Going unremarked this summer, amidst the drought and the heatwaves and the greyness, is the CONSISTENCY of the heat in London
It is 27C at 6pm in Camden, on the turbulent Primrose Hill frontier
That is quite unusual, yet it is happening day after day
Nor am I imagining it. July's CET (Central England Temp) is 2.2C above normal, and I am pretty sure London is hotter than that. Netweather claims London is 3C over the average for July
Creepy as fuck from Rishi, that my own size gag bombed worse than the suntan one
Rishi needs a better team around him. That gag was ill-advised. In discussing the cost of living crisis, he skipped over the measures he has already taken and went straight on to what he will do, throwing away his advantage over Truss.
Rishi also has the disadvantage of going second, so a lot of his lines echo Truss. He should have had his team anticipate this problem, listen to her speech and rewrite his on the fly.
Going unremarked this summer, amidst the drought and the heatwaves and the greyness, is the CONSISTENCY of the heat in London
It is 27C at 6pm in Camden, on the turbulent Primrose Hill frontier
That is quite unusual, yet it is happening day after day
Nor am I imagining it. July's CET (Central England Temp) is 2.2C above normal, and I am pretty sure London is hotter than that. Netweather claims London is 3C over the average for July
Met Office website August prediction is "very warm" for the South.
Fun for Mrs Flatlander doing some grassland surveys the other day. Difficulty level: Max. At least they hadn't actually caught fire (yet).
I am told one of the local fires during the 40C event was due to a pole transformer. It overheated and sparks set the nearby hedge alight. 3 fields went up before it was eventually stopped, not far from some houses.
This isn't supposed to be like Australia! Our infrastructure just can't cope.
Expecting some rain here tonight although it looks like it will fail to reach the South East.
Drier than average August predicted too. Most rain in the form of thunderstorms. Which isn't great.
Hose pipe bans… is it really the case that there’s basically no enforcement of these? So if you don’t take the piss in front of your neighbours you can can away with giving a splash to particularly vulnerable plants?
Without smart water meters I don't see how they could enforce it other than by nosy neighbour syndrome.
If everyone takes the piss, however, standpipes await...
We are nowhere near that yet.
I don't see how a smart meter would detect it, unless drips are leaving their hoses on for hours rather than using it like running a bath.
Normal water meters are up from 40% in 2015 to 60%+ now, so coming your way soon.
There was a wonderful tweet claiming that not needing to build any reservoirs for a generation despite a 10% population increase was an indication of the failure of privatisation.
Going unremarked this summer, amidst the drought and the heatwaves and the greyness, is the CONSISTENCY of the heat in London
It is 27C at 6pm in Camden, on the turbulent Primrose Hill frontier
That is quite unusual, yet it is happening day after day
Nor am I imagining it. July's CET (Central England Temp) is 2.2C above normal, and I am pretty sure London is hotter than that. Netweather claims London is 3C over the average for July
Rishi needs to stop talking about his family because everyone knows his background. Get down to specifics like what Liz did.
Standard stump stuff though isn't it? Repeat the same speech in dozens of different campaign stops.
Yes but this is the age of the interweb and so it is unnecessary and even counterproductive. The irony is that Rishi even joked that everyone already knew his mum ran a pharmacy.
"It didn’t used to be like this. This part of southern Mesopotamia, where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers flow into the Persian Gulf, was once so fertile that scholars have suggested it could have been the location of the biblical Garden of Eden."
One of the most disturbing articles about climate change in recent years was in the Times only the other day. Describing daily life in Iraq and Kuwait
Unfortunately, it is paywall, but it is powerful
"Outside, in Basra and Kuwait, the heat is everywhere, like soup in your mouth or stinging fire in your throat — depending on the humidity. At its worst, you hold your tongue to the back of your front teeth because it hurts to breathe in the air directly. Your eyes prickle, their surfaces drying.
"It didn’t used to be like this. This part of southern Mesopotamia, where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers flow into the Persian Gulf, was once so fertile that scholars have suggested it could have been the location of the biblical Garden of Eden."
One of the most disturbing articles about climate change in recent years was in the Times only the other day. Describing daily life in Iraq and Kuwait
Unfortunately, it is paywall, but it is powerful
"Outside, in Basra and Kuwait, the heat is everywhere, like soup in your mouth or stinging fire in your throat — depending on the humidity. At its worst, you hold your tongue to the back of your front teeth because it hurts to breathe in the air directly. Your eyes prickle, their surfaces drying.
"It didn’t used to be like this. This part of southern Mesopotamia, where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers flow into the Persian Gulf, was once so fertile that scholars have suggested it could have been the location of the biblical Garden of Eden."
I don't see how the Middle East can remain habitable
The same article pointed out that the massive difference between the two was that Kuwait had air con everywhere. So I guess the middle east remains habitable if they generate enough power for everyone to have air con?
But who wants to spend their entire life breathing in fake, filtered air? Indoors?
Not me. I love England and its seasons.
I guess @Sandpit can tell us more about the reality in the deserts.
I grew up living in the heat without air-conditioning, and spent a lot of time driving/camping around Yemen without it either. It is amazing what the human body can habituate to, but there is a limit. 50C in the dry desert was like walking in an oven but ok if you remembered to drink enough, even when you didn't think you needed to. 45C on the coast with high humidity without AC was just bearable, and the locals both sides of the Red Sea eke out a living in those conditions. But the human body cannot cope with much more than that - witness the hotter, uninhabited areas of Djibouti.
One of the most disturbing articles about climate change in recent years was in the Times only the other day. Describing daily life in Iraq and Kuwait
Unfortunately, it is paywall, but it is powerful
"Outside, in Basra and Kuwait, the heat is everywhere, like soup in your mouth or stinging fire in your throat — depending on the humidity. At its worst, you hold your tongue to the back of your front teeth because it hurts to breathe in the air directly. Your eyes prickle, their surfaces drying.
"It didn’t used to be like this. This part of southern Mesopotamia, where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers flow into the Persian Gulf, was once so fertile that scholars have suggested it could have been the location of the biblical Garden of Eden."
One of the most disturbing articles about climate change in recent years was in the Times only the other day. Describing daily life in Iraq and Kuwait
Unfortunately, it is paywall, but it is powerful
"Outside, in Basra and Kuwait, the heat is everywhere, like soup in your mouth or stinging fire in your throat — depending on the humidity. At its worst, you hold your tongue to the back of your front teeth because it hurts to breathe in the air directly. Your eyes prickle, their surfaces drying.
"It didn’t used to be like this. This part of southern Mesopotamia, where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers flow into the Persian Gulf, was once so fertile that scholars have suggested it could have been the location of the biblical Garden of Eden."
I don't see how the Middle East can remain habitable
The same article pointed out that the massive difference between the two was that Kuwait had air con everywhere. So I guess the middle east remains habitable if they generate enough power for everyone to have air con?
But who wants to spend their entire life breathing in fake, filtered air? Indoors?
Not me. I love England and its seasons.
I guess @Sandpit can tell us more about the reality in the deserts.
It really isn’t that bad, perfectly liveable in a city if you’re a white-collar desk jockey. Building sites work split shifts or night shifts in the summer, to avoid the worst of the heat. Winter is lovely though.
