frequently regale me, at great length, with your replies.
What's making matters worse for you at the moment is that as a loyal Tory you are trying to defend the truly indefensible even to start.
Just learn some humility. You might even enjoy yourself more.
Descending from the important questions in the Header to the nakedly partisan - apols - I wonder how a Sunak/Starmer match-up would play to the country? I haven't quite worked myself out a take on this yet. I do probably need to since he looks nailed on if and when 'it' finally happens.
Starmer's only real appeal is that he is the boring-but-competent one against the charismatic but flawed partygate buffoonery of Boris (being generous to Boris there).
Sunak would essentially occupy the same boring-but-competent territory. Which is bad for Starmer.
Except that one has a modicum of working class background and a trusted profession.
The other is the richest person in Parliament and was a banker. Replace the first letter & you have how most people view them.
lawyer who are almost as unloved as bankers.
Utterly untrue as Mike Smithson demonstrated the other day.
IPSOS MORI (One of your two permitted pollsters):
Other professions trusted by more than half of the public include museum curators, the police, lawyers, civil servants, the ordinary man/woman on the street and clergy/priests. Professions with negative net trust ratings include bankers, local councillors, business leaders, professional footballers, estate agents and journalists.
"If Old Labour had bulldozed Eton in the Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss.
"If Old Labour had not bulldozed most of the Grammar schools in the Sixties and Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools I presume
No, everyone. The presence of those from the working class in positions of power helps everyone.
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools
Yep appalling institutions
So appalling they produced the highest number of non privately educated people products in our top professions, yes even judges and lawyers had plenty of grammar school alumni. More so than the number who now come from comprehensives
If you got rid of private schools and grammar schools then 100% of our PMs, people in top professions and judges and lawyers would be from comprehensives. Explain that one.
If you got rid of Waitrose, Marks and Spencer and Sainsburys all their customers would have to shop at Tesco, Aldi or Lidl. Explain that one.
I believe in choice for parents as much as consumers
Let me break it down for you.
1. I don't believe we should abolish existing grammar schools.
2. I don't believe we should abolish private schools.
3. However, if we did, then 100% of our 'elite' would be from comprehensives.
I ask again, explain that one?
If you ban private schools, then the ‘elites’ will send their kids to school abroad - just as the elites of many other countries currently aspire to be able to send their kids to school in the UK.
Only a small minority.
My point is that HY quotes statistics without any appreciation of the other factors at play.
We know that comprehensives are better in rich areas and we know that wealth players a big part in children's prospects, regardless of whether you go to a comprehensive or a grammar school.
Therefore simply saying "ah but X% of our 'elite' went to a grammar school" tells us absolutely nothing about the benefit of grammar schools.
It's just bollocks, as usual.
Your point is you are an ideological leftwing socialist who would deny parents the choice of where to send their children and would nationalise much of industry too given the chance.
Yes indeed comprehensives are better in wealthy areas and the left destroyed the best tools of tackling that for a bright child by abolishing the grammar schools that used to exist in inner cities or ex industrial areas or poor seaside towns. So the only ones left are generally in more prosperous areas with Tory councils where comprehensive schools and academies tend to be better anyway so they are less needed.
So we still have selection in state education, just by house price and vicar's reference, not by IQ
Also, grammar schools do not select by IQ. They select by wealth. Only a fool would try to pretend that wealth does not increase your chances of passing entrance exams by better access to learning materials and private tutors.
No, private schools and the best comprehensive schools select by parental wealth or house price (or church attendance).
Grammar schools select by IQ. If you have a low IQ tutoring will not get you through a grammar school entrance exam, if you have a high IQ you will pass a grammar school entrance exam regardless of tutoring
We have been here before also. Yes it will. You can train for IQ tests unless you are particularly dim. I gave you some examples of stuff you could do last time we had this argument. I could easily raise someone's IQ result with training and I had to administer such test for potential employees for one the large computer companies I used to work for. I guessed I could add 10 - 20 points to someone's test, but later in that discussion @rcs1000 posted a link showing the improvement could be as much as 30 points.
Here is just one of those techniques: If given a sequence of numbers and you have to find the next number and can't see it simply subtract each number from the next number in the sequence and create a new sequence. Repeat until a pattern appears. This can be done in seconds so doesn't waste time and works nearly all the time for sequences in IQ tests.
There are a few particularly dim pupils in some private schools without entrance exams.
There are no particularly dim pupils in grammar schools
There are you know. I taught several when I was teaching in a grammar.
It was not a good place for them. They found keeping up very, very tough.
By particularly dim we mean below average IQ, as I said there are none in grammar schools
Yes, there are. I taught several.
Are you saying your political beliefs trump my practical experience?
One trick incidentally was to get them in not at age 11 but for entry part way through Year 8 or 9, when others had dropped out or moved away. Because grammar schools tend to be less generously funded than other state schools, they are always desperate for money and tended not to mark the exam too harshly.
I can guarantee if you did an IQ test for them, none of those pupils would have an IQ below the national average.
A few might not have had as high an IQ as most of their peers at their grammar school but that is not the same thing
They did. As I proved by, er, testing them. They were below the average across the national cohort.
You are simply wrong. You are basing your views on a system that ceased to exist sixty years ago. If there are vacancies in a school, even a selective school, they take the ones who apply, not the ones who are the brightest.
I'm reminded of that time you lectured @Richard_Tyndall on the requirements to be an engineer.
In what? Every subject. In which case how on earth did they manage to pass an entrance exam to a grammar school if they were below average IQ?
Even if they did that is not an argument against grammar schools, it is an argument for ensuring tougher grammar school entrance exams at every age of entry to it. You cannot just apply to a grammar even at 13 plus, you have to pass an entrance exam and 16+ entry to grammars is generally only given to those getting mainly As and A*s at GCSE ie well above average grades
Hyufd, I did explain that in a post two stages above. Could you at least read what I've written before arguing with me?
Sadly he only has his opinion and that is set in tablets of stone no matter how ridiculous he looks
I have Conservative opinions on most subjects across the board and will anchor them, you are a wishy washy vaguely One Nation Tory but happy to sometimes vote Labour or LD person willing to float with the tide
Mind, Big G does have his principles (misguided as they are). He just won't vote PC despite their fitting with his sentiments on many areas. You on the other hand ...
I have a strong principle I always use every vote I have an once I have voted for all 4 Tory candidates on the ballot paper used up my remaining votes too for the final 2 votes I still had for the 6 councillors to be elected
Not grammar schools again, please. The only place I ever come across nostalgia for grammar schools is on PB. They are the past, not the future. Even the Tory Party has shut up about them (apart from in Epping).
UKIP wanted a "grammar school in every town". No other party is interested. Tells you all you need to know. And why? Because the evidence (educational and social mobility) that they do more harm than good is incontrovertible. Trust me.
Not sure why you'd expect anyone to 'trust you', and this post is a collection of sloppy empty clichés, of which 'they are the past not the future' is the emptiest.
Thanks for the rudeness. I've spent the last forty years working in education and educational policy, much of it on data analysis, at a high level. So while I'm pretty ignorant about much, I think I know about this. And guess what? The Tory party doesn't advocate the return of a tertiary system of secondary education.
I thought you were a civil servant?
Please don't tell me you worked at the DfE or I'll have to hate you.
Not the DfE. Much worse.
Where, then?
What other department could lead to somebody being involved in education for forty years while being a civil servant? An LEA?
I taught and managed in FE for the first 20 years. The rest shall remain a mystery - you can message me if you really want to know.
Fair enough. I won't invade your privacy to that extent.
At least you did teach.
No problem, thanks. Surprised you haven't worked it out. And yes, I taught for 15 years in (state) sixth form and FE colleges before rising up the ranks and then joining the CS.
I've managed 10. Don't think I'll go much further, partly because of the egregious nature of the organisation you have (presumably) just left. Curiously, have been looking at options in the Civil Service myself, although how I would manage that given my disdain for its workforce is a different question.
It's not nessecarily a problem. I have had a long and successful career in a teaching hospital despite not liking doctors, being a therapeutic nihilist and considering modern educational theory wrong.
So taking your example, if I sit on a teams meeting and suddenly burst out with 'you're all ignorant, stupid ****s' there will be no problem?
Dom Cummings made a reasonable career out of it for a while.
Descending from the important questions in the Header to the nakedly partisan - apols - I wonder how a Sunak/Starmer match-up would play to the country? I haven't quite worked myself out a take on this yet. I do probably need to since he looks nailed on if and when 'it' finally happens.
Starmer's only real appeal is that he is the boring-but-competent one against the charismatic but flawed partygate buffoonery of Boris (being generous to Boris there).
Sunak would essentially occupy the same boring-but-competent territory. Which is bad for Starmer.
Except that one has a modicum of working class background and a trusted profession.
The other is the richest person in Parliament and was a banker. Replace the first letter & you have how most people view them.
lawyer who are almost as unloved as bankers.
Utterly untrue as Mike Smithson demonstrated the other day.
IPSOS MORI (One of your two permitted pollsters):
Other professions trusted by more than half of the public include museum curators, the police, lawyers, civil servants, the ordinary man/woman on the street and clergy/priests. Professions with negative net trust ratings include bankers, local councillors, business leaders, professional footballers, estate agents and journalists.
"If Old Labour had bulldozed Eton in the Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss.
"If Old Labour had not bulldozed most of the Grammar schools in the Sixties and Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools I presume
No, everyone. The presence of those from the working class in positions of power helps everyone.
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools
Yep appalling institutions
So appalling they produced the highest number of non privately educated people products in our top professions, yes even judges and lawyers had plenty of grammar school alumni. More so than the number who now come from comprehensives
If you got rid of private schools and grammar schools then 100% of our PMs, people in top professions and judges and lawyers would be from comprehensives. Explain that one.
If you got rid of Waitrose, Marks and Spencer and Sainsburys all their customers would have to shop at Tesco, Aldi or Lidl. Explain that one.
I believe in choice for parents as much as consumers
Let me break it down for you.
1. I don't believe we should abolish existing grammar schools.
2. I don't believe we should abolish private schools.
3. However, if we did, then 100% of our 'elite' would be from comprehensives.
I ask again, explain that one?
If you ban private schools, then the ‘elites’ will send their kids to school abroad - just as the elites of many other countries currently aspire to be able to send their kids to school in the UK.
Only a small minority.
My point is that HY quotes statistics without any appreciation of the other factors at play.
We know that comprehensives are better in rich areas and we know that wealth players a big part in children's prospects, regardless of whether you go to a comprehensive or a grammar school.
Therefore simply saying "ah but X% of our 'elite' went to a grammar school" tells us absolutely nothing about the benefit of grammar schools.
It's just bollocks, as usual.
Your point is you are an ideological leftwing socialist who would deny parents the choice of where to send their children and would nationalise much of industry too given the chance.
Yes indeed comprehensives are better in wealthy areas and the left destroyed the best tools of tackling that for a bright child by abolishing the grammar schools that used to exist in inner cities or ex industrial areas or poor seaside towns. So the only ones left are generally in more prosperous areas with Tory councils where comprehensive schools and academies tend to be better anyway so they are less needed.
So we still have selection in state education, just by house price and vicar's reference, not by IQ
Also, grammar schools do not select by IQ. They select by wealth. Only a fool would try to pretend that wealth does not increase your chances of passing entrance exams by better access to learning materials and private tutors.
