Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
He's right in one way. Grammar schools are not the answer to the myriad of problems facing education. But in another way he illustrates the problem:
For the past 12 years, the Conservative party has spearheaded a revolution in education. The brilliant Gove reforms, ably carried forward by his successors, have seen state schools regularly outperform private schools. We recently saw the 10,000th academy school created.
That sentence is total bullshit and anyone who thinks it isn't should be sectioned. Not only have the Gove reforms been a shattering failure, state schools do not 'regularly outperform private schools' because that's a meaningless statement. Which ones? By what metric? Why? Where? Without defining his criteria it's Rhetorical bullshit.
And almost no academies have been 'created.' They are schools rebadged under another name, usually with a nice cushy number for either the former Head or one of their mates.
The next paragraph is simply a lie:
Successive Conservative governments have been right to support phonics, setting/streaming, curriculum reform, academies, free schools and specialist sixth forms for 16-18 year olds, sponsored by independent schools and universities. This has raised standards and promoted genuine competition.
It has done none of those things. In fact, curriculum reform has slammed educational standards into hard reverse because of the gross incompetence and wilful stupidity with which it was mismanaged by the third rate lunatics in charge of it who treated as an ego trip for their personal hobby horses and not as a serious exercise in educational management. Specialist sixth form colleges at the same time are being closed like crazy as a result of his own government's tax policies, in a deliberate bid to run them down. Is he really unaware of this?
Yet another person who does not get it: the issue is we don't know what we want from schools and the policy chaos inflicted from Whitehall reflects that.
*Breathes deeply and unclenches fist*
Rant over.
Fantastic post!
Aspirational Tory voters are very supportive of Grammar Schools until their children fail the 11 plus...then not so much.
It is somewhat disingenuous to financially support Grammar Schools in Warwickshire and Kent and laud them as a great success while underfunding, and interfering with everything else and then claiming the woefully underfunded, interfered with system is failing.
I'll post my view (again):
The grammar school / comprehensive question is the wrong one. It is basically asking: "Where should the brightest kids go?"
The real question is: "How do we help the kids who cannot read and write well by the time they are 11?"
They are the kids that we should be concentrating on. They are the kids who are routinely forgotten.
Well, actually I would not agree. THey're the ones who get the extra funding, the extra support, the specialised tuition.
Our system certainly does fail the brightest, by assuming that if you just put them in a classroom and leave them to it they'll do OK. Which is not the case - quite the reverse. I remember in one of Steven Moffat's earlier efforts, called 'Chalk,' a teacher criticised the head for providing more teaching for abler children with the words 'So we're concentrating the most education on the children who need it the least?' Rubbish. Bright children actually need much more educating, due to the amount of material they can cope with, and speaking as somebody whose taught both types it's much harder work as well.
However, the key thing to remember is that we're trying to run what amounts to a baby-sitting service on the cheap while running an education system designed to cram knowledge. That's a trifecta that ultimately, whatever your views on grammar schools or indeed on the existence of moon pigs, fails *all* children caught up in it.
Until we have a sensible conversation on whether we want a baby-sitting service, a cheap service or an educationally effective service, and make a decision among those three options, we're going to end up with a second-rate service. Alas, no sign of that yet. Certainly not from Truss or Sunak, and not from Labour either.
"Well, actually I would not agree."
Then why are so many kids leaving school functionally illiterate and innumerate? Why are millions of adults functionally illiterate and innumerate?
Tackle functional innumeracy and illiteracy, and you ease a heck of a lot of social and other problems in future decades.
Also: if we are 'concentrating' on them, then why are we having episode #234234 of 'grammar schools vs comps' on here?
You said 'these are the kids who are routinely forgotten.' Which is incorrect. Whether the money's well spent is a different question, but they're certainly not forgotten. An obsession with academic education including phonics isn't always helpful.
But brighter children very frequently are forgotten about.
Ironically, the example of taking struggling children out of lessons to give them more attention elsewhere - which is essentially what grammars would do for the ablest - suggests it wouldn't help anyway!
Edit - besides, with respect, you're missing the point. Our school system does not 'concentrate' on any child. It's based on a ridiculous 'one size doesn't really fit anybody but it's cheap so we'll go with it.' The extra funding is essentially remedial guilt money.
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
He's right in one way. Grammar schools are not the answer to the myriad of problems facing education. But in another way he illustrates the problem:
For the past 12 years, the Conservative party has spearheaded a revolution in education. The brilliant Gove reforms, ably carried forward by his successors, have seen state schools regularly outperform private schools. We recently saw the 10,000th academy school created.
That sentence is total bullshit and anyone who thinks it isn't should be sectioned. Not only have the Gove reforms been a shattering failure, state schools do not 'regularly outperform private schools' because that's a meaningless statement. Which ones? By what metric? Why? Where? Without defining his criteria it's Rhetorical bullshit.
And almost no academies have been 'created.' They are schools rebadged under another name, usually with a nice cushy number for either the former Head or one of their mates.
The next paragraph is simply a lie:
Successive Conservative governments have been right to support phonics, setting/streaming, curriculum reform, academies, free schools and specialist sixth forms for 16-18 year olds, sponsored by independent schools and universities. This has raised standards and promoted genuine competition.
It has done none of those things. In fact, curriculum reform has slammed educational standards into hard reverse because of the gross incompetence and wilful stupidity with which it was mismanaged by the third rate lunatics in charge of it who treated as an ego trip for their personal hobby horses and not as a serious exercise in educational management. Specialist sixth form colleges at the same time are being closed like crazy as a result of his own government's tax policies, in a deliberate bid to run them down. Is he really unaware of this?
Yet another person who does not get it: the issue is we don't know what we want from schools and the policy chaos inflicted from Whitehall reflects that.
*Breathes deeply and unclenches fist*
Rant over.
Fantastic post!
Aspirational Tory voters are very supportive of Grammar Schools until their children fail the 11 plus...then not so much.
It is somewhat disingenuous to financially support Grammar Schools in Warwickshire and Kent and laud them as a great success while underfunding, and interfering with everything else and then claiming the woefully underfunded, interfered with system is failing.
I'll post my view (again):
The grammar school / comprehensive question is the wrong one. It is basically asking: "Where should the brightest kids go?"
The real question is: "How do we help the kids who cannot read and write well by the time they are 11?"
They are the kids that we should be concentrating on. They are the kids who are routinely forgotten.
Well, actually I would not agree. THey're the ones who get the extra funding, the extra support, the specialised tuition.
Our system certainly does fail the brightest, by assuming that if you just put them in a classroom and leave them to it they'll do OK. Which is not the case - quite the reverse. I remember in one of Steven Moffat's earlier efforts, called 'Chalk,' a teacher criticised the head for providing more teaching for abler children with the words 'So we're concentrating the most education on the children who need it the least?' Rubbish. Bright children actually need much more educating, due to the amount of material they can cope with, and speaking as somebody whose taught both types it's much harder work as well.
However, the key thing to remember is that we're trying to run what amounts to a baby-sitting service on the cheap while running an education system designed to cram knowledge. That's a trifecta that ultimately, whatever your views on grammar schools or indeed on the existence of moon pigs, fails *all* children caught up in it.
Until we have a sensible conversation on whether we want a baby-sitting service, a cheap service or an educationally effective service, and make a decision among those three options, we're going to end up with a second-rate service. Alas, no sign of that yet. Certainly not from Truss or Sunak, and not from Labour either.
"Well, actually I would not agree."
Then why are so many kids leaving school functionally illiterate and innumerate? Why are millions of adults functionally illiterate and innumerate?
Tackle functional innumeracy and illiteracy, and you ease a heck of a lot of social and other problems in future decades.
Also: if we are 'concentrating' on them, then why are we having episode #234234 of 'grammar schools vs comps' on here?
Because HYUFD believes Grammar schools solve all problems while most of us know they at best hide issues and more often than not create more issues than they are worth..
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
OK, let’s resolve this once and for all. Could you set out what you think is the most pressing problem in the education system today and what evidence you have that the introduction of more grammar schools is the solution most likely to solve that problem.
The most pressing problem in education today is lack of opportunity in poor working class areas to get into a top Russell Group university and Oxbridge and a good career. More grammars would expand that opportunity.
Followed by the particularly poor results in terms of reading and maths and core GCSEs achieved by white working class boys in particular
Or you could just expand Oxbridge and Russell Group Universities.
Because if your aim is to get more children into Russell Group Universities and Oxbridge - the only options are to increase the number of places available or reduce the number of places available for different group of students.
Can you tell me what makes a Russel group uni special? (Asking as a member of staff at a top ten U.K. university, not in the fecking Russel group...)
As they make up most of the entrants to top law firms and chambers (Oxbridge especially the latter), most doctors went to them, as did most MPs and most top journalists.
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
Ability/aptitude streaming in comps achieves the same goals as grammars, without the social stigmas for those who don't get in. And without the enormous pressure on 11-year old kids. Also, you learn to look after yourself...!
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
He's right in one way. Grammar schools are not the answer to the myriad of problems facing education. But in another way he illustrates the problem:
For the past 12 years, the Conservative party has spearheaded a revolution in education. The brilliant Gove reforms, ably carried forward by his successors, have seen state schools regularly outperform private schools. We recently saw the 10,000th academy school created.
That sentence is total bullshit and anyone who thinks it isn't should be sectioned. Not only have the Gove reforms been a shattering failure, state schools do not 'regularly outperform private schools' because that's a meaningless statement. Which ones? By what metric? Why? Where? Without defining his criteria it's Rhetorical bullshit.
And almost no academies have been 'created.' They are schools rebadged under another name, usually with a nice cushy number for either the former Head or one of their mates.
The next paragraph is simply a lie:
Successive Conservative governments have been right to support phonics, setting/streaming, curriculum reform, academies, free schools and specialist sixth forms for 16-18 year olds, sponsored by independent schools and universities. This has raised standards and promoted genuine competition.
It has done none of those things. In fact, curriculum reform has slammed educational standards into hard reverse because of the gross incompetence and wilful stupidity with which it was mismanaged by the third rate lunatics in charge of it who treated as an ego trip for their personal hobby horses and not as a serious exercise in educational management. Specialist sixth form colleges at the same time are being closed like crazy as a result of his own government's tax policies, in a deliberate bid to run them down. Is he really unaware of this?
Yet another person who does not get it: the issue is we don't know what we want from schools and the policy chaos inflicted from Whitehall reflects that.
*Breathes deeply and unclenches fist*
Rant over.
Fantastic post!
Aspirational Tory voters are very supportive of Grammar Schools until their children fail the 11 plus...then not so much.
It is somewhat disingenuous to financially support Grammar Schools in Warwickshire and Kent and laud them as a great success while underfunding, and interfering with everything else and then claiming the woefully underfunded, interfered with system is failing.
I'll post my view (again):
The grammar school / comprehensive question is the wrong one. It is basically asking: "Where should the brightest kids go?"
The real question is: "How do we help the kids who cannot read and write well by the time they are 11?"
They are the kids that we should be concentrating on. They are the kids who are routinely forgotten.
I can actually think of a reason to support Grammar Schools - because the children attending are likely to want to learn and won't have many special needs requirements - they could be run at a lower cost to non Grammar Schools.
And I have zero problem with a 2 tier education system where the money is spent on those who need the money (i.e. the none Grammar Schools). What I disliked about the approach in Bucks and Kent back in the 80's was that Grammar Schools got more money than none Grammar schools on most measures. Have Grammar schools but reduce their per pupil funding by 10% compared....
Yep, and that's fair enough - but IMV the question should be: "How do we ensure that every (*) child leaves primary school able to read and write at an adequate level?"
And spend the money accordingly. There is little point in kids moving onto secondary school of any type if they are already that far behind.
(*) Not 'every', as some children will have quite severe learning difficulties, like one of my son's friends. But every child who can.
simply answer to that SureStart - the stupidest cut Osborne made out of many stupid cuts.
You don't try to fix the problem at Age 9-11. You fix it between the ages of 6 months to 4 years.
I'd agree with that to an extent, but say you can 'fix' it at both. Schools, in particular, only get hold of kids after the age of 4.
Looking at friends and acquaintances, there are several different types of academically struggling young kids. Firstly are those with learning difficulties. As Dr Y says, resources can be chucked at those: the little 'uns friend is having loads of money spent on her - and good on it. But there there are those kids who, for whatever reason, do not try hard. This can be anything from boredom, to something akin to ADHD. I'm thinking of one disruptive boy in particular. When I chat to him, he is actually quite bright, but being in a large class seems to muck him up. At least, as far as I can tell.
But I'm not a teacher, so I don't get to see large parts of the system...
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
He's right in one way. Grammar schools are not the answer to the myriad of problems facing education. But in another way he illustrates the problem:
For the past 12 years, the Conservative party has spearheaded a revolution in education. The brilliant Gove reforms, ably carried forward by his successors, have seen state schools regularly outperform private schools. We recently saw the 10,000th academy school created.
That sentence is total bullshit and anyone who thinks it isn't should be sectioned. Not only have the Gove reforms been a shattering failure, state schools do not 'regularly outperform private schools' because that's a meaningless statement. Which ones? By what metric? Why? Where? Without defining his criteria it's Rhetorical bullshit.
And almost no academies have been 'created.' They are schools rebadged under another name, usually with a nice cushy number for either the former Head or one of their mates.
The next paragraph is simply a lie:
Successive Conservative governments have been right to support phonics, setting/streaming, curriculum reform, academies, free schools and specialist sixth forms for 16-18 year olds, sponsored by independent schools and universities. This has raised standards and promoted genuine competition.
It has done none of those things. In fact, curriculum reform has slammed educational standards into hard reverse because of the gross incompetence and wilful stupidity with which it was mismanaged by the third rate lunatics in charge of it who treated as an ego trip for their personal hobby horses and not as a serious exercise in educational management. Specialist sixth form colleges at the same time are being closed like crazy as a result of his own government's tax policies, in a deliberate bid to run them down. Is he really unaware of this?
Yet another person who does not get it: the issue is we don't know what we want from schools and the policy chaos inflicted from Whitehall reflects that.
*Breathes deeply and unclenches fist*
Rant over.
Fantastic post!
Aspirational Tory voters are very supportive of Grammar Schools until their children fail the 11 plus...then not so much.
It is somewhat disingenuous to financially support Grammar Schools in Warwickshire and Kent and laud them as a great success while underfunding, and interfering with everything else and then claiming the woefully underfunded, interfered with system is failing.
I'll post my view (again):
The grammar school / comprehensive question is the wrong one. It is basically asking: "Where should the brightest kids go?"
The real question is: "How do we help the kids who cannot read and write well by the time they are 11?"
They are the kids that we should be concentrating on. They are the kids who are routinely forgotten.
Added value is seldom a measure of success (it should be). Certainly not in HY World where A*s and the ratio of Oxbridge entrants is the only currency of value.
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
OK, let’s resolve this once and for all. Could you set out what you think is the most pressing problem in the education system today and what evidence you have that the introduction of more grammar schools is the solution most likely to solve that problem.
The most pressing problem in education today is lack of opportunity in poor working class areas to get into a top Russell Group university and Oxbridge and a good career. More grammars would expand that opportunity.
Followed by the particularly poor results in terms of reading and maths and core GCSEs achieved by white working class boys in particular
Or you could just expand Oxbridge and Russell Group Universities.
Because if your aim is to get more children into Russell Group Universities and Oxbridge - the only options are to increase the number of places available or reduce the number of places available for different group of students.
No just give more top academic state schools they have an equal chance of entry into
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
He's right in one way. Grammar schools are not the answer to the myriad of problems facing education. But in another way he illustrates the problem:
For the past 12 years, the Conservative party has spearheaded a revolution in education. The brilliant Gove reforms, ably carried forward by his successors, have seen state schools regularly outperform private schools. We recently saw the 10,000th academy school created.
That sentence is total bullshit and anyone who thinks it isn't should be sectioned. Not only have the Gove reforms been a shattering failure, state schools do not 'regularly outperform private schools' because that's a meaningless statement. Which ones? By what metric? Why? Where? Without defining his criteria it's Rhetorical bullshit.
And almost no academies have been 'created.' They are schools rebadged under another name, usually with a nice cushy number for either the former Head or one of their mates.
The next paragraph is simply a lie:
Successive Conservative governments have been right to support phonics, setting/streaming, curriculum reform, academies, free schools and specialist sixth forms for 16-18 year olds, sponsored by independent schools and universities. This has raised standards and promoted genuine competition.
It has done none of those things. In fact, curriculum reform has slammed educational standards into hard reverse because of the gross incompetence and wilful stupidity with which it was mismanaged by the third rate lunatics in charge of it who treated as an ego trip for their personal hobby horses and not as a serious exercise in educational management. Specialist sixth form colleges at the same time are being closed like crazy as a result of his own government's tax policies, in a deliberate bid to run them down. Is he really unaware of this?
Yet another person who does not get it: the issue is we don't know what we want from schools and the policy chaos inflicted from Whitehall reflects that.
*Breathes deeply and unclenches fist*
Rant over.
Fantastic post!
Aspirational Tory voters are very supportive of Grammar Schools until their children fail the 11 plus...then not so much.
It is somewhat disingenuous to financially support Grammar Schools in Warwickshire and Kent and laud them as a great success while underfunding, and interfering with everything else and then claiming the woefully underfunded, interfered with system is failing.
I'll post my view (again):
The grammar school / comprehensive question is the wrong one. It is basically asking: "Where should the brightest kids go?"
The real question is: "How do we help the kids who cannot read and write well by the time they are 11?"
They are the kids that we should be concentrating on. They are the kids who are routinely forgotten.
Well, actually I would not agree. THey're the ones who get the extra funding, the extra support, the specialised tuition.
Our system certainly does fail the brightest, by assuming that if you just put them in a classroom and leave them to it they'll do OK. Which is not the case - quite the reverse. I remember in one of Steven Moffat's earlier efforts, called 'Chalk,' a teacher criticised the head for providing more teaching for abler children with the words 'So we're concentrating the most education on the children who need it the least?' Rubbish. Bright children actually need much more educating, due to the amount of material they can cope with, and speaking as somebody whose taught both types it's much harder work as well.
However, the key thing to remember is that we're trying to run what amounts to a baby-sitting service on the cheap while running an education system designed to cram knowledge. That's a trifecta that ultimately, whatever your views on grammar schools or indeed on the existence of moon pigs, fails *all* children caught up in it.
Until we have a sensible conversation on whether we want a baby-sitting service, a cheap service or an educationally effective service, and make a decision among those three options, we're going to end up with a second-rate service. Alas, no sign of that yet. Certainly not from Truss or Sunak, and not from Labour either.
"Well, actually I would not agree."
Then why are so many kids leaving school functionally illiterate and innumerate? Why are millions of adults functionally illiterate and innumerate?
Tackle functional innumeracy and illiteracy, and you ease a heck of a lot of social and other problems in future decades.
Also: if we are 'concentrating' on them, then why are we having episode #234234 of 'grammar schools vs comps' on here?
You said 'these are the kids who are routinely forgotten.' Which is incorrect. Whether the money's well spent is a different question, but they're certainly not forgotten. An obsession with academic education including phonics isn't always helpful.
But brighter children very frequently are forgotten about.
Ironically, the example of taking struggling children out of lessons to give them more attention elsewhere - which is essentially what grammars would do for the ablest - suggests it wouldn't help anyway!
Edit - besides, with respect, you're missing the point. Our school system does not 'concentrate' on any child. It's based on a ridiculous 'one size doesn't really fit anybody but it's cheap so we'll go with it.' The extra funding is essentially remedial guilt money.
As I said, I meant that they are forgotten in conversations on here. I seem to be the only person who ever raises functional illiteracy and innumeracy as an issue.
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
OK, let’s resolve this once and for all. Could you set out what you think is the most pressing problem in the education system today and what evidence you have that the introduction of more grammar schools is the solution most likely to solve that problem.
The most pressing problem in education today is lack of opportunity in poor working class areas to get into a top Russell Group university and Oxbridge and a good career. More grammars would expand that opportunity.
Followed by the particularly poor results in terms of reading and maths and core GCSEs achieved by white working class boys in particular
Or you could just expand Oxbridge and Russell Group Universities.