Yesterday, Shipley CLP selected the candidate to face Philip Davies at the next GE. Unfortunately, I remembered the meeting about 3 hours too late, so failed to participate. Mind, I didn't have strong views about any of the shortlisted candidates anyway.
Going unremarked this summer, amidst the drought and the heatwaves and the greyness, is the CONSISTENCY of the heat in London
It is 27C at 6pm in Camden, on the turbulent Primrose Hill frontier
That is quite unusual, yet it is happening day after day
Nor am I imagining it. July's CET (Central England Temp) is 2.2C above normal, and I am pretty sure London is hotter than that. Netweather claims London is 3C over the average for July
Are you on board with Truss now Roger? Lots of hostility towards Starmer on show.
I can't stand Truss. I just want Starmer to start showing some backbone. If he's going to become PM for the Leaver Red Wallers then he'll be very lucky to win. Most Labour voters AREN'T Leavers. Not being as bad as Truss might do it but I wouldn't put my house on it.
Truss's ratings rise has been very swift and steep. Suggests a big bounce and a big collapse possible or indeed probable. In the meantime, lol @ SKS
No PM in the last 50 years who has taken over midterm has not got a poll bounce.
However sustaining that to win a general election majority is something only Major and Johnson achieved
Yep. Eg Brown got a massive one when he took over and sorted out the floods and the cows - but look what ensued at the GE. He lost.
I'm not sure he would have won the election that wasn't.
All the Tories in Parliament and on here are falling in behind Truss. It strikes me as only those who want to see her appeal can see her appeal. She strikes me as an Emperor's New Clothes sort of a Prime Minister.
To be expected that Cons get their minds right. But I don't think she'll connect and convince with floating voters here in England in 2022 - or more pertinently 2024. She looks really second rate to me. And now the quirky gaffes have gone, "dull". Which is just political death these days apparently.
What if Mary E Truss tears SKS a new one in GE2024/25?
I think she has been underestimated at every turn.
She's capable. People warm to her. She's for a small state.
What isn't to like!
True, albeit Johnson and May and Brown and Major all led by 10% in at least one poll within about 10 days of becoming PM, so 1% ahead for Truss would not be a huge bounce even if still a welcome one
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.
Which of course gives the kids at Kensington and Chelsea and Surrey comps a huge inbuilt head start over the kids at Stoke and Barnsley and Grimsby comps by default
No, because another strand of the solution - to Optimal Education System - is a very marked skewing of resource to those latter type areas.
Which is irrelevant without change in intake
What particular advantages do grammar schools offer over larger, well streamed comprehensives?
My comp, for example, had seven different math sets.
As a parent currently going through this, my motivations are: 1) Grammar schools weed out most of the kids who make your kids' lives a misery. 2) Comprehensives have a lot of more challenging kidd, and a lot of kids who will need a bit more effort to get them over 5 grade Cs territory. This will leave fewer resources and focus for my kids. 3) Locally, but I don't thi k this is uncommon: the grammar school is just nicer. Better maintained, less graffiti, fewer leaks. All entirely selfish motivations, but show me someone who makes decision their kids' education based on what will be best for other kids?
Those are excellent points: but they equally mean that the 80% of kids left behind at Secondary Moderns suffer more from the problems you identify.
Because, let us be clear, the problem is not grammar schools (which are great), but how you avoid a situation where the people left behind get a worse education.
In a large comprehensive, there will be lots of movement between the second and third deciles: a significant number of kids will drop from first set maths to second... And vice versa. That's really tough to do when the sets are at different schools. Essentially you end up ossifying kids into two groups at a very early age.
And, of course, it's ok for me. If my 10 year old fails the 11+, well I can put him in private education. But what if yours has a bad day? Or is a late developer? It's much much harder for them to climb out of the Secondary Modern into a Grammar.
Finally, there's the issue of kids who are great at one thing, but not another. I was dreadful at languages (bottom in German Tanbridge School 1987!), but excellent at maths. How do you allocate people who are great at one set of subjects, but average (or worse) at another?
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.
Which of course gives the kids at Kensington and Chelsea and Surrey comps a huge inbuilt head start over the kids at Stoke and Barnsley and Grimsby comps by default
No, because another strand of the solution - to Optimal Education System - is a very marked skewing of resource to those latter type areas.
Which is irrelevant without change in intake
What particular advantages do grammar schools offer over larger, well streamed comprehensives?
My comp, for example, had seven different math sets.
As a parent currently going through this, my motivations are: 1) Grammar schools weed out most of the kids who make your kids' lives a misery. 2) Comprehensives have a lot of more challenging kidd, and a lot of kids who will need a bit more effort to get them over 5 grade Cs territory. This will leave fewer resources and focus for my kids. 3) Locally, but I don't thi k this is uncommon: the grammar school is just nicer. Better maintained, less graffiti, fewer leaks. All entirely selfish motivations, but show me someone who makes decision their kids' education based on what will be best for other kids?
Those are excellent points: but they equally mean that the 80% of kids left behind at Secondary Moderns suffer more from the problems you identify.
Because, let us be clear, the problem is not grammar schools (which are great), but how you avoid a situation where the people left behind get a worse education.
In a large comprehensive, there will be lots of movement between the second and third deciles: a significant number of kids will drop from first set maths to second... And vice versa. That's really tough to do when the sets are at different schools. Essentially you end up ossifying kids into two groups at a very early age.
And, of course, it's ok for me. If my 10 year old fails the 11+, well I can put him in private education. But what if yours has a bad day? Or is a late developer? It's much much harder for them to climb out of the Secondary Modern into a Grammar.
Finally, there's the issue of kids who are great at one thing, but not another. I was dreadful at languages (bottom in German Tanbridge School 1987!), but excellent at maths. How do you allocate people who are great at one set of subjects, but average (or worse) at another?
Most comprehensives and academies are effectively secondary moderns in all but name, apart from the minority rated Outstanding
Going unremarked this summer, amidst the drought and the heatwaves and the greyness, is the CONSISTENCY of the heat in London
It is 27C at 6pm in Camden, on the turbulent Primrose Hill frontier
That is quite unusual, yet it is happening day after day
Nor am I imagining it. July's CET (Central England Temp) is 2.2C above normal, and I am pretty sure London is hotter than that. Netweather claims London is 3C over the average for July
A poll from Techne has Sunak only five points behind Truss. It says it's a private poll but I think BPC rules say once a poll is written up like this the tables need to be published. https://t.co/bmKclHGOzZ
Going unremarked this summer, amidst the drought and the heatwaves and the greyness, is the CONSISTENCY of the heat in London
It is 27C at 6pm in Camden, on the turbulent Primrose Hill frontier
That is quite unusual, yet it is happening day after day
Nor am I imagining it. July's CET (Central England Temp) is 2.2C above normal, and I am pretty sure London is hotter than that. Netweather claims London is 3C over the average for July
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.
Which of course gives the kids at Kensington and Chelsea and Surrey comps a huge inbuilt head start over the kids at Stoke and Barnsley and Grimsby comps by default
No, because another strand of the solution - to Optimal Education System - is a very marked skewing of resource to those latter type areas.