No, private schools and the best comprehensive schools select by parental wealth or house price (or church attendance).
Grammar schools select by IQ. If you have a low IQ tutoring will not get you through a grammar school entrance exam, if you have a high IQ you will pass a grammar school entrance exam regardless of tutoring
We have been here before also. Yes it will. You can train for IQ tests unless you are particularly dim. I gave you some examples of stuff you could do last time we had this argument. I could easily raise someone's IQ result with training and I had to administer such test for potential employees for one the large computer companies I used to work for. I guessed I could add 10 - 20 points to someone's test, but later in that discussion @rcs1000 posted a link showing the improvement could be as much as 30 points.
Here is just one of those techniques: If given a sequence of numbers and you have to find the next number and can't see it simply subtract each number from the next number in the sequence and create a new sequence. Repeat until a pattern appears. This can be done in seconds so doesn't waste time and works nearly all the time for sequences in IQ tests.
There are a few particularly dim pupils in some private schools without entrance exams.
There are no particularly dim pupils in grammar schools
Thankfully I have missed most of your new nonsensical grammar school mumblings.
At the Grammar School I went to in the late 1970s there were two streams in each year. Bear in mind everyone passed the 11 plus (except me, I arrived aged 14). There was the A stream of clever kids and the B stream of what some teachers referred to as "less able" students. The 100% pass rate in optional subjects like chemistry was retained by weeding out those who might fail at 14 and the remainder who might fail at some stage before O level.
Stop talking nonsense!
Hm, but my incination would be to side with HYUFD here. I don't know EVERY child at grammar schools. But my daughter's experience at a grammar school in Trafford would tend to suggest that the very broad statement that 'there are no particularly dim pupils in grammar schools' is not obviously incorrect. In my very, very limited, but current, experience - there just aren't. I can't deny the possibility that there are some in either her school or the many other grammar schools in the country that I am not aware of.
I can only speak from my own experience, albeit a long, long time ago. I went to a great Comprehensive and a Grammar School I hated. All the A stream I daresay loved it. In the B stream most (but not all) of us hated it.
I suspect if your offspring failed the 11 plus you might be less. impressed.
@ydoethur I know a few former teachers who went on to have successful careers in town planning. One former colleague quit a job as head of geography when he was in his late 30's and took on an entry level role in planning, 13 years later he has just been made a partner in a big law firm. Its pretty easy if you can just keep your head down working in a Council for a few years in a junior role whilst getting started. You do have to put up with a lot of shit and ever changing government regulations but I doubt it is as bad as working in a school.
Descending from the important questions in the Header to the nakedly partisan - apols - I wonder how a Sunak/Starmer match-up would play to the country? I haven't quite worked myself out a take on this yet. I do probably need to since he looks nailed on if and when 'it' finally happens.
Starmer's only real appeal is that he is the boring-but-competent one against the charismatic but flawed partygate buffoonery of Boris (being generous to Boris there).
Sunak would essentially occupy the same boring-but-competent territory. Which is bad for Starmer.
Except that one has a modicum of working class background and a trusted profession.
The other is the richest person in Parliament and was a banker. Replace the first letter & you have how most people view them.
lawyer who are almost as unloved as bankers.
Utterly untrue as Mike Smithson demonstrated the other day.
IPSOS MORI (One of your two permitted pollsters):
Other professions trusted by more than half of the public include museum curators, the police, lawyers, civil servants, the ordinary man/woman on the street and clergy/priests. Professions with negative net trust ratings include bankers, local councillors, business leaders, professional footballers, estate agents and journalists.
"If Old Labour had bulldozed Eton in the Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss.
"If Old Labour had not bulldozed most of the Grammar schools in the Sixties and Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools I presume
No, everyone. The presence of those from the working class in positions of power helps everyone.
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools
Yep appalling institutions
So appalling they produced the highest number of non privately educated people products in our top professions, yes even judges and lawyers had plenty of grammar school alumni. More so than the number who now come from comprehensives
If you got rid of private schools and grammar schools then 100% of our PMs, people in top professions and judges and lawyers would be from comprehensives. Explain that one.
If you got rid of Waitrose, Marks and Spencer and Sainsburys all their customers would have to shop at Tesco, Aldi or Lidl. Explain that one.
I believe in choice for parents as much as consumers
Let me break it down for you.
1. I don't believe we should abolish existing grammar schools.
2. I don't believe we should abolish private schools.
3. However, if we did, then 100% of our 'elite' would be from comprehensives.
I ask again, explain that one?
If you ban private schools, then the ‘elites’ will send their kids to school abroad - just as the elites of many other countries currently aspire to be able to send their kids to school in the UK.
Only a small minority.
My point is that HY quotes statistics without any appreciation of the other factors at play.
We know that comprehensives are better in rich areas and we know that wealth players a big part in children's prospects, regardless of whether you go to a comprehensive or a grammar school.
Therefore simply saying "ah but X% of our 'elite' went to a grammar school" tells us absolutely nothing about the benefit of grammar schools.
It's just bollocks, as usual.
Your point is you are an ideological leftwing socialist who would deny parents the choice of where to send their children and would nationalise much of industry too given the chance.
Yes indeed comprehensives are better in wealthy areas and the left destroyed the best tools of tackling that for a bright child by abolishing the grammar schools that used to exist in inner cities or ex industrial areas or poor seaside towns. So the only ones left are generally in more prosperous areas with Tory councils where comprehensive schools and academies tend to be better anyway so they are less needed.
So we still have selection in state education, just by house price and vicar's reference, not by IQ
Also, grammar schools do not select by IQ. They select by wealth. Only a fool would try to pretend that wealth does not increase your chances of passing entrance exams by better access to learning materials and private tutors.
No, private schools and the best comprehensive schools select by parental wealth or house price (or church attendance).
Grammar schools select by IQ. If you have a low IQ tutoring will not get you through a grammar school entrance exam, if you have a high IQ you will pass a grammar school entrance exam regardless of tutoring
We have been here before also. Yes it will. You can train for IQ tests unless you are particularly dim. I gave you some examples of stuff you could do last time we had this argument. I could easily raise someone's IQ result with training and I had to administer such test for potential employees for one the large computer companies I used to work for. I guessed I could add 10 - 20 points to someone's test, but later in that discussion @rcs1000 posted a link showing the improvement could be as much as 30 points.
Here is just one of those techniques: If given a sequence of numbers and you have to find the next number and can't see it simply subtract each number from the next number in the sequence and create a new sequence. Repeat until a pattern appears. This can be done in seconds so doesn't waste time and works nearly all the time for sequences in IQ tests.
There are a few particularly dim pupils in some private schools without entrance exams.
There are no particularly dim pupils in grammar schools
There are you know. I taught several when I was teaching in a grammar.
It was not a good place for them. They found keeping up very, very tough.
By particularly dim we mean below average IQ, as I said there are none in grammar schools
Yes, there are. I taught several.
Are you saying your political beliefs trump my practical experience?
One trick incidentally was to get them in not at age 11 but for entry part way through Year 8 or 9, when others had dropped out or moved away. Because grammar schools tend to be less generously funded than other state schools, they are always desperate for money and tended not to mark the exam too harshly.
I can guarantee if you did an IQ test for them, none of those pupils would have an IQ below the national average.
A few might not have had as high an IQ as most of their peers at their grammar school but that is not the same thing
So you are disputing you can train for an IQ test even after the evidence I and @rcs1000 provided to you previously. Previously I gave you a whole lot of techniques and @rcs1000 gave you a link to evidence of such. I could easily raise the IQ score of someone who has never taken a test from 100 to 110 or 120.
We are talking people below 100 IQ.
If a few people of 100 IQ ie average, get tutored to the nth degree to scrape into a grammar it will still not stop someone with a 130+IQ easily passing the entrance exam even without a single tutorial session
Yes, but bell curve statistics apply. Far fewer people of IQ130 than IQ100, so plenty of scope for moneyed parents aka Tory voters to fiddle the system.
Descending from the important questions in the Header to the nakedly partisan - apols - I wonder how a Sunak/Starmer match-up would play to the country? I haven't quite worked myself out a take on this yet. I do probably need to since he looks nailed on if and when 'it' finally happens.
Starmer's only real appeal is that he is the boring-but-competent one against the charismatic but flawed partygate buffoonery of Boris (being generous to Boris there).
Sunak would essentially occupy the same boring-but-competent territory. Which is bad for Starmer.
Except that one has a modicum of working class background and a trusted profession.
The other is the richest person in Parliament and was a banker. Replace the first letter & you have how most people view them.
lawyer who are almost as unloved as bankers.
Utterly untrue as Mike Smithson demonstrated the other day.
IPSOS MORI (One of your two permitted pollsters):
Other professions trusted by more than half of the public include museum curators, the police, lawyers, civil servants, the ordinary man/woman on the street and clergy/priests. Professions with negative net trust ratings include bankers, local councillors, business leaders, professional footballers, estate agents and journalists.
"If Old Labour had bulldozed Eton in the Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss.
"If Old Labour had not bulldozed most of the Grammar schools in the Sixties and Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools I presume
No, everyone. The presence of those from the working class in positions of power helps everyone.
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools
Yep appalling institutions
So appalling they produced the highest number of non privately educated people products in our top professions, yes even judges and lawyers had plenty of grammar school alumni. More so than the number who now come from comprehensives
If you got rid of private schools and grammar schools then 100% of our PMs, people in top professions and judges and lawyers would be from comprehensives. Explain that one.
If you got rid of Waitrose, Marks and Spencer and Sainsburys all their customers would have to shop at Tesco, Aldi or Lidl. Explain that one.
I believe in choice for parents as much as consumers
Let me break it down for you.
1. I don't believe we should abolish existing grammar schools.
2. I don't believe we should abolish private schools.
3. However, if we did, then 100% of our 'elite' would be from comprehensives.
I ask again, explain that one?
If you ban private schools, then the ‘elites’ will send their kids to school abroad - just as the elites of many other countries currently aspire to be able to send their kids to school in the UK.
Only a small minority.
My point is that HY quotes statistics without any appreciation of the other factors at play.
We know that comprehensives are better in rich areas and we know that wealth players a big part in children's prospects, regardless of whether you go to a comprehensive or a grammar school.
Therefore simply saying "ah but X% of our 'elite' went to a grammar school" tells us absolutely nothing about the benefit of grammar schools.
It's just bollocks, as usual.
Your point is you are an ideological leftwing socialist who would deny parents the choice of where to send their children and would nationalise much of industry too given the chance.
Yes indeed comprehensives are better in wealthy areas and the left destroyed the best tools of tackling that for a bright child by abolishing the grammar schools that used to exist in inner cities or ex industrial areas or poor seaside towns. So the only ones left are generally in more prosperous areas with Tory councils where comprehensive schools and academies tend to be better anyway so they are less needed.
So we still have selection in state education, just by house price and vicar's reference, not by IQ
Also, grammar schools do not select by IQ. They select by wealth. Only a fool would try to pretend that wealth does not increase your chances of passing entrance exams by better access to learning materials and private tutors.
No, private schools and the best comprehensive schools select by parental wealth or house price (or church attendance).