Because if your aim is to get more children into Russell Group Universities and Oxbridge - the only options are to increase the number of places available or reduce the number of places available for different group of students.
No just give more top academic state schools they have an equal chance of entry into
You mean, like in the 1960s where they tried to create a system of 'grammar schools for all,' also called the 'comprehensive' system?
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
OK, let’s resolve this once and for all. Could you set out what you think is the most pressing problem in the education system today and what evidence you have that the introduction of more grammar schools is the solution most likely to solve that problem.
The most pressing problem in education today is lack of opportunity in poor working class areas to get into a top Russell Group university and Oxbridge and a good career. More grammars would expand that opportunity.
Followed by the particularly poor results in terms of reading and maths and core GCSEs achieved by white working class boys in particular
The most pressing problem is the general standard. Degree level students would now fail 1960s O level exams.
The questions don't look that different, except (a) the O-level paper questions are not very good because there are too many leading questions in them and (b) you have to write twice as much at degree level.
Difficult to know really without seeing what depth is expected in the answers tbh.
The 1950's O level does seem much harder though.
Take page 3 of @ydoethur's link - I've no idea at all apart from the last (21) item. And that's a good page.
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
He's right in one way. Grammar schools are not the answer to the myriad of problems facing education. But in another way he illustrates the problem:
For the past 12 years, the Conservative party has spearheaded a revolution in education. The brilliant Gove reforms, ably carried forward by his successors, have seen state schools regularly outperform private schools. We recently saw the 10,000th academy school created.
That sentence is total bullshit and anyone who thinks it isn't should be sectioned. Not only have the Gove reforms been a shattering failure, state schools do not 'regularly outperform private schools' because that's a meaningless statement. Which ones? By what metric? Why? Where? Without defining his criteria it's Rhetorical bullshit.
And almost no academies have been 'created.' They are schools rebadged under another name, usually with a nice cushy number for either the former Head or one of their mates.
The next paragraph is simply a lie:
Successive Conservative governments have been right to support phonics, setting/streaming, curriculum reform, academies, free schools and specialist sixth forms for 16-18 year olds, sponsored by independent schools and universities. This has raised standards and promoted genuine competition.
It has done none of those things. In fact, curriculum reform has slammed educational standards into hard reverse because of the gross incompetence and wilful stupidity with which it was mismanaged by the third rate lunatics in charge of it who treated as an ego trip for their personal hobby horses and not as a serious exercise in educational management. Specialist sixth form colleges at the same time are being closed like crazy as a result of his own government's tax policies, in a deliberate bid to run them down. Is he really unaware of this?
Yet another person who does not get it: the issue is we don't know what we want from schools and the policy chaos inflicted from Whitehall reflects that.
*Breathes deeply and unclenches fist*
Rant over.
Fantastic post!
Aspirational Tory voters are very supportive of Grammar Schools until their children fail the 11 plus...then not so much.
It is somewhat disingenuous to financially support Grammar Schools in Warwickshire and Kent and laud them as a great success while underfunding, and interfering with everything else and then claiming the woefully underfunded, interfered with system is failing.
I'll post my view (again):
The grammar school / comprehensive question is the wrong one. It is basically asking: "Where should the brightest kids go?"
The real question is: "How do we help the kids who cannot read and write well by the time they are 11?"
They are the kids that we should be concentrating on. They are the kids who are routinely forgotten.
Well, actually I would not agree. THey're the ones who get the extra funding, the extra support, the specialised tuition.
Our system certainly does fail the brightest, by assuming that if you just put them in a classroom and leave them to it they'll do OK. Which is not the case - quite the reverse. I remember in one of Steven Moffat's earlier efforts, called 'Chalk,' a teacher criticised the head for providing more teaching for abler children with the words 'So we're concentrating the most education on the children who need it the least?' Rubbish. Bright children actually need much more educating, due to the amount of material they can cope with, and speaking as somebody whose taught both types it's much harder work as well.
However, the key thing to remember is that we're trying to run what amounts to a baby-sitting service on the cheap while running an education system designed to cram knowledge. That's a trifecta that ultimately, whatever your views on grammar schools or indeed on the existence of moon pigs, fails *all* children caught up in it.
Until we have a sensible conversation on whether we want a baby-sitting service, a cheap service or an educationally effective service, and make a decision among those three options, we're going to end up with a second-rate service. Alas, no sign of that yet. Certainly not from Truss or Sunak, and not from Labour either.
"Well, actually I would not agree."
Then why are so many kids leaving school functionally illiterate and innumerate? Why are millions of adults functionally illiterate and innumerate?
Tackle functional innumeracy and illiteracy, and you ease a heck of a lot of social and other problems in future decades.
Also: if we are 'concentrating' on them, then why are we having episode #234234 of 'grammar schools vs comps' on here?
You said 'these are the kids who are routinely forgotten.' Which is incorrect. Whether the money's well spent is a different question, but they're certainly not forgotten. An obsession with academic education including phonics isn't always helpful.
But brighter children very frequently are forgotten about.
Ironically, the example of taking struggling children out of lessons to give them more attention elsewhere - which is essentially what grammars would do for the ablest - suggests it wouldn't help anyway!
Edit - besides, with respect, you're missing the point. Our school system does not 'concentrate' on any child. It's based on a ridiculous 'one size doesn't really fit anybody but it's cheap so we'll go with it.' The extra funding is essentially remedial guilt money.
As I said, I meant that they are forgotten in conversations on here. I seem to be the only person who ever raises functional illiteracy and innumeracy as an issue.
Right, my misunderstanding for which I apologise. I thought you were talking about the system.
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
OK, let’s resolve this once and for all. Could you set out what you think is the most pressing problem in the education system today and what evidence you have that the introduction of more grammar schools is the solution most likely to solve that problem.
The most pressing problem in education today is lack of opportunity in poor working class areas to get into a top Russell Group university and Oxbridge and a good career. More grammars would expand that opportunity.
Followed by the particularly poor results in terms of reading and maths and core GCSEs achieved by white working class boys in particular
No they wouldn't. The Grammar Schools would get filled with the children of middle class parents who move into the area, putting up house prices and who tutor their children.
In the large poorer village I lived in not a single child passed the 11 plus. In the posh areas loads did. Come A levels a whole bunch of us from the village transferred to the Grammar School. What do you think happened to us between 11 and 16 to suddenly make us brighter? The answer is nothing whatsoever.
No they wouldn't, not if we returned to grammar schools nationwide. Even today grammars also have entry at 16 as well as 11.
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
OK, let’s resolve this once and for all. Could you set out what you think is the most pressing problem in the education system today and what evidence you have that the introduction of more grammar schools is the solution most likely to solve that problem.
The most pressing problem in education today is lack of opportunity in poor working class areas to get into a top Russell Group university and Oxbridge and a good career. More grammars would expand that opportunity.
Followed by the particularly poor results in terms of reading and maths and core GCSEs achieved by white working class boys in particular
Or you could just expand Oxbridge and Russell Group Universities.
Because if your aim is to get more children into Russell Group Universities and Oxbridge - the only options are to increase the number of places available or reduce the number of places available for different group of students.
Can you tell me what makes a Russel group uni special? (Asking as a member of staff at a top ten U.K. university, not in the fecking Russel group...)
HYUFD is someone who is in awe of what he perceives to be his betters. I don't get it but there we go. So he looks up to these institutions or gentry, etc.
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
OK, let’s resolve this once and for all. Could you set out what you think is the most pressing problem in the education system today and what evidence you have that the introduction of more grammar schools is the solution most likely to solve that problem.
The most pressing problem in education today is lack of opportunity in poor working class areas to get into a top Russell Group university and Oxbridge and a good career. More grammars would expand that opportunity.
Followed by the particularly poor results in terms of reading and maths and core GCSEs achieved by white working class boys in particular
Or you could just expand Oxbridge and Russell Group Universities.
Because if your aim is to get more children into Russell Group Universities and Oxbridge - the only options are to increase the number of places available or reduce the number of places available for different group of students.
No just give more top academic state schools they have an equal chance of entry into
Then some young people have to lose those uni places. Who?
THE SCOTTISH Government asked the UK Government to delete a mention of England’s 1966 World Cup victory in a special children’s book to mark the Queen’s jubilee.
According to an email, released under Freedom of Information, the Curriculum and Qualifications Division said that the win “doesn’t seem to merit this level of exposure” and was “not that relevant in the non-England parts of the UK.”
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
OK, let’s resolve this once and for all. Could you set out what you think is the most pressing problem in the education system today and what evidence you have that the introduction of more grammar schools is the solution most likely to solve that problem.
The most pressing problem in education today is lack of opportunity in poor working class areas to get into a top Russell Group university and Oxbridge and a good career. More grammars would expand that opportunity.
Followed by the particularly poor results in terms of reading and maths and core GCSEs achieved by white working class boys in particular
Or you could just expand Oxbridge and Russell Group Universities.
Because if your aim is to get more children into Russell Group Universities and Oxbridge - the only options are to increase the number of places available or reduce the number of places available for different group of students.
No just give more top academic state schools they have an equal chance of entry into
Then some young people have to lose those uni places. Who?
Those from private schools overtaken by top performing pupils from grammar schools
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
OK, let’s resolve this once and for all. Could you set out what you think is the most pressing problem in the education system today and what evidence you have that the introduction of more grammar schools is the solution most likely to solve that problem.
The most pressing problem in education today is lack of opportunity in poor working class areas to get into a top Russell Group university and Oxbridge and a good career. More grammars would expand that opportunity.
Followed by the particularly poor results in terms of reading and maths and core GCSEs achieved by white working class boys in particular
Or you could just expand Oxbridge and Russell Group Universities.
Because if your aim is to get more children into Russell Group Universities and Oxbridge - the only options are to increase the number of places available or reduce the number of places available for different group of students.
Can you tell me what makes a Russel group uni special? (Asking as a member of staff at a top ten U.K. university, not in the fecking Russel group...)
Bugger all (speaking as a member of staff at a Russell Group university)
It's a somewhat artifical distinction now. Many non-Russell departments are better than many Russel departments. Some whole non-Russell universities are better than some Russell Group universities. I did my degree and PhD at Russell Group universities, but I worked for a time at a former poly before my present post. The team I worked in at the former poly was the most effective team I have ever encountered. We did great research on a shoestring budget that changed practices (for the better) within NHS hospitals nationwide and will, without doubt, have saved lives. My present research group is fine and doing some good work, but the University is lumbering, slow and bureaucratic. The former Poly team just got on with things, in my present university there's an awful lot of time and money wasted on faffing about.
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
OK, let’s resolve this once and for all. Could you set out what you think is the most pressing problem in the education system today and what evidence you have that the introduction of more grammar schools is the solution most likely to solve that problem.
The most pressing problem in education today is lack of opportunity in poor working class areas to get into a top Russell Group university and Oxbridge and a good career. More grammars would expand that opportunity.
Followed by the particularly poor results in terms of reading and maths and core GCSEs achieved by white working class boys in particular
The most pressing problem is the general standard. Degree level students would now fail 1960s O level exams.
The questions don't look that different, except (a) the O-level paper questions are not very good because there are too many leading questions in them and (b) you have to write twice as much at degree level.
Difficult to know really without seeing what depth is expected in the answers tbh.
The 1950's O level does seem much harder though.
Take page 3 of @ydoethur's link - I've no idea at all apart from the last (21) item. And that's a good page.
They really are not. Leaving aside the huge variety of choice (far more, incidentally, than you would get today at GCSE) leaving somebody with ample scope to choose a question that suits them, you're looking at basically writing around a side of A4 (hence the 'write briefly'). For a degree level answer 4-5 sides would be needed.
And remember, you would be taught these topics in advance. You haven't been. They don't come as some massive surprise: 'Oh shit, they said it would be the Civil War and here we are looking at the Peninsular campaign!'
Kieran quite rightly suggests it is v. soft support for Labour.
I wonder if Truss’s improving numbers is down, partly, to name recognition and her profile being raised.
Labours lead has always tended to be soft, plenty of Tories sitting on their hands and not moving to labour.
The Bloomberg article Leon linked to is interesting and clearly shows a route to victory at the next GE.
There has been an enormous amount of conjecture over the last few days from the PB faithful that, on the accession of La Truss, Labour are in massive trouble.
I’m not convinced but I must say she has surprised me on the upside. She has been nowhere near as bad as I’d expected. Expectation being partly due to her ‘thatcher cosplay’ and partly due to others comments.
Has she really impressed, or has Sunak seriously disappointed?
For me it is a bit of both but having to take Sunak on head to head has undoubtedly raised her debating skills well beyond where they need to be for SKS.
"Undoubtedly raised her debating skills"? Much doubt remains at this desk.
A great deal of "the King is dead, long live the Queen" in Conservative Party circles now.
I don't that there has been any doubt that they have been raised. Whether that makes them good or not is a matter on which opinions can legitimately vary.
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
OK, let’s resolve this once and for all. Could you set out what you think is the most pressing problem in the education system today and what evidence you have that the introduction of more grammar schools is the solution most likely to solve that problem.
The most pressing problem in education today is lack of opportunity in poor working class areas to get into a top Russell Group university and Oxbridge and a good career. More grammars would expand that opportunity.
Followed by the particularly poor results in terms of reading and maths and core GCSEs achieved by white working class boys in particular
Or you could just expand Oxbridge and Russell Group Universities.
Because if your aim is to get more children into Russell Group Universities and Oxbridge - the only options are to increase the number of places available or reduce the number of places available for different group of students.
No just give more top academic state schools they have an equal chance of entry into
You mean, like in the 1960s where they tried to create a system of 'grammar schools for all,' also called the 'comprehensive' system?
There is no such thing as grammars for all, most comprehensives today are largely the same intake as the old secondary moderns except for a few of the most outstanding comprehensives and academies, generally those with a religious connection or in the leafiest suburbs or a few free schools like Birbalsingh's
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
He's right in one way. Grammar schools are not the answer to the myriad of problems facing education. But in another way he illustrates the problem:
For the past 12 years, the Conservative party has spearheaded a revolution in education. The brilliant Gove reforms, ably carried forward by his successors, have seen state schools regularly outperform private schools. We recently saw the 10,000th academy school created.
That sentence is total bullshit and anyone who thinks it isn't should be sectioned. Not only have the Gove reforms been a shattering failure, state schools do not 'regularly outperform private schools' because that's a meaningless statement. Which ones? By what metric? Why? Where? Without defining his criteria it's Rhetorical bullshit.
And almost no academies have been 'created.' They are schools rebadged under another name, usually with a nice cushy number for either the former Head or one of their mates.
The next paragraph is simply a lie:
Successive Conservative governments have been right to support phonics, setting/streaming, curriculum reform, academies, free schools and specialist sixth forms for 16-18 year olds, sponsored by independent schools and universities. This has raised standards and promoted genuine competition.
It has done none of those things. In fact, curriculum reform has slammed educational standards into hard reverse because of the gross incompetence and wilful stupidity with which it was mismanaged by the third rate lunatics in charge of it who treated as an ego trip for their personal hobby horses and not as a serious exercise in educational management. Specialist sixth form colleges at the same time are being closed like crazy as a result of his own government's tax policies, in a deliberate bid to run them down. Is he really unaware of this?
Yet another person who does not get it: the issue is we don't know what we want from schools and the policy chaos inflicted from Whitehall reflects that.
*Breathes deeply and unclenches fist*
Rant over.
Fantastic post!
Aspirational Tory voters are very supportive of Grammar Schools until their children fail the 11 plus...then not so much.
It is somewhat disingenuous to financially support Grammar Schools in Warwickshire and Kent and laud them as a great success while underfunding, and interfering with everything else and then claiming the woefully underfunded, interfered with system is failing.
I'll post my view (again):
The grammar school / comprehensive question is the wrong one. It is basically asking: "Where should the brightest kids go?"
The real question is: "How do we help the kids who cannot read and write well by the time they are 11?"
They are the kids that we should be concentrating on. They are the kids who are routinely forgotten.
Well, actually I would not agree. THey're the ones who get the extra funding, the extra support, the specialised tuition.
Our system certainly does fail the brightest, by assuming that if you just put them in a classroom and leave them to it they'll do OK. Which is not the case - quite the reverse. I remember in one of Steven Moffat's earlier efforts, called 'Chalk,' a teacher criticised the head for providing more teaching for abler children with the words 'So we're concentrating the most education on the children who need it the least?' Rubbish. Bright children actually need much more educating, due to the amount of material they can cope with, and speaking as somebody whose taught both types it's much harder work as well.
However, the key thing to remember is that we're trying to run what amounts to a baby-sitting service on the cheap while running an education system designed to cram knowledge. That's a trifecta that ultimately, whatever your views on grammar schools or indeed on the existence of moon pigs, fails *all* children caught up in it.
Until we have a sensible conversation on whether we want a baby-sitting service, a cheap service or an educationally effective service, and make a decision among those three options, we're going to end up with a second-rate service. Alas, no sign of that yet. Certainly not from Truss or Sunak, and not from Labour either.
I went to a school that was run for the smartest kids as well as those who were less academically minded. There was rigorous streaming, and it worked. I hear arguments that subject streaming would be impossible, but they did it and there was minimal if any buggeration factor.
It can be done, but if the political will exists for a system to fail by starving it of resources, it must fail.
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
OK, let’s resolve this once and for all. Could you set out what you think is the most pressing problem in the education system today and what evidence you have that the introduction of more grammar schools is the solution most likely to solve that problem.
The most pressing problem in education today is lack of opportunity in poor working class areas to get into a top Russell Group university and Oxbridge and a good career. More grammars would expand that opportunity.
Followed by the particularly poor results in terms of reading and maths and core GCSEs achieved by white working class boys in particular
Or you could just expand Oxbridge and Russell Group Universities.
Because if your aim is to get more children into Russell Group Universities and Oxbridge - the only options are to increase the number of places available or reduce the number of places available for different group of students.
No just give more top academic state schools they have an equal chance of entry into
You mean, like in the 1960s where they tried to create a system of 'grammar schools for all,' also called the 'comprehensive' system?
There is no such thing as grammars for all, most comprehensives today are largely the same intake as the old secondary moderns except for a few of the most outstanding comprehensives and academies, generally those with a religious connection or in the leafiest suburbs or a few free schools like Birbalsingh's
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
Ability/aptitude streaming in comps achieves the same goals as grammars, without the social stigmas for those who don't get in. And without the enormous pressure on 11-year old kids. Also, you learn to look after yourself...!
YOU making decent points - what gives?
Comps that are streamed for ability are better than grammars in my view. Learn with people of your ability, mix with everybody. And no stigma. Everybody wears the same uniform.
They can be a bit rough, but as long as the staff sit on the bullies and protect those who want to learn, they work very well.
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
OK, let’s resolve this once and for all. Could you set out what you think is the most pressing problem in the education system today and what evidence you have that the introduction of more grammar schools is the solution most likely to solve that problem.
The most pressing problem in education today is lack of opportunity in poor working class areas to get into a top Russell Group university and Oxbridge and a good career. More grammars would expand that opportunity.
Followed by the particularly poor results in terms of reading and maths and core GCSEs achieved by white working class boys in particular
The most pressing problem is the general standard. Degree level students would now fail 1960s O level exams.
The questions don't look that different, except (a) the O-level paper questions are not very good because there are too many leading questions in them and (b) you have to write twice as much at degree level.
Difficult to know really without seeing what depth is expected in the answers tbh.
The 1950's O level does seem much harder though.
Take page 3 of @ydoethur's link - I've no idea at all apart from the last (21) item. And that's a good page.
They really are not. Leaving aside the huge variety of choice (far more, incidentally, than you would get today at GCSE) leaving somebody with ample scope to choose a question that suits them, you're looking at basically writing around a side of A4 (hence the 'write briefly'). For a degree level answer 4-5 sides would be needed.
And remember, you would be taught these topics in advance. You haven't been. They don't come as some massive surprise: 'Oh shit, they said it would be the Civil War and here we are looking at the Peninsular campaign!'
I think you're seeing what you want to see.
Well I'm seeing what you want me to see, given how we got here.
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
OK, let’s resolve this once and for all. Could you set out what you think is the most pressing problem in the education system today and what evidence you have that the introduction of more grammar schools is the solution most likely to solve that problem.