Which is irrelevant without change in intake
What particular advantages do grammar schools offer over larger, well streamed comprehensives?
My comp, for example, had seven different math sets.
As a parent currently going through this, my motivations are: 1) Grammar schools weed out most of the kids who make your kids' lives a misery. 2) Comprehensives have a lot of more challenging kidd, and a lot of kids who will need a bit more effort to get them over 5 grade Cs territory. This will leave fewer resources and focus for my kids. 3) Locally, but I don't thi k this is uncommon: the grammar school is just nicer. Better maintained, less graffiti, fewer leaks. All entirely selfish motivations, but show me someone who makes decision their kids' education based on what will be best for other kids?
Those are excellent points: but they equally mean that the 80% of kids left behind at Secondary Moderns suffer more from the problems you identify.
Because, let us be clear, the problem is not grammar schools (which are great), but how you avoid a situation where the people left behind get a worse education.
In a large comprehensive, there will be lots of movement between the second and third deciles: a significant number of kids will drop from first set maths to second... And vice versa. That's really tough to do when the sets are at different schools. Essentially you end up ossifying kids into two groups at a very early age.
And, of course, it's ok for me. If my 10 year old fails the 11+, well I can put him in private education. But what if yours has a bad day? Or is a late developer? It's much much harder for them to climb out of the Secondary Modern into a Grammar.
Finally, there's the issue of kids who are great at one thing, but not another. I was dreadful at languages (bottom in German Tanbridge School 1987!), but excellent at maths. How do you allocate people who are great at one set of subjects, but average (or worse) at another?
Most comprehensives and academies are effectively secondary moderns in all but name, apart from the minority rated Outstanding
That was a remarkably good answer to the hunting question.
Managed to get a rural audience to clap her when saying she wouldn't repeal the Hunting Act 2005
Mind you:
I was talking to a mate who runs a small commercial pheasant shoot the other day who said she was putting down 5,000 birds this year. To be shot. And after they are thwacked, they are landfill or cat food. And every single person thwacking them is a rich fuck, vs about 20% of the average mounted hunting field.
And what really pisses me off, is the likes of Nick Palmer are well informed and intelligent and realise all this is true. And are prepared to leverage sheer dishonesty to advance their case. I do utterly loathe an intelligent liar.
I'd bet on an Opinium lead almost certainly, I think that's a good one to come off by the end of the year.
I do not think the boost will be long lasting because it seems to me that Truss nor Rishi are actually offering anything that's going to fundamentally impact CoL.
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.
Which of course gives the kids at Kensington and Chelsea and Surrey comps a huge inbuilt head start over the kids at Stoke and Barnsley and Grimsby comps by default
No, because another strand of the solution - to Optimal Education System - is a very marked skewing of resource to those latter type areas.
Which is irrelevant without change in intake
What particular advantages do grammar schools offer over larger, well streamed comprehensives?
My comp, for example, had seven different math sets.
As a parent currently going through this, my motivations are: 1) Grammar schools weed out most of the kids who make your kids' lives a misery. 2) Comprehensives have a lot of more challenging kidd, and a lot of kids who will need a bit more effort to get them over 5 grade Cs territory. This will leave fewer resources and focus for my kids. 3) Locally, but I don't thi k this is uncommon: the grammar school is just nicer. Better maintained, less graffiti, fewer leaks. All entirely selfish motivations, but show me someone who makes decision their kids' education based on what will be best for other kids?
Those are excellent points: but they equally mean that the 80% of kids left behind at Secondary Moderns suffer more from the problems you identify.
Because, let us be clear, the problem is not grammar schools (which are great), but how you avoid a situation where the people left behind get a worse education.
In a large comprehensive, there will be lots of movement between the second and third deciles: a significant number of kids will drop from first set maths to second... And vice versa. That's really tough to do when the sets are at different schools. Essentially you end up ossifying kids into two groups at a very early age.
And, of course, it's ok for me. If my 10 year old fails the 11+, well I can put him in private education. But what if yours has a bad day? Or is a late developer? It's much much harder for them to climb out of the Secondary Modern into a Grammar.
Finally, there's the issue of kids who are great at one thing, but not another. I was dreadful at languages (bottom in German Tanbridge School 1987!), but excellent at maths. How do you allocate people who are great at one set of subjects, but average (or worse) at another?
Most comprehensives and academies are effectively secondary moderns in all but name, apart from the minority rated Outstanding
That's simply not true.
In my comprehensive, my top set maths was full of exactly the kids who would have been at the local grammar school (had there been 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!
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.
Which of course gives the kids at Kensington and Chelsea and Surrey comps a huge inbuilt head start over the kids at Stoke and Barnsley and Grimsby comps by default
No, because another strand of the solution - to Optimal Education System - is a very marked skewing of resource to those latter type areas.
Which is irrelevant without change in intake
What particular advantages do grammar schools offer over larger, well streamed comprehensives?
My comp, for example, had seven different math sets.
As a parent currently going through this, my motivations are: 1) Grammar schools weed out most of the kids who make your kids' lives a misery. 2) Comprehensives have a lot of more challenging kidd, and a lot of kids who will need a bit more effort to get them over 5 grade Cs territory. This will leave fewer resources and focus for my kids. 3) Locally, but I don't thi k this is uncommon: the grammar school is just nicer. Better maintained, less graffiti, fewer leaks. All entirely selfish motivations, but show me someone who makes decision their kids' education based on what will be best for other kids?
Those are excellent points: but they equally mean that the 80% of kids left behind at Secondary Moderns suffer more from the problems you identify.
Because, let us be clear, the problem is not grammar schools (which are great), but how you avoid a situation where the people left behind get a worse education.
In a large comprehensive, there will be lots of movement between the second and third deciles: a significant number of kids will drop from first set maths to second... And vice versa. That's really tough to do when the sets are at different schools. Essentially you end up ossifying kids into two groups at a very early age.
And, of course, it's ok for me. If my 10 year old fails the 11+, well I can put him in private education. But what if yours has a bad day? Or is a late developer? It's much much harder for them to climb out of the Secondary Modern into a Grammar.
Finally, there's the issue of kids who are great at one thing, but not another. I was dreadful at languages (bottom in German Tanbridge School 1987!), but excellent at maths. How do you allocate people who are great at one set of subjects, but average (or worse) at another?
Most comprehensives and academies are effectively secondary moderns in all but name, apart from the minority rated Outstanding
That's simply not true.
In my comprehensive, my top set maths was full of exactly the kids who would have been at the local grammar school (had there been grammar schools).
Might have been but the vast majority of the pupils wouldn't have been and the ethos of the school will be mainly directed towards them
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.
Which of course gives the kids at Kensington and Chelsea and Surrey comps a huge inbuilt head start over the kids at Stoke and Barnsley and Grimsby comps by default
No, because another strand of the solution - to Optimal Education System - is a very marked skewing of resource to those latter type areas.
Which is irrelevant without change in intake
What particular advantages do grammar schools offer over larger, well streamed comprehensives?
My comp, for example, had seven different math sets.