Grammar schools select by IQ. If you have a low IQ tutoring will not get you through a grammar school entrance exam, if you have a high IQ you will pass a grammar school entrance exam regardless of tutoring
We have been here before also. Yes it will. You can train for IQ tests unless you are particularly dim. I gave you some examples of stuff you could do last time we had this argument. I could easily raise someone's IQ result with training and I had to administer such test for potential employees for one the large computer companies I used to work for. I guessed I could add 10 - 20 points to someone's test, but later in that discussion @rcs1000 posted a link showing the improvement could be as much as 30 points.
Here is just one of those techniques: If given a sequence of numbers and you have to find the next number and can't see it simply subtract each number from the next number in the sequence and create a new sequence. Repeat until a pattern appears. This can be done in seconds so doesn't waste time and works nearly all the time for sequences in IQ tests.
There are a few particularly dim pupils in some private schools without entrance exams.
There are no particularly dim pupils in grammar schools
There are you know. I taught several when I was teaching in a grammar.
It was not a good place for them. They found keeping up very, very tough.
By particularly dim we mean below average IQ, as I said there are none in grammar schools
Yes, there are. I taught several.
Are you saying your political beliefs trump my practical experience?
One trick incidentally was to get them in not at age 11 but for entry part way through Year 8 or 9, when others had dropped out or moved away. Because grammar schools tend to be less generously funded than other state schools, they are always desperate for money and tended not to mark the exam too harshly.
I can guarantee if you did an IQ test for them, none of those pupils would have an IQ below the national average.
A few might not have had as high an IQ as most of their peers at their grammar school but that is not the same thing
So you are disputing you can train for an IQ test even after the evidence I and @rcs1000 provided to you previously. Previously I gave you a whole lot of techniques and @rcs1000 gave you a link to evidence of such. I could easily raise the IQ score of someone who has never taken a test from 100 to 110 or 120.
We are talking people below 100 IQ.
If a few people of 100 IQ ie average, get tutored to the nth degree to scrape into a grammar it will still not stop someone with a 130+IQ easily passing the entrance exam even without a single tutorial session
Pedentry. Ok get a score of 95 to over 100.
The point is contrary to what you said wealthy people can tutor their children to get higher scores which poor parents don't. You denied this.
When I transferred from a Secondary to a Grammar there was a huge drop out of Grammar school kids who flopped their O levels.
"If Old Labour had bulldozed Eton in the Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss.
Clem bottled it.
In truth, I'm not a radical - I'm no more in favour of outlawing private schooling as I am scrapping private healthcare - but when one contemplates the calamitous careers of Johnson and Cameron it does give one pause for thought as to whether slipping a few extra aces into the hands of entitled chancers from the serried ranks of England's imbecilic upper class is really such a good idea...
I particularly enjoyed this description of Eton:
"A sort of Hogwarts for wankers where you get taught Latin and tax avoidance whilst wearing full evening dress" is the moment where this went from good to [expletive] great."
@ydoethur I know a few former teachers who went on to have successful careers in town planning. One former colleague quit a job as head of geography when he was in his late 30's and took on an entry level role in planning, 13 years later he has just been made a partner in a big law firm. Its pretty easy if you can just keep your head down working in a Council for a few years in a junior role whilst getting started. You do have to put up with a lot of shit and ever changing government regulations but I doubt it is as bad as working in a school.
Thank you for the suggestion. There's certainly going to be a lot of work in that over the next few years and it is a job I might enjoy. I will have a look into it.
Not grammar schools again, please. The only place I ever come across nostalgia for grammar schools is on PB. They are the past, not the future. Even the Tory Party has shut up about them (apart from in Epping).
UKIP wanted a "grammar school in every town". No other party is interested. Tells you all you need to know. And why? Because the evidence (educational and social mobility) that they do more harm than good is incontrovertible. Trust me.
Not sure why you'd expect anyone to 'trust you', and this post is a collection of sloppy empty clichés, of which 'they are the past not the future' is the emptiest.
Thanks for the rudeness. I've spent the last forty years working in education and educational policy, much of it on data analysis, at a high level. So while I'm pretty ignorant about much, I think I know about this. And guess what? The Tory party doesn't advocate the return of a tertiary system of secondary education.
Any time. I am sure that you have a great deal of knowledge on the subject, but you claimed 'incontrevertible evidence' that grammar schools have done more harm than good. If you have such evidence, why not present it?
Disadvantaged kids do worse in Kent than elsewhere in England, because they end up going to Secondary Moderns, and it's blooming hard to make Secondary Modern Schools work.
Ignoring Trafford, Bucks etc which are fully selective and have above average GCSE results across the board, including in their high schools
But that's because of the social composition of Bucks and Trafford, not because they have grammar schools. Their primary schools do very well, before selection at 11. Guess why? Social class.
Not grammar schools again, please. The only place I ever come across nostalgia for grammar schools is on PB. They are the past, not the future. Even the Tory Party has shut up about them (apart from in Epping).
UKIP wanted a "grammar school in every town". No other party is interested. Tells you all you need to know. And why? Because the evidence (educational and social mobility) that they do more harm than good is incontrovertible. Trust me.
Not sure why you'd expect anyone to 'trust you', and this post is a collection of sloppy empty clichés, of which 'they are the past not the future' is the emptiest.
Thanks for the rudeness. I've spent the last forty years working in education and educational policy, much of it on data analysis, at a high level. So while I'm pretty ignorant about much, I think I know about this. And guess what? The Tory party doesn't advocate the return of a tertiary system of secondary education.
Any time. I am sure that you have a great deal of knowledge on the subject, but you claimed 'incontrevertible evidence' that grammar schools have done more harm than good. If you have such evidence, why not present it?
The problem with grammar schools is not the grammar schools. Grammar schools, by and large, do a great job of educating kids. The 25% of kids who get into grammar schools do better than the top 25% of kids in comprehensives.
The problem is that the educational outcomes of the people who end up at the secondary moderns is significantly worse than if they had been to comprehensive schools.
And I would argue that the educational system in the UK's big problem for a very long time has been a lack of focus on the 75% of kids who probably shouldn't be going to university. It's ensuring - as they do in Switzerland or Germany - that they get the right skills to succeed.
The grammar discussion is the wrong one. It's a myopic focus on kids who are mostly going to do fine anyway. When the people we should worrying about aren't the people getting good GCSEs and A-Levels.
Descending from the important questions in the Header to the nakedly partisan - apols - I wonder how a Sunak/Starmer match-up would play to the country? I haven't quite worked myself out a take on this yet. I do probably need to since he looks nailed on if and when 'it' finally happens.
Starmer's only real appeal is that he is the boring-but-competent one against the charismatic but flawed partygate buffoonery of Boris (being generous to Boris there).
Sunak would essentially occupy the same boring-but-competent territory. Which is bad for Starmer.
Except that one has a modicum of working class background and a trusted profession.
The other is the richest person in Parliament and was a banker. Replace the first letter & you have how most people view them.
lawyer who are almost as unloved as bankers.
Utterly untrue as Mike Smithson demonstrated the other day.
IPSOS MORI (One of your two permitted pollsters):
Other professions trusted by more than half of the public include museum curators, the police, lawyers, civil servants, the ordinary man/woman on the street and clergy/priests. Professions with negative net trust ratings include bankers, local councillors, business leaders, professional footballers, estate agents and journalists.
"If Old Labour had bulldozed Eton in the Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss.
"If Old Labour had not bulldozed most of the Grammar schools in the Sixties and Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools I presume
No, everyone. The presence of those from the working class in positions of power helps everyone.
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools
Yep appalling institutions
So appalling they produced the highest number of non privately educated people products in our top professions, yes even judges and lawyers had plenty of grammar school alumni. More so than the number who now come from comprehensives
If you got rid of private schools and grammar schools then 100% of our PMs, people in top professions and judges and lawyers would be from comprehensives. Explain that one.
If you got rid of Waitrose, Marks and Spencer and Sainsburys all their customers would have to shop at Tesco, Aldi or Lidl. Explain that one.
I believe in choice for parents as much as consumers
Let me break it down for you.
1. I don't believe we should abolish existing grammar schools.
2. I don't believe we should abolish private schools.
3. However, if we did, then 100% of our 'elite' would be from comprehensives.
I ask again, explain that one?
If you ban private schools, then the ‘elites’ will send their kids to school abroad - just as the elites of many other countries currently aspire to be able to send their kids to school in the UK.
Only a small minority.
My point is that HY quotes statistics without any appreciation of the other factors at play.
We know that comprehensives are better in rich areas and we know that wealth players a big part in children's prospects, regardless of whether you go to a comprehensive or a grammar school.
Therefore simply saying "ah but X% of our 'elite' went to a grammar school" tells us absolutely nothing about the benefit of grammar schools.
It's just bollocks, as usual.
Your point is you are an ideological leftwing socialist who would deny parents the choice of where to send their children and would nationalise much of industry too given the chance.
Yes indeed comprehensives are better in wealthy areas and the left destroyed the best tools of tackling that for a bright child by abolishing the grammar schools that used to exist in inner cities or ex industrial areas or poor seaside towns. So the only ones left are generally in more prosperous areas with Tory councils where comprehensive schools and academies tend to be better anyway so they are less needed.
So we still have selection in state education, just by house price and vicar's reference, not by IQ
Also, grammar schools do not select by IQ. They select by wealth. Only a fool would try to pretend that wealth does not increase your chances of passing entrance exams by better access to learning materials and private tutors.
No, private schools and the best comprehensive schools select by parental wealth or house price (or church attendance).
Grammar schools select by IQ. If you have a low IQ tutoring will not get you through a grammar school entrance exam, if you have a high IQ you will pass a grammar school entrance exam regardless of tutoring
We have been here before also. Yes it will. You can train for IQ tests unless you are particularly dim. I gave you some examples of stuff you could do last time we had this argument. I could easily raise someone's IQ result with training and I had to administer such test for potential employees for one the large computer companies I used to work for. I guessed I could add 10 - 20 points to someone's test, but later in that discussion @rcs1000 posted a link showing the improvement could be as much as 30 points.
Here is just one of those techniques: If given a sequence of numbers and you have to find the next number and can't see it simply subtract each number from the next number in the sequence and create a new sequence. Repeat until a pattern appears. This can be done in seconds so doesn't waste time and works nearly all the time for sequences in IQ tests.
There are a few particularly dim pupils in some private schools without entrance exams.
There are no particularly dim pupils in grammar schools
There are you know. I taught several when I was teaching in a grammar.
It was not a good place for them. They found keeping up very, very tough.
By particularly dim we mean below average IQ, as I said there are none in grammar schools
Yet another subject about which you clearly know nothing.
But I'll leave it there.
Sorry but you are just not worth it.
Back to someone more interesting ...
Oh I know nothing because I don't accord to your left liberal ideological agenda, well tough I do not care less
Hyufd, it's not that you know nothing. You do know lots of things. Your knowledge of polling is unrivalled. And invaluable.
But at the same time, you do like to pontificate on subjects you don't know much about, and make mistakes as a result. Which isn't illegal. I can think of many posters who would accuse me of doing much the same, quite possibly starting with you (certainly your banned alter ego Justin would). The issue is that you almost never correct mistakes when they're pointed out to you. Which means, you (a) never learn from them and (b) look absolutely ridiculous as a result of your efforts to warp the facts to fit your misconceptions.