The most pressing problem in education today is lack of opportunity in poor working class areas to get into a top Russell Group university and Oxbridge and a good career. More grammars would expand that opportunity.
Followed by the particularly poor results in terms of reading and maths and core GCSEs achieved by white working class boys in particular
Or you could just expand Oxbridge and Russell Group Universities.
Because if your aim is to get more children into Russell Group Universities and Oxbridge - the only options are to increase the number of places available or reduce the number of places available for different group of students.
Can you tell me what makes a Russel group uni special? (Asking as a member of staff at a top ten U.K. university, not in the fecking Russel group...)
As they make up most of the entrants to top law firms and chambers (Oxbridge especially the latter), most doctors went to them, as did most MPs and most top journalists.
Most top 10 universities are also Russell Group
That’s not an answer, more likely biased recruiting. Perhaps they should try blind recruitment practices?
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
OK, let’s resolve this once and for all. Could you set out what you think is the most pressing problem in the education system today and what evidence you have that the introduction of more grammar schools is the solution most likely to solve that problem.
The most pressing problem in education today is lack of opportunity in poor working class areas to get into a top Russell Group university and Oxbridge and a good career. More grammars would expand that opportunity.
Followed by the particularly poor results in terms of reading and maths and core GCSEs achieved by white working class boys in particular
The most pressing problem is the general standard. Degree level students would now fail 1960s O level exams.
The questions don't look that different, except (a) the O-level paper questions are not very good because there are too many leading questions in them and (b) you have to write twice as much at degree level.
Difficult to know really without seeing what depth is expected in the answers tbh.
The 1950's O level does seem much harder though.
Take page 3 of @ydoethur's link - I've no idea at all apart from the last (21) item. And that's a good page.
They really are not. Leaving aside the huge variety of choice (far more, incidentally, than you would get today at GCSE) leaving somebody with ample scope to choose a question that suits them, you're looking at basically writing around a side of A4 (hence the 'write briefly'). For a degree level answer 4-5 sides would be needed.
And remember, you would be taught these topics in advance. You haven't been. They don't come as some massive surprise: 'Oh shit, they said it would be the Civil War and here we are looking at the Peninsular campaign!'
I think you're seeing what you want to see.
Well I'm seeing what you want me to see, given how we got here.
Well, actually you're seeing what I thought you were asking for - evidence of how difficult o-levels were compared to degree level today.
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
OK, let’s resolve this once and for all. Could you set out what you think is the most pressing problem in the education system today and what evidence you have that the introduction of more grammar schools is the solution most likely to solve that problem.
The most pressing problem in education today is lack of opportunity in poor working class areas to get into a top Russell Group university and Oxbridge and a good career. More grammars would expand that opportunity.
Followed by the particularly poor results in terms of reading and maths and core GCSEs achieved by white working class boys in particular
Or you could just expand Oxbridge and Russell Group Universities.
Because if your aim is to get more children into Russell Group Universities and Oxbridge - the only options are to increase the number of places available or reduce the number of places available for different group of students.
Can you tell me what makes a Russel group uni special? (Asking as a member of staff at a top ten U.K. university, not in the fecking Russel group...)
As they make up most of the entrants to top law firms and chambers (Oxbridge especially the latter), most doctors went to them, as did most MPs and most top journalists.
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
OK, let’s resolve this once and for all. Could you set out what you think is the most pressing problem in the education system today and what evidence you have that the introduction of more grammar schools is the solution most likely to solve that problem.
The most pressing problem in education today is lack of opportunity in poor working class areas to get into a top Russell Group university and Oxbridge and a good career. More grammars would expand that opportunity.
Followed by the particularly poor results in terms of reading and maths and core GCSEs achieved by white working class boys in particular
No they wouldn't. The Grammar Schools would get filled with the children of middle class parents who move into the area, putting up house prices and who tutor their children.
In the large poorer village I lived in not a single child passed the 11 plus. In the posh areas loads did. Come A levels a whole bunch of us from the village transferred to the Grammar School. What do you think happened to us between 11 and 16 to suddenly make us brighter? The answer is nothing whatsoever.
No they wouldn't, not if we returned to grammar schools nationwide. Even today grammars also have entry at 16 as well as 11.
Well they were nationwide when I went to school and clearly they did. How do you explain what happened in my village and all the poorer areas around where I lived and everywhere come to that. There wasn't some event that made my village children brighter between 11 and 16. It was because the selection process is crap at 11. The Grammar schools was full of the middle classes and the Secondary moderns full of the poor. Then at 16 we all swapped over. Selection at 11 is cruel and damaging.
Tomorrow is primary election day here in Washington state, which mostly means that ballots must be postmarked no later than tomorrow, or placed in a drop box by early tomorrow evening.
And, were I to judge only by the TV ads I have been seeing, Republican candidates have families and are proud of them; if the Democrats have families, they don't think mentioning them will impress voters. For example, our senior senator, Patty Murray, is married and has two grown children, but neither her husband, nor her children are even mentioned in any of her ads. In contrast, her likely Republican opponent, Tiffany Smiley, includes her husband (an Iraq war veteran, blinded by a suicide bomber) and her three young sons in almost all her ads.
(And a Republican candidate for the House of Representatives, Vincent J. Cavaleri, sent me a large postcard telling me, among other things that: "Vincent and his wife Lilian have been married for over 33 years, and just welcomed their first granchild last October.")
Is having a strong family a reason to vote for a candidate? I think so, because it tells you something, on the average, about a person's character.
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
Ability/aptitude streaming in comps achieves the same goals as grammars, without the social stigmas for those who don't get in. And without the enormous pressure on 11-year old kids. Also, you learn to look after yourself...!
YOU making decent points - what gives?
It does happen, more often than you might expect (I also do a bit a a double-take sometimes when liking MISTY's posts).
Part of the joy of PB, there are very few (if any) posters that I don't discover over time I have some common ground with, on something.
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
OK, let’s resolve this once and for all. Could you set out what you think is the most pressing problem in the education system today and what evidence you have that the introduction of more grammar schools is the solution most likely to solve that problem.
The most pressing problem in education today is lack of opportunity in poor working class areas to get into a top Russell Group university and Oxbridge and a good career. More grammars would expand that opportunity.
Followed by the particularly poor results in terms of reading and maths and core GCSEs achieved by white working class boys in particular
No they wouldn't. The Grammar Schools would get filled with the children of middle class parents who move into the area, putting up house prices and who tutor their children.
In the large poorer village I lived in not a single child passed the 11 plus. In the posh areas loads did. Come A levels a whole bunch of us from the village transferred to the Grammar School. What do you think happened to us between 11 and 16 to suddenly make us brighter? The answer is nothing whatsoever.
No they wouldn't, not if we returned to grammar schools nationwide. Even today grammars also have entry at 16 as well as 11.
Well they were nationwide when I went to school and clearly they did. How do you explain what happened in my village and all the poorer areas around where I lived and everywhere come to that. There wasn't some event that made my village children brighter between 11 and 16. It was because the selection process is crap at 11. The Grammar schools was full of the middle classes and the Secondary moderns full of the poor. Then at 16 we all swapped over. Selection at 11 is cruel and damaging.
Rubbish, more from poorer working class areas got into top universities and became lawyers and doctors etc when we had more grammar schools than do today.
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
OK, let’s resolve this once and for all. Could you set out what you think is the most pressing problem in the education system today and what evidence you have that the introduction of more grammar schools is the solution most likely to solve that problem.
The most pressing problem in education today is lack of opportunity in poor working class areas to get into a top Russell Group university and Oxbridge and a good career. More grammars would expand that opportunity.
Followed by the particularly poor results in terms of reading and maths and core GCSEs achieved by white working class boys in particular
Or you could just expand Oxbridge and Russell Group Universities.
Because if your aim is to get more children into Russell Group Universities and Oxbridge - the only options are to increase the number of places available or reduce the number of places available for different group of students.
No just give more top academic state schools they have an equal chance of entry into
You mean, like in the 1960s where they tried to create a system of 'grammar schools for all,' also called the 'comprehensive' system?
There is no such thing as grammars for all, most comprehensives today are largely the same intake as the old secondary moderns except for a few of the most outstanding comprehensives and academies, generally those with a religious connection or in the leafiest suburbs or a few free schools like Birbalsingh's
I am conflicted by Birbalsingh, the Conservatives, Conservative Headteacher.
The old Gammon in me thinks good on her, kick their lazy arses into shape, but then there is something I can't pinpoint that doesn't sit right, and I am not sure what that something might be.
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
OK, let’s resolve this once and for all. Could you set out what you think is the most pressing problem in the education system today and what evidence you have that the introduction of more grammar schools is the solution most likely to solve that problem.
The most pressing problem in education today is lack of opportunity in poor working class areas to get into a top Russell Group university and Oxbridge and a good career. More grammars would expand that opportunity.
Followed by the particularly poor results in terms of reading and maths and core GCSEs achieved by white working class boys in particular
Or you could just expand Oxbridge and Russell Group Universities.
Because if your aim is to get more children into Russell Group Universities and Oxbridge - the only options are to increase the number of places available or reduce the number of places available for different group of students.
Can you tell me what makes a Russel group uni special? (Asking as a member of staff at a top ten U.K. university, not in the fecking Russel group...)
As they make up most of the entrants to top law firms and chambers (Oxbridge especially the latter), most doctors went to them, as did most MPs and most top journalists.
Most top 10 universities are also Russell Group
That’s not an answer, more likely biased recruiting. Perhaps they should try blind recruitment practices?
As the Russell Group universities have the highest entry grades in terms of GCSEs and A Levels and that is who the top professions want
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
He's right in one way. Grammar schools are not the answer to the myriad of problems facing education. But in another way he illustrates the problem:
For the past 12 years, the Conservative party has spearheaded a revolution in education. The brilliant Gove reforms, ably carried forward by his successors, have seen state schools regularly outperform private schools. We recently saw the 10,000th academy school created.
That sentence is total bullshit and anyone who thinks it isn't should be sectioned. Not only have the Gove reforms been a shattering failure, state schools do not 'regularly outperform private schools' because that's a meaningless statement. Which ones? By what metric? Why? Where? Without defining his criteria it's Rhetorical bullshit.
And almost no academies have been 'created.' They are schools rebadged under another name, usually with a nice cushy number for either the former Head or one of their mates.
The next paragraph is simply a lie:
Successive Conservative governments have been right to support phonics, setting/streaming, curriculum reform, academies, free schools and specialist sixth forms for 16-18 year olds, sponsored by independent schools and universities. This has raised standards and promoted genuine competition.
It has done none of those things. In fact, curriculum reform has slammed educational standards into hard reverse because of the gross incompetence and wilful stupidity with which it was mismanaged by the third rate lunatics in charge of it who treated as an ego trip for their personal hobby horses and not as a serious exercise in educational management. Specialist sixth form colleges at the same time are being closed like crazy as a result of his own government's tax policies, in a deliberate bid to run them down. Is he really unaware of this?
Yet another person who does not get it: the issue is we don't know what we want from schools and the policy chaos inflicted from Whitehall reflects that.
*Breathes deeply and unclenches fist*
Rant over.
Fantastic post!
Aspirational Tory voters are very supportive of Grammar Schools until their children fail the 11 plus...then not so much.
It is somewhat disingenuous to financially support Grammar Schools in Warwickshire and Kent and laud them as a great success while underfunding, and interfering with everything else and then claiming the woefully underfunded, interfered with system is failing.
What always strikes me as ironic about the grammar schools 'debate' is that comprehensive education was introduced to provide 'grammar schools for all.'
So if they're not happy with the results, maybe take a minute to ponder whether grammar schools are such a great idea?
But what's infuriating is how everyone in power not only misses the point but as a result invariably draws the wrong conclusion.
The purpose of schools in Britain is to perform the "meritocratic" sorting ritual to determine which children have succeeded, and deserve a decent job, and which children have failed, and deserve to be forced into demeaning work at poverty pay levels, while doing everything possible to convince parents that every child can succeed, so they don't have to worry about their child being one of the failures.
The problem with the grammar system is that it was too obvious about labelling a majority of children as failures at the stage of the 11+, but the education system is still performing the same function, while pretending not to do so.
Ms Truss has absolutely no requirement to go to the country to seek a mandate, she already has one.
She is abandoning the manifesto on which they were elected
But we are always told that party manifestos are meaningless and non binding. Why should they suddenly become meaningful in this specific situation?
To be fair, in our parliamentary system, no candidate should be running on anything other than the manifesto from the previous GE unless they want to submit themselves to a new one.
Otherwise you're having your cake and eating it, with no real democratic mandate.
The democratic mandate applying to manifestos, if it ever existed, was abolished by the Wheeler case.
You what? How in the name of God can election on a manifesto not amount to a democratic mandate for that manifesto?
Because even without the precedent of decades of government's ignoring manifestos, that is what the law says. It was decided, in court, on that specific point. There is (sadly) no room for debate on this. Manifestos have no legal standing in our democratic system.
No, utterly wrong, what that case says is that there is no legally enforceable mandate, not there is no mandate.
Just as, if I solemnly promise to pay you £100 and then decide not to, there is nothing you can legally do about it. Doesn't alter the fact that I have an obligation to pay you.
It doesn't stop the fact that, should you be so minded, you could simply refuse and, apart from some reputational damage there is nothing to prevent you doing so. The same applies to manifestos. They are meaningless unless it is possible to convince a majority of people that failing to enact them should be a reason to remove an MP. And whilst that may have been the case at some point in the distant mists of time, it certainly isn't the case now.
That "apart from some reputational damage" is a bit "apart from that, Mrs Lincoln..." Look at Boris (and May): it wasn't legal mechanisms that got them out in the end, but out they are. I don't think a bet made by me on here with a fellow PBer would be legally enforceable, but i'd pay up on it even if i didn't much want to.
Nor was it failure to enact manifesto pledges. In the grand scheme of things they are meaningless because all that matters to people is that the Government is vaguely competent and does things that people vaguely agree with. If they do that then no one even looks at what they promised in their manifesto.
I am not saying I think it should be this way. I would happily see manifestos be legally binding though I accept that might be impractical. But in the end they really are meaningless.
They just aren't. There are other systems of obligation than the courts.
Glaring example; do you think DC would in a million years have held a referendum in 2016 if he hadn't committed to one by manifesto in 2015?
It was UKIP breathing down the Conservatives' neck that prompted Cameron's referendum commitment.
Well a bunch of leavers on here consistently and vehemently argue that breaking the (not legally binding) pledge for a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty was why Brexit happened. Had the latest dose of this just at the weekend.
Yes, that's obvious, isn't it? Every time the Europhiles blocked the people from having a say, resentment and suspicion of the EU grew.So when we finally got a say, it was seen as the only chance to say no. It would have been better if we could have said no to the euro or to Lisbon. Or even to Maastricht.
So now you DO agree that political pledges - though not legally enforceable - are not "meaningless".
Wah hey. Somebody on PB.com led by clear and impeccable logic to recognize their previous error.
Always a thrill!
Eh? That doesn't follow at all.
Labour had a manifesto pledge to not pass the constitution (i.e. Lisbon Treaty, they were the same thing) without a referendum. That pledge was broken, irrevocably so and the courts found the pledge could not be enforced, i.e. it was meaningless.
Not meaningless because breaking it had consequences. With a meaningless pledge, by definition (of the word "meaningless") it makes no difference if it was made or not made in the first place. But it did make a difference. That it was made meant it not being done was a breach and this had consequences. If it hadn't been made there'd have been no breach and therefore no consequences. So making the pledge had consequences and therefore meaning. Thus although it wasn't legally enforceable it wasn't meaningless. Meaningless meaning devoid of meaning - which it had.
A view from the States: "Economically stagnant, socially fragmented and politically adrift, [the UK] is being cut down to size. The right’s Brexit fantasy — of a revitalized Britain, able once again to confidently assert itself — is finished." ~AA
Ah, the New York Times reverts to its histrionic Britain-bashing. It must please a segment of its liberal readership
A few months ago I worked out why they do this. It's because of the desperate state of American politics, with seemingly no way out of the nightmare. Add in racial conflict, mass shootings, foreign policy disasters, global retreat, surging crime, homelessness and drugs, and America's clear descent from top country status, and it is very depressing to be American right now. But they get some solace from pointing at Britain and saying "but look this place is fucked up too, and by rightwing populists who are just as bad as ours"
I have seen this effect in play at family weddings, but the NYT are really missing out on an important piece of the jigsaw. They need to discover how bad the governance of Ireland is as well. American visitors always need a crash course in the many past mistakes and misdemeanours of Leo Varadkar and Micheál Martin.
For sure
And, to be fair, the UK press does exactly this as well. Whenever Britain feels a bit miserable, a lot of papers will print articles pointing out how newly crap everything is another country similar to ours (generally France, Germany, Italy, or the EU as a whole). And of course there is an entire school of journalists who spend careers writing America-is-terrible articles, they are particularly noticeable whenever there is a mass shooting
It is a sign of insecurity, and all countries suffer from it, sporadically. Some smaller, more insecure countries do it all the time (eg Ireland vis a vis the UK)
What's new here is AMERICAN insecurity. They have been top dog for a long while, but as that conviction of superiority fast speedily away, on multiple fronts, they are becoming more like other countries, with attendant neuroses
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
Ability/aptitude streaming in comps achieves the same goals as grammars, without the social stigmas for those who don't get in. And without the enormous pressure on 11-year old kids. Also, you learn to look after yourself...!
YOU making decent points - what gives?
It does happen, more often than you might expect (I also do a bit a a double-take sometimes when liking MISTY's posts).
Part of the joy of PB, there are very few (if any) posters that I don't discover over time I have some common ground with, on something.
It's going to be an ugly place soon. OGH will not be happy if Sunak doesn't win. No cigar!
A view from the States: "Economically stagnant, socially fragmented and politically adrift, [the UK] is being cut down to size. The right’s Brexit fantasy — of a revitalized Britain, able once again to confidently assert itself — is finished." ~AA
Ah, the New York Times reverts to its histrionic Britain-bashing. It must please a segment of its liberal readership
A few months ago I worked out why they do this. It's because of the desperate state of American politics, with seemingly no way out of the nightmare. Add in racial conflict, mass shootings, foreign policy disasters, global retreat, surging crime, homelessness and drugs, and America's clear descent from top country status, and it is very depressing to be American right now. But they get some solace from pointing at Britain and saying "but look this place is fucked up too, and by rightwing populists who are just as bad as ours"
I have seen this effect in play at family weddings, but the NYT are really missing out on an important piece of the jigsaw. They need to discover how bad the governance of Ireland is as well. American visitors always need a crash course in the many past mistakes and misdemeanours of Leo Varadkar and Micheál Martin.
For sure
And, to be fair, the UK press does exactly this as well. Whenever Britain feels a bit miserable, a lot of papers will print articles pointing out how newly crap everything is another country similar to ours (generally France, Germany, Italy, or the EU as a whole). And of course there is an entire school of journalists who spend careers writing America-is-terrible articles, they are particularly noticeable whenever there is a mass shooting
It is a sign of insecurity, and all countries suffer from it, sporadically. Some smaller, more insecure countries do it all the time (eg Ireland vis a vis the UK)
What's new here is AMERICAN insecurity. They have been top dog for a long while, but as that conviction of superiority fast speedily away, on multiple fronts, they are becoming more like other countries, with attendant neuroses
Indeed and in any case the threat to America is from China not us, we are only a middle ranking power now
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
OK, let’s resolve this once and for all. Could you set out what you think is the most pressing problem in the education system today and what evidence you have that the introduction of more grammar schools is the solution most likely to solve that problem.
The most pressing problem in education today is lack of opportunity in poor working class areas to get into a top Russell Group university and Oxbridge and a good career. More grammars would expand that opportunity.
Followed by the particularly poor results in terms of reading and maths and core GCSEs achieved by white working class boys in particular
Or you could just expand Oxbridge and Russell Group Universities.
Because if your aim is to get more children into Russell Group Universities and Oxbridge - the only options are to increase the number of places available or reduce the number of places available for different group of students.
No just give more top academic state schools they have an equal chance of entry into
You mean, like in the 1960s where they tried to create a system of 'grammar schools for all,' also called the 'comprehensive' system?