As a parent currently going through this, my motivations are: 1) Grammar schools weed out most of the kids who make your kids' lives a misery. 2) Comprehensives have a lot of more challenging kidd, and a lot of kids who will need a bit more effort to get them over 5 grade Cs territory. This will leave fewer resources and focus for my kids. 3) Locally, but I don't thi k this is uncommon: the grammar school is just nicer. Better maintained, less graffiti, fewer leaks. All entirely selfish motivations, but show me someone who makes decision their kids' education based on what will be best for other kids?
Those are excellent points: but they equally mean that the 80% of kids left behind at Secondary Moderns suffer more from the problems you identify.
Because, let us be clear, the problem is not grammar schools (which are great), but how you avoid a situation where the people left behind get a worse education.
In a large comprehensive, there will be lots of movement between the second and third deciles: a significant number of kids will drop from first set maths to second... And vice versa. That's really tough to do when the sets are at different schools. Essentially you end up ossifying kids into two groups at a very early age.
And, of course, it's ok for me. If my 10 year old fails the 11+, well I can put him in private education. But what if yours has a bad day? Or is a late developer? It's much much harder for them to climb out of the Secondary Modern into a Grammar.
Finally, there's the issue of kids who are great at one thing, but not another. I was dreadful at languages (bottom in German Tanbridge School 1987!), but excellent at maths. How do you allocate people who are great at one set of subjects, but average (or worse) at another?
Most comprehensives and academies are effectively secondary moderns in all but name, apart from the minority rated Outstanding
That's simply not true.
In my comprehensive, my top set maths was full of exactly the kids who would have been at the local grammar school (had there been grammar schools).
Likewise at my late 1970s bog standard comp.
My memory is the problem was that kind of streaming didn't happen until after the first three years of the secondary education.
For the brighter kids those three years were wasted. Down at the private school nearby they were teaching them a year or two ahead of where they should be.
Are you on board with Truss now Roger? Lots of hostility towards Starmer on show.
I can't stand Truss. I just want Starmer to start showing some backbone. If he's going to become PM for the Leaver Red Wallers then he'll be very lucky to win. Most Labour voters AREN'T Leavers. Not being as bad as Truss might do it but I wouldn't put my house on it.
He is underwhelming, but too much red on red action when the Conservatives are embarking on a love-in with Liz will end in tears.
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.
Which of course gives the kids at Kensington and Chelsea and Surrey comps a huge inbuilt head start over the kids at Stoke and Barnsley and Grimsby comps by default
No, because another strand of the solution - to Optimal Education System - is a very marked skewing of resource to those latter type areas.
Which is irrelevant without change in intake
What particular advantages do grammar schools offer over larger, well streamed comprehensives?
My comp, for example, had seven different math sets.
As a parent currently going through this, my motivations are: 1) Grammar schools weed out most of the kids who make your kids' lives a misery. 2) Comprehensives have a lot of more challenging kidd, and a lot of kids who will need a bit more effort to get them over 5 grade Cs territory. This will leave fewer resources and focus for my kids. 3) Locally, but I don't thi k this is uncommon: the grammar school is just nicer. Better maintained, less graffiti, fewer leaks. All entirely selfish motivations, but show me someone who makes decision their kids' education based on what will be best for other kids?
Those are excellent points: but they equally mean that the 80% of kids left behind at Secondary Moderns suffer more from the problems you identify.
Because, let us be clear, the problem is not grammar schools (which are great), but how you avoid a situation where the people left behind get a worse education.
In a large comprehensive, there will be lots of movement between the second and third deciles: a significant number of kids will drop from first set maths to second... And vice versa. That's really tough to do when the sets are at different schools. Essentially you end up ossifying kids into two groups at a very early age.
And, of course, it's ok for me. If my 10 year old fails the 11+, well I can put him in private education. But what if yours has a bad day? Or is a late developer? It's much much harder for them to climb out of the Secondary Modern into a Grammar.
Finally, there's the issue of kids who are great at one thing, but not another. I was dreadful at languages (bottom in German Tanbridge School 1987!), but excellent at maths. How do you allocate people who are great at one set of subjects, but average (or worse) at another?
Most comprehensives and academies are effectively secondary moderns in all but name, apart from the minority rated Outstanding
That's simply not true.
In my comprehensive, my top set maths was full of exactly the kids who would have been at the local grammar school (had there been grammar schools).
Might have been but the vast majority of the pupils wouldn't have been
The vast majority of pupils - 85% if memory serves - never got to grammar schools anyway!
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.
Which of course gives the kids at Kensington and Chelsea and Surrey comps a huge inbuilt head start over the kids at Stoke and Barnsley and Grimsby comps by default
No, because another strand of the solution - to Optimal Education System - is a very marked skewing of resource to those latter type areas.
Which is irrelevant without change in intake
What particular advantages do grammar schools offer over larger, well streamed comprehensives?
My comp, for example, had seven different math sets.
As a parent currently going through this, my motivations are: 1) Grammar schools weed out most of the kids who make your kids' lives a misery. 2) Comprehensives have a lot of more challenging kidd, and a lot of kids who will need a bit more effort to get them over 5 grade Cs territory. This will leave fewer resources and focus for my kids. 3) Locally, but I don't thi k this is uncommon: the grammar school is just nicer. Better maintained, less graffiti, fewer leaks. All entirely selfish motivations, but show me someone who makes decision their kids' education based on what will be best for other kids?
Those are excellent points: but they equally mean that the 80% of kids left behind at Secondary Moderns suffer more from the problems you identify.
Because, let us be clear, the problem is not grammar schools (which are great), but how you avoid a situation where the people left behind get a worse education.
In a large comprehensive, there will be lots of movement between the second and third deciles: a significant number of kids will drop from first set maths to second... And vice versa. That's really tough to do when the sets are at different schools. Essentially you end up ossifying kids into two groups at a very early age.
And, of course, it's ok for me. If my 10 year old fails the 11+, well I can put him in private education. But what if yours has a bad day? Or is a late developer? It's much much harder for them to climb out of the Secondary Modern into a Grammar.
Finally, there's the issue of kids who are great at one thing, but not another. I was dreadful at languages (bottom in German Tanbridge School 1987!), but excellent at maths. How do you allocate people who are great at one set of subjects, but average (or worse) at another?
Most comprehensives and academies are effectively secondary moderns in all but name, apart from the minority rated Outstanding
That's simply not true.
In my comprehensive, my top set maths was full of exactly the kids who would have been at the local grammar school (had there been grammar schools).
Might have been but the vast majority of the pupils wouldn't have been
The vast majority of pupils - 85% if memory serves - never got to grammar schools anyway!
Hence most comprehensives are effectively secondary moderns in all but name (though grammar intakes tend to range from top 10% to top 25%)
Going unremarked this summer, amidst the drought and the heatwaves and the greyness, is the CONSISTENCY of the heat in London
It is 27C at 6pm in Camden, on the turbulent Primrose Hill frontier
That is quite unusual, yet it is happening day after day
Nor am I imagining it. July's CET (Central England Temp) is 2.2C above normal, and I am pretty sure London is hotter than that. Netweather claims London is 3C over the average for July
Perhaps this is the year we will see the first signs of truly irreversible warming
Yes, it may well be too late (we can just about still hope, but).