As I said before, I didn't find this anything other than irritating when we knew each other in person and I withdrew from your society as a result. Others found it funny. In fact my flatmate (another Simon) got a sort of bizarre pleasure out of trolling you and would frequently regale me, at great length, with your replies.
What's making matters worse for you at the moment is that as a loyal Tory you are trying to defend the truly indefensible even to start.
Just learn some humility. You might even enjoy yourself more.
Except normally humility is a cue for accept the left liberal consensus on x issue, here grammar schools it may be something else because we have extracted one data point we will use to push our point of view.
Which I will not do.
I cannot work out precisely what society you are talking about, I was involved in hiking at Aberystwyth and was a member of the Conservative Society but never its chairman or even on its committee (although I was chairman of the Conservative group when I was at Warwick)
Not grammar schools again, please. The only place I ever come across nostalgia for grammar schools is on PB. They are the past, not the future. Even the Tory Party has shut up about them (apart from in Epping).
UKIP wanted a "grammar school in every town". No other party is interested. Tells you all you need to know. And why? Because the evidence (educational and social mobility) that they do more harm than good is incontrovertible. Trust me.
Not sure why you'd expect anyone to 'trust you', and this post is a collection of sloppy empty clichés, of which 'they are the past not the future' is the emptiest.
Thanks for the rudeness. I've spent the last forty years working in education and educational policy, much of it on data analysis, at a high level. So while I'm pretty ignorant about much, I think I know about this. And guess what? The Tory party doesn't advocate the return of a tertiary system of secondary education.
I thought you were a civil servant?
Please don't tell me you worked at the DfE or I'll have to hate you.
Not the DfE. Much worse.
Where, then?
What other department could lead to somebody being involved in education for forty years while being a civil servant? An LEA?
I taught and managed in FE for the first 20 years. The rest shall remain a mystery - you can message me if you really want to know.
Fair enough. I won't invade your privacy to that extent.
At least you did teach.
No problem, thanks. Surprised you haven't worked it out. And yes, I taught for 15 years in (state) sixth form and FE colleges before rising up the ranks and then joining the CS.
I've managed 10. Don't think I'll go much further, partly because of the egregious nature of the organisation you have (presumably) just left. Curiously, have been looking at options in the Civil Service myself, although how I would manage that given my disdain for its workforce is a different question.
It's not nessecarily a problem. I have had a long and successful career in a teaching hospital despite not liking doctors, being a therapeutic nihilist and considering modern educational theory wrong.
So taking your example, if I sit on a teams meeting and suddenly burst out with 'you're all ignorant, stupid ****s' there will be no problem?
I have managed it by just ignoring things that I don't like, and getting on with it.
No one argues with your methods when they produce results. It's when they fail to and you are a maverick that you get slaughtered.
Not grammar schools again, please. The only place I ever come across nostalgia for grammar schools is on PB. They are the past, not the future. Even the Tory Party has shut up about them (apart from in Epping).
UKIP wanted a "grammar school in every town". No other party is interested. Tells you all you need to know. And why? Because the evidence (educational and social mobility) that they do more harm than good is incontrovertible. Trust me.
Not sure why you'd expect anyone to 'trust you', and this post is a collection of sloppy empty clichés, of which 'they are the past not the future' is the emptiest.
Thanks for the rudeness. I've spent the last forty years working in education and educational policy, much of it on data analysis, at a high level. So while I'm pretty ignorant about much, I think I know about this. And guess what? The Tory party doesn't advocate the return of a tertiary system of secondary education.
Any time. I am sure that you have a great deal of knowledge on the subject, but you claimed 'incontrevertible evidence' that grammar schools have done more harm than good. If you have such evidence, why not present it?
Disadvantaged kids do worse in Kent than elsewhere in England, because they end up going to Secondary Moderns, and it's blooming hard to make Secondary Modern Schools work.
Ignoring Trafford, Bucks etc which are fully selective and have above average GCSE results across the board, including in their high schools
I'm agnostic on grammar schools. Grammar school suits my oldest daughter very well, but I'm not sure whether my middle or youngest daughter will get in, nor whether they should get in. If I knew then what I know now, would I choose to settle in a selective authority before I had kids? I honestly don't know.
But Trafford has undeniably good schools of all stripes.
I put this down to 'giving a shit about education' - back in the 80s, when the rest of GM was run by councils who had not only abolished grammar schools but viewed any sort of academic success - or indeed success of any sort - with at best great suspicion, Trafford had a culture of educating its children - both at the grammars and non-grammars. Not every school was excellent. But in most of GM it was a struggle to find a school which appeared to believe in education at all.
Trafford's grammar schools are a hangover of its culture of valuing education.
Descending from the important questions in the Header to the nakedly partisan - apols - I wonder how a Sunak/Starmer match-up would play to the country? I haven't quite worked myself out a take on this yet. I do probably need to since he looks nailed on if and when 'it' finally happens.
Starmer's only real appeal is that he is the boring-but-competent one against the charismatic but flawed partygate buffoonery of Boris (being generous to Boris there).
Sunak would essentially occupy the same boring-but-competent territory. Which is bad for Starmer.
Except that one has a modicum of working class background and a trusted profession.
The other is the richest person in Parliament and was a banker. Replace the first letter & you have how most people view them.
lawyer who are almost as unloved as bankers.
Utterly untrue as Mike Smithson demonstrated the other day.
IPSOS MORI (One of your two permitted pollsters):
Other professions trusted by more than half of the public include museum curators, the police, lawyers, civil servants, the ordinary man/woman on the street and clergy/priests. Professions with negative net trust ratings include bankers, local councillors, business leaders, professional footballers, estate agents and journalists.
"If Old Labour had bulldozed Eton in the Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss.
"If Old Labour had not bulldozed most of the Grammar schools in the Sixties and Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools I presume
No, everyone. The presence of those from the working class in positions of power helps everyone.
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools
Yep appalling institutions
So appalling they produced the highest number of non privately educated people products in our top professions, yes even judges and lawyers had plenty of grammar school alumni. More so than the number who now come from comprehensives
If you got rid of private schools and grammar schools then 100% of our PMs, people in top professions and judges and lawyers would be from comprehensives. Explain that one.
If you got rid of Waitrose, Marks and Spencer and Sainsburys all their customers would have to shop at Tesco, Aldi or Lidl. Explain that one.
I believe in choice for parents as much as consumers
Let me break it down for you.
1. I don't believe we should abolish existing grammar schools.
2. I don't believe we should abolish private schools.
3. However, if we did, then 100% of our 'elite' would be from comprehensives.
I ask again, explain that one?
If you ban private schools, then the ‘elites’ will send their kids to school abroad - just as the elites of many other countries currently aspire to be able to send their kids to school in the UK.
Only a small minority.
My point is that HY quotes statistics without any appreciation of the other factors at play.
We know that comprehensives are better in rich areas and we know that wealth players a big part in children's prospects, regardless of whether you go to a comprehensive or a grammar school.
Therefore simply saying "ah but X% of our 'elite' went to a grammar school" tells us absolutely nothing about the benefit of grammar schools.
It's just bollocks, as usual.
Your point is you are an ideological leftwing socialist who would deny parents the choice of where to send their children and would nationalise much of industry too given the chance.
Yes indeed comprehensives are better in wealthy areas and the left destroyed the best tools of tackling that for a bright child by abolishing the grammar schools that used to exist in inner cities or ex industrial areas or poor seaside towns. So the only ones left are generally in more prosperous areas with Tory councils where comprehensive schools and academies tend to be better anyway so they are less needed.
So we still have selection in state education, just by house price and vicar's reference, not by IQ
Also, grammar schools do not select by IQ. They select by wealth. Only a fool would try to pretend that wealth does not increase your chances of passing entrance exams by better access to learning materials and private tutors.
No, private schools and the best comprehensive schools select by parental wealth or house price (or church attendance).
Grammar schools select by IQ. If you have a low IQ tutoring will not get you through a grammar school entrance exam, if you have a high IQ you will pass a grammar school entrance exam regardless of tutoring
We have been here before also. Yes it will. You can train for IQ tests unless you are particularly dim. I gave you some examples of stuff you could do last time we had this argument. I could easily raise someone's IQ result with training and I had to administer such test for potential employees for one the large computer companies I used to work for. I guessed I could add 10 - 20 points to someone's test, but later in that discussion @rcs1000 posted a link showing the improvement could be as much as 30 points.
Here is just one of those techniques: If given a sequence of numbers and you have to find the next number and can't see it simply subtract each number from the next number in the sequence and create a new sequence. Repeat until a pattern appears. This can be done in seconds so doesn't waste time and works nearly all the time for sequences in IQ tests.
There are a few particularly dim pupils in some private schools without entrance exams.
There are no particularly dim pupils in grammar schools
Thankfully I have missed most of your new nonsensical grammar school mumblings.
At the Grammar School I went to in the late 1970s there were two streams in each year. Bear in mind everyone passed the 11 plus (except me, I arrived aged 14). There was the A stream of clever kids and the B stream of what some teachers referred to as "less able" students. The 100% pass rate in optional subjects like chemistry was retained by weeding out those who might fail at 14 and the remainder who might fail at some stage before O level.
Stop talking nonsense!
Hm, but my incination would be to side with HYUFD here. I don't know EVERY child at grammar schools. But my daughter's experience at a grammar school in Trafford would tend to suggest that the very broad statement that 'there are no particularly dim pupils in grammar schools' is not obviously incorrect. In my very, very limited, but current, experience - there just aren't. I can't deny the possibility that there are some in either her school or the many other grammar schools in the country that I am not aware of.
As I said earlier, grammar schools of the 70s are very different to grammar schools now.
Descending from the important questions in the Header to the nakedly partisan - apols - I wonder how a Sunak/Starmer match-up would play to the country? I haven't quite worked myself out a take on this yet. I do probably need to since he looks nailed on if and when 'it' finally happens.
Starmer's only real appeal is that he is the boring-but-competent one against the charismatic but flawed partygate buffoonery of Boris (being generous to Boris there).
Sunak would essentially occupy the same boring-but-competent territory. Which is bad for Starmer.
Except that one has a modicum of working class background and a trusted profession.
The other is the richest person in Parliament and was a banker. Replace the first letter & you have how most people view them.
lawyer who are almost as unloved as bankers.
Utterly untrue as Mike Smithson demonstrated the other day.
IPSOS MORI (One of your two permitted pollsters):
Other professions trusted by more than half of the public include museum curators, the police, lawyers, civil servants, the ordinary man/woman on the street and clergy/priests. Professions with negative net trust ratings include bankers, local councillors, business leaders, professional footballers, estate agents and journalists.
"If Old Labour had bulldozed Eton in the Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss.
"If Old Labour had not bulldozed most of the Grammar schools in the Sixties and Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools I presume
No, everyone. The presence of those from the working class in positions of power helps everyone.
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools
Yep appalling institutions
So appalling they produced the highest number of non privately educated people products in our top professions, yes even judges and lawyers had plenty of grammar school alumni. More so than the number who now come from comprehensives
If you got rid of private schools and grammar schools then 100% of our PMs, people in top professions and judges and lawyers would be from comprehensives. Explain that one.
If you got rid of Waitrose, Marks and Spencer and Sainsburys all their customers would have to shop at Tesco, Aldi or Lidl. Explain that one.