There is no such thing as grammars for all, most comprehensives today are largely the same intake as the old secondary moderns except for a few of the most outstanding comprehensives and academies, generally those with a religious connection or in the leafiest suburbs or a few free schools like Birbalsingh's
I am conflicted by Birbalsingh, the Conservatives, Conservative Headteacher.
The old Gammon in me thinks good on her, kick their lazy arses into shape, but then there is something I can't pinpoint that doesn't sit right, and I am not sure what that something might be.
She is a conservative with traditional values and a love of strict discipline maybe
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
OK, let’s resolve this once and for all. Could you set out what you think is the most pressing problem in the education system today and what evidence you have that the introduction of more grammar schools is the solution most likely to solve that problem.
The most pressing problem in education today is lack of opportunity in poor working class areas to get into a top Russell Group university and Oxbridge and a good career. More grammars would expand that opportunity.
Followed by the particularly poor results in terms of reading and maths and core GCSEs achieved by white working class boys in particular
Or you could just expand Oxbridge and Russell Group Universities.
Because if your aim is to get more children into Russell Group Universities and Oxbridge - the only options are to increase the number of places available or reduce the number of places available for different group of students.
No just give more top academic state schools they have an equal chance of entry into
You mean, like in the 1960s where they tried to create a system of 'grammar schools for all,' also called the 'comprehensive' system?
There is no such thing as grammars for all, most comprehensives today are largely the same intake as the old secondary moderns except for a few of the most outstanding comprehensives and academies, generally those with a religious connection or in the leafiest suburbs or a few free schools like Birbalsingh's
That's a big generalisation. In Wales there are no academies, frees or grammars and very few private schools of note. Most go to the local comp and the middle class parents can be quite influential in making them work.
(I prefer to call since our primary system, "top-two", rather than "blanket", as the Wikipedia article does. In the past, we had a true blanket primary, which meant that we could, for example, on a single ballot vote in the Republican primary for governor, the Democratic primary for senator, and so on down the line. The parties didn't like it.)
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
OK, let’s resolve this once and for all. Could you set out what you think is the most pressing problem in the education system today and what evidence you have that the introduction of more grammar schools is the solution most likely to solve that problem.
The most pressing problem in education today is lack of opportunity in poor working class areas to get into a top Russell Group university and Oxbridge and a good career. More grammars would expand that opportunity.
Followed by the particularly poor results in terms of reading and maths and core GCSEs achieved by white working class boys in particular
Or you could just expand Oxbridge and Russell Group Universities.
Because if your aim is to get more children into Russell Group Universities and Oxbridge - the only options are to increase the number of places available or reduce the number of places available for different group of students.
Can you tell me what makes a Russel group uni special? (Asking as a member of staff at a top ten U.K. university, not in the fecking Russel group...)
As they make up most of the entrants to top law firms and chambers (Oxbridge especially the latter), most doctors went to them, as did most MPs and most top journalists.
Most top 10 universities are also Russell Group
That’s not an answer, more likely biased recruiting. Perhaps they should try blind recruitment practices?
As the Russell Group universities have the highest entry grades in terms of GCSEs and A Levels and that is who the top professions want
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
OK, let’s resolve this once and for all. Could you set out what you think is the most pressing problem in the education system today and what evidence you have that the introduction of more grammar schools is the solution most likely to solve that problem.
The most pressing problem in education today is lack of opportunity in poor working class areas to get into a top Russell Group university and Oxbridge and a good career. More grammars would expand that opportunity.
Followed by the particularly poor results in terms of reading and maths and core GCSEs achieved by white working class boys in particular
Or you could just expand Oxbridge and Russell Group Universities.
Because if your aim is to get more children into Russell Group Universities and Oxbridge - the only options are to increase the number of places available or reduce the number of places available for different group of students.
Can you tell me what makes a Russel group uni special? (Asking as a member of staff at a top ten U.K. university, not in the fecking Russel group...)
As they make up most of the entrants to top law firms and chambers (Oxbridge especially the latter), most doctors went to them, as did most MPs and most top journalists.
Most top 10 universities are also Russell Group
That’s not an answer, more likely biased recruiting. Perhaps they should try blind recruitment practices?
And the doctors point is just silly. It may as well claim that all doctors went to medical school. If that correlates with Russell Group, that just tells you where the largest medical schools are. As it happens, some new medical schools have recently opened and they too will be churning out doctors.
A view from the States: "Economically stagnant, socially fragmented and politically adrift, [the UK] is being cut down to size. The right’s Brexit fantasy — of a revitalized Britain, able once again to confidently assert itself — is finished." ~AA
Ah, the New York Times reverts to its histrionic Britain-bashing. It must please a segment of its liberal readership
A few months ago I worked out why they do this. It's because of the desperate state of American politics, with seemingly no way out of the nightmare. Add in racial conflict, mass shootings, foreign policy disasters, global retreat, surging crime, homelessness and drugs, and America's clear descent from top country status, and it is very depressing to be American right now. But they get some solace from pointing at Britain and saying "but look this place is fucked up too, and by rightwing populists who are just as bad as ours"
I have seen this effect in play at family weddings, but the NYT are really missing out on an important piece of the jigsaw. They need to discover how bad the governance of Ireland is as well. American visitors always need a crash course in the many past mistakes and misdemeanours of Leo Varadkar and Micheál Martin.
For sure
And, to be fair, the UK press does exactly this as well. Whenever Britain feels a bit miserable, a lot of papers will print articles pointing out how newly crap everything is another country similar to ours (generally France, Germany, Italy, or the EU as a whole). And of course there is an entire school of journalists who spend careers writing America-is-terrible articles, they are particularly noticeable whenever there is a mass shooting
It is a sign of insecurity, and all countries suffer from it, sporadically. Some smaller, more insecure countries do it all the time (eg Ireland vis a vis the UK)
What's new here is AMERICAN insecurity. They have been top dog for a long while, but as that conviction of superiority fast speedily away, on multiple fronts, they are becoming more like other countries, with attendant neuroses
Hm? I thought you'd be run out of town in Ireland for comparing it negatively to the UK.
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
He's right in one way. Grammar schools are not the answer to the myriad of problems facing education. But in another way he illustrates the problem:
For the past 12 years, the Conservative party has spearheaded a revolution in education. The brilliant Gove reforms, ably carried forward by his successors, have seen state schools regularly outperform private schools. We recently saw the 10,000th academy school created.
That sentence is total bullshit and anyone who thinks it isn't should be sectioned. Not only have the Gove reforms been a shattering failure, state schools do not 'regularly outperform private schools' because that's a meaningless statement. Which ones? By what metric? Why? Where? Without defining his criteria it's Rhetorical bullshit.
And almost no academies have been 'created.' They are schools rebadged under another name, usually with a nice cushy number for either the former Head or one of their mates.
The next paragraph is simply a lie:
Successive Conservative governments have been right to support phonics, setting/streaming, curriculum reform, academies, free schools and specialist sixth forms for 16-18 year olds, sponsored by independent schools and universities. This has raised standards and promoted genuine competition.
It has done none of those things. In fact, curriculum reform has slammed educational standards into hard reverse because of the gross incompetence and wilful stupidity with which it was mismanaged by the third rate lunatics in charge of it who treated as an ego trip for their personal hobby horses and not as a serious exercise in educational management. Specialist sixth form colleges at the same time are being closed like crazy as a result of his own government's tax policies, in a deliberate bid to run them down. Is he really unaware of this?
Yet another person who does not get it: the issue is we don't know what we want from schools and the policy chaos inflicted from Whitehall reflects that.
*Breathes deeply and unclenches fist*
Rant over.
I stopped reading the article at "the brilliant Gove reforms..." Well done for making the effort to read and set out the rest of the nonsense.
The bit about specialist 6th form colleges is particularly galling.
As far as grammar schools are concerned, I don't have a problem with them, individually. But a system entirely bifurcated by selection at age 11 is quite another matter.
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
OK, let’s resolve this once and for all. Could you set out what you think is the most pressing problem in the education system today and what evidence you have that the introduction of more grammar schools is the solution most likely to solve that problem.
The most pressing problem in education today is lack of opportunity in poor working class areas to get into a top Russell Group university and Oxbridge and a good career. More grammars would expand that opportunity.
Followed by the particularly poor results in terms of reading and maths and core GCSEs achieved by white working class boys in particular
No they wouldn't. The Grammar Schools would get filled with the children of middle class parents who move into the area, putting up house prices and who tutor their children.
In the large poorer village I lived in not a single child passed the 11 plus. In the posh areas loads did. Come A levels a whole bunch of us from the village transferred to the Grammar School. What do you think happened to us between 11 and 16 to suddenly make us brighter? The answer is nothing whatsoever.
No they wouldn't, not if we returned to grammar schools nationwide. Even today grammars also have entry at 16 as well as 11.
Well they were nationwide when I went to school and clearly they did. How do you explain what happened in my village and all the poorer areas around where I lived and everywhere come to that. There wasn't some event that made my village children brighter between 11 and 16. It was because the selection process is crap at 11. The Grammar schools was full of the middle classes and the Secondary moderns full of the poor. Then at 16 we all swapped over. Selection at 11 is cruel and damaging.
Rubbish, more from poorer working class areas got into top universities and became lawyers and doctors etc when we had more grammar schools than do today.
Evidence? I can't think of a single working class person at my Grammar School .
You do understand that because there were more Grammar schools then obviously more progressed don't you? You need to do ratios not absolute numbers. Just because of social mobility in general what you said just can't be true.
And what is it with this inferiority complex you have in looking up at doctors, lawyers, Oxbridge gentry, etc. I'm married to a doctor. She is perfectly normal you know.
A view from the States: "Economically stagnant, socially fragmented and politically adrift, [the UK] is being cut down to size. The right’s Brexit fantasy — of a revitalized Britain, able once again to confidently assert itself — is finished." ~AA
Ah, the New York Times reverts to its histrionic Britain-bashing. It must please a segment of its liberal readership
A few months ago I worked out why they do this. It's because of the desperate state of American politics, with seemingly no way out of the nightmare. Add in racial conflict, mass shootings, foreign policy disasters, global retreat, surging crime, homelessness and drugs, and America's clear descent from top country status, and it is very depressing to be American right now. But they get some solace from pointing at Britain and saying "but look this place is fucked up too, and by rightwing populists who are just as bad as ours"
I have seen this effect in play at family weddings, but the NYT are really missing out on an important piece of the jigsaw. They need to discover how bad the governance of Ireland is as well. American visitors always need a crash course in the many past mistakes and misdemeanours of Leo Varadkar and Micheál Martin.
For sure
And, to be fair, the UK press does exactly this as well. Whenever Britain feels a bit miserable, a lot of papers will print articles pointing out how newly crap everything is another country similar to ours (generally France, Germany, Italy, or the EU as a whole). And of course there is an entire school of journalists who spend careers writing America-is-terrible articles, they are particularly noticeable whenever there is a mass shooting
It is a sign of insecurity, and all countries suffer from it, sporadically. Some smaller, more insecure countries do it all the time (eg Ireland vis a vis the UK)
What's new here is AMERICAN insecurity. They have been top dog for a long while, but as that conviction of superiority fast speedily away, on multiple fronts, they are becoming more like other countries, with attendant neuroses
Indeed and in any case the threat to America is from China not us, we are only a middle ranking power now
I wouldn’t say we were “middle ranking”. I think better to numerically rank based on combos of size, economy, population, military power, soft power etc.
1st Rank US and China
2nd UK, France, Germany, Japan maybe India
3rd Italy, Russia,
I don’t know why I bothered to write that but there you go! Just mental diarrhoea.
Tomorrow is primary election day here in Washington state, which mostly means that ballots must be postmarked no later than tomorrow, or placed in a drop box by early tomorrow evening.
And, were I to judge only by the TV ads I have been seeing, Republican candidates have families and are proud of them; if the Democrats have families, they don't think mentioning them will impress voters. For example, our senior senator, Patty Murray, is married and has two grown children, but neither her husband, nor her children are even mentioned in any of her ads. In contrast, her likely Republican opponent, Tiffany Smiley, includes her husband (an Iraq war veteran, blinded by a suicide bomber) and her three young sons in almost all her ads.
(And a Republican candidate for the House of Representatives, Vincent J. Cavaleri, sent me a large postcard telling me, among other things that: "Vincent and his wife Lilian have been married for over 33 years, and just welcomed their first granchild last October.")
Is having a strong family a reason to vote for a candidate? I think so, because it tells you something, on the average, about a person's character.
I suppose it depends whether you are of the opinion that the candidate is standing for office, not his/her family.
Just a question. Can you turn up at a polling station and vote instead of post the ballot paper in?
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
OK, let’s resolve this once and for all. Could you set out what you think is the most pressing problem in the education system today and what evidence you have that the introduction of more grammar schools is the solution most likely to solve that problem.
The most pressing problem in education today is lack of opportunity in poor working class areas to get into a top Russell Group university and Oxbridge and a good career. More grammars would expand that opportunity.
Followed by the particularly poor results in terms of reading and maths and core GCSEs achieved by white working class boys in particular
No they wouldn't. The Grammar Schools would get filled with the children of middle class parents who move into the area, putting up house prices and who tutor their children.
In the large poorer village I lived in not a single child passed the 11 plus. In the posh areas loads did. Come A levels a whole bunch of us from the village transferred to the Grammar School. What do you think happened to us between 11 and 16 to suddenly make us brighter? The answer is nothing whatsoever.
No they wouldn't, not if we returned to grammar schools nationwide. Even today grammars also have entry at 16 as well as 11.
Well they were nationwide when I went to school and clearly they did. How do you explain what happened in my village and all the poorer areas around where I lived and everywhere come to that. There wasn't some event that made my village children brighter between 11 and 16. It was because the selection process is crap at 11. The Grammar schools was full of the middle classes and the Secondary moderns full of the poor. Then at 16 we all swapped over. Selection at 11 is cruel and damaging.
Rubbish, more from poorer working class areas got into top universities and became lawyers and doctors etc when we had more grammar schools than do today.
You really can't see the wood from the trees can you.
My father was church mouse poor and went to Llanelli Grammar School, he was an ambitious grafter so it was the making of him. Good for him, it worked for him, although as a teaching professional he was very much pro- Comprehensives. The flip side to that is, when I went to Ledbury Grammar School the council house kids who passed the 11 plus were all shoehorned into the " less able" B stream by the fourth year. They were then largely ignored by the staff in favour of the A stream high flyers. The remainder of the Grammar School catchment area either went to Ledbury Secondary or Canon Frome Secondary, both of which were piss-poor. So from a seven class academic year intake, six classes were largely ignored. Some system!
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
He's right in one way. Grammar schools are not the answer to the myriad of problems facing education. But in another way he illustrates the problem:
For the past 12 years, the Conservative party has spearheaded a revolution in education. The brilliant Gove reforms, ably carried forward by his successors, have seen state schools regularly outperform private schools. We recently saw the 10,000th academy school created.
That sentence is total bullshit and anyone who thinks it isn't should be sectioned. Not only have the Gove reforms been a shattering failure, state schools do not 'regularly outperform private schools' because that's a meaningless statement. Which ones? By what metric? Why? Where? Without defining his criteria it's Rhetorical bullshit.
And almost no academies have been 'created.' They are schools rebadged under another name, usually with a nice cushy number for either the former Head or one of their mates.
The next paragraph is simply a lie:
Successive Conservative governments have been right to support phonics, setting/streaming, curriculum reform, academies, free schools and specialist sixth forms for 16-18 year olds, sponsored by independent schools and universities. This has raised standards and promoted genuine competition.
It has done none of those things. In fact, curriculum reform has slammed educational standards into hard reverse because of the gross incompetence and wilful stupidity with which it was mismanaged by the third rate lunatics in charge of it who treated as an ego trip for their personal hobby horses and not as a serious exercise in educational management. Specialist sixth form colleges at the same time are being closed like crazy as a result of his own government's tax policies, in a deliberate bid to run them down. Is he really unaware of this?
Yet another person who does not get it: the issue is we don't know what we want from schools and the policy chaos inflicted from Whitehall reflects that.
*Breathes deeply and unclenches fist*
Rant over.
Fantastic post!
Aspirational Tory voters are very supportive of Grammar Schools until their children fail the 11 plus...then not so much.
It is somewhat disingenuous to financially support Grammar Schools in Warwickshire and Kent and laud them as a great success while underfunding, and interfering with everything else and then claiming the woefully underfunded, interfered with system is failing.
I'll post my view (again):
The grammar school / comprehensive question is the wrong one. It is basically asking: "Where should the brightest kids go?"
The real question is: "How do we help the kids who cannot read and write well by the time they are 11?"
They are the kids that we should be concentrating on. They are the kids who are routinely forgotten.
I can actually think of a reason to support Grammar Schools - because the children attending are likely to want to learn and won't have many special needs requirements - they could be run at a lower cost to non Grammar Schools.
And I have zero problem with a 2 tier education system where the money is spent on those who need the money (i.e. the none Grammar Schools). What I disliked about the approach in Bucks and Kent back in the 80's was that Grammar Schools got more money than none Grammar schools on most measures. Have Grammar schools but reduce their per pupil funding by 10% compared....
Well, that was certainly the policy adopted by Kingston-upon-Thames LEA in the 70s and early 80s. No money for anything in the Grammar, not even decorating, (one inspection report by OFSTED's predecessor was excoriating) whereas my brother's Secondary Modern had excellent facilities.
But the real problem was of course the arbitrary dividing line between 11+ pass and fail. Some of the weaker kids may have benefitted from just scraping in, but more than outweighed by the larger number like my brother who were actively disadvantaged compared to the education they might have had at a Comprehensive. And don't think the 11+ helps working class kids - the extra Grammar school places go overwhelmingly to the middle class kids resulting in a worse education for most working class children.
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
Ability/aptitude streaming in comps achieves the same goals as grammars, without the social stigmas for those who don't get in. And without the enormous pressure on 11-year old kids. Also, you learn to look after yourself...!
YOU making decent points - what gives?
It does happen, more often than you might expect (I also do a bit a a double-take sometimes when liking MISTY's posts).
Part of the joy of PB, there are very few (if any) posters that I don't discover over time I have some common ground with, on something.
It's going to be an ugly place soon. OGH will not be happy if Sunak doesn't win. No cigar!
I think you'll find OGH has by now hedged as he explained the other day, as have many of us whether we started by backing Sunak or Truss.
I always ask myself when it comes to University discussion - What does everyone HYUFD have against St Andrews, Loughborough and Bath ?
And Aberdeen
I mean the Russell group is a collection of large and generally highly ranked Universities - so sure 90% of all barristers or doctors might be from them, but there are top unis outside the group.
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
OK, let’s resolve this once and for all. Could you set out what you think is the most pressing problem in the education system today and what evidence you have that the introduction of more grammar schools is the solution most likely to solve that problem.
The most pressing problem in education today is lack of opportunity in poor working class areas to get into a top Russell Group university and Oxbridge and a good career. More grammars would expand that opportunity.
Followed by the particularly poor results in terms of reading and maths and core GCSEs achieved by white working class boys in particular
Or you could just expand Oxbridge and Russell Group Universities.
Because if your aim is to get more children into Russell Group Universities and Oxbridge - the only options are to increase the number of places available or reduce the number of places available for different group of students.
No just give more top academic state schools they have an equal chance of entry into
Then some young people have to lose those uni places. Who?
Those from private schools overtaken by top performing pupils from grammar schools
That suggests a small number of people will benefit and lose overall, with no net benefit. It's also a big claim - in particular that parents will be happy to keep sending kids to private schools that send 50% of intake to (insert low-mid-quality British university the reader didn't attend).
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
OK, let’s resolve this once and for all. Could you set out what you think is the most pressing problem in the education system today and what evidence you have that the introduction of more grammar schools is the solution most likely to solve that problem.
The most pressing problem in education today is lack of opportunity in poor working class areas to get into a top Russell Group university and Oxbridge and a good career. More grammars would expand that opportunity.
Followed by the particularly poor results in terms of reading and maths and core GCSEs achieved by white working class boys in particular
Or you could just expand Oxbridge and Russell Group Universities.
Because if your aim is to get more children into Russell Group Universities and Oxbridge - the only options are to increase the number of places available or reduce the number of places available for different group of students.
No just give more top academic state schools they have an equal chance of entry into
Then some young people have to lose those uni places. Who?