So the question is not which lot of politicians can stop it, but which lot of politicians will be best most effective in helping us to deal with the calamity (and that in the face of continuing well funded denial as the world suffers).
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.
Which of course gives the kids at Kensington and Chelsea and Surrey comps a huge inbuilt head start over the kids at Stoke and Barnsley and Grimsby comps by default
No, because another strand of the solution - to Optimal Education System - is a very marked skewing of resource to those latter type areas.
Which is irrelevant without change in intake
What particular advantages do grammar schools offer over larger, well streamed comprehensives?
My comp, for example, had seven different math sets.
As a parent currently going through this, my motivations are: 1) Grammar schools weed out most of the kids who make your kids' lives a misery. 2) Comprehensives have a lot of more challenging kidd, and a lot of kids who will need a bit more effort to get them over 5 grade Cs territory. This will leave fewer resources and focus for my kids. 3) Locally, but I don't thi k this is uncommon: the grammar school is just nicer. Better maintained, less graffiti, fewer leaks. All entirely selfish motivations, but show me someone who makes decision their kids' education based on what will be best for other kids?
Those are excellent points: but they equally mean that the 80% of kids left behind at Secondary Moderns suffer more from the problems you identify.
Because, let us be clear, the problem is not grammar schools (which are great), but how you avoid a situation where the people left behind get a worse education.
In a large comprehensive, there will be lots of movement between the second and third deciles: a significant number of kids will drop from first set maths to second... And vice versa. That's really tough to do when the sets are at different schools. Essentially you end up ossifying kids into two groups at a very early age.
And, of course, it's ok for me. If my 10 year old fails the 11+, well I can put him in private education. But what if yours has a bad day? Or is a late developer? It's much much harder for them to climb out of the Secondary Modern into a Grammar.
Finally, there's the issue of kids who are great at one thing, but not another. I was dreadful at languages (bottom in German Tanbridge School 1987!), but excellent at maths. How do you allocate people who are great at one set of subjects, but average (or worse) at another?
Most comprehensives and academies are effectively secondary moderns in all but name, apart from the minority rated Outstanding
That's simply not true.
In my comprehensive, my top set maths was full of exactly the kids who would have been at the local grammar school (had there been grammar schools).
Might have been but the vast majority of the pupils wouldn't have been
The vast majority of pupils - 85% if memory serves - never got to grammar schools anyway!
Hence most comprehensives are effectively secondary moderns in all but name (though grammar intakes tend to range from top 10% to top 25%)
You mean, they are basically secondary moderns but with the top 15% added back in? How could that not be the case?
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.
Which of course gives the kids at Kensington and Chelsea and Surrey comps a huge inbuilt head start over the kids at Stoke and Barnsley and Grimsby comps by default
No, because another strand of the solution - to Optimal Education System - is a very marked skewing of resource to those latter type areas.
Which is irrelevant without change in intake
What particular advantages do grammar schools offer over larger, well streamed comprehensives?
My comp, for example, had seven different math sets.
As a parent currently going through this, my motivations are: 1) Grammar schools weed out most of the kids who make your kids' lives a misery. 2) Comprehensives have a lot of more challenging kidd, and a lot of kids who will need a bit more effort to get them over 5 grade Cs territory. This will leave fewer resources and focus for my kids. 3) Locally, but I don't thi k this is uncommon: the grammar school is just nicer. Better maintained, less graffiti, fewer leaks. All entirely selfish motivations, but show me someone who makes decision their kids' education based on what will be best for other kids?
Those are excellent points: but they equally mean that the 80% of kids left behind at Secondary Moderns suffer more from the problems you identify.
Because, let us be clear, the problem is not grammar schools (which are great), but how you avoid a situation where the people left behind get a worse education.
In a large comprehensive, there will be lots of movement between the second and third deciles: a significant number of kids will drop from first set maths to second... And vice versa. That's really tough to do when the sets are at different schools. Essentially you end up ossifying kids into two groups at a very early age.
And, of course, it's ok for me. If my 10 year old fails the 11+, well I can put him in private education. But what if yours has a bad day? Or is a late developer? It's much much harder for them to climb out of the Secondary Modern into a Grammar.
Finally, there's the issue of kids who are great at one thing, but not another. I was dreadful at languages (bottom in German Tanbridge School 1987!), but excellent at maths. How do you allocate people who are great at one set of subjects, but average (or worse) at another?
Most comprehensives and academies are effectively secondary moderns in all but name, apart from the minority rated Outstanding
That's simply not true.
In my comprehensive, my top set maths was full of exactly the kids who would have been at the local grammar school (had there been grammar schools).
Might have been but the vast majority of the pupils wouldn't have been and the ethos of the school will be mainly directed towards them
Was this post written in code that only full seven year alumni of Grammar Schools can understand? 'Cos I am struggling.
One of the most disturbing articles about climate change in recent years was in the Times only the other day. Describing daily life in Iraq and Kuwait
Unfortunately, it is paywall, but it is powerful
"Outside, in Basra and Kuwait, the heat is everywhere, like soup in your mouth or stinging fire in your throat — depending on the humidity. At its worst, you hold your tongue to the back of your front teeth because it hurts to breathe in the air directly. Your eyes prickle, their surfaces drying.
"It didn’t used to be like this. This part of southern Mesopotamia, where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers flow into the Persian Gulf, was once so fertile that scholars have suggested it could have been the location of the biblical Garden of Eden."
That was a remarkably good answer to the hunting question.
Managed to get a rural audience to clap her when saying she wouldn't repeal the Hunting Act 2005
Mind you:
I was talking to a mate who runs a small commercial pheasant shoot the other day who said she was putting down 5,000 birds this year. To be shot. And after they are thwacked, they are landfill or cat food. And every single person thwacking them is a rich fuck, vs about 20% of the average mounted hunting field.
And what really pisses me off, is the likes of Nick Palmer are well informed and intelligent and realise all this is true. And are prepared to leverage sheer dishonesty to advance their case. I do utterly loathe an intelligent liar.
Seriously, do they not eat the pheasants? That's a criminal waste. I often eat pheasant and other game from Lothian and the Borders.
One of the most disturbing articles about climate change in recent years was in the Times only the other day. Describing daily life in Iraq and Kuwait
Unfortunately, it is paywall, but it is powerful
"Outside, in Basra and Kuwait, the heat is everywhere, like soup in your mouth or stinging fire in your throat — depending on the humidity. At its worst, you hold your tongue to the back of your front teeth because it hurts to breathe in the air directly. Your eyes prickle, their surfaces drying.
"It didn’t used to be like this. This part of southern Mesopotamia, where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers flow into the Persian Gulf, was once so fertile that scholars have suggested it could have been the location of the biblical Garden of Eden."
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.
Which of course gives the kids at Kensington and Chelsea and Surrey comps a huge inbuilt head start over the kids at Stoke and Barnsley and Grimsby comps by default
No, because another strand of the solution - to Optimal Education System - is a very marked skewing of resource to those latter type areas.
Which is irrelevant without change in intake
What particular advantages do grammar schools offer over larger, well streamed comprehensives?
My comp, for example, had seven different math sets.