I believe in choice for parents as much as consumers
Let me break it down for you.
1. I don't believe we should abolish existing grammar schools.
2. I don't believe we should abolish private schools.
3. However, if we did, then 100% of our 'elite' would be from comprehensives.
I ask again, explain that one?
If you ban private schools, then the ‘elites’ will send their kids to school abroad - just as the elites of many other countries currently aspire to be able to send their kids to school in the UK.
Only a small minority.
My point is that HY quotes statistics without any appreciation of the other factors at play.
We know that comprehensives are better in rich areas and we know that wealth players a big part in children's prospects, regardless of whether you go to a comprehensive or a grammar school.
Therefore simply saying "ah but X% of our 'elite' went to a grammar school" tells us absolutely nothing about the benefit of grammar schools.
It's just bollocks, as usual.
Your point is you are an ideological leftwing socialist who would deny parents the choice of where to send their children and would nationalise much of industry too given the chance.
Yes indeed comprehensives are better in wealthy areas and the left destroyed the best tools of tackling that for a bright child by abolishing the grammar schools that used to exist in inner cities or ex industrial areas or poor seaside towns. So the only ones left are generally in more prosperous areas with Tory councils where comprehensive schools and academies tend to be better anyway so they are less needed.
So we still have selection in state education, just by house price and vicar's reference, not by IQ
Also, grammar schools do not select by IQ. They select by wealth. Only a fool would try to pretend that wealth does not increase your chances of passing entrance exams by better access to learning materials and private tutors.
No, private schools and the best comprehensive schools select by parental wealth or house price (or church attendance).
Grammar schools select by IQ. If you have a low IQ tutoring will not get you through a grammar school entrance exam, if you have a high IQ you will pass a grammar school entrance exam regardless of tutoring
We have been here before also. Yes it will. You can train for IQ tests unless you are particularly dim. I gave you some examples of stuff you could do last time we had this argument. I could easily raise someone's IQ result with training and I had to administer such test for potential employees for one the large computer companies I used to work for. I guessed I could add 10 - 20 points to someone's test, but later in that discussion @rcs1000 posted a link showing the improvement could be as much as 30 points.
Here is just one of those techniques: If given a sequence of numbers and you have to find the next number and can't see it simply subtract each number from the next number in the sequence and create a new sequence. Repeat until a pattern appears. This can be done in seconds so doesn't waste time and works nearly all the time for sequences in IQ tests.
There are a few particularly dim pupils in some private schools without entrance exams.
There are no particularly dim pupils in grammar schools
There are you know. I taught several when I was teaching in a grammar.
It was not a good place for them. They found keeping up very, very tough.
By particularly dim we mean below average IQ, as I said there are none in grammar schools
Yes, there are. I taught several.
Are you saying your political beliefs trump my practical experience?
One trick incidentally was to get them in not at age 11 but for entry part way through Year 8 or 9, when others had dropped out or moved away. Because grammar schools tend to be less generously funded than other state schools, they are always desperate for money and tended not to mark the exam too harshly.
I can guarantee if you did an IQ test for them, none of those pupils would have an IQ below the national average.
A few might not have had as high an IQ as most of their peers at their grammar school but that is not the same thing
So you are disputing you can train for an IQ test even after the evidence I and @rcs1000 provided to you previously. Previously I gave you a whole lot of techniques and @rcs1000 gave you a link to evidence of such. I could easily raise the IQ score of someone who has never taken a test from 100 to 110 or 120.
We are talking people below 100 IQ.
If a few people of 100 IQ ie average, get tutored to the nth degree to scrape into a grammar it will still not stop someone with a 130+IQ easily passing the entrance exam even without a single tutorial session
Pedentry. Ok get a score of 95 to over 100.
The point is contrary to what you said wealthy people can tutor their children to get higher scores which poor parents don't. You denied this.
When I transferred from a Secondary to a Grammar there was a huge drop out of Grammar school kids who flopped their O levels.
Still is a major churn at 16.
One of the things I noticed about teaching A-level is that the standard doesn't vary much across any of the four schools I've taught in. I think that's because it effectively reselects at 16 anyway (especially in the subjects I teach) and generally only those who are best at it will go forward.
Not grammar schools again, please. The only place I ever come across nostalgia for grammar schools is on PB. They are the past, not the future. Even the Tory Party has shut up about them (apart from in Epping).
UKIP wanted a "grammar school in every town". No other party is interested. Tells you all you need to know. And why? Because the evidence (educational and social mobility) that they do more harm than good is incontrovertible. Trust me.
Not sure why you'd expect anyone to 'trust you', and this post is a collection of sloppy empty clichés, of which 'they are the past not the future' is the emptiest.
Thanks for the rudeness. I've spent the last forty years working in education and educational policy, much of it on data analysis, at a high level. So while I'm pretty ignorant about much, I think I know about this. And guess what? The Tory party doesn't advocate the return of a tertiary system of secondary education.
Any time. I am sure that you have a great deal of knowledge on the subject, but you claimed 'incontrevertible evidence' that grammar schools have done more harm than good. If you have such evidence, why not present it?
The problem with grammar schools is not the grammar schools. Grammar schools, by and large, do a great job of educating kids. The 25% of kids who get into grammar schools do better than the top 25% of kids in comprehensives.
The problem is that the educational outcomes of the people who end up at the secondary moderns is significantly worse than if they had been to comprehensive schools.
And I would argue that the educational system in the UK's big problem for a very long time has been a lack of focus on the 75% of kids who probably shouldn't be going to university. It's ensuring - as they do in Switzerland or Germany - that they get the right skills to succeed.
The grammar discussion is the wrong one. It's a myopic focus on kids who are mostly going to do fine anyway. When the people we should worrying about aren't the people getting good GCSEs and A-Levels.
Germany has grammar schools, gymnasiums, it also has excellent technical and vocational skills in other schools
"If Old Labour had bulldozed Eton in the Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss.
Clem bottled it.
In truth, I'm not a radical - I'm no more in favour of outlawing private schooling as I am scrapping private healthcare - but when one contemplates the calamitous careers of Johnson and Cameron it does give one pause for thought as to whether slipping a few extra aces into the hands of entitled chancers from the serried ranks of England's imbecilic upper class is really such a good idea...
I particularly enjoyed this description of Eton:
"A sort of Hogwarts for wankers where you get taught Latin and tax avoidance whilst wearing full evening dress" is the moment where this went from good to [expletive] great."
Descending from the important questions in the Header to the nakedly partisan - apols - I wonder how a Sunak/Starmer match-up would play to the country? I haven't quite worked myself out a take on this yet. I do probably need to since he looks nailed on if and when 'it' finally happens.
Starmer's only real appeal is that he is the boring-but-competent one against the charismatic but flawed partygate buffoonery of Boris (being generous to Boris there).
Sunak would essentially occupy the same boring-but-competent territory. Which is bad for Starmer.
Except that one has a modicum of working class background and a trusted profession.
The other is the richest person in Parliament and was a banker. Replace the first letter & you have how most people view them.
lawyer who are almost as unloved as bankers.
Utterly untrue as Mike Smithson demonstrated the other day.
IPSOS MORI (One of your two permitted pollsters):
Other professions trusted by more than half of the public include museum curators, the police, lawyers, civil servants, the ordinary man/woman on the street and clergy/priests. Professions with negative net trust ratings include bankers, local councillors, business leaders, professional footballers, estate agents and journalists.
"If Old Labour had bulldozed Eton in the Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss.
"If Old Labour had not bulldozed most of the Grammar schools in the Sixties and Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools I presume
No, everyone. The presence of those from the working class in positions of power helps everyone.
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools
Yep appalling institutions
So appalling they produced the highest number of non privately educated people products in our top professions, yes even judges and lawyers had plenty of grammar school alumni. More so than the number who now come from comprehensives
If you got rid of private schools and grammar schools then 100% of our PMs, people in top professions and judges and lawyers would be from comprehensives. Explain that one.
If you got rid of Waitrose, Marks and Spencer and Sainsburys all their customers would have to shop at Tesco, Aldi or Lidl. Explain that one.
I believe in choice for parents as much as consumers
Let me break it down for you.
1. I don't believe we should abolish existing grammar schools.
2. I don't believe we should abolish private schools.
3. However, if we did, then 100% of our 'elite' would be from comprehensives.
I ask again, explain that one?
If you ban private schools, then the ‘elites’ will send their kids to school abroad - just as the elites of many other countries currently aspire to be able to send their kids to school in the UK.
Only a small minority.
My point is that HY quotes statistics without any appreciation of the other factors at play.
We know that comprehensives are better in rich areas and we know that wealth players a big part in children's prospects, regardless of whether you go to a comprehensive or a grammar school.
Therefore simply saying "ah but X% of our 'elite' went to a grammar school" tells us absolutely nothing about the benefit of grammar schools.
It's just bollocks, as usual.
Your point is you are an ideological leftwing socialist who would deny parents the choice of where to send their children and would nationalise much of industry too given the chance.
Yes indeed comprehensives are better in wealthy areas and the left destroyed the best tools of tackling that for a bright child by abolishing the grammar schools that used to exist in inner cities or ex industrial areas or poor seaside towns. So the only ones left are generally in more prosperous areas with Tory councils where comprehensive schools and academies tend to be better anyway so they are less needed.
So we still have selection in state education, just by house price and vicar's reference, not by IQ
Also, grammar schools do not select by IQ. They select by wealth. Only a fool would try to pretend that wealth does not increase your chances of passing entrance exams by better access to learning materials and private tutors.
No, private schools and the best comprehensive schools select by parental wealth or house price (or church attendance).
Grammar schools select by IQ. If you have a low IQ tutoring will not get you through a grammar school entrance exam, if you have a high IQ you will pass a grammar school entrance exam regardless of tutoring
We have been here before also. Yes it will. You can train for IQ tests unless you are particularly dim. I gave you some examples of stuff you could do last time we had this argument. I could easily raise someone's IQ result with training and I had to administer such test for potential employees for one the large computer companies I used to work for. I guessed I could add 10 - 20 points to someone's test, but later in that discussion @rcs1000 posted a link showing the improvement could be as much as 30 points.
Here is just one of those techniques: If given a sequence of numbers and you have to find the next number and can't see it simply subtract each number from the next number in the sequence and create a new sequence. Repeat until a pattern appears. This can be done in seconds so doesn't waste time and works nearly all the time for sequences in IQ tests.
There are a few particularly dim pupils in some private schools without entrance exams.
There are no particularly dim pupils in grammar schools
There are you know. I taught several when I was teaching in a grammar.
It was not a good place for them. They found keeping up very, very tough.
By particularly dim we mean below average IQ, as I said there are none in grammar schools
Yet another subject about which you clearly know nothing.
But I'll leave it there.
Sorry but you are just not worth it.
Back to someone more interesting ...
Oh I know nothing because I don't accord to your left liberal ideological agenda, well tough I do not care less
Hyufd, it's not that you know nothing. You do know lots of things. Your knowledge of polling is unrivalled. And invaluable.
But at the same time, you do like to pontificate on subjects you don't know much about, and make mistakes as a result. Which isn't illegal. I can think of many posters who would accuse me of doing much the same, quite possibly starting with you (certainly your banned alter ego Justin would). The issue is that you almost never correct mistakes when they're pointed out to you. Which means, you (a) never learn from them and (b) look absolutely ridiculous as a result of your efforts to warp the facts to fit your misconceptions.