Those from private schools overtaken by top performing pupils from grammar schools
That suggests a small number of people will benefit and lose overall, with no net benefit. It's also a big claim - in particular that parents will be happy to keep sending kids to private schools that send 50% of intake to (insert low-mid-quality British university the reader didn't attend).
When grammar schools were at their height fewer middle class parents sent their children to private schools except the ones with snob value like Eton
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
OK, let’s resolve this once and for all. Could you set out what you think is the most pressing problem in the education system today and what evidence you have that the introduction of more grammar schools is the solution most likely to solve that problem.
The most pressing problem in education today is lack of opportunity in poor working class areas to get into a top Russell Group university and Oxbridge and a good career. More grammars would expand that opportunity.
Followed by the particularly poor results in terms of reading and maths and core GCSEs achieved by white working class boys in particular
Or you could just expand Oxbridge and Russell Group Universities.
Because if your aim is to get more children into Russell Group Universities and Oxbridge - the only options are to increase the number of places available or reduce the number of places available for different group of students.
This is the most obvious problem with the whole notion. The advocates need to name the broad category of young people they want to exclude from the universities they value.
Very simple: other people's children, not our bright little sparks.
A view from the States: "Economically stagnant, socially fragmented and politically adrift, [the UK] is being cut down to size. The right’s Brexit fantasy — of a revitalized Britain, able once again to confidently assert itself — is finished." ~AA
Ah, the New York Times reverts to its histrionic Britain-bashing. It must please a segment of its liberal readership
A few months ago I worked out why they do this. It's because of the desperate state of American politics, with seemingly no way out of the nightmare. Add in racial conflict, mass shootings, foreign policy disasters, global retreat, surging crime, homelessness and drugs, and America's clear descent from top country status, and it is very depressing to be American right now. But they get some solace from pointing at Britain and saying "but look this place is fucked up too, and by rightwing populists who are just as bad as ours"
I have seen this effect in play at family weddings, but the NYT are really missing out on an important piece of the jigsaw. They need to discover how bad the governance of Ireland is as well. American visitors always need a crash course in the many past mistakes and misdemeanours of Leo Varadkar and Micheál Martin.
For sure
And, to be fair, the UK press does exactly this as well. Whenever Britain feels a bit miserable, a lot of papers will print articles pointing out how newly crap everything is another country similar to ours (generally France, Germany, Italy, or the EU as a whole). And of course there is an entire school of journalists who spend careers writing America-is-terrible articles, they are particularly noticeable whenever there is a mass shooting
It is a sign of insecurity, and all countries suffer from it, sporadically. Some smaller, more insecure countries do it all the time (eg Ireland vis a vis the UK)
What's new here is AMERICAN insecurity. They have been top dog for a long while, but as that conviction of superiority fast speedily away, on multiple fronts, they are becoming more like other countries, with attendant neuroses
Hm? I thought you'd be run out of town in Ireland for comparing it negatively to the UK.
Ah, my apologies to Leon. I understood wrongly. Yes, it's exactly the dynamic he describes, I thought.
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
He's right in one way. Grammar schools are not the answer to the myriad of problems facing education. But in another way he illustrates the problem:
For the past 12 years, the Conservative party has spearheaded a revolution in education. The brilliant Gove reforms, ably carried forward by his successors, have seen state schools regularly outperform private schools. We recently saw the 10,000th academy school created.
That sentence is total bullshit and anyone who thinks it isn't should be sectioned. Not only have the Gove reforms been a shattering failure, state schools do not 'regularly outperform private schools' because that's a meaningless statement. Which ones? By what metric? Why? Where? Without defining his criteria it's Rhetorical bullshit.
And almost no academies have been 'created.' They are schools rebadged under another name, usually with a nice cushy number for either the former Head or one of their mates.
The next paragraph is simply a lie:
Successive Conservative governments have been right to support phonics, setting/streaming, curriculum reform, academies, free schools and specialist sixth forms for 16-18 year olds, sponsored by independent schools and universities. This has raised standards and promoted genuine competition.
It has done none of those things. In fact, curriculum reform has slammed educational standards into hard reverse because of the gross incompetence and wilful stupidity with which it was mismanaged by the third rate lunatics in charge of it who treated as an ego trip for their personal hobby horses and not as a serious exercise in educational management. Specialist sixth form colleges at the same time are being closed like crazy as a result of his own government's tax policies, in a deliberate bid to run them down. Is he really unaware of this?
Yet another person who does not get it: the issue is we don't know what we want from schools and the policy chaos inflicted from Whitehall reflects that.
*Breathes deeply and unclenches fist*
Rant over.
Fantastic post!
Aspirational Tory voters are very supportive of Grammar Schools until their children fail the 11 plus...then not so much.
It is somewhat disingenuous to financially support Grammar Schools in Warwickshire and Kent and laud them as a great success while underfunding, and interfering with everything else and then claiming the woefully underfunded, interfered with system is failing.
I'll post my view (again):
The grammar school / comprehensive question is the wrong one. It is basically asking: "Where should the brightest kids go?"
The real question is: "How do we help the kids who cannot read and write well by the time they are 11?"
They are the kids that we should be concentrating on. They are the kids who are routinely forgotten.
Well, actually I would not agree. THey're the ones who get the extra funding, the extra support, the specialised tuition.
Our system certainly does fail the brightest, by assuming that if you just put them in a classroom and leave them to it they'll do OK. Which is not the case - quite the reverse. I remember in one of Steven Moffat's earlier efforts, called 'Chalk,' a teacher criticised the head for providing more teaching for abler children with the words 'So we're concentrating the most education on the children who need it the least?' Rubbish. Bright children actually need much more educating, due to the amount of material they can cope with, and speaking as somebody whose taught both types it's much harder work as well.
However, the key thing to remember is that we're trying to run what amounts to a baby-sitting service on the cheap while running an education system designed to cram knowledge. That's a trifecta that ultimately, whatever your views on grammar schools or indeed on the existence of moon pigs, fails *all* children caught up in it.
Until we have a sensible conversation on whether we want a baby-sitting service, a cheap service or an educationally effective service, and make a decision among those three options, we're going to end up with a second-rate service. Alas, no sign of that yet. Certainly not from Truss or Sunak, and not from Labour either.
That's one of the great strengths of large 6th form colleges. They can offer an extended curriculum, hire subject experts, and attract those who are actually interested in learning. And they mitigate much of the divisiveness of the selection debate - their offer can be superior to that of grammar school 6th forms.
Except, as you point out, they've been stuffed financially in recent years.
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
OK, let’s resolve this once and for all. Could you set out what you think is the most pressing problem in the education system today and what evidence you have that the introduction of more grammar schools is the solution most likely to solve that problem.
The most pressing problem in education today is lack of opportunity in poor working class areas to get into a top Russell Group university and Oxbridge and a good career. More grammars would expand that opportunity.
Followed by the particularly poor results in terms of reading and maths and core GCSEs achieved by white working class boys in particular
No they wouldn't. The Grammar Schools would get filled with the children of middle class parents who move into the area, putting up house prices and who tutor their children.
In the large poorer village I lived in not a single child passed the 11 plus. In the posh areas loads did. Come A levels a whole bunch of us from the village transferred to the Grammar School. What do you think happened to us between 11 and 16 to suddenly make us brighter? The answer is nothing whatsoever.
No they wouldn't, not if we returned to grammar schools nationwide. Even today grammars also have entry at 16 as well as 11.
Well they were nationwide when I went to school and clearly they did. How do you explain what happened in my village and all the poorer areas around where I lived and everywhere come to that. There wasn't some event that made my village children brighter between 11 and 16. It was because the selection process is crap at 11. The Grammar schools was full of the middle classes and the Secondary moderns full of the poor. Then at 16 we all swapped over. Selection at 11 is cruel and damaging.
Rubbish, more from poorer working class areas got into top universities and became lawyers and doctors etc when we had more grammar schools than do today.
You really can't see the wood from the trees can you.
My father was church mouse poor and went to Llanelli Grammar School, he was an ambitious grafter so it was the making of him. Good for him, it worked for him, although as a teaching professional he was very much pro- Comprehensives. The flip side to that is, when I went to Ledbury Grammar School the council house kids who passed the 11 plus were all shoehorned into the " less able" B stream by the fourth year. They were then largely ignored by the staff in favour of the A stream high flyers. The remainder of the Grammar School catchment area either went to Ledbury Secondary or Canon Frome Secondary, both of which were piss-poor. So from a seven class academic year intake, six classes were largely ignored. Some system!
So your father got into the middle class thanks to his grammar school.
You also know full well I will always support grammars, part of the reason I support the Conservatives, the most pro grammar of the main parties
THE SCOTTISH Government asked the UK Government to delete a mention of England’s 1966 World Cup victory in a special children’s book to mark the Queen’s jubilee.
According to an email, released under Freedom of Information, the Curriculum and Qualifications Division said that the win “doesn’t seem to merit this level of exposure” and was “not that relevant in the non-England parts of the UK.”
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
He's right in one way. Grammar schools are not the answer to the myriad of problems facing education. But in another way he illustrates the problem:
For the past 12 years, the Conservative party has spearheaded a revolution in education. The brilliant Gove reforms, ably carried forward by his successors, have seen state schools regularly outperform private schools. We recently saw the 10,000th academy school created.
That sentence is total bullshit and anyone who thinks it isn't should be sectioned. Not only have the Gove reforms been a shattering failure, state schools do not 'regularly outperform private schools' because that's a meaningless statement. Which ones? By what metric? Why? Where? Without defining his criteria it's Rhetorical bullshit.
And almost no academies have been 'created.' They are schools rebadged under another name, usually with a nice cushy number for either the former Head or one of their mates.
The next paragraph is simply a lie:
Successive Conservative governments have been right to support phonics, setting/streaming, curriculum reform, academies, free schools and specialist sixth forms for 16-18 year olds, sponsored by independent schools and universities. This has raised standards and promoted genuine competition.
It has done none of those things. In fact, curriculum reform has slammed educational standards into hard reverse because of the gross incompetence and wilful stupidity with which it was mismanaged by the third rate lunatics in charge of it who treated as an ego trip for their personal hobby horses and not as a serious exercise in educational management. Specialist sixth form colleges at the same time are being closed like crazy as a result of his own government's tax policies, in a deliberate bid to run them down. Is he really unaware of this?
Yet another person who does not get it: the issue is we don't know what we want from schools and the policy chaos inflicted from Whitehall reflects that.
*Breathes deeply and unclenches fist*
Rant over.
Fantastic post!
Aspirational Tory voters are very supportive of Grammar Schools until their children fail the 11 plus...then not so much.
It is somewhat disingenuous to financially support Grammar Schools in Warwickshire and Kent and laud them as a great success while underfunding, and interfering with everything else and then claiming the woefully underfunded, interfered with system is failing.
What always strikes me as ironic about the grammar schools 'debate' is that comprehensive education was introduced to provide 'grammar schools for all.'
So if they're not happy with the results, maybe take a minute to ponder whether grammar schools are such a great idea?
But what's infuriating is how everyone in power not only misses the point but as a result invariably draws the wrong conclusion.
It's a bit like the "Levelling Up" bollox. The problem in both being a compulsion to present win/lose changes as win/win (or win/flat) and an erasure of the crucial truth of relativities. So, grammar schools could only exist meaningfully by reference to what they were better than - secondary moderns. No sec mods, no grammars. That's the truth. Likewise Levelling Up can only happen if there's some Levelling Down. Also the truth. But these things cannot be acknowledged.
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
OK, let’s resolve this once and for all. Could you set out what you think is the most pressing problem in the education system today and what evidence you have that the introduction of more grammar schools is the solution most likely to solve that problem.
The most pressing problem in education today is lack of opportunity in poor working class areas to get into a top Russell Group university and Oxbridge and a good career. More grammars would expand that opportunity.
Followed by the particularly poor results in terms of reading and maths and core GCSEs achieved by white working class boys in particular
No they wouldn't. The Grammar Schools would get filled with the children of middle class parents who move into the area, putting up house prices and who tutor their children.
In the large poorer village I lived in not a single child passed the 11 plus. In the posh areas loads did. Come A levels a whole bunch of us from the village transferred to the Grammar School. What do you think happened to us between 11 and 16 to suddenly make us brighter? The answer is nothing whatsoever.
No they wouldn't, not if we returned to grammar schools nationwide. Even today grammars also have entry at 16 as well as 11.
Well they were nationwide when I went to school and clearly they did. How do you explain what happened in my village and all the poorer areas around where I lived and everywhere come to that. There wasn't some event that made my village children brighter between 11 and 16. It was because the selection process is crap at 11. The Grammar schools was full of the middle classes and the Secondary moderns full of the poor. Then at 16 we all swapped over. Selection at 11 is cruel and damaging.
Rubbish, more from poorer working class areas got into top universities and became lawyers and doctors etc when we had more grammar schools than do today.
Evidence? I can't think of a single working class person at my Grammar School .
You do understand that because there were more Grammar schools then obviously more progressed don't you? You need to do ratios not absolute numbers. Just because of social mobility in general what you said just can't be true.
And what is it with this inferiority complex you have in looking up at doctors, lawyers, Oxbridge gentry, etc. I'm married to a doctor. She is perfectly normal you know.
I was one of about 2 or 3 true working class in my Grammar school year (1970s). Mum and Dad both worked and were paid weekly in cash. Dad was in a manual occupation, Mum was a bookkeeper part time, (no accountancy quals). Dad was always out on strike (union man etc), Mum relied on Family allowance once a week, (She used to get it on a Tuesday from the GPO in town in her dinner hour). I was envious of my mates because they had money and nice houses. There were no Free School meals in our year. ( and no, we didn't live in a shoebox in't midlle o't't' road)
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
OK, let’s resolve this once and for all. Could you set out what you think is the most pressing problem in the education system today and what evidence you have that the introduction of more grammar schools is the solution most likely to solve that problem.
The most pressing problem in education today is lack of opportunity in poor working class areas to get into a top Russell Group university and Oxbridge and a good career. More grammars would expand that opportunity.
Followed by the particularly poor results in terms of reading and maths and core GCSEs achieved by white working class boys in particular
Or you could just expand Oxbridge and Russell Group Universities.
Because if your aim is to get more children into Russell Group Universities and Oxbridge - the only options are to increase the number of places available or reduce the number of places available for different group of students.
Can you tell me what makes a Russel group uni special? (Asking as a member of staff at a top ten U.K. university, not in the fecking Russel group...)
As they make up most of the entrants to top law firms and chambers (Oxbridge especially the latter), most doctors went to them, as did most MPs and most top journalists.
Most top 10 universities are also Russell Group
That’s not an answer, more likely biased recruiting. Perhaps they should try blind recruitment practices?
As the Russell Group universities have the highest entry grades in terms of GCSEs and A Levels and that is who the top professions want
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
Ability/aptitude streaming in comps achieves the same goals as grammars, without the social stigmas for those who don't get in. And without the enormous pressure on 11-year old kids. Also, you learn to look after yourself...!
YOU making decent points - what gives?
It does happen, more often than you might expect (I also do a bit a a double-take sometimes when liking MISTY's posts).
Part of the joy of PB, there are very few (if any) posters that I don't discover over time I have some common ground with, on something.
It's going to be an ugly place soon. OGH will not be happy if Sunak doesn't win. No cigar!
I think you'll find OGH has by now hedged as he explained the other day, as have many of us whether we started by backing Sunak or Truss.
I know. I doubt Mike would even smoke a celebratatory cigar. The mental image of it doesn't hurt.
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
OK, let’s resolve this once and for all. Could you set out what you think is the most pressing problem in the education system today and what evidence you have that the introduction of more grammar schools is the solution most likely to solve that problem.
The most pressing problem in education today is lack of opportunity in poor working class areas to get into a top Russell Group university and Oxbridge and a good career. More grammars would expand that opportunity.
Followed by the particularly poor results in terms of reading and maths and core GCSEs achieved by white working class boys in particular
Or you could just expand Oxbridge and Russell Group Universities.
Because if your aim is to get more children into Russell Group Universities and Oxbridge - the only options are to increase the number of places available or reduce the number of places available for different group of students.
No just give more top academic state schools they have an equal chance of entry into
You mean, like in the 1960s where they tried to create a system of 'grammar schools for all,' also called the 'comprehensive' system?
There is no such thing as grammars for all, most comprehensives today are largely the same intake as the old secondary moderns except for a few of the most outstanding comprehensives and academies, generally those with a religious connection or in the leafiest suburbs or a few free schools like Birbalsingh's
I am conflicted by Birbalsingh, the Conservatives, Conservative Headteacher.
The old Gammon in me thinks good on her, kick their lazy arses into shape, but then there is something I can't pinpoint that doesn't sit right, and I am not sure what that something might be.
She is a conservative with traditional values and a love of strict discipline maybe
No, the Gammon side of me is on board with the disciplinarianism, although there is a bit of a BS element to how the teachers behave.
We had a crap Geography Teacher at Ledbury Grammar who would give us hundreds of lines (paragraph sized lines) for no particular reason, it was of no added value and struck me as a power display. He did, because he could! Much of the disciplinarianism at Michaela strikes me in a similar way. But then if it works, who am I to criticise?
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
OK, let’s resolve this once and for all. Could you set out what you think is the most pressing problem in the education system today and what evidence you have that the introduction of more grammar schools is the solution most likely to solve that problem.
The most pressing problem in education today is lack of opportunity in poor working class areas to get into a top Russell Group university and Oxbridge and a good career. More grammars would expand that opportunity.
Followed by the particularly poor results in terms of reading and maths and core GCSEs achieved by white working class boys in particular
Or you could just expand Oxbridge and Russell Group Universities.
Because if your aim is to get more children into Russell Group Universities and Oxbridge - the only options are to increase the number of places available or reduce the number of places available for different group of students.
No just give more top academic state schools they have an equal chance of entry into
You mean, like in the 1960s where they tried to create a system of 'grammar schools for all,' also called the 'comprehensive' system?
There is no such thing as grammars for all, most comprehensives today are largely the same intake as the old secondary moderns except for a few of the most outstanding comprehensives and academies, generally those with a religious connection or in the leafiest suburbs or a few free schools like Birbalsingh's
That's a big generalisation. In Wales there are no academies, frees or grammars and very few private schools of note. Most go to the local comp and the middle class parents can be quite influential in making them work.
Wales has the lowest ranked education system of any nation in the UK
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
He's right in one way. Grammar schools are not the answer to the myriad of problems facing education. But in another way he illustrates the problem:
For the past 12 years, the Conservative party has spearheaded a revolution in education. The brilliant Gove reforms, ably carried forward by his successors, have seen state schools regularly outperform private schools. We recently saw the 10,000th academy school created.
That sentence is total bullshit and anyone who thinks it isn't should be sectioned. Not only have the Gove reforms been a shattering failure, state schools do not 'regularly outperform private schools' because that's a meaningless statement. Which ones? By what metric? Why? Where? Without defining his criteria it's Rhetorical bullshit.
And almost no academies have been 'created.' They are schools rebadged under another name, usually with a nice cushy number for either the former Head or one of their mates.
The next paragraph is simply a lie:
Successive Conservative governments have been right to support phonics, setting/streaming, curriculum reform, academies, free schools and specialist sixth forms for 16-18 year olds, sponsored by independent schools and universities. This has raised standards and promoted genuine competition.
It has done none of those things. In fact, curriculum reform has slammed educational standards into hard reverse because of the gross incompetence and wilful stupidity with which it was mismanaged by the third rate lunatics in charge of it who treated as an ego trip for their personal hobby horses and not as a serious exercise in educational management. Specialist sixth form colleges at the same time are being closed like crazy as a result of his own government's tax policies, in a deliberate bid to run them down. Is he really unaware of this?
Yet another person who does not get it: the issue is we don't know what we want from schools and the policy chaos inflicted from Whitehall reflects that.
*Breathes deeply and unclenches fist*
Rant over.
I stopped reading the article at "the brilliant Gove reforms..." Well done for making the effort to read and set out the rest of the nonsense.
The bit about specialist 6th form colleges is particularly galling.
As far as grammar schools are concerned, I don't have a problem with them, individually. But a system entirely bifurcated by selection at age 11 is quite another matter.
