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Grammar schools to return

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Original post by Serine Soul
Now watch the pushy middle/upper middle parents flock near to the new grammar schools when they open so their little darlings can go to a school without chavs for free...

Hardly social mobility


Why should children who are more intelligent and have aspirations be forced to hang out with chavs.

If you a are intelligent you should be able to maximise your potential which you cannot do at a comprehensive and just as equally. A less able student should have all the help they need to get their C grades so they can get a job.
Original post by Salamandastron
a lot of them still have entrance exams such as the 11+ lol which you have to pass to get in.
the only flaw with this really is that super high powered richer parents often tutor their sprogs to death and so people end up there that shouldn't really be there but idk how you could avoid this really.


My mother spent £1000 trying to get me in and slightly more on getting my sister in which is wrong. Rather than a separate exam the top 10% say or maybe more students should be selected via their SAT scores.
Original post by niteninja1
Why should children who are more intelligent and have aspirations be forced to hang out with chavs.

If you a are intelligent you should be able to maximise your potential which you cannot do at a comprehensive and just as equally. A less able student should have all the help they need to get their C grades so they can get a job.

You didn't read my post properly I think.
Original post by niteninja1
My mother spent £1000 trying to get me in and slightly more on getting my sister in which is wrong. Rather than a separate exam the top 10% say or maybe more students should be selected via their SAT scores.


Do you mean in tuition fees or something? and i agree that is wrong, tbh I dont think there should be any tutors at all but i dont see how that is logically feesible.
And how would that help? people are already tutored to death for their SATs lol
Original post by niteninja1
Why should children who are more intelligent and have aspirations be forced to hang out with chavs.

If you a are intelligent you should be able to maximise your potential which you cannot do at a comprehensive and just as equally. A less able student should have all the help they need to get their C grades so they can get a job.


The issue I see is middle class parents generally have the means and desire to pay for tutoring for their kids to pass the exams and get into a grammar school (even if some of them, in reality may not have passed originally). Meanwhile poorer students fail the exam and get shafted, some of which may have potential but just don't have the means to get there.
Original post by Serine Soul
You didn't read my post properly I think.


I did but as grammar schools will take anyone who passes the whole principle of what you said is wrong.

My family is not rich before my stepfather went back to uni we were on 23k a year 2 adults 4 kids.

My sister gets FSM and is treated no differently.

Money does not guarantee you a place at a grammar school
Original post by Salamandastron
Do you mean in tuition fees or something? and i agree that is wrong, tbh I dont think there should be any tutors at all but i dont see how that is logically feesible.
And how would that help? people are already tutored to death for their SATs lol


Private tutor. and what I am saying is the 11+ covers topics never done at SAT's so most students wouldn't get in as they wont have covered the subject areas.
Original post by Serine Soul
Now watch the pushy middle/upper middle parents flock near to the new grammar schools when they open so their little darlings can go to a school without chavs for free...

Hardly social mobility


IKR :moon: avoiding chavs should be for the real middle class only, not self-hating blue collar scum
Original post by niteninja1
Private tutor. and what I am saying is the 11+ covers topics never done at SAT's so most students wouldn't get in as they wont have covered the subject areas.


well that makes sense then but a grammar school doesn't require that you pay (let's assume it is a state owned one) you chose to in order to maximise your chances of getting in which is perfectly understandable but still your choice and the school can't take the blame for that.
And that was the point, to see a students natural ability and intelligence without being influenced by a teacher which of course has now been sort of made redundant due to tutors but my point still stands.
Reply 49
Avatar for sdotd
sdotd
17
Great news.I went to a very rough grammar school and was full of idiots and chavs but we were all pretty intelligent which was the main thing so no one was held back
People's refusal to look at the evidence baffles me. There is zero evidence that grammar schools increase social mobility.

A far better idea would be to have streamed sets within schools.

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Original post by lucabrasi98
Then there's no reason to be opposed to this. You don't have a problem with grammar schools specifically. Your issue is with private schools. And tbh i don't mind private schools either. If i was rich I'd probably send my kids there too. But whatever, that's a seperate issue.


A return to grammar schools will long term be a return to fee paying schools.