As I said before, I didn't find this anything other than irritating when we knew each other in person and I withdrew from your society as a result. Others found it funny. In fact my flatmate (another Simon) got a sort of bizarre pleasure out of trolling you and would frequently regale me, at great length, with your replies.
What's making matters worse for you at the moment is that as a loyal Tory you are trying to defend the truly indefensible even to start.
Just learn some humility. You might even enjoy yourself more.
Except normally humility is a cue for accept the left liberal consensus on x issue, here grammar schools it may be something else because we have extracted one data point we will use to push our point of view.
Which I will not do.
I cannot work out precisely what society you are talking about, I was involved in hiking at Aberystwyth and was a member of the Conservative Society but never its chairman or even on its committee (although I was chairman of the Conservative group when I was at Warwick)
Well, if it helps, it was the Walking Club.
I hadn't made the connection until fairly recently.
ETA Incidentally by 'withdrawing from your society' I meant 'stopped talking to you,' not left the walking club!
< I have Conservative opinions on most subjects across the board and will anchor them, you are a wishy washy vaguely One Nation Tory but happy to sometimes vote Labour or LD person willing to float with the tide
I'd argue Conservative (or perhaps conservative) opinions exist in other parties as well. For example, you've conceded Liberal Democrats and Labour support the Union - I'd argue members of both parties are strong supporters of the monarchy.
I'd argue all three main parties share a desire to provide good governance for the people of this country at both local and national level and I've certainly seen in my working life local councillors of all parties and none who are deeply committed to their localities and communities.
As someone who was a member of a party for many years, the key question always had to be whether the policies being promulgated by the party matched the principles on which that party is based. As a liberal, I would look to see if any policy backed by the party passed that litmus test of liberalism. Ultimately when the party moved away from liberalism, I moved away from the party.
I do accept there are differences over the role of the State and the relationship of the State to the individual but these are more often differences of means rather than ends.
Not grammar schools again, please. The only place I ever come across nostalgia for grammar schools is on PB. They are the past, not the future. Even the Tory Party has shut up about them (apart from in Epping).
UKIP wanted a "grammar school in every town". No other party is interested. Tells you all you need to know. And why? Because the evidence (educational and social mobility) that they do more harm than good is incontrovertible. Trust me.
Not sure why you'd expect anyone to 'trust you', and this post is a collection of sloppy empty clichés, of which 'they are the past not the future' is the emptiest.
Thanks for the rudeness. I've spent the last forty years working in education and educational policy, much of it on data analysis, at a high level. So while I'm pretty ignorant about much, I think I know about this. And guess what? The Tory party doesn't advocate the return of a tertiary system of secondary education.
Any time. I am sure that you have a great deal of knowledge on the subject, but you claimed 'incontrevertible evidence' that grammar schools have done more harm than good. If you have such evidence, why not present it?
The problem with grammar schools is not the grammar schools. Grammar schools, by and large, do a great job of educating kids. The 25% of kids who get into grammar schools do better than the top 25% of kids in comprehensives.
The problem is that the educational outcomes of the people who end up at the secondary moderns is significantly worse than if they had been to comprehensive schools.
And I would argue that the educational system in the UK's big problem for a very long time has been a lack of focus on the 75% of kids who probably shouldn't be going to university. It's ensuring - as they do in Switzerland or Germany - that they get the right skills to succeed.
The grammar discussion is the wrong one. It's a myopic focus on kids who are mostly going to do fine anyway. When the people we should worrying about aren't the people getting good GCSEs and A-Levels.
Germany has grammar schools, gymnasiums, it also has excellent technical and vocational skills in other schools
So why has the Conservative Party not implemented that? It's only been in power since 2010. OK, with LDs to begin with, but they'd approve too.
Not grammar schools again, please. The only place I ever come across nostalgia for grammar schools is on PB. They are the past, not the future. Even the Tory Party has shut up about them (apart from in Epping).
UKIP wanted a "grammar school in every town". No other party is interested. Tells you all you need to know. And why? Because the evidence (educational and social mobility) that they do more harm than good is incontrovertible. Trust me.
Not sure why you'd expect anyone to 'trust you', and this post is a collection of sloppy empty clichés, of which 'they are the past not the future' is the emptiest.
Thanks for the rudeness. I've spent the last forty years working in education and educational policy, much of it on data analysis, at a high level. So while I'm pretty ignorant about much, I think I know about this. And guess what? The Tory party doesn't advocate the return of a tertiary system of secondary education.
Any time. I am sure that you have a great deal of knowledge on the subject, but you claimed 'incontrevertible evidence' that grammar schools have done more harm than good. If you have such evidence, why not present it?
The problem with grammar schools is not the grammar schools. Grammar schools, by and large, do a great job of educating kids. The 25% of kids who get into grammar schools do better than the top 25% of kids in comprehensives.
The problem is that the educational outcomes of the people who end up at the secondary moderns is significantly worse than if they had been to comprehensive schools.
And I would argue that the educational system in the UK's big problem for a very long time has been a lack of focus on the 75% of kids who probably shouldn't be going to university. It's ensuring - as they do in Switzerland or Germany - that they get the right skills to succeed.
The grammar discussion is the wrong one. It's a myopic focus on kids who are mostly going to do fine anyway. When the people we should worrying about aren't the people getting good GCSEs and A-Levels.
A very good analysis, which you could usefully extend to include private schools as well as grammar schools.
This alone is why Boris Johnson needs to go, he is turning into Britain Trump.
The mood has turned further against Johnson in recent days after he criticised Sir Keir Starmer in the Commons on Monday for failing to prosecute the child abuser Jimmy Savile during his time as director of public prosecutions. The baseless attack on the opposition leader led to the resignation on Thursday of Johnson’s longtime aide and head of policy at No 10, Munira Mirza, who had demanded that Johnson apologise, which he failed to do.
Investigations by the Observer show that the unfounded claims about Starmer were being promoted, before Johnson aired them, by far-right groups including the UK branch of Proud Boys, a violent white nationalist organisation labelled a terrorist entity.
After Johnson made the comments in the Commons, other notorious far-right groups, including football hooligans linked to the anti-Muslim English Defence League as well as the nationalist organisation the Traditional Britain Group, lauded him.
The allegation appears to have roots in the far right’s obsession with the unfounded suggestion that the establishment is protecting paedophiles.
I have to say that I'm surprised Johnson's chief advisor chose to resign over the Saville slur. Though unpleasant it doesn't seem measurably worse than other things he's said and done over the last 14 years. I wonder if it was something else. She must have known how significant her resignation would be.
Consider to whom she is married, for whom he works, and who else is, erm, a potential replacement for Mr Johnson.
Of course, it's all such a SMALL WORLD that it might be coincidence.
Descending from the important questions in the Header to the nakedly partisan - apols - I wonder how a Sunak/Starmer match-up would play to the country? I haven't quite worked myself out a take on this yet. I do probably need to since he looks nailed on if and when 'it' finally happens.
Starmer's only real appeal is that he is the boring-but-competent one against the charismatic but flawed partygate buffoonery of Boris (being generous to Boris there).
Sunak would essentially occupy the same boring-but-competent territory. Which is bad for Starmer.
Except that one has a modicum of working class background and a trusted profession.
The other is the richest person in Parliament and was a banker. Replace the first letter & you have how most people view them.
lawyer who are almost as unloved as bankers.
Utterly untrue as Mike Smithson demonstrated the other day.
IPSOS MORI (One of your two permitted pollsters):
Other professions trusted by more than half of the public include museum curators, the police, lawyers, civil servants, the ordinary man/woman on the street and clergy/priests. Professions with negative net trust ratings include bankers, local councillors, business leaders, professional footballers, estate agents and journalists.
"If Old Labour had bulldozed Eton in the Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss.
"If Old Labour had not bulldozed most of the Grammar schools in the Sixties and Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools I presume
No, everyone. The presence of those from the working class in positions of power helps everyone.
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools
Yep appalling institutions
So appalling they produced the highest number of non privately educated people products in our top professions, yes even judges and lawyers had plenty of grammar school alumni. More so than the number who now come from comprehensives
If you got rid of private schools and grammar schools then 100% of our PMs, people in top professions and judges and lawyers would be from comprehensives. Explain that one.
If you got rid of Waitrose, Marks and Spencer and Sainsburys all their customers would have to shop at Tesco, Aldi or Lidl. Explain that one.
I believe in choice for parents as much as consumers
Let me break it down for you.
1. I don't believe we should abolish existing grammar schools.
2. I don't believe we should abolish private schools.
3. However, if we did, then 100% of our 'elite' would be from comprehensives.
I ask again, explain that one?
If you ban private schools, then the ‘elites’ will send their kids to school abroad - just as the elites of many other countries currently aspire to be able to send their kids to school in the UK.
Only a small minority.
My point is that HY quotes statistics without any appreciation of the other factors at play.
We know that comprehensives are better in rich areas and we know that wealth players a big part in children's prospects, regardless of whether you go to a comprehensive or a grammar school.
Therefore simply saying "ah but X% of our 'elite' went to a grammar school" tells us absolutely nothing about the benefit of grammar schools.
It's just bollocks, as usual.
Your point is you are an ideological leftwing socialist who would deny parents the choice of where to send their children and would nationalise much of industry too given the chance.
Yes indeed comprehensives are better in wealthy areas and the left destroyed the best tools of tackling that for a bright child by abolishing the grammar schools that used to exist in inner cities or ex industrial areas or poor seaside towns. So the only ones left are generally in more prosperous areas with Tory councils where comprehensive schools and academies tend to be better anyway so they are less needed.
So we still have selection in state education, just by house price and vicar's reference, not by IQ
Also, grammar schools do not select by IQ. They select by wealth. Only a fool would try to pretend that wealth does not increase your chances of passing entrance exams by better access to learning materials and private tutors.
No, private schools and the best comprehensive schools select by parental wealth or house price (or church attendance).
Grammar schools select by IQ. If you have a low IQ tutoring will not get you through a grammar school entrance exam, if you have a high IQ you will pass a grammar school entrance exam regardless of tutoring
We have been here before also. Yes it will. You can train for IQ tests unless you are particularly dim. I gave you some examples of stuff you could do last time we had this argument. I could easily raise someone's IQ result with training and I had to administer such test for potential employees for one the large computer companies I used to work for. I guessed I could add 10 - 20 points to someone's test, but later in that discussion @rcs1000 posted a link showing the improvement could be as much as 30 points.
Here is just one of those techniques: If given a sequence of numbers and you have to find the next number and can't see it simply subtract each number from the next number in the sequence and create a new sequence. Repeat until a pattern appears. This can be done in seconds so doesn't waste time and works nearly all the time for sequences in IQ tests.
There are a few particularly dim pupils in some private schools without entrance exams.
There are no particularly dim pupils in grammar schools
There are you know. I taught several when I was teaching in a grammar.
It was not a good place for them. They found keeping up very, very tough.
By particularly dim we mean below average IQ, as I said there are none in grammar schools
Yes, there are. I taught several.
Are you saying your political beliefs trump my practical experience?