I assume the "specialist 6th form colleges" is a reference to the mega-selective ones, rather than the ones which take anyone who has a reasonable change of making a go of A Levels. A very different creature, and one with an uncomfortable amount of hype.
(And one of the examples where Katherine Birbalsingh's hype doesn't quite match her reality. The entrance criteria for her Sixth Form are very much "if you're not Oxbridge potenital then go and find somewhere more... undemanding".)
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
OK, let’s resolve this once and for all. Could you set out what you think is the most pressing problem in the education system today and what evidence you have that the introduction of more grammar schools is the solution most likely to solve that problem.
The most pressing problem in education today is lack of opportunity in poor working class areas to get into a top Russell Group university and Oxbridge and a good career. More grammars would expand that opportunity.
Followed by the particularly poor results in terms of reading and maths and core GCSEs achieved by white working class boys in particular
Or you could just expand Oxbridge and Russell Group Universities.
Because if your aim is to get more children into Russell Group Universities and Oxbridge - the only options are to increase the number of places available or reduce the number of places available for different group of students.
Can you tell me what makes a Russel group uni special? (Asking as a member of staff at a top ten U.K. university, not in the fecking Russel group...)
As they make up most of the entrants to top law firms and chambers (Oxbridge especially the latter), most doctors went to them, as did most MPs and most top journalists.
Most top 10 universities are also Russell Group
That’s not an answer, more likely biased recruiting. Perhaps they should try blind recruitment practices?
As the Russell Group universities have the highest entry grades in terms of GCSEs and A Levels and that is who the top professions want
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
OK, let’s resolve this once and for all. Could you set out what you think is the most pressing problem in the education system today and what evidence you have that the introduction of more grammar schools is the solution most likely to solve that problem.
The most pressing problem in education today is lack of opportunity in poor working class areas to get into a top Russell Group university and Oxbridge and a good career. More grammars would expand that opportunity.
Followed by the particularly poor results in terms of reading and maths and core GCSEs achieved by white working class boys in particular
Or you could just expand Oxbridge and Russell Group Universities.
Because if your aim is to get more children into Russell Group Universities and Oxbridge - the only options are to increase the number of places available or reduce the number of places available for different group of students.
No just give more top academic state schools they have an equal chance of entry into
Then some young people have to lose those uni places. Who?
Those from private schools overtaken by top performing pupils from grammar schools
That suggests a small number of people will benefit and lose overall, with no net benefit. It's also a big claim - in particular that parents will be happy to keep sending kids to private schools that send 50% of intake to (insert low-mid-quality British university the reader didn't attend).
When grammar schools were at their height fewer middle class parents sent their children to private schools except the ones with snob value like Eton
That seems irrelevant, though, to the point that the same number of kids will go to your favourite unis overall. So if the change is entirely affecting a handful of hundred of public schools today, we might be talking about, what, one or two thousand kids who benefit from the policy per year? (Balanced by the same number of place-losers from those public schools.) After excluding the kids whom, you acknowledge, would be merely rediverted from a public->uni to a grammar->uni pipeline.
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
OK, let’s resolve this once and for all. Could you set out what you think is the most pressing problem in the education system today and what evidence you have that the introduction of more grammar schools is the solution most likely to solve that problem.
The most pressing problem in education today is lack of opportunity in poor working class areas to get into a top Russell Group university and Oxbridge and a good career. More grammars would expand that opportunity.
Followed by the particularly poor results in terms of reading and maths and core GCSEs achieved by white working class boys in particular
No they wouldn't. The Grammar Schools would get filled with the children of middle class parents who move into the area, putting up house prices and who tutor their children.
In the large poorer village I lived in not a single child passed the 11 plus. In the posh areas loads did. Come A levels a whole bunch of us from the village transferred to the Grammar School. What do you think happened to us between 11 and 16 to suddenly make us brighter? The answer is nothing whatsoever.
No they wouldn't, not if we returned to grammar schools nationwide. Even today grammars also have entry at 16 as well as 11.
Presumably anyone who gets in at 16 is a tacit admission that selection at age 11 has failed.
One reason streaming works well in Comps is that people can be in different streams according to subject, and can switch streams without the disruption of moving school.
A view from the States: "Economically stagnant, socially fragmented and politically adrift, [the UK] is being cut down to size. The right’s Brexit fantasy — of a revitalized Britain, able once again to confidently assert itself — is finished." ~AA
Ah, the New York Times reverts to its histrionic Britain-bashing. It must please a segment of its liberal readership
A few months ago I worked out why they do this. It's because of the desperate state of American politics, with seemingly no way out of the nightmare. Add in racial conflict, mass shootings, foreign policy disasters, global retreat, surging crime, homelessness and drugs, and America's clear descent from top country status, and it is very depressing to be American right now. But they get some solace from pointing at Britain and saying "but look this place is fucked up too, and by rightwing populists who are just as bad as ours"
I have seen this effect in play at family weddings, but the NYT are really missing out on an important piece of the jigsaw. They need to discover how bad the governance of Ireland is as well. American visitors always need a crash course in the many past mistakes and misdemeanours of Leo Varadkar and Micheál Martin.
For sure
And, to be fair, the UK press does exactly this as well. Whenever Britain feels a bit miserable, a lot of papers will print articles pointing out how newly crap everything is another country similar to ours (generally France, Germany, Italy, or the EU as a whole). And of course there is an entire school of journalists who spend careers writing America-is-terrible articles, they are particularly noticeable whenever there is a mass shooting
It is a sign of insecurity, and all countries suffer from it, sporadically. Some smaller, more insecure countries do it all the time (eg Ireland vis a vis the UK)
What's new here is AMERICAN insecurity. They have been top dog for a long while, but as that conviction of superiority fast speedily away, on multiple fronts, they are becoming more like other countries, with attendant neuroses
Indeed and in any case the threat to America is from China not us, we are only a middle ranking power now
I wouldn’t say we were “middle ranking”. I think better to numerically rank based on combos of size, economy, population, military power, soft power etc.
1st Rank US and China
2nd UK, France, Germany, Japan maybe India
3rd Italy, Russia,
I don’t know why I bothered to write that but there you go! Just mental diarrhoea.
In terms of economy, South Korea is arguably more influential than the UK. And Poland and Turkey may soon have superior conventional armed forces.
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
Ability/aptitude streaming in comps achieves the same goals as grammars, without the social stigmas for those who don't get in. And without the enormous pressure on 11-year old kids. Also, you learn to look after yourself...!
YOU making decent points - what gives?
It does happen, more often than you might expect (I also do a bit a a double-take sometimes when liking MISTY's posts).
Part of the joy of PB, there are very few (if any) posters that I don't discover over time I have some common ground with, on something.
It's going to be an ugly place soon. OGH will not be happy if Sunak doesn't win. No cigar!
I think you'll find OGH has by now hedged as he explained the other day, as have many of us whether we started by backing Sunak or Truss.
I know. I doubt Mike would even smoke a celebratatory cigar. The mental image of it doesn't hurt.
That is very good if intentional and genius if it's a typo
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
OK, let’s resolve this once and for all. Could you set out what you think is the most pressing problem in the education system today and what evidence you have that the introduction of more grammar schools is the solution most likely to solve that problem.
The most pressing problem in education today is lack of opportunity in poor working class areas to get into a top Russell Group university and Oxbridge and a good career. More grammars would expand that opportunity.
Followed by the particularly poor results in terms of reading and maths and core GCSEs achieved by white working class boys in particular
Or you could just expand Oxbridge and Russell Group Universities.
Because if your aim is to get more children into Russell Group Universities and Oxbridge - the only options are to increase the number of places available or reduce the number of places available for different group of students.
Can you tell me what makes a Russel group uni special? (Asking as a member of staff at a top ten U.K. university, not in the fecking Russel group...)
Old boys club - with 30 years of continual (sunk cost) advertising that they are better than the rest (even though they aren't)...
The sad bit is that I was there when it was first announced - they bribed students to attend in return for free beer.
Commercially astute then. Best offer I have ever had was a sodding owl and that never showed up!
A view from the States: "Economically stagnant, socially fragmented and politically adrift, [the UK] is being cut down to size. The right’s Brexit fantasy — of a revitalized Britain, able once again to confidently assert itself — is finished." ~AA
Ah, the New York Times reverts to its histrionic Britain-bashing. It must please a segment of its liberal readership
A few months ago I worked out why they do this. It's because of the desperate state of American politics, with seemingly no way out of the nightmare. Add in racial conflict, mass shootings, foreign policy disasters, global retreat, surging crime, homelessness and drugs, and America's clear descent from top country status, and it is very depressing to be American right now. But they get some solace from pointing at Britain and saying "but look this place is fucked up too, and by rightwing populists who are just as bad as ours"
I have seen this effect in play at family weddings, but the NYT are really missing out on an important piece of the jigsaw. They need to discover how bad the governance of Ireland is as well. American visitors always need a crash course in the many past mistakes and misdemeanours of Leo Varadkar and Micheál Martin.
For sure
And, to be fair, the UK press does exactly this as well. Whenever Britain feels a bit miserable, a lot of papers will print articles pointing out how newly crap everything is another country similar to ours (generally France, Germany, Italy, or the EU as a whole). And of course there is an entire school of journalists who spend careers writing America-is-terrible articles, they are particularly noticeable whenever there is a mass shooting
It is a sign of insecurity, and all countries suffer from it, sporadically. Some smaller, more insecure countries do it all the time (eg Ireland vis a vis the UK)
What's new here is AMERICAN insecurity. They have been top dog for a long while, but as that conviction of superiority fast speedily away, on multiple fronts, they are becoming more like other countries, with attendant neuroses
Hm? I thought you'd be run out of town in Ireland for comparing it negatively to the UK.
Was I not clear? I meant the Irish press is often adorned with Anglophobic, Brit-bashing articles. They reached a peak of exultation during our early. botched response to Covid
Notably, you seldom if ever get an article bashing Ireland in the British press, indeed you seldom get articles about Ireland at all (apart from the bit which is in the UK)
A view from the States: "Economically stagnant, socially fragmented and politically adrift, [the UK] is being cut down to size. The right’s Brexit fantasy — of a revitalized Britain, able once again to confidently assert itself — is finished." ~AA
Ah, the New York Times reverts to its histrionic Britain-bashing. It must please a segment of its liberal readership
A few months ago I worked out why they do this. It's because of the desperate state of American politics, with seemingly no way out of the nightmare. Add in racial conflict, mass shootings, foreign policy disasters, global retreat, surging crime, homelessness and drugs, and America's clear descent from top country status, and it is very depressing to be American right now. But they get some solace from pointing at Britain and saying "but look this place is fucked up too, and by rightwing populists who are just as bad as ours"
I have seen this effect in play at family weddings, but the NYT are really missing out on an important piece of the jigsaw. They need to discover how bad the governance of Ireland is as well. American visitors always need a crash course in the many past mistakes and misdemeanours of Leo Varadkar and Micheál Martin.
For sure
And, to be fair, the UK press does exactly this as well. Whenever Britain feels a bit miserable, a lot of papers will print articles pointing out how newly crap everything is another country similar to ours (generally France, Germany, Italy, or the EU as a whole). And of course there is an entire school of journalists who spend careers writing America-is-terrible articles, they are particularly noticeable whenever there is a mass shooting
It is a sign of insecurity, and all countries suffer from it, sporadically. Some smaller, more insecure countries do it all the time (eg Ireland vis a vis the UK)
What's new here is AMERICAN insecurity. They have been top dog for a long while, but as that conviction of superiority fast speedily away, on multiple fronts, they are becoming more like other countries, with attendant neuroses
Hm? I thought you'd be run out of town in Ireland for comparing it negatively to the UK.
Was I not clear? I meant the Irish press is often adorned with Anglophobic, Brit-bashing articles. They reached a peak of exultation during our early. botched response to Covid
Notably, you seldom if ever get an article bashing Ireland in the British press, indeed you seldom get articles about Ireland at all (apart from the bit which is in the UK)
You were clear, I was reading too many things at once.
A view from the States: "Economically stagnant, socially fragmented and politically adrift, [the UK] is being cut down to size. The right’s Brexit fantasy — of a revitalized Britain, able once again to confidently assert itself — is finished." ~AA
Ah, the New York Times reverts to its histrionic Britain-bashing. It must please a segment of its liberal readership
A few months ago I worked out why they do this. It's because of the desperate state of American politics, with seemingly no way out of the nightmare. Add in racial conflict, mass shootings, foreign policy disasters, global retreat, surging crime, homelessness and drugs, and America's clear descent from top country status, and it is very depressing to be American right now. But they get some solace from pointing at Britain and saying "but look this place is fucked up too, and by rightwing populists who are just as bad as ours"
I have seen this effect in play at family weddings, but the NYT are really missing out on an important piece of the jigsaw. They need to discover how bad the governance of Ireland is as well. American visitors always need a crash course in the many past mistakes and misdemeanours of Leo Varadkar and Micheál Martin.
For sure
And, to be fair, the UK press does exactly this as well. Whenever Britain feels a bit miserable, a lot of papers will print articles pointing out how newly crap everything is another country similar to ours (generally France, Germany, Italy, or the EU as a whole). And of course there is an entire school of journalists who spend careers writing America-is-terrible articles, they are particularly noticeable whenever there is a mass shooting
It is a sign of insecurity, and all countries suffer from it, sporadically. Some smaller, more insecure countries do it all the time (eg Ireland vis a vis the UK)
What's new here is AMERICAN insecurity. They have been top dog for a long while, but as that conviction of superiority fast speedily away, on multiple fronts, they are becoming more like other countries, with attendant neuroses
Perhaps the equalising effect of the internet is another factor.
When television was dominant, Americans could more easily ignore of the rest of the world, but now they're plunged into a global cultural medium where the largest group who can compete with them on equal terms are the British.
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
OK, let’s resolve this once and for all. Could you set out what you think is the most pressing problem in the education system today and what evidence you have that the introduction of more grammar schools is the solution most likely to solve that problem.
The most pressing problem in education today is lack of opportunity in poor working class areas to get into a top Russell Group university and Oxbridge and a good career. More grammars would expand that opportunity.
Followed by the particularly poor results in terms of reading and maths and core GCSEs achieved by white working class boys in particular
No they wouldn't. The Grammar Schools would get filled with the children of middle class parents who move into the area, putting up house prices and who tutor their children.
In the large poorer village I lived in not a single child passed the 11 plus. In the posh areas loads did. Come A levels a whole bunch of us from the village transferred to the Grammar School. What do you think happened to us between 11 and 16 to suddenly make us brighter? The answer is nothing whatsoever.
No they wouldn't, not if we returned to grammar schools nationwide. Even today grammars also have entry at 16 as well as 11.
Well they were nationwide when I went to school and clearly they did. How do you explain what happened in my village and all the poorer areas around where I lived and everywhere come to that. There wasn't some event that made my village children brighter between 11 and 16. It was because the selection process is crap at 11. The Grammar schools was full of the middle classes and the Secondary moderns full of the poor. Then at 16 we all swapped over. Selection at 11 is cruel and damaging.
Rubbish, more from poorer working class areas got into top universities and became lawyers and doctors etc when we had more grammar schools than do today.
You really can't see the wood from the trees can you.
My father was church mouse poor and went to Llanelli Grammar School, he was an ambitious grafter so it was the making of him. Good for him, it worked for him, although as a teaching professional he was very much pro- Comprehensives. The flip side to that is, when I went to Ledbury Grammar School the council house kids who passed the 11 plus were all shoehorned into the " less able" B stream by the fourth year. They were then largely ignored by the staff in favour of the A stream high flyers. The remainder of the Grammar School catchment area either went to Ledbury Secondary or Canon Frome Secondary, both of which were piss-poor. So from a seven class academic year intake, six classes were largely ignored. Some system!
So your father got into the middle class thanks to his grammar school.
You also know full well I will always support grammars, part of the reason I support the Conservatives, the most pro grammar of the main parties
I can't dispute the logic for your first paragraph, but I have also provided you with details of why it seldom works for those it should be championing, a point you have ignored.
Your second paragraph provides me with the most compelling case for why I am not a Conservative voter.
A view from the States: "Economically stagnant, socially fragmented and politically adrift, [the UK] is being cut down to size. The right’s Brexit fantasy — of a revitalized Britain, able once again to confidently assert itself — is finished." ~AA
Ah, the New York Times reverts to its histrionic Britain-bashing. It must please a segment of its liberal readership
A few months ago I worked out why they do this. It's because of the desperate state of American politics, with seemingly no way out of the nightmare. Add in racial conflict, mass shootings, foreign policy disasters, global retreat, surging crime, homelessness and drugs, and America's clear descent from top country status, and it is very depressing to be American right now. But they get some solace from pointing at Britain and saying "but look this place is fucked up too, and by rightwing populists who are just as bad as ours"
I have seen this effect in play at family weddings, but the NYT are really missing out on an important piece of the jigsaw. They need to discover how bad the governance of Ireland is as well. American visitors always need a crash course in the many past mistakes and misdemeanours of Leo Varadkar and Micheál Martin.
For sure
And, to be fair, the UK press does exactly this as well. Whenever Britain feels a bit miserable, a lot of papers will print articles pointing out how newly crap everything is another country similar to ours (generally France, Germany, Italy, or the EU as a whole). And of course there is an entire school of journalists who spend careers writing America-is-terrible articles, they are particularly noticeable whenever there is a mass shooting
It is a sign of insecurity, and all countries suffer from it, sporadically. Some smaller, more insecure countries do it all the time (eg Ireland vis a vis the UK)
What's new here is AMERICAN insecurity. They have been top dog for a long while, but as that conviction of superiority fast speedily away, on multiple fronts, they are becoming more like other countries, with attendant neuroses
Indeed and in any case the threat to America is from China not us, we are only a middle ranking power now
I wouldn’t say we were “middle ranking”. I think better to numerically rank based on combos of size, economy, population, military power, soft power etc.
1st Rank US and China
2nd UK, France, Germany, Japan maybe India
3rd Italy, Russia,
I don’t know why I bothered to write that but there you go! Just mental diarrhoea.
In terms of economy, South Korea is arguably more influential than the UK. And Poland and Turkey may soon have superior conventional armed forces.
As I indicated I didn’t really think it through fully and just blurted it out!
I was thinking about multiple added factors so while Poland and Turkey might soon have stronger conventional forces they drop due to lack of soft power comparatively and the economy sizes.
Israel has strong military and prob nukes but poor soft power and not a huge economy or population.
South Korea growing in soft power through film and music and strong economy and military so second rank I would say.
A view from the States: "Economically stagnant, socially fragmented and politically adrift, [the UK] is being cut down to size. The right’s Brexit fantasy — of a revitalized Britain, able once again to confidently assert itself — is finished." ~AA
Ah, the New York Times reverts to its histrionic Britain-bashing. It must please a segment of its liberal readership
A few months ago I worked out why they do this. It's because of the desperate state of American politics, with seemingly no way out of the nightmare. Add in racial conflict, mass shootings, foreign policy disasters, global retreat, surging crime, homelessness and drugs, and America's clear descent from top country status, and it is very depressing to be American right now. But they get some solace from pointing at Britain and saying "but look this place is fucked up too, and by rightwing populists who are just as bad as ours"
I have seen this effect in play at family weddings, but the NYT are really missing out on an important piece of the jigsaw. They need to discover how bad the governance of Ireland is as well. American visitors always need a crash course in the many past mistakes and misdemeanours of Leo Varadkar and Micheál Martin.
For sure
And, to be fair, the UK press does exactly this as well. Whenever Britain feels a bit miserable, a lot of papers will print articles pointing out how newly crap everything is another country similar to ours (generally France, Germany, Italy, or the EU as a whole). And of course there is an entire school of journalists who spend careers writing America-is-terrible articles, they are particularly noticeable whenever there is a mass shooting
It is a sign of insecurity, and all countries suffer from it, sporadically. Some smaller, more insecure countries do it all the time (eg Ireland vis a vis the UK)
What's new here is AMERICAN insecurity. They have been top dog for a long while, but as that conviction of superiority fast speedily away, on multiple fronts, they are becoming more like other countries, with attendant neuroses
Indeed and in any case the threat to America is from China not us, we are only a middle ranking power now
I wouldn’t say we were “middle ranking”. I think better to numerically rank based on combos of size, economy, population, military power, soft power etc.