As a parent currently going through this, my motivations are: 1) Grammar schools weed out most of the kids who make your kids' lives a misery. 2) Comprehensives have a lot of more challenging kidd, and a lot of kids who will need a bit more effort to get them over 5 grade Cs territory. This will leave fewer resources and focus for my kids. 3) Locally, but I don't thi k this is uncommon: the grammar school is just nicer. Better maintained, less graffiti, fewer leaks. All entirely selfish motivations, but show me someone who makes decision their kids' education based on what will be best for other kids?
Those are excellent points: but they equally mean that the 80% of kids left behind at Secondary Moderns suffer more from the problems you identify.
Because, let us be clear, the problem is not grammar schools (which are great), but how you avoid a situation where the people left behind get a worse education.
In a large comprehensive, there will be lots of movement between the second and third deciles: a significant number of kids will drop from first set maths to second... And vice versa. That's really tough to do when the sets are at different schools. Essentially you end up ossifying kids into two groups at a very early age.
And, of course, it's ok for me. If my 10 year old fails the 11+, well I can put him in private education. But what if yours has a bad day? Or is a late developer? It's much much harder for them to climb out of the Secondary Modern into a Grammar.
Finally, there's the issue of kids who are great at one thing, but not another. I was dreadful at languages (bottom in German Tanbridge School 1987!), but excellent at maths. How do you allocate people who are great at one set of subjects, but average (or worse) at another?
Most comprehensives and academies are effectively secondary moderns in all but name, apart from the minority rated Outstanding
That's simply not true.
In my comprehensive, my top set maths was full of exactly the kids who would have been at the local grammar school (had there been grammar schools).
Might have been but the vast majority of the pupils wouldn't have been and the ethos of the school will be mainly directed towards them
Was this post written in code that only full seven year alumni of Grammar Schools can understand? 'Cos I am struggling.
No, only alumni of Posh "Public Schools", I think. I think?!
This Tory election is so funny. Currently our resident Tories are ramping Truss, someone they were saying was going to deliver certain defeat just a few days ago.
Going unremarked this summer, amidst the drought and the heatwaves and the greyness, is the CONSISTENCY of the heat in London
It is 27C at 6pm in Camden, on the turbulent Primrose Hill frontier
That is quite unusual, yet it is happening day after day
Nor am I imagining it. July's CET (Central England Temp) is 2.2C above normal, and I am pretty sure London is hotter than that. Netweather claims London is 3C over the average for July
Perhaps this is the year we will see the first signs of truly irreversible warming
Yes, it may well be too late (we can just about still hope, but).
So the question is not which lot of politicians can stop it, but which lot of politicians will be best most effective in helping us to deal with the calamity (and that in the face of continuing well funded denial as the world suffers).
I wish Leon had been posting on here when that guy SeanT was. The latter was a climate-change denier who laughed and sneered at anyone who claimed there was problem. Leon would have ripped him a new one!
One of the most disturbing articles about climate change in recent years was in the Times only the other day. Describing daily life in Iraq and Kuwait
Unfortunately, it is paywall, but it is powerful
"Outside, in Basra and Kuwait, the heat is everywhere, like soup in your mouth or stinging fire in your throat — depending on the humidity. At its worst, you hold your tongue to the back of your front teeth because it hurts to breathe in the air directly. Your eyes prickle, their surfaces drying.
"It didn’t used to be like this. This part of southern Mesopotamia, where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers flow into the Persian Gulf, was once so fertile that scholars have suggested it could have been the location of the biblical Garden of Eden."
That was a remarkably good answer to the hunting question.
Managed to get a rural audience to clap her when saying she wouldn't repeal the Hunting Act 2005
Mind you:
I was talking to a mate who runs a small commercial pheasant shoot the other day who said she was putting down 5,000 birds this year. To be shot. And after they are thwacked, they are landfill or cat food. And every single person thwacking them is a rich fuck, vs about 20% of the average mounted hunting field.
And what really pisses me off, is the likes of Nick Palmer are well informed and intelligent and realise all this is true. And are prepared to leverage sheer dishonesty to advance their case. I do utterly loathe an intelligent liar.
I am breaking my rule to reply to you on this to say, I totally agree.
It's a triumph of sentimentality over reason.
Almost everyone who actually goes foxhunting in reality realises this, including its opponents.
This Tory election is so funny. Currently our resident Tories are ramping Truss, someone they were saying was going to deliver certain defeat just a few days ago.
Ramping she will get a bounce as new PM is not the same thing as saying she will win the next general election
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.
Which of course gives the kids at Kensington and Chelsea and Surrey comps a huge inbuilt head start over the kids at Stoke and Barnsley and Grimsby comps by default
No, because another strand of the solution - to Optimal Education System - is a very marked skewing of resource to those latter type areas.
Which is irrelevant without change in intake
What particular advantages do grammar schools offer over larger, well streamed comprehensives?
My comp, for example, had seven different math sets.
As a parent currently going through this, my motivations are: 1) Grammar schools weed out most of the kids who make your kids' lives a misery. 2) Comprehensives have a lot of more challenging kidd, and a lot of kids who will need a bit more effort to get them over 5 grade Cs territory. This will leave fewer resources and focus for my kids. 3) Locally, but I don't thi k this is uncommon: the grammar school is just nicer. Better maintained, less graffiti, fewer leaks. All entirely selfish motivations, but show me someone who makes decision their kids' education based on what will be best for other kids?
Those are excellent points: but they equally mean that the 80% of kids left behind at Secondary Moderns suffer more from the problems you identify.
Because, let us be clear, the problem is not grammar schools (which are great), but how you avoid a situation where the people left behind get a worse education.
In a large comprehensive, there will be lots of movement between the second and third deciles: a significant number of kids will drop from first set maths to second... And vice versa. That's really tough to do when the sets are at different schools. Essentially you end up ossifying kids into two groups at a very early age.
And, of course, it's ok for me. If my 10 year old fails the 11+, well I can put him in private education. But what if yours has a bad day? Or is a late developer? It's much much harder for them to climb out of the Secondary Modern into a Grammar.
Finally, there's the issue of kids who are great at one thing, but not another. I was dreadful at languages (bottom in German Tanbridge School 1987!), but excellent at maths. How do you allocate people who are great at one set of subjects, but average (or worse) at another?
Most comprehensives and academies are effectively secondary moderns in all but name, apart from the minority rated Outstanding
That's simply not true.
In my comprehensive, my top set maths was full of exactly the kids who would have been at the local grammar school (had there been grammar schools).
Might have been but the vast majority of the pupils wouldn't have been and the ethos of the school will be mainly directed towards them
I don't really understand your comment.
My comprehensive school, with an upper sixth of perhaps 60 kids, got four kids into Oxbridge in my year. And, by the way, this was a school with a very high proportion of free school meals, and where English wasn't the first language.
But we also had a number of extremely smart, extremely competitive kids (of which I was one). I can see the advantage of putting more smart, competitive kids together.
Would I have really enjoyed a Grammar school?
Yep.
But my school also streamed extremely aggressively. I'm not sure my GCSE maths class would have been any more advanced. Pretty much the entire top set maths did A Level maths. And other than me, pretty much all got As at A Level.