One trick incidentally was to get them in not at age 11 but for entry part way through Year 8 or 9, when others had dropped out or moved away. Because grammar schools tend to be less generously funded than other state schools, they are always desperate for money and tended not to mark the exam too harshly.
I can guarantee if you did an IQ test for them, none of those pupils would have an IQ below the national average.
A few might not have had as high an IQ as most of their peers at their grammar school but that is not the same thing
So you are disputing you can train for an IQ test even after the evidence I and @rcs1000 provided to you previously. Previously I gave you a whole lot of techniques and @rcs1000 gave you a link to evidence of such. I could easily raise the IQ score of someone who has never taken a test from 100 to 110 or 120.
We are talking people below 100 IQ.
If a few people of 100 IQ ie average, get tutored to the nth degree to scrape into a grammar it will still not stop someone with a 130+IQ easily passing the entrance exam even without a single tutorial session
Yes, but bell curve statistics apply. Far fewer people of IQ130 than IQ100, so plenty of scope for moneyed parents aka Tory voters to fiddle the system.
Generally however it is only those of IQ 130+ who go on to get the top professional jobs and the highest earning careers (outside of sport and entertainment). Hence identifying those of high IQ from less well off backgrounds and helping them get into top universities and top jobs is more important than a few rich kids of average intelligence who scrape into grammars with tutors and end up with only average careers
Descending from the important questions in the Header to the nakedly partisan - apols - I wonder how a Sunak/Starmer match-up would play to the country? I haven't quite worked myself out a take on this yet. I do probably need to since he looks nailed on if and when 'it' finally happens.
Starmer's only real appeal is that he is the boring-but-competent one against the charismatic but flawed partygate buffoonery of Boris (being generous to Boris there).
Sunak would essentially occupy the same boring-but-competent territory. Which is bad for Starmer.
Except that one has a modicum of working class background and a trusted profession.
The other is the richest person in Parliament and was a banker. Replace the first letter & you have how most people view them.
lawyer who are almost as unloved as bankers.
Utterly untrue as Mike Smithson demonstrated the other day.
IPSOS MORI (One of your two permitted pollsters):
Other professions trusted by more than half of the public include museum curators, the police, lawyers, civil servants, the ordinary man/woman on the street and clergy/priests. Professions with negative net trust ratings include bankers, local councillors, business leaders, professional footballers, estate agents and journalists.
"If Old Labour had bulldozed Eton in the Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss.
"If Old Labour had not bulldozed most of the Grammar schools in the Sixties and Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools I presume
No, everyone. The presence of those from the working class in positions of power helps everyone.
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools
Yep appalling institutions
So appalling they produced the highest number of non privately educated people products in our top professions, yes even judges and lawyers had plenty of grammar school alumni. More so than the number who now come from comprehensives
If you got rid of private schools and grammar schools then 100% of our PMs, people in top professions and judges and lawyers would be from comprehensives. Explain that one.
If you got rid of Waitrose, Marks and Spencer and Sainsburys all their customers would have to shop at Tesco, Aldi or Lidl. Explain that one.
I believe in choice for parents as much as consumers
Let me break it down for you.
1. I don't believe we should abolish existing grammar schools.
2. I don't believe we should abolish private schools.
3. However, if we did, then 100% of our 'elite' would be from comprehensives.
I ask again, explain that one?
If you ban private schools, then the ‘elites’ will send their kids to school abroad - just as the elites of many other countries currently aspire to be able to send their kids to school in the UK.
Only a small minority.
My point is that HY quotes statistics without any appreciation of the other factors at play.
We know that comprehensives are better in rich areas and we know that wealth players a big part in children's prospects, regardless of whether you go to a comprehensive or a grammar school.
Therefore simply saying "ah but X% of our 'elite' went to a grammar school" tells us absolutely nothing about the benefit of grammar schools.
It's just bollocks, as usual.
Your point is you are an ideological leftwing socialist who would deny parents the choice of where to send their children and would nationalise much of industry too given the chance.
Yes indeed comprehensives are better in wealthy areas and the left destroyed the best tools of tackling that for a bright child by abolishing the grammar schools that used to exist in inner cities or ex industrial areas or poor seaside towns. So the only ones left are generally in more prosperous areas with Tory councils where comprehensive schools and academies tend to be better anyway so they are less needed.
So we still have selection in state education, just by house price and vicar's reference, not by IQ
Also, grammar schools do not select by IQ. They select by wealth. Only a fool would try to pretend that wealth does not increase your chances of passing entrance exams by better access to learning materials and private tutors.
No, private schools and the best comprehensive schools select by parental wealth or house price (or church attendance).
Grammar schools select by IQ. If you have a low IQ tutoring will not get you through a grammar school entrance exam, if you have a high IQ you will pass a grammar school entrance exam regardless of tutoring
We have been here before also. Yes it will. You can train for IQ tests unless you are particularly dim. I gave you some examples of stuff you could do last time we had this argument. I could easily raise someone's IQ result with training and I had to administer such test for potential employees for one the large computer companies I used to work for. I guessed I could add 10 - 20 points to someone's test, but later in that discussion @rcs1000 posted a link showing the improvement could be as much as 30 points.
Here is just one of those techniques: If given a sequence of numbers and you have to find the next number and can't see it simply subtract each number from the next number in the sequence and create a new sequence. Repeat until a pattern appears. This can be done in seconds so doesn't waste time and works nearly all the time for sequences in IQ tests.
There are a few particularly dim pupils in some private schools without entrance exams.
There are no particularly dim pupils in grammar schools
There are you know. I taught several when I was teaching in a grammar.
It was not a good place for them. They found keeping up very, very tough.
By particularly dim we mean below average IQ, as I said there are none in grammar schools
Yet another subject about which you clearly know nothing.
But I'll leave it there.
Sorry but you are just not worth it.
Back to someone more interesting ...
Oh I know nothing because I don't accord to your left liberal ideological agenda, well tough I do not care less
Hyufd, it's not that you know nothing. You do know lots of things. Your knowledge of polling is unrivalled. And invaluable.
But at the same time, you do like to pontificate on subjects you don't know much about, and make mistakes as a result. Which isn't illegal. I can think of many posters who would accuse me of doing much the same, quite possibly starting with you (certainly your banned alter ego Justin would). The issue is that you almost never correct mistakes when they're pointed out to you. Which means, you (a) never learn from them and (b) look absolutely ridiculous as a result of your efforts to warp the facts to fit your misconceptions.
As I said before, I didn't find this anything other than irritating when we knew each other in person and I withdrew from your society as a result. Others found it funny. In fact my flatmate (another Simon) got a sort of bizarre pleasure out of trolling you and would frequently regale me, at great length, with your replies.
What's making matters worse for you at the moment is that as a loyal Tory you are trying to defend the truly indefensible even to start.
Just learn some humility. You might even enjoy yourself more.
Except normally humility is a cue for accept the left liberal consensus on x issue, here grammar schools it may be something else because we have extracted one data point we will use to push our point of view.
Which I will not do.
I cannot work out precisely what society you are talking about, I was involved in hiking at Aberystwyth and was a member of the Conservative Society but never its chairman or even on its committee (although I was chairman of the Conservative group when I was at Warwick)
Well, if it helps, it was the Walking Club.
I hadn't made the connection until fairly recently.
ETA Incidentally by 'withdrawing from your society' I meant 'stopped talking to you,' not left the walking club!
Fine but it was never my society, I was only a member of it
Descending from the important questions in the Header to the nakedly partisan - apols - I wonder how a Sunak/Starmer match-up would play to the country? I haven't quite worked myself out a take on this yet. I do probably need to since he looks nailed on if and when 'it' finally happens.
Starmer's only real appeal is that he is the boring-but-competent one against the charismatic but flawed partygate buffoonery of Boris (being generous to Boris there).
Sunak would essentially occupy the same boring-but-competent territory. Which is bad for Starmer.
Except that one has a modicum of working class background and a trusted profession.
The other is the richest person in Parliament and was a banker. Replace the first letter & you have how most people view them.
lawyer who are almost as unloved as bankers.
Utterly untrue as Mike Smithson demonstrated the other day.
IPSOS MORI (One of your two permitted pollsters):
Other professions trusted by more than half of the public include museum curators, the police, lawyers, civil servants, the ordinary man/woman on the street and clergy/priests. Professions with negative net trust ratings include bankers, local councillors, business leaders, professional footballers, estate agents and journalists.
"If Old Labour had bulldozed Eton in the Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss.
"If Old Labour had not bulldozed most of the Grammar schools in the Sixties and Seventies then almost everyone's life would be better today." Discuss
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools I presume
No, everyone. The presence of those from the working class in positions of power helps everyone.
Apart from the people who didn't get into the grammar schools
Yep appalling institutions
So appalling they produced the highest number of non privately educated people products in our top professions, yes even judges and lawyers had plenty of grammar school alumni. More so than the number who now come from comprehensives
If you got rid of private schools and grammar schools then 100% of our PMs, people in top professions and judges and lawyers would be from comprehensives. Explain that one.
If you got rid of Waitrose, Marks and Spencer and Sainsburys all their customers would have to shop at Tesco, Aldi or Lidl. Explain that one.
I believe in choice for parents as much as consumers
Let me break it down for you.
1. I don't believe we should abolish existing grammar schools.
2. I don't believe we should abolish private schools.
3. However, if we did, then 100% of our 'elite' would be from comprehensives.
I ask again, explain that one?
If you ban private schools, then the ‘elites’ will send their kids to school abroad - just as the elites of many other countries currently aspire to be able to send their kids to school in the UK.
Only a small minority.
My point is that HY quotes statistics without any appreciation of the other factors at play.
We know that comprehensives are better in rich areas and we know that wealth players a big part in children's prospects, regardless of whether you go to a comprehensive or a grammar school.
Therefore simply saying "ah but X% of our 'elite' went to a grammar school" tells us absolutely nothing about the benefit of grammar schools.
It's just bollocks, as usual.
Your point is you are an ideological leftwing socialist who would deny parents the choice of where to send their children and would nationalise much of industry too given the chance.
Yes indeed comprehensives are better in wealthy areas and the left destroyed the best tools of tackling that for a bright child by abolishing the grammar schools that used to exist in inner cities or ex industrial areas or poor seaside towns. So the only ones left are generally in more prosperous areas with Tory councils where comprehensive schools and academies tend to be better anyway so they are less needed.
So we still have selection in state education, just by house price and vicar's reference, not by IQ
Also, grammar schools do not select by IQ. They select by wealth. Only a fool would try to pretend that wealth does not increase your chances of passing entrance exams by better access to learning materials and private tutors.
No, private schools and the best comprehensive schools select by parental wealth or house price (or church attendance).
Grammar schools select by IQ. If you have a low IQ tutoring will not get you through a grammar school entrance exam, if you have a high IQ you will pass a grammar school entrance exam regardless of tutoring
We have been here before also. Yes it will. You can train for IQ tests unless you are particularly dim. I gave you some examples of stuff you could do last time we had this argument. I could easily raise someone's IQ result with training and I had to administer such test for potential employees for one the large computer companies I used to work for. I guessed I could add 10 - 20 points to someone's test, but later in that discussion @rcs1000 posted a link showing the improvement could be as much as 30 points.