1st Rank US and China
2nd UK, France, Germany, Japan maybe India
3rd Italy, Russia,
I don’t know why I bothered to write that but there you go! Just mental diarrhoea.
In terms of economy, South Korea is arguably more influential than the UK. And Poland and Turkey may soon have superior conventional armed forces.
Tbh if you're in NATO it doesn't matter how strong your armed forces are, you have the guarantee of all other members.
A view from the States: "Economically stagnant, socially fragmented and politically adrift, [the UK] is being cut down to size. The right’s Brexit fantasy — of a revitalized Britain, able once again to confidently assert itself — is finished." ~AA
Ah, the New York Times reverts to its histrionic Britain-bashing. It must please a segment of its liberal readership
A few months ago I worked out why they do this. It's because of the desperate state of American politics, with seemingly no way out of the nightmare. Add in racial conflict, mass shootings, foreign policy disasters, global retreat, surging crime, homelessness and drugs, and America's clear descent from top country status, and it is very depressing to be American right now. But they get some solace from pointing at Britain and saying "but look this place is fucked up too, and by rightwing populists who are just as bad as ours"
I have seen this effect in play at family weddings, but the NYT are really missing out on an important piece of the jigsaw. They need to discover how bad the governance of Ireland is as well. American visitors always need a crash course in the many past mistakes and misdemeanours of Leo Varadkar and Micheál Martin.
For sure
And, to be fair, the UK press does exactly this as well. Whenever Britain feels a bit miserable, a lot of papers will print articles pointing out how newly crap everything is another country similar to ours (generally France, Germany, Italy, or the EU as a whole). And of course there is an entire school of journalists who spend careers writing America-is-terrible articles, they are particularly noticeable whenever there is a mass shooting
It is a sign of insecurity, and all countries suffer from it, sporadically. Some smaller, more insecure countries do it all the time (eg Ireland vis a vis the UK)
What's new here is AMERICAN insecurity. They have been top dog for a long while, but as that conviction of superiority fast speedily away, on multiple fronts, they are becoming more like other countries, with attendant neuroses
Indeed and in any case the threat to America is from China not us, we are only a middle ranking power now
I wouldn’t say we were “middle ranking”. I think better to numerically rank based on combos of size, economy, population, military power, soft power etc.
1st Rank US and China
2nd UK, France, Germany, Japan maybe India
3rd Italy, Russia,
I don’t know why I bothered to write that but there you go! Just mental diarrhoea.
Russia is economically weak, but its willingness to use brute force, around the world , sometimes with skill - plus its great size, and wealth of natural resources - means it is the third most powerful country on earth, behind China and the USA
As we see right now. Russia is bullying the entire EU (which is economically ten times the size) with a degree of success
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
OK, let’s resolve this once and for all. Could you set out what you think is the most pressing problem in the education system today and what evidence you have that the introduction of more grammar schools is the solution most likely to solve that problem.
The most pressing problem in education today is lack of opportunity in poor working class areas to get into a top Russell Group university and Oxbridge and a good career. More grammars would expand that opportunity.
Followed by the particularly poor results in terms of reading and maths and core GCSEs achieved by white working class boys in particular
Or you could just expand Oxbridge and Russell Group Universities.
Because if your aim is to get more children into Russell Group Universities and Oxbridge - the only options are to increase the number of places available or reduce the number of places available for different group of students.
Can you tell me what makes a Russel group uni special? (Asking as a member of staff at a top ten U.K. university, not in the fecking Russel group...)
Old boys club - with 30 years of continual (sunk cost) advertising that they are better than the rest (even though they aren't)...
The sad bit is that I was there when it was first announced - they bribed students to attend in return for free beer.
Commercially astute then. Best offer I have ever had was a sodding owl and that never showed up!
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
OK, let’s resolve this once and for all. Could you set out what you think is the most pressing problem in the education system today and what evidence you have that the introduction of more grammar schools is the solution most likely to solve that problem.
The most pressing problem in education today is lack of opportunity in poor working class areas to get into a top Russell Group university and Oxbridge and a good career. More grammars would expand that opportunity.
Followed by the particularly poor results in terms of reading and maths and core GCSEs achieved by white working class boys in particular
No they wouldn't. The Grammar Schools would get filled with the children of middle class parents who move into the area, putting up house prices and who tutor their children.
In the large poorer village I lived in not a single child passed the 11 plus. In the posh areas loads did. Come A levels a whole bunch of us from the village transferred to the Grammar School. What do you think happened to us between 11 and 16 to suddenly make us brighter? The answer is nothing whatsoever.
No they wouldn't, not if we returned to grammar schools nationwide. Even today grammars also have entry at 16 as well as 11.
Presumably anyone who gets in at 16 is a tacit admission that selection at age 11 has failed.
One reason streaming works well in Comps is that people can be in different streams according to subject, and can switch streams without the disruption of moving school.
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
OK, let’s resolve this once and for all. Could you set out what you think is the most pressing problem in the education system today and what evidence you have that the introduction of more grammar schools is the solution most likely to solve that problem.
The most pressing problem in education today is lack of opportunity in poor working class areas to get into a top Russell Group university and Oxbridge and a good career. More grammars would expand that opportunity.
Followed by the particularly poor results in terms of reading and maths and core GCSEs achieved by white working class boys in particular
No they wouldn't. The Grammar Schools would get filled with the children of middle class parents who move into the area, putting up house prices and who tutor their children.
In the large poorer village I lived in not a single child passed the 11 plus. In the posh areas loads did. Come A levels a whole bunch of us from the village transferred to the Grammar School. What do you think happened to us between 11 and 16 to suddenly make us brighter? The answer is nothing whatsoever.
No they wouldn't, not if we returned to grammar schools nationwide. Even today grammars also have entry at 16 as well as 11.
Presumably anyone who gets in at 16 is a tacit admission that selection at age 11 has failed.
One reason streaming works well in Comps is that people can be in different streams according to subject, and can switch streams without the disruption of moving school.
Also students can progress at different speeds. I remember my year 8 and year 9 in Grammar school was just a play time. I don't remember really learning things, apart from maths. My Year 10 onwards were my hardworking years.
A view from the States: "Economically stagnant, socially fragmented and politically adrift, [the UK] is being cut down to size. The right’s Brexit fantasy — of a revitalized Britain, able once again to confidently assert itself — is finished." ~AA
Ah, the New York Times reverts to its histrionic Britain-bashing. It must please a segment of its liberal readership
A few months ago I worked out why they do this. It's because of the desperate state of American politics, with seemingly no way out of the nightmare. Add in racial conflict, mass shootings, foreign policy disasters, global retreat, surging crime, homelessness and drugs, and America's clear descent from top country status, and it is very depressing to be American right now. But they get some solace from pointing at Britain and saying "but look this place is fucked up too, and by rightwing populists who are just as bad as ours"
I have seen this effect in play at family weddings, but the NYT are really missing out on an important piece of the jigsaw. They need to discover how bad the governance of Ireland is as well. American visitors always need a crash course in the many past mistakes and misdemeanours of Leo Varadkar and Micheál Martin.
For sure
And, to be fair, the UK press does exactly this as well. Whenever Britain feels a bit miserable, a lot of papers will print articles pointing out how newly crap everything is another country similar to ours (generally France, Germany, Italy, or the EU as a whole). And of course there is an entire school of journalists who spend careers writing America-is-terrible articles, they are particularly noticeable whenever there is a mass shooting
It is a sign of insecurity, and all countries suffer from it, sporadically. Some smaller, more insecure countries do it all the time (eg Ireland vis a vis the UK)
What's new here is AMERICAN insecurity. They have been top dog for a long while, but as that conviction of superiority fast speedily away, on multiple fronts, they are becoming more like other countries, with attendant neuroses
Indeed and in any case the threat to America is from China not us, we are only a middle ranking power now
I wouldn’t say we were “middle ranking”. I think better to numerically rank based on combos of size, economy, population, military power, soft power etc.
1st Rank US and China
2nd UK, France, Germany, Japan maybe India
3rd Italy, Russia,
I don’t know why I bothered to write that but there you go! Just mental diarrhoea.
In terms of economy, South Korea is arguably more influential than the UK. And Poland and Turkey may soon have superior conventional armed forces.
Tbh if you're in NATO it doesn't matter how strong your armed forces are, you have the guarantee of all other members.
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
Ability/aptitude streaming in comps achieves the same goals as grammars, without the social stigmas for those who don't get in. And without the enormous pressure on 11-year old kids. Also, you learn to look after yourself...!
YOU making decent points - what gives?
It does happen, more often than you might expect (I also do a bit a a double-take sometimes when liking MISTY's posts).
Part of the joy of PB, there are very few (if any) posters that I don't discover over time I have some common ground with, on something.
Yep. Just thought that through and - yep.
Mr Ed would be my antimatter but every now and again he posts something and I go, "Hmm, this isn't actually a bucket of total slop, I'll keep mum on it."
Well, actually I would not agree. THey're the ones who get the extra funding, the extra support, the specialised tuition.
Our system certainly does fail the brightest, by assuming that if you just put them in a classroom and leave them to it they'll do OK. Which is not the case - quite the reverse. I remember in one of Steven Moffat's earlier efforts, called 'Chalk,' a teacher criticised the head for providing more teaching for abler children with the words 'So we're concentrating the most education on the children who need it the least?' Rubbish. Bright children actually need much more educating, due to the amount of material they can cope with, and speaking as somebody whose taught both types it's much harder work as well.
However, the key thing to remember is that we're trying to run what amounts to a baby-sitting service on the cheap while running an education system designed to cram knowledge. That's a trifecta that ultimately, whatever your views on grammar schools or indeed on the existence of moon pigs, fails *all* children caught up in it.
Until we have a sensible conversation on whether we want a baby-sitting service, a cheap service or an educationally effective service, and make a decision among those three options, we're going to end up with a second-rate service. Alas, no sign of that yet. Certainly not from Truss or Sunak, and not from Labour either.
FWIW my understanding from Mrs Capitano's years in primary is that it's - generalising wildly - the 10th-50th percentiles (in terms of attainment) that are being failed.
As you say the lowest 10% can get funding and support - though not enough, and this is usually tied up with the CAMHS crisis which means it's often years before that support becomes available. (Free tip to anyone who needs it: get them referred at nursery/pre-school so they're further up the queue.)
A lot of primaries will do ok by bright kids. Not all, but a lot; and an assertive middle-class parent can usually sniff out which schools these are. (We did... Capitano Junior goes to a great primary and I would literally have disembowelled the Ofsted inspectors if they had shown a sign of ----king it up.)
In such a school, a kid who's not in the top 10% yet but has a chance of getting greater depth will often get some support from the school. Partly because it's good for the stats to have more greater depth kids, but also because the nature of small-group work means that they get put with the top 10% and that brings them on.
But the slightly under-achieving kids are often left to muddle on, and in particular, the girls. They're not going to trouble the stats either way. The boys will be boisterous and draw attention to themselves each way, but every primary school cohort has a bunch of pleasant little girls who have - as does every kid - vast amounts of potential but never draw attention to themselves. They don't misbehave, they don't come bottom of the class, they won't trouble the top group either... but if schools were properly resourced they could do so much better.
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
OK, let’s resolve this once and for all. Could you set out what you think is the most pressing problem in the education system today and what evidence you have that the introduction of more grammar schools is the solution most likely to solve that problem.
The most pressing problem in education today is lack of opportunity in poor working class areas to get into a top Russell Group university and Oxbridge and a good career. More grammars would expand that opportunity.
Followed by the particularly poor results in terms of reading and maths and core GCSEs achieved by white working class boys in particular
Or you could just expand Oxbridge and Russell Group Universities.
Because if your aim is to get more children into Russell Group Universities and Oxbridge - the only options are to increase the number of places available or reduce the number of places available for different group of students.
No just give more top academic state schools they have an equal chance of entry into
Then some young people have to lose those uni places. Who?
Those from private schools overtaken by top performing pupils from grammar schools
That suggests a small number of people will benefit and lose overall, with no net benefit. It's also a big claim - in particular that parents will be happy to keep sending kids to private schools that send 50% of intake to (insert low-mid-quality British university the reader didn't attend).
When grammar schools were at their height fewer middle class parents sent their children to private schools except the ones with snob value like Eton
Yes, the comprehensive system emboldened the private school system.
To be honest HY I have less problem with posh parents spending their hard-earned on their children's educations than me spending my hard- earned on posh parents' children's educations.
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
He's right in one way. Grammar schools are not the answer to the myriad of problems facing education. But in another way he illustrates the problem:
For the past 12 years, the Conservative party has spearheaded a revolution in education. The brilliant Gove reforms, ably carried forward by his successors, have seen state schools regularly outperform private schools. We recently saw the 10,000th academy school created.
That sentence is total bullshit and anyone who thinks it isn't should be sectioned. Not only have the Gove reforms been a shattering failure, state schools do not 'regularly outperform private schools' because that's a meaningless statement. Which ones? By what metric? Why? Where? Without defining his criteria it's Rhetorical bullshit.
And almost no academies have been 'created.' They are schools rebadged under another name, usually with a nice cushy number for either the former Head or one of their mates.
The next paragraph is simply a lie:
Successive Conservative governments have been right to support phonics, setting/streaming, curriculum reform, academies, free schools and specialist sixth forms for 16-18 year olds, sponsored by independent schools and universities. This has raised standards and promoted genuine competition.
It has done none of those things. In fact, curriculum reform has slammed educational standards into hard reverse because of the gross incompetence and wilful stupidity with which it was mismanaged by the third rate lunatics in charge of it who treated as an ego trip for their personal hobby horses and not as a serious exercise in educational management. Specialist sixth form colleges at the same time are being closed like crazy as a result of his own government's tax policies, in a deliberate bid to run them down. Is he really unaware of this?
Yet another person who does not get it: the issue is we don't know what we want from schools and the policy chaos inflicted from Whitehall reflects that.
*Breathes deeply and unclenches fist*
Rant over.
I stopped reading the article at "the brilliant Gove reforms..." Well done for making the effort to read and set out the rest of the nonsense.
The bit about specialist 6th form colleges is particularly galling.
As far as grammar schools are concerned, I don't have a problem with them, individually. But a system entirely bifurcated by selection at age 11 is quite another matter.
I assume the "specialist 6th form colleges" is a reference to the mega-selective ones, rather than the ones which take anyone who has a reasonable change of making a go of A Levels. A very different creature, and one with an uncomfortable amount of hype...
No, it really isn't. My children both attended grammar school until the 6th form, when they chose to go to a large 6th form college in a neighbouring authority, which took pupils from every school in that local authority. The minimum entry requirements were grade 6 in three GCSE subjects.
One subsequently went to Oxford, the other to Imperial.
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
OK, let’s resolve this once and for all. Could you set out what you think is the most pressing problem in the education system today and what evidence you have that the introduction of more grammar schools is the solution most likely to solve that problem.
The most pressing problem in education today is lack of opportunity in poor working class areas to get into a top Russell Group university and Oxbridge and a good career. More grammars would expand that opportunity.
Followed by the particularly poor results in terms of reading and maths and core GCSEs achieved by white working class boys in particular
The most pressing problem is the general standard. Degree level students would now fail 1960s O level exams.
The questions don't look that different, except (a) the O-level paper questions are not very good because there are too many leading questions in them and (b) you have to write twice as much at degree level.
Difficult to know really without seeing what depth is expected in the answers tbh.
The 1950's O level does seem much harder though.
Take page 3 of @ydoethur's link - I've no idea at all apart from the last (21) item. And that's a good page.
They really are not. Leaving aside the huge variety of choice (far more, incidentally, than you would get today at GCSE) leaving somebody with ample scope to choose a question that suits them, you're looking at basically writing around a side of A4 (hence the 'write briefly'). For a degree level answer 4-5 sides would be needed.
And remember, you would be taught these topics in advance. You haven't been. They don't come as some massive surprise: 'Oh shit, they said it would be the Civil War and here we are looking at the Peninsular campaign!'
I think you're seeing what you want to see.
Comparing that O-level paper with a modern GCSE History paper, the biggest difference seems to be that you can accumulate marks on the modern paper with much less retained knowledge as long as you have good critical reading skills.
A view from the States: "Economically stagnant, socially fragmented and politically adrift, [the UK] is being cut down to size. The right’s Brexit fantasy — of a revitalized Britain, able once again to confidently assert itself — is finished." ~AA
Ah, the New York Times reverts to its histrionic Britain-bashing. It must please a segment of its liberal readership
A few months ago I worked out why they do this. It's because of the desperate state of American politics, with seemingly no way out of the nightmare. Add in racial conflict, mass shootings, foreign policy disasters, global retreat, surging crime, homelessness and drugs, and America's clear descent from top country status, and it is very depressing to be American right now. But they get some solace from pointing at Britain and saying "but look this place is fucked up too, and by rightwing populists who are just as bad as ours"
I have seen this effect in play at family weddings, but the NYT are really missing out on an important piece of the jigsaw. They need to discover how bad the governance of Ireland is as well. American visitors always need a crash course in the many past mistakes and misdemeanours of Leo Varadkar and Micheál Martin.
For sure
And, to be fair, the UK press does exactly this as well. Whenever Britain feels a bit miserable, a lot of papers will print articles pointing out how newly crap everything is another country similar to ours (generally France, Germany, Italy, or the EU as a whole). And of course there is an entire school of journalists who spend careers writing America-is-terrible articles, they are particularly noticeable whenever there is a mass shooting
It is a sign of insecurity, and all countries suffer from it, sporadically. Some smaller, more insecure countries do it all the time (eg Ireland vis a vis the UK)
What's new here is AMERICAN insecurity. They have been top dog for a long while, but as that conviction of superiority fast speedily away, on multiple fronts, they are becoming more like other countries, with attendant neuroses
Perhaps the equalising effect of the internet is another factor.
When television was dominant, Americans could more easily ignore of the rest of the world, but now they're plunged into a global cultural medium where the largest group who can compete with them on equal terms are the British.
Not sure I wholly agree with that..... However the fact the NYT is so desperate to print something bad about Britain they turn to a notoriously unpleasant, contentious, untrustworthy, possibly anti-Semitic Irish Marxist to pen the article is quite striking
I can't see them going to such urgent lengths to diss France or Germany or Japan. Maybe China, but then China is America's mortal enemy and is supplanting America around the world, so negative press about China is to be expected
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A view from the States: "Economically stagnant, socially fragmented and politically adrift, [the UK] is being cut down to size. The right’s Brexit fantasy — of a revitalized Britain, able once again to confidently assert itself — is finished." ~AA
Ah, the New York Times reverts to its histrionic Britain-bashing. It must please a segment of its liberal readership
A few months ago I worked out why they do this. It's because of the desperate state of American politics, with seemingly no way out of the nightmare. Add in racial conflict, mass shootings, foreign policy disasters, global retreat, surging crime, homelessness and drugs, and America's clear descent from top country status, and it is very depressing to be American right now. But they get some solace from pointing at Britain and saying "but look this place is fucked up too, and by rightwing populists who are just as bad as ours"
Actually it started when the Coalition government went for fiscal restraint rather than turning in the taps as Obama did. The NYT started publishing articles about how the U.K. was doomed, DOOMED!
Complete with comments from people on the streets of London. Using American idiom and references….
When my American relatives visited (New York Democrats since FDR), they would comment on the difference between the NYT and the reality.
DaveyBoy1961 asked: "Just a question. Can you turn up at a polling station and vote instead of post the ballot paper in?" (In Washington state, which is a vote-by-mail state.)
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
Ability/aptitude streaming in comps achieves the same goals as grammars, without the social stigmas for those who don't get in. And without the enormous pressure on 11-year old kids. Also, you learn to look after yourself...!
YOU making decent points - what gives?
Comps that are streamed for ability are better than grammars in my view. Learn with people of your ability, mix with everybody. And no stigma. Everybody wears the same uniform.
They can be a bit rough, but as long as the staff sit on the bullies and protect those who want to learn, they work very well.
Yes, I think big diverse Comprehensive Schools, all kids going to their nearest one, whilst not the solution in itself to "Optimal Education System" is the platform on which to construct it.