The question is: how much do grammar schools improve the educational outcomes of the top 20%? And do they do so at the expense of the rest?
Really? Some pretty woolly thinking there if she did say that.
Wait for the ewe-turn.
No, she'll want to ram it through.
Wedder she's pandering to the members or not, yowe'd need to be pretty daft to believe she was serious about it being either/or. The sheep would love the shelter from the panels, for a start. And they'd stop the grass and scrub getting long enougfh to shade the panels at early/late hours.
One of the most disturbing articles about climate change in recent years was in the Times only the other day. Describing daily life in Iraq and Kuwait
Unfortunately, it is paywall, but it is powerful
"Outside, in Basra and Kuwait, the heat is everywhere, like soup in your mouth or stinging fire in your throat — depending on the humidity. At its worst, you hold your tongue to the back of your front teeth because it hurts to breathe in the air directly. Your eyes prickle, their surfaces drying.
"It didn’t used to be like this. This part of southern Mesopotamia, where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers flow into the Persian Gulf, was once so fertile that scholars have suggested it could have been the location of the biblical Garden of Eden."
I don't see how the Middle East can remain habitable
The same article pointed out that the massive difference between the two was that Kuwait had air con everywhere. So I guess the middle east remains habitable if they generate enough power for everyone to have air con?
But who wants to spend their entire life breathing in fake, filtered air? Indoors?
Not me. I love England and its seasons.
I guess @Sandpit can tell us more about the reality in the deserts.
It really isn’t that bad, perfectly liveable in a city if you’re a white-collar desk jockey. Building sites work split shifts or night shifts in the summer, to avoid the worst of the heat. Winter is lovely though.
Is The Line going to happen or is it just a concept to sell shares in Neom?
Truss adds: “The best thing to do with Nicola Sturgeon is to ignore her. She is an attention seeker. That is what she is.”
JFC. You don't have to be @StuartDickson to think that the Prime Minister of the UK deciding to "ignore" the elected leader of the Scottish Parliament is probably not the way that devolution was meant to work.
One of the most disturbing articles about climate change in recent years was in the Times only the other day. Describing daily life in Iraq and Kuwait
Unfortunately, it is paywall, but it is powerful
"Outside, in Basra and Kuwait, the heat is everywhere, like soup in your mouth or stinging fire in your throat — depending on the humidity. At its worst, you hold your tongue to the back of your front teeth because it hurts to breathe in the air directly. Your eyes prickle, their surfaces drying.
"It didn’t used to be like this. This part of southern Mesopotamia, where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers flow into the Persian Gulf, was once so fertile that scholars have suggested it could have been the location of the biblical Garden of Eden."
I don't see how the Middle East can remain habitable
The fertile crescent has seen better and more fertile days.
Egypt was the Ukraine of its day, biggest bread basket in the known world.
No wonder the Roman emperors never delegated its government to a senator, but only to an equestrian - in other wirds a middle class type with no hope of ever making himself Emperor.
That was a remarkably good answer to the hunting question.
Managed to get a rural audience to clap her when saying she wouldn't repeal the Hunting Act 2005
Mind you:
I was talking to a mate who runs a small commercial pheasant shoot the other day who said she was putting down 5,000 birds this year. To be shot. And after they are thwacked, they are landfill or cat food. And every single person thwacking them is a rich fuck, vs about 20% of the average mounted hunting field.
And what really pisses me off, is the likes of Nick Palmer are well informed and intelligent and realise all this is true. And are prepared to leverage sheer dishonesty to advance their case. I do utterly loathe an intelligent liar.
Seriously, do they not eat the pheasants? That's a criminal waste. I often eat pheasant and other game from Lothian and the Borders.
There just isn't the demand. They backed off from the just burying them when people started noticing, but mostly they become catfood.
Whereas fox hunting only ever polished off 2 or 3 a day, and those were the unhealthy ones.
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.
Which of course gives the kids at Kensington and Chelsea and Surrey comps a huge inbuilt head start over the kids at Stoke and Barnsley and Grimsby comps by default
No, because another strand of the solution - to Optimal Education System - is a very marked skewing of resource to those latter type areas.
Which is irrelevant without change in intake
What particular advantages do grammar schools offer over larger, well streamed comprehensives?
My comp, for example, had seven different math sets.
As a parent currently going through this, my motivations are: 1) Grammar schools weed out most of the kids who make your kids' lives a misery. 2) Comprehensives have a lot of more challenging kidd, and a lot of kids who will need a bit more effort to get them over 5 grade Cs territory. This will leave fewer resources and focus for my kids. 3) Locally, but I don't thi k this is uncommon: the grammar school is just nicer. Better maintained, less graffiti, fewer leaks. All entirely selfish motivations, but show me someone who makes decision their kids' education based on what will be best for other kids?
Those are excellent points: but they equally mean that the 80% of kids left behind at Secondary Moderns suffer more from the problems you identify.
Because, let us be clear, the problem is not grammar schools (which are great), but how you avoid a situation where the people left behind get a worse education.
In a large comprehensive, there will be lots of movement between the second and third deciles: a significant number of kids will drop from first set maths to second... And vice versa. That's really tough to do when the sets are at different schools. Essentially you end up ossifying kids into two groups at a very early age.
And, of course, it's ok for me. If my 10 year old fails the 11+, well I can put him in private education. But what if yours has a bad day? Or is a late developer? It's much much harder for them to climb out of the Secondary Modern into a Grammar.
Finally, there's the issue of kids who are great at one thing, but not another. I was dreadful at languages (bottom in German Tanbridge School 1987!), but excellent at maths. How do you allocate people who are great at one set of subjects, but average (or worse) at another?
Kate Clanchy's 'Some kids I taught ...' is really good on this issue. Amazing the attempts to get the book cancelled, despite it being the absolute epitome of left-liberalism. It's actually a superb and very moving piece of writing.
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.
Which of course gives the kids at Kensington and Chelsea and Surrey comps a huge inbuilt head start over the kids at Stoke and Barnsley and Grimsby comps by default
No, because another strand of the solution - to Optimal Education System - is a very marked skewing of resource to those latter type areas.
Which is irrelevant without change in intake
What particular advantages do grammar schools offer over larger, well streamed comprehensives?
My comp, for example, had seven different math sets.
As a parent currently going through this, my motivations are: 1) Grammar schools weed out most of the kids who make your kids' lives a misery. 2) Comprehensives have a lot of more challenging kidd, and a lot of kids who will need a bit more effort to get them over 5 grade Cs territory. This will leave fewer resources and focus for my kids. 3) Locally, but I don't thi k this is uncommon: the grammar school is just nicer. Better maintained, less graffiti, fewer leaks. All entirely selfish motivations, but show me someone who makes decision their kids' education based on what will be best for other kids?
Those are excellent points: but they equally mean that the 80% of kids left behind at Secondary Moderns suffer more from the problems you identify.
Because, let us be clear, the problem is not grammar schools (which are great), but how you avoid a situation where the people left behind get a worse education.
In a large comprehensive, there will be lots of movement between the second and third deciles: a significant number of kids will drop from first set maths to second... And vice versa. That's really tough to do when the sets are at different schools. Essentially you end up ossifying kids into two groups at a very early age.