Here is just one of those techniques: If given a sequence of numbers and you have to find the next number and can't see it simply subtract each number from the next number in the sequence and create a new sequence. Repeat until a pattern appears. This can be done in seconds so doesn't waste time and works nearly all the time for sequences in IQ tests.
There are a few particularly dim pupils in some private schools without entrance exams.
There are no particularly dim pupils in grammar schools
There are you know. I taught several when I was teaching in a grammar.
It was not a good place for them. They found keeping up very, very tough.
By particularly dim we mean below average IQ, as I said there are none in grammar schools
Yes, there are. I taught several.
Are you saying your political beliefs trump my practical experience?
One trick incidentally was to get them in not at age 11 but for entry part way through Year 8 or 9, when others had dropped out or moved away. Because grammar schools tend to be less generously funded than other state schools, they are always desperate for money and tended not to mark the exam too harshly.
I can guarantee if you did an IQ test for them, none of those pupils would have an IQ below the national average.
A few might not have had as high an IQ as most of their peers at their grammar school but that is not the same thing
They did. As I proved by, er, testing them. They were below the average across the national cohort.
You are simply wrong. You are basing your views on a system that ceased to exist sixty years ago. If there are vacancies in a school, even a selective school, they take the ones who apply, not the ones who are the brightest.
I'm reminded of that time you lectured @Richard_Tyndall on the requirements to be an engineer.
In what? Every subject. In which case how on earth did they manage to pass an entrance exam to a grammar school if they were below average IQ?
Even if they did that is not an argument against grammar schools, it is an argument for ensuring tougher grammar school entrance exams at every age of entry to it. You cannot just apply to a grammar even at 13 plus, you have to pass an entrance exam and 16+ entry to grammars is generally only given to those getting mainly As and A*s at GCSE ie well above average grades
Comments
If Sunak became leader and failed to retain the Tory majority and needed the DUP to stay in power and pass legislation, he would have to invoke Art 16 to get their support otherwise they would abstain and he would not be able to form a government and Starmer would form a new government instead with SNP and LD support
On your first sentence, that would be a dramatic break with tradition. Who was the last PM to surprise on the upside over the full course of their premiership? I keep coming back to Alec Douglas-Home whose record was 'he was in office for eleven months and lost an election slightly less badly than his predecessor would have done.' Which isn't exactly a recommendation.
I am reminded of Enoch Powell - 'all political careers end in failure.' Similarly, all Prime Ministers in the end are removed for being duds.
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/survey-results/daily/2018/05/11/f9380/1
You can presently ballot to close grammars, you cannot even ballot to open new ones
Please don't tell me you worked at the DfE or I'll have to hate you.
What other department could lead to somebody being involved in education for forty years while being a civil servant? An LEA?
There are no particularly dim pupils in grammar schools
It was not a good place for them. They found keeping up very, very tough.
The LDs would back Starmer and not back him without a softer Brexit, which would split the party and see a resurgent RefUK
https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/13/democracy-the-establishment-lack-of-trust-paedophile-ring-westminster
Well, I like to think I am always on my guard against hysteria. But we can't put it all down to over-fevered imaginations. There is now too much evidence of sexual predators getting away with it in that era airily to dismiss the idea that it was also happening in the precincts of parliament. We already know – the case of the late Sir Cyril Smith – of one vile perpetrator. I'd be surprised to discover that there was a vast paedophile gang with tentacles gripping every nook and cranny of Westminster, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if it is shown that there were cases of offenders among MPs whose criminal depredations were hushed up by whips and other party managers for the usual self-serving reasons.
BTW (and for my information) is that "Texas Embassy" dive still open in Trafalgar Square?
At least you did teach.
He was spokesperson for policing and domestic safety, and had been on the (choosing my words carefully) traditionalist side of the trans policy debate that seems to have affected the Greens more than any other party.
https://twitter.com/lizreason/status/1490013274569592833
Are you saying your political beliefs trump my practical experience?
One trick incidentally was to get them in not at age 11 but for entry part way through Year 8 or 9, when others had dropped out or moved away. Because grammar schools tend to be less generously funded than other state schools, they are always desperate for money and tended not to mark the exam too harshly.
A few might not have had as high an IQ as most of their peers at their grammar school but that is not the same thing
You are simply wrong. You are basing your views on a system that ceased to exist sixty years ago. If there are vacancies in a school, even a selective school, they take the ones who apply, not the ones who are the brightest.
I'm reminded of that time you lectured @Richard_Tyndall on the requirements to be an engineer.
Some have nostalgia for grammar schools, but no one calls nostalgically for the return of Secondary Moderns.
Even if they did that is not an argument against grammar schools, it is an argument for ensuring tougher grammar school entrance exams at every age of entry to it. You cannot just apply to a grammar even at 13 plus, you have to pass an entrance exam and 16+ entry to grammars is generally only given to those getting mainly As and A*s at GCSE ie well above average grades
Now that could lead to problems of its own, but give me a class of 32 in a girls' grammar ahead of a class of 16 year nines in a bottom set in an inner city comp any day of the week, especially Friday afternoon.
The marking load wasn't fun though...
In some ways this reflects the inherent unfairness of life, but the consequential social inequality has been exacerbated by changes in the housing market, particularly in the south east of england, over the last 20 years. If the average wage is 20k, and rent is £1k per month or a basic property is £250k to buy, then the situation is no good - hopeless if you are disabled, on a really low income, have lots of children etc.
In the end the problems to do with fairness largely go down to housing policy and house prices, and lack of supply particularly in terms of social housing. But we know that the tories won't ever do anything significant about it, and nor will the lib dems; as the experience in Chesham and Amersham shows. See the subsequent shelving of planning reform.
The dynamics within the conservative party, of which we have learnt much of over the last 2 years, indicate that the initiative to solve this problem is very unlikely to come from any future leader, including Sunak. I think it will ultimately have to come from the Labour party.
Leaving aside the wider social effects, and the fact that it's the State choosing pupils, you can't measure IQ that reliably.
But I'll leave it there.
Sorry but you are just not worth it.
Back to someone more interesting ...
If a few people of 100 IQ ie average, get tutored to the nth degree to scrape into a grammar it will still not stop someone with a 130+IQ easily passing the entrance exam even without a single tutorial session
At the Grammar School I went to in the late 1970s there were two streams in each year. Bear in mind everyone passed the 11 plus (except me, I arrived aged 14). There was the A stream of clever kids and the B stream of what some teachers referred to as "less able" students. The 100% pass rate in optional subjects like chemistry was retained by weeding out those who might fail at 14 and the remainder who might fail at some stage before O level.
Stop talking nonsense!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-36662965
Disadvantaged kids do worse in Kent than elsewhere in England, because they end up going to Secondary Moderns, and it's blooming hard to make Secondary Modern Schools work.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/05/11/ben-fogle-says-found-infamous-ed-stone-upmarket-restaurant-london/
Of course, it's all such a SMALL WORLD that it might be coincidence.
I don't know EVERY child at grammar schools. But my daughter's experience at a grammar school in Trafford would tend to suggest that the very broad statement that 'there are no particularly dim pupils in grammar schools' is not obviously incorrect.
In my very, very limited, but current, experience - there just aren't.
I can't deny the possibility that there are some in either her school or the many other grammar schools in the country that I am not aware of.
Ignoring Trafford, Bucks etc which are fully selective and have above average GCSE results across the board, including in their high schools
"A sort of Hogwarts for wankers where you get taught Latin and tax avoidance whilst wearing full evening dress" is the moment where this went from good to [expletive] great."
https://twitter.com/abugorowies/status/1489600547418222600?t=MWKGxmnZ_-OmZLO9tD3KNg&s=19
You should try it, it is good for the soul
But at the same time, you do like to pontificate on subjects you don't know much about, and make mistakes as a result. Which isn't illegal. I can think of many posters who would accuse me of doing much the same, quite possibly starting with you (certainly your banned alter ego Justin would). The issue is that you almost never correct mistakes when they're pointed out to you. Which means, you (a) never learn from them and (b) look absolutely ridiculous as a result of your efforts to warp the facts to fit your misconceptions.
As I said before, I didn't find this anything other than irritating when we knew each other in person and I withdrew from your society as a result. Others found it funny. In fact my flatmate (another Simon) got a sort of bizarre pleasure out of trolling you and would frequently regale me, at great length, with your replies.
What's making matters worse for you at the moment is that as a loyal Tory you are trying to defend the truly indefensible even to start.
Just learn some humility. You might even enjoy yourself more.
Therefore getting run over by a car is obviously no big deal.
I suspect if your offspring failed the 11 plus you might be less. impressed.
I know a few former teachers who went on to have successful careers in town planning. One former colleague quit a job as head of geography when he was in his late 30's and took on an entry level role in planning, 13 years later he has just been made a partner in a big law firm. Its pretty easy if you can just keep your head down working in a Council for a few years in a junior role whilst getting started. You do have to put up with a lot of shit and ever changing government regulations but I doubt it is as bad as working in a school.
The point is contrary to what you said wealthy people can tutor their children to get higher scores which poor parents don't. You denied this.
When I transferred from a Secondary to a Grammar there was a huge drop out of Grammar school kids who flopped their O levels.
The problem is that the educational outcomes of the people who end up at the secondary moderns is significantly worse than if they had been to comprehensive schools.
And I would argue that the educational system in the UK's big problem for a very long time has been a lack of focus on the 75% of kids who probably shouldn't be going to university. It's ensuring - as they do in Switzerland or Germany - that they get the right skills to succeed.
The grammar discussion is the wrong one. It's a myopic focus on kids who are mostly going to do fine anyway. When the people we should worrying about aren't the people getting good GCSEs and A-Levels.
Which I will not do.
I cannot work out precisely what society you are talking about, I was involved in hiking at Aberystwyth and was a member of the Conservative Society but never its chairman or even on its committee (although I was chairman of the Conservative group when I was at Warwick)
No one argues with your methods when they produce results. It's when they fail to and you are a maverick that you get slaughtered.
But Trafford has undeniably good schools of all stripes.
I put this down to 'giving a shit about education' - back in the 80s, when the rest of GM was run by councils who had not only abolished grammar schools but viewed any sort of academic success - or indeed success of any sort - with at best great suspicion, Trafford had a culture of educating its children - both at the grammars and non-grammars. Not every school was excellent. But in most of GM it was a struggle to find a school which appeared to believe in education at all.
Trafford's grammar schools are a hangover of its culture of valuing education.
One of the things I noticed about teaching A-level is that the standard doesn't vary much across any of the four schools I've taught in. I think that's because it effectively reselects at 16 anyway (especially in the subjects I teach) and generally only those who are best at it will go forward.
I hadn't made the connection until fairly recently.
ETA Incidentally by 'withdrawing from your society' I meant 'stopped talking to you,' not left the walking club!
I'd argue all three main parties share a desire to provide good governance for the people of this country at both local and national level and I've certainly seen in my working life local councillors of all parties and none who are deeply committed to their localities and communities.
As someone who was a member of a party for many years, the key question always had to be whether the policies being promulgated by the party matched the principles on which that party is based. As a liberal, I would look to see if any policy backed by the party passed that litmus test of liberalism. Ultimately when the party moved away from liberalism, I moved away from the party.
I do accept there are differences over the role of the State and the relationship of the State to the individual but these are more often differences of means rather than ends.
Mike I have PMed you with a question about the event on 2 March.