Aside from that, I just think it screws over the kids who haven't reached their peak by year 5/6. The system failed before I don't see why we're going back to it. It'll just give regular state schools another opportunity to slack off, and it'll funnel the best teachers away. I think investing in better teaching, smarter school systems (where children are set by their ability more effectively than "aiming for c+" or "aiming for c-") would be a better solution than opening a bunch of new grammars...
Good. I'm working class scum but I managed to get into a grammar school and it's done wonders for me.
I went to a comprehensive school and achieved all As and A* in both gcses and a levels.

I didn't need a grammar school or a private school, people need to stop making excuses.

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I don't know how to feel about this. I have been to both a secondary school and a grammar school, and they are both different environments. In my first school I didn't do as well as I could have, partially from teachers trying to bring students on Ds up to Cs, and because I ended up with the wrong crowd of people for a while.

Ideally, all schools should be good schools and be able to support both weaker and academically capable students. In my old school I did not get my A* in GCSE Maths. Our teacher put us all in for the GCSE Maths exams in year 11 (year 10 for England), and I was the only person who achieved an A. My teacher had to bring everyone else's Bs-Es up to passes and I did not get taught the higher topics. I want to able to a place like Cambridge and I feel like this will have held me back a bit. It also stopped me from being able to study Further Maths at my new school, and I had to self-teach it because their entrance requirement was a B in Further Maths but I wasn't even offered the GCSE.

Its definitely a tricky one. To be honest though, the 11-plus wasn't fair. I had absolutely no tutoring for the exam because we couldn't afford it, but my friends who got tutored got As, but yet my GCSE results turned out a lot better than their's. My fear is that people who can't afford tutoring or extra-curricula's will end up disadvantaged. As I said, ideally a school should be able to accommodate for both, but I do feel like because of my first secondary school I did not do as well as I could have.

I have found though in my new school that some of the children actually think they're better than the kids in my old school, which is not right at all... I'm really mixed on the issue.
As a grammar school student, I think it's a terrific idea. Being able to learn with other intelligent students creates a sense of competition, which has pushed me to achieve more and shows me that it's possible to aim higher. I never had this experience in my (comprehensive) primary school. I think going to a grammar school has been a life changing opportunity and has propelled me to aim higher than I would have at a comprehensive school.
(edited 7 years ago)
Original post by Serine Soul
Now watch the pushy middle/upper middle parents flock near to the new grammar schools when they open so their little darlings can go to a school without chavs for free...

Hardly social mobility


There are plenty of working class students (mostly of immigrant background) at my grammar school. No chavs though. Personally I think it does help students to achieve higher because of the competition from other students. I'm from a working class background and before I went to a grammar school I never knew how high some people achieved. It does help high potential children from working class backgrounds to achieve more, in my opinion.
(edited 7 years ago)
Reply 57
Avatar for saran23
saran23
6
Original post by john1332123
i agree its mostly the upper classes that end going to them anyway .

if they are not a snob when they go in, they will be when they come out.

if i am being honest every school is like a grammar school in that you have sets A B C most people who are in A will stay with people who are in A also i have noticed that the teachers put more effort in to A


I am a middle class person here who went to a grammar school and there are many others like me :smile:
In my state school there was not really that much of a push from the Teachers apart from an excellent handful who realised your potential. If you were doing really well for example in maths they would not move you up a group because they thought you don't have the ability to get past a c grade. Interestingly enough, most of the people in the top sets went on to average polys and people like me who were clever but not stimulated and perhaps didn't fully buy into the "education, education, education" mantra of the day either went on to solid Russell groups or good apprenticeships/full time work. We played to our strengths which is not pure academics by showing desire etc and doing things outside of school. Heck one of my best mates got into ucl doing btecs and is thriving after his first year, and was told by a teacher he should accept the DMU offer because it's a university
Pretty good that they're coming back. The grammar school I attended offered much better teaching and therefore produced much better results than my normal state secondary school. However, it won't really do a thing for social mobility. The majority of the people in my school were arguably 'middle class', not those from the supposed 'working class' people who will have to work much harder to get in, as a lot of people had tutoring in order to pass the 11+ exam.

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