A view from the States: "Economically stagnant, socially fragmented and politically adrift, [the UK] is being cut down to size. The right’s Brexit fantasy — of a revitalized Britain, able once again to confidently assert itself — is finished." ~AA
Ah, the New York Times reverts to its histrionic Britain-bashing. It must please a segment of its liberal readership
A few months ago I worked out why they do this. It's because of the desperate state of American politics, with seemingly no way out of the nightmare. Add in racial conflict, mass shootings, foreign policy disasters, global retreat, surging crime, homelessness and drugs, and America's clear descent from top country status, and it is very depressing to be American right now. But they get some solace from pointing at Britain and saying "but look this place is fucked up too, and by rightwing populists who are just as bad as ours"
I have seen this effect in play at family weddings, but the NYT are really missing out on an important piece of the jigsaw. They need to discover how bad the governance of Ireland is as well. American visitors always need a crash course in the many past mistakes and misdemeanours of Leo Varadkar and Micheál Martin.
For sure
And, to be fair, the UK press does exactly this as well. Whenever Britain feels a bit miserable, a lot of papers will print articles pointing out how newly crap everything is another country similar to ours (generally France, Germany, Italy, or the EU as a whole). And of course there is an entire school of journalists who spend careers writing America-is-terrible articles, they are particularly noticeable whenever there is a mass shooting
It is a sign of insecurity, and all countries suffer from it, sporadically. Some smaller, more insecure countries do it all the time (eg Ireland vis a vis the UK)
What's new here is AMERICAN insecurity. They have been top dog for a long while, but as that conviction of superiority fast speedily away, on multiple fronts, they are becoming more like other countries, with attendant neuroses
Perhaps the equalising effect of the internet is another factor.
When television was dominant, Americans could more easily ignore of the rest of the world, but now they're plunged into a global cultural medium where the largest group who can compete with them on equal terms are the British.
Not sure I wholly agree with that..... However the fact the NYT is so desperate to print something bad about Britain they turn to a notoriously unpleasant, contentious, untrustworthy, possibly anti-Semitic Irish Marxist to pen the article is quite striking
I can't see them going to such urgent lengths to diss France or Germany or Japan. Maybe China, but then China is America's mortal enemy and is supplanting America around the world, so negative press about China is to be expected
Something about Brexit Britain REALLY irks them
By Irish, of course, you mean from a British background in firmly-protestant Ballymena.
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
OK, let’s resolve this once and for all. Could you set out what you think is the most pressing problem in the education system today and what evidence you have that the introduction of more grammar schools is the solution most likely to solve that problem.
The most pressing problem in education today is lack of opportunity in poor working class areas to get into a top Russell Group university and Oxbridge and a good career. More grammars would expand that opportunity.
Followed by the particularly poor results in terms of reading and maths and core GCSEs achieved by white working class boys in particular
No they wouldn't. The Grammar Schools would get filled with the children of middle class parents who move into the area, putting up house prices and who tutor their children.
In the large poorer village I lived in not a single child passed the 11 plus. In the posh areas loads did. Come A levels a whole bunch of us from the village transferred to the Grammar School. What do you think happened to us between 11 and 16 to suddenly make us brighter? The answer is nothing whatsoever.
No they wouldn't, not if we returned to grammar schools nationwide. Even today grammars also have entry at 16 as well as 11.
Well they were nationwide when I went to school and clearly they did. How do you explain what happened in my village and all the poorer areas around where I lived and everywhere come to that. There wasn't some event that made my village children brighter between 11 and 16. It was because the selection process is crap at 11. The Grammar schools was full of the middle classes and the Secondary moderns full of the poor. Then at 16 we all swapped over. Selection at 11 is cruel and damaging.
Rubbish, more from poorer working class areas got into top universities and became lawyers and doctors etc when we had more grammar schools than do today.
Evidence? I can't think of a single working class person at my Grammar School .
You do understand that because there were more Grammar schools then obviously more progressed don't you? You need to do ratios not absolute numbers. Just because of social mobility in general what you said just can't be true.
And what is it with this inferiority complex you have in looking up at doctors, lawyers, Oxbridge gentry, etc. I'm married to a doctor. She is perfectly normal you know.
I was one of about 2 or 3 true working class in my Grammar school year (1970s). Mum and Dad both worked and were paid weekly in cash. Dad was in a manual occupation, Mum was a bookkeeper part time, (no accountancy quals). Dad was always out on strike (union man etc), Mum relied on Family allowance once a week, (She used to get it on a Tuesday from the GPO in town in her dinner hour). I was envious of my mates because they had money and nice houses. There were no Free School meals in our year. ( and no, we didn't live in a shoebox in't midlle o't't' road)
Sale High School: 15% on free school meals (FSM). Sale Grammar School: 3% FSM.
Now to be fair, the catchments aren't the same: Sale High draws many from Wythenshawe, while Sale Grammar gives priority to Trafford. But this shows that while you do get *some* working class pupils at Grammars, you don't, nowadays, get that many. You used to get a lot more, I think. Notable working class Grammar school pupils from the 80s include Ian Brown and John Squire of the Stone Roses, who both attended Altrincham Boys' Grammar - though I think both left at 16.
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
He's right in one way. Grammar schools are not the answer to the myriad of problems facing education. But in another way he illustrates the problem:
For the past 12 years, the Conservative party has spearheaded a revolution in education. The brilliant Gove reforms, ably carried forward by his successors, have seen state schools regularly outperform private schools. We recently saw the 10,000th academy school created.
That sentence is total bullshit and anyone who thinks it isn't should be sectioned. Not only have the Gove reforms been a shattering failure, state schools do not 'regularly outperform private schools' because that's a meaningless statement. Which ones? By what metric? Why? Where? Without defining his criteria it's Rhetorical bullshit.
And almost no academies have been 'created.' They are schools rebadged under another name, usually with a nice cushy number for either the former Head or one of their mates.
The next paragraph is simply a lie:
Successive Conservative governments have been right to support phonics, setting/streaming, curriculum reform, academies, free schools and specialist sixth forms for 16-18 year olds, sponsored by independent schools and universities. This has raised standards and promoted genuine competition.
It has done none of those things. In fact, curriculum reform has slammed educational standards into hard reverse because of the gross incompetence and wilful stupidity with which it was mismanaged by the third rate lunatics in charge of it who treated as an ego trip for their personal hobby horses and not as a serious exercise in educational management. Specialist sixth form colleges at the same time are being closed like crazy as a result of his own government's tax policies, in a deliberate bid to run them down. Is he really unaware of this?
Yet another person who does not get it: the issue is we don't know what we want from schools and the policy chaos inflicted from Whitehall reflects that.
A view from the States: "Economically stagnant, socially fragmented and politically adrift, [the UK] is being cut down to size. The right’s Brexit fantasy — of a revitalized Britain, able once again to confidently assert itself — is finished." ~AA
Ah, the New York Times reverts to its histrionic Britain-bashing. It must please a segment of its liberal readership
A few months ago I worked out why they do this. It's because of the desperate state of American politics, with seemingly no way out of the nightmare. Add in racial conflict, mass shootings, foreign policy disasters, global retreat, surging crime, homelessness and drugs, and America's clear descent from top country status, and it is very depressing to be American right now. But they get some solace from pointing at Britain and saying "but look this place is fucked up too, and by rightwing populists who are just as bad as ours"
I have seen this effect in play at family weddings, but the NYT are really missing out on an important piece of the jigsaw. They need to discover how bad the governance of Ireland is as well. American visitors always need a crash course in the many past mistakes and misdemeanours of Leo Varadkar and Micheál Martin.
For sure
And, to be fair, the UK press does exactly this as well. Whenever Britain feels a bit miserable, a lot of papers will print articles pointing out how newly crap everything is another country similar to ours (generally France, Germany, Italy, or the EU as a whole). And of course there is an entire school of journalists who spend careers writing America-is-terrible articles, they are particularly noticeable whenever there is a mass shooting
It is a sign of insecurity, and all countries suffer from it, sporadically. Some smaller, more insecure countries do it all the time (eg Ireland vis a vis the UK)
What's new here is AMERICAN insecurity. They have been top dog for a long while, but as that conviction of superiority fast speedily away, on multiple fronts, they are becoming more like other countries, with attendant neuroses
Indeed and in any case the threat to America is from China not us, we are only a middle ranking power now
I wouldn’t say we were “middle ranking”. I think better to numerically rank based on combos of size, economy, population, military power, soft power etc.
1st Rank US and China
2nd UK, France, Germany, Japan maybe India
3rd Italy, Russia,
I don’t know why I bothered to write that but there you go! Just mental diarrhoea.
In terms of economy, South Korea is arguably more influential than the UK. And Poland and Turkey may soon have superior conventional armed forces.
Tbh if you're in NATO it doesn't matter how strong your armed forces are, you have the guarantee of all other members.
This has never been properly tested. Let's hope that remains the case
Because I am unconvinced we would go to the brink of nuclear war with Russia, if Putin invaded the Baltics
I'm equally doubtful we would defend Romania or Bulgaria either. Turkey is tricky. Greece probably, Poland probably. Slovakia? Hmm
It would be fun to chart the mental map of REAL NATO, ie the NATO that contains the countries we would actually go to total war to defend. It is smaller than Theoretical Legal NATO
Comments
But brighter children very frequently are forgotten about.
Ironically, the example of taking struggling children out of lessons to give them more attention elsewhere - which is essentially what grammars would do for the ablest - suggests it wouldn't help anyway!
Edit - besides, with respect, you're missing the point. Our school system does not 'concentrate' on any child. It's based on a ridiculous 'one size doesn't really fit anybody but it's cheap so we'll go with it.' The extra funding is essentially remedial guilt money.
Most top 10 universities are also Russell Group
Looking at friends and acquaintances, there are several different types of academically struggling young kids. Firstly are those with learning difficulties. As Dr Y says, resources can be chucked at those: the little 'uns friend is having loads of money spent on her - and good on it. But there there are those kids who, for whatever reason, do not try hard. This can be anything from boredom, to something akin to ADHD. I'm thinking of one disruptive boy in particular. When I chat to him, he is actually quite bright, but being in a large class seems to muck him up. At least, as far as I can tell.
But I'm not a teacher, so I don't get to see large parts of the system...
Take page 3 of @ydoethur's link - I've no idea at all apart from the last (21) item. And that's a good page.
It's a somewhat artifical distinction now. Many non-Russell departments are better than many Russel departments. Some whole non-Russell universities are better than some Russell Group universities. I did my degree and PhD at Russell Group universities, but I worked for a time at a former poly before my present post. The team I worked in at the former poly was the most effective team I have ever encountered. We did great research on a shoestring budget that changed practices (for the better) within NHS hospitals nationwide and will, without doubt, have saved lives. My present research group is fine and doing some good work, but the University is lumbering, slow and bureaucratic. The former Poly team just got on with things, in my present university there's an awful lot of time and money wasted on faffing about.
And remember, you would be taught these topics in advance. You haven't been. They don't come as some massive surprise: 'Oh shit, they said it would be the Civil War and here we are looking at the Peninsular campaign!'
I think you're seeing what you want to see.
It can be done, but if the political will exists for a system to fail by starving it of resources, it must fail.
And that's how it would be again...
They can be a bit rough, but as long as the staff sit on the bullies and protect those who want to learn, they work very well.
Anyway, I'm off for a bit. Later.
And, were I to judge only by the TV ads I have been seeing, Republican candidates have families and are proud of them; if the Democrats have families, they don't think mentioning them will impress voters. For example, our senior senator, Patty Murray, is married and has two grown children, but neither her husband, nor her children are even mentioned in any of her ads. In contrast, her likely Republican opponent, Tiffany Smiley, includes her husband (an Iraq war veteran, blinded by a suicide bomber) and her three young sons in almost all her ads.
(And a Republican candidate for the House of Representatives, Vincent J. Cavaleri, sent me a large postcard telling me, among other things that: "Vincent and his wife Lilian have been married for over 33 years, and just welcomed their first granchild last October.")
Is having a strong family a reason to vote for a candidate? I think so, because it tells you something, on the average, about a person's character.
Part of the joy of PB, there are very few (if any) posters that I don't discover over time I have some common ground with, on something.
The old Gammon in me thinks good on her, kick their lazy arses into shape, but then there is something I can't pinpoint that doesn't sit right, and I am not sure what that something might be.
The problem with the grammar system is that it was too obvious about labelling a majority of children as failures at the stage of the 11+, but the education system is still performing the same function, while pretending not to do so.
And, to be fair, the UK press does exactly this as well. Whenever Britain feels a bit miserable, a lot of papers will print articles pointing out how newly crap everything is another country similar to ours (generally France, Germany, Italy, or the EU as a whole). And of course there is an entire school of journalists who spend careers writing America-is-terrible articles, they are particularly noticeable whenever there is a mass shooting
It is a sign of insecurity, and all countries suffer from it, sporadically. Some smaller, more insecure countries do it all the time (eg Ireland vis a vis the UK)
What's new here is AMERICAN insecurity. They have been top dog for a long while, but as that conviction of superiority fast speedily away, on multiple fronts, they are becoming more like other countries, with attendant neuroses
(I prefer to call since our primary system, "top-two", rather than "blanket", as the Wikipedia article does. In the past, we had a true blanket primary, which meant that we could, for example, on a single ballot vote in the Republican primary for governor, the Democratic primary for senator, and so on down the line. The parties didn't like it.)
St Andrews has the Highest entry tariff according to https://www.theguardian.com/education/ng-interactive/2021/sep/11/the-best-uk-universities-2022-rankings
Well done for making the effort to read and set out the rest of the nonsense.
The bit about specialist 6th form colleges is particularly galling.
As far as grammar schools are concerned, I don't have a problem with them, individually.
But a system entirely bifurcated by selection at age 11 is quite another matter.
You do understand that because there were more Grammar schools then obviously more progressed don't you? You need to do ratios not absolute numbers. Just because of social mobility in general what you said just can't be true.
And what is it with this inferiority complex you have in looking up at doctors, lawyers, Oxbridge gentry, etc. I'm married to a doctor. She is perfectly normal you know.
1st Rank US and China
2nd UK, France, Germany, Japan maybe India
3rd Italy, Russia,
I don’t know why I bothered to write that but there you go! Just mental diarrhoea.
Just a question. Can you turn up at a polling station and vote instead of post the ballot paper in?
My father was church mouse poor and went to Llanelli Grammar School, he was an ambitious grafter so it was the making of him. Good for him, it worked for him, although as a teaching professional he was very much pro- Comprehensives. The flip side to that is, when I went to Ledbury Grammar School the council house kids who passed the 11 plus were all shoehorned into the " less able" B stream by the fourth year. They were then largely ignored by the staff in favour of the A stream high flyers. The remainder of the Grammar School catchment area either went to Ledbury Secondary or Canon Frome Secondary, both of which were piss-poor. So from a seven class academic year intake, six classes were largely ignored. Some system!
But the real problem was of course the arbitrary dividing line between 11+ pass and fail. Some of the weaker kids may have benefitted from just scraping in, but more than outweighed by the larger number like my brother who were actively disadvantaged compared to the education they might have had at a Comprehensive. And don't think the 11+ helps working class kids - the extra Grammar school places go overwhelmingly to the middle class kids resulting in a worse education for most working class children.
They can offer an extended curriculum, hire subject experts, and attract those who are actually interested in learning. And they mitigate much of the divisiveness of the selection debate - their offer can be superior to that of grammar school 6th forms.
Except, as you point out, they've been stuffed financially in recent years.
You also know full well I will always support grammars, part of the reason I support the Conservatives, the most pro grammar of the main parties
Of course all hacks indulge in that sort of crap, but it's pretty much the Herald's sole modus operandi nowadays.
We had a crap Geography Teacher at Ledbury Grammar who would give us hundreds of lines (paragraph sized lines) for no particular reason, it was of no added value and struck me as a power display. He did, because he could! Much of the disciplinarianism at Michaela strikes me in a similar way. But then if it works, who am I to criticise?
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/education/pisa-wales-international-schools-2019-17346247
(And one of the examples where Katherine Birbalsingh's hype doesn't quite match her reality. The entrance criteria for her Sixth Form are very much "if you're not Oxbridge potenital then go and find somewhere more... undemanding".)
One reason streaming works well in Comps is that people can be in different streams according to subject, and can switch streams without the disruption of moving school.
And Poland and Turkey may soon have superior conventional armed forces.
Notably, you seldom if ever get an article bashing Ireland in the British press, indeed you seldom get articles about Ireland at all (apart from the bit which is in the UK)
When television was dominant, Americans could more easily ignore of the rest of the world, but now they're plunged into a global cultural medium where the largest group who can compete with them on equal terms are the British.
Your second paragraph provides me with the most compelling case for why I am not a Conservative voter.
I was thinking about multiple added factors so while Poland and Turkey might soon have stronger conventional forces they drop due to lack of soft power comparatively and the economy sizes.
Israel has strong military and prob nukes but poor soft power and not a huge economy or population.
South Korea growing in soft power through film and music and strong economy and military so second rank I would say.
As we see right now. Russia is bullying the entire EU (which is economically ten times the size) with a degree of success
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Group
Gives a lot of cogent reasons for treating the whole thing as crap.
Mr Ed would be my antimatter but every now and again he posts something and I go, "Hmm, this isn't actually a bucket of total slop, I'll keep mum on it."
As you say the lowest 10% can get funding and support - though not enough, and this is usually tied up with the CAMHS crisis which means it's often years before that support becomes available. (Free tip to anyone who needs it: get them referred at nursery/pre-school so they're further up the queue.)
A lot of primaries will do ok by bright kids. Not all, but a lot; and an assertive middle-class parent can usually sniff out which schools these are. (We did... Capitano Junior goes to a great primary and I would literally have disembowelled the Ofsted inspectors if they had shown a sign of ----king it up.)
In such a school, a kid who's not in the top 10% yet but has a chance of getting greater depth will often get some support from the school. Partly because it's good for the stats to have more greater depth kids, but also because the nature of small-group work means that they get put with the top 10% and that brings them on.
But the slightly under-achieving kids are often left to muddle on, and in particular, the girls. They're not going to trouble the stats either way. The boys will be boisterous and draw attention to themselves each way, but every primary school cohort has a bunch of pleasant little girls who have - as does every kid - vast amounts of potential but never draw attention to themselves. They don't misbehave, they don't come bottom of the class, they won't trouble the top group either... but if schools were properly resourced they could do so much better.
To be honest HY I have less problem with posh parents spending their hard-earned on their children's educations than me spending my hard- earned on posh parents' children's educations.
My children both attended grammar school until the 6th form, when they chose to go to a large 6th form college in a neighbouring authority, which took pupils from every school in that local authority.
The minimum entry requirements were grade 6 in three GCSE subjects.
One subsequently went to Oxford, the other to Imperial.
I can't see them going to such urgent lengths to diss France or Germany or Japan. Maybe China, but then China is America's mortal enemy and is supplanting America around the world, so negative press about China is to be expected
Something about Brexit Britain REALLY irks them
We have proven to be smart operators of this weapon. The sound of the #HIMARS volley has become a top hit 🎶 of this summer at the front lines!
https://twitter.com/oleksiireznikov/status/1554076054435889152
Complete with comments from people on the streets of London. Using American idiom and references….
When my American relatives visited (New York Democrats since FDR), they would comment on the difference between the NYT and the reality.
Yes, but there aren't many such places. For example: https://kingcounty.gov/depts/elections/how-to-vote/ballots/returning-my-ballot/vote-centers.aspx
Sale Grammar School: 3% FSM.
Now to be fair, the catchments aren't the same: Sale High draws many from Wythenshawe, while Sale Grammar gives priority to Trafford.
But this shows that while you do get *some* working class pupils at Grammars, you don't, nowadays, get that many.
You used to get a lot more, I think. Notable working class Grammar school pupils from the 80s include Ian Brown and John Squire of the Stone Roses, who both attended Altrincham Boys' Grammar - though I think both left at 16.
Because I am unconvinced we would go to the brink of nuclear war with Russia, if Putin invaded the Baltics
I'm equally doubtful we would defend Romania or Bulgaria either. Turkey is tricky. Greece probably, Poland probably. Slovakia? Hmm
It would be fun to chart the mental map of REAL NATO, ie the NATO that contains the countries we would actually go to total war to defend. It is smaller than Theoretical Legal NATO