And, of course, it's ok for me. If my 10 year old fails the 11+, well I can put him in private education. But what if yours has a bad day? Or is a late developer? It's much much harder for them to climb out of the Secondary Modern into a Grammar.
Finally, there's the issue of kids who are great at one thing, but not another. I was dreadful at languages (bottom in German Tanbridge School 1987!), but excellent at maths. How do you allocate people who are great at one set of subjects, but average (or worse) at another?
Most comprehensives and academies are effectively secondary moderns in all but name, apart from the minority rated Outstanding
That's simply not true.
In my comprehensive, my top set maths was full of exactly the kids who would have been at the local grammar school (had there been grammar schools).
Might have been but the vast majority of the pupils wouldn't have been and the ethos of the school will be mainly directed towards them
I don't really understand your comment.
My comprehensive school, with an upper sixth of perhaps 60 kids, got four kids into Oxbridge in my year. And, by the way, this was a school with a very high proportion of free school meals, and where English wasn't the first language.
But we also had a number of extremely smart, extremely competitive kids (of which I was one). I can see the advantage of putting more smart, competitive kids together.
Would I have really enjoyed a Grammar school?
Yep.
But my school also streamed extremely aggressively. I'm not sure my GCSE maths class would have been any more advanced. Pretty much the entire top set maths did A Level maths. And other than me, pretty much all got As at A Level.
The question is: how much do grammar schools improve the educational outcomes of the top 20%? And do they do so at the expense of the rest?
How many of those who entered the school at 11 though got good GCSE passes? 4 kids into Oxbridge, while better than most comps, is still less than 10% even of the upper sixth. Many top grammars would get more into Oxbridge than that
Comments
It would mean us as a species are the collective 27 year old who has overdone it and choked on our own vomit.
In fact strike "terrible shame", let me for once unplug and emote. It would be a tragedy of the very first order.
Their position over strikes. Their position over Tavistock.
Rishi also has the disadvantage of going second, so a lot of his lines echo Truss. He should have had his team anticipate this problem, listen to her speech and rewrite his on the fly.
Betfair next prime minister
1.11 Liz Truss 90%
10 Rishi Sunak 10%
Next Conservative leader
1.1 Liz Truss 91%
10.5 Rishi Sunak 10%
Normal water meters are up from 40% in 2015 to 60%+ now, so coming your way soon.
There was a wonderful tweet claiming that not needing to build any reservoirs for a generation despite a 10% population increase was an indication of the failure of privatisation.
The doubters said that the transatlantic slave trade was the pinnacle of our national achievement. but I said, Be patient!
She's capable. People warm to her. She's for a small state.
What isn't to like!
FPTP and safe seat (Labour nowhere) means that all I can do is register a vote for neither, which I will.
I do wonder about Labour supporters attacking Starmer, the Tories will do that well enough, as they would and will for anyone not a Tory.
Yesterday, Shipley CLP selected the candidate to face Philip Davies at the next GE. Unfortunately, I remembered the meeting about 3 hours too late, so failed to participate. Mind, I didn't have strong views about any of the shortlisted candidates anyway.
The great filter. We've found it. It's us, it's here, it's now.
Any first impressions of Liz Truss tonight so far?
Managed to get a rural audience to clap her when saying she wouldn't repeal the Hunting Act 2005
Because, let us be clear, the problem is not grammar schools (which are great), but how you avoid a situation where the people left behind get a worse education.
In a large comprehensive, there will be lots of movement between the second and third deciles: a significant number of kids will drop from first set maths to second... And vice versa. That's really tough to do when the sets are at different schools. Essentially you end up ossifying kids into two groups at a very early age.
And, of course, it's ok for me. If my 10 year old fails the 11+, well I can put him in private education. But what if yours has a bad day? Or is a late developer? It's much much harder for them to climb out of the Secondary Modern into a Grammar.
Finally, there's the issue of kids who are great at one thing, but not another. I was dreadful at languages (bottom in German Tanbridge School 1987!), but excellent at maths. How do you allocate people who are great at one set of subjects, but average (or worse) at another?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OPe6qzlzLg
LAB: 44% (+3)
CON: 30% (=)
LDM: 10% (-5)
GRN: 8% (+2)
Via
@IpsosUK
, 21-27 Jul.
Changes w/ 22-29 Jun.
BJO please explain?
I do not think she has any answers on CoL.
A poll from Techne has Sunak only five points behind Truss. It says it's a private poll but I think BPC rules say once a poll is written up like this the tables need to be published.
https://t.co/bmKclHGOzZ
A load of waffley sentimentality. Wolves hunt animals in packs in the Yukon. Perfectly natural and normal.
Deal with it.
I was talking to a mate who runs a small commercial pheasant shoot the other day who said she was putting down 5,000 birds this year. To be shot. And after they are thwacked, they are landfill or cat food. And every single person thwacking them is a rich fuck, vs about 20% of the average mounted hunting field.
And what really pisses me off, is the likes of Nick Palmer are well informed and intelligent and realise all this is true. And are prepared to leverage sheer dishonesty to advance their case. I do utterly loathe an intelligent liar.
I do not think the boost will be long lasting because it seems to me that Truss nor Rishi are actually offering anything that's going to fundamentally impact CoL.
In my comprehensive, my top set maths was full of exactly the kids who would have been at the local grammar school (had there been grammar schools).
Long answer: economic growth, which will be higher if taxes are lower
Imagine if Labour was offering this rubbish
My memory is the problem was that kind of streaming didn't happen until after the first three years of the secondary education.
For the brighter kids those three years were wasted. Down at the private school nearby they were teaching them a year or two ahead of where they should be.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OPe6qzlzLg
So the question is not which lot of politicians can stop it, but which lot of politicians will be best most effective in helping us to deal with the calamity (and that in the face of continuing well funded denial as the world suffers).
Its the smug smiling and nodding when people clap him....
It must be awful being poor and stupid. Sympathy.
It's a triumph of sentimentality over reason.
Almost everyone who actually goes foxhunting in reality realises this, including its opponents.
My comprehensive school, with an upper sixth of perhaps 60 kids, got four kids into Oxbridge in my year. And, by the way, this was a school with a very high proportion of free school meals, and where English wasn't the first language.
But we also had a number of extremely smart, extremely competitive kids (of which I was one). I can see the advantage of putting more smart, competitive kids together.
Would I have really enjoyed a Grammar school?
Yep.
But my school also streamed extremely aggressively. I'm not sure my GCSE maths class would have been any more advanced. Pretty much the entire top set maths did A Level maths. And other than me, pretty much all got As at A Level.
The question is: how much do grammar schools improve the educational outcomes of the top 20%? And do they do so at the expense of the rest?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kz5vEqdaSc
And Oxagon?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_p3kl6FHDY
JFC. You don't have to be @StuartDickson to think that the Prime Minister of the UK deciding to "ignore" the elected leader of the Scottish Parliament is probably not the way that devolution was meant to work.
I think that is value after today's "difficulties" with Sir K.
It's never going to be repealed - too much ignorant sentiment against it - but I don't agree with it, and never will.
Whereas fox hunting only ever polished off 2 or 3 a day, and those were the unhealthy ones.