The Student Room Group

Is academic selection unfair?

The Tories are to abandon their support for grammar schools as they "entrench advantage" rather than help children from poorer homes. Is the selection of children on academic ability unfair?

The party's Education spokesman David Willetts told the BBC that middle class children dominated the grammar intake, and that not many poor children got in.

Under the Tories existing grammar schools would not be axed, but there would be more academy schools which operate outside the control of local education authorities and have private sponsors.

Do you think that children should be selected on academic ability? Can there ever be a totally fair system of education access? Should grammar schools be axed? Are you a grammar school teacher, pupil or parent? Send us your comments and experiences.

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Reply 1
It's probably just as unfair as selecting on the basis of where you live.

I'd still rather have academic selection, though. *is glad the new NI Assembly has taken education decisions out of the hands of Westminster*
Academic selection is only as fair as the testing system used to provide information to make the selection. We all know the inherent biases in various forms of examinations, etc.

Do I think it is fair to select people on academic grounds? Of course it is, and this wouldn't be an issue if we had a far more flexible schooling system which provided multiple entry points into various schooling systems as this allows for the natural development of talent and intellectual ability, which may not always run to the national curriculum's timetable or assessment criteria. I think that a more indivdualistic approach to education is needed and this means educational establishments with different philosophies and goals dependant on the abilities and needs of their pupils. We want everyone to find their niche and that cannot be achieved by one-size-fits all education. Scrapping the national curriculum is a must if we want education to benefit everyone. Having faith in the professional skill of teachers wouldn't hurt either.

We can't deny that parents have different views on education and that will affect their childrens' perceptions and abilities. I have a very high level of education and I consider it to be very important and I will ensure that my children are told this and benefit from my education - is this an unfair advantage? I don't think so.

Academy schools worry me considerably because of the coinflict of interests many of the private partners seem to have and the lack of control over these schools at a local level. Also, the results of the academy experiment have been far from encouraging to date.
Reply 3
This question could be rephrased as 'is receiving grades from exams unfair'?
Reply 4
I would say it is quite unfair. I went to a Grammar school which was great for me but yes, it was heavily comprised of middle class people. I'd prefer everyone to go into streamed schools.
Reply 5
Don't let posh people into uni. They're boring and ruin the student atmosphere : D.
Academic selection is fair. It enables students to be able to learn with other students which are of the same ability, so that less able students do hinder the ability of the other students to learn. I went to a grammar school, and even there there was a broad ability grade, there were people who got D's at GCSE and people who got all A*'s, the same could be said for a-levels/IB. It was also a common rule, that the people who disrupted classes and held them back were often, hard to believe, underachievers who made it even harder for people to progress. And when the school further streamed classes after GCSE, there was a much better education environment with people of the same ability.

If grammar schools are achiving as well as similar comprehensives, then sure, they should be replaced by not selective schools. But from where i lived, grammar schools held all of the top positions in the league tables in my county/borough/town. All of the other schools in the area, comprehensives, were a dire alternative in terms of education and school life(regular riots/fights/bullying/drug problems). And, it has been shown that overall, grammar schools are a better learning environment and produce better results. My school was so good that people were trying to get their children in there rather than private schools, because we were better and we were free. Labour MPs who had abolished grammar schools were even trying to send they children there, and children from all over London were traveling to go there, rather than the city academies(which are severely underachieving).

If the local comprehensives were better than the grammars, i would have gone there, but they weren't. We were told as we collected our grades that we were the next generation or doctors, vets, lawyers, teachers, etc. The same could not be said for the other local schools.


Grammars aren't unfair, if you have the ability to get in, no matter what class, you can get in. The same can be said for universities. At my school i had people from all classes. And streaming schools, is in effect the same as creating selective grammar schools. And streaming a mixed school is a logistical nightmare. One school a friend went to had 6 different maths sets!
Kralia
I would say it is quite unfair. I went to a Grammar school which was great for me but yes, it was heavily comprised of middle class people. I'd prefer everyone to go into streamed schools.


Streaming just isn't as effective as having seperately run institutions with different philosophies. Whilst there clear has been and may still be some class bias in grammar school selection procedures (comepletely going against the point of grammar schools in the first place, funnily enough) this has to be mitigated to some extent by the fact that the middle-classes contain a lot of university educated professionals who will have a very positive attitude to education and are shown to be more involved in their children's education. Punishing people for having and education and helping their children is totally wrong and we must be careful that any measures we do institute do not do this.
Being mediocre is ok, as long as everyone can be mediocre together. This seems to be the message that the Tories are giving. Intelligence is the only fair way of selecting pupils into the state system. I am sure that there are tests which allow minimal influence from cultural considerations and which are therefore good at testing innate intelligence.

Academies are also a bad idea because they allow ideological hegemony of whatever the sponsor believes over actual facts. The Vardy academies for example teach Dawinism and Christian Creationism as equals, despite the former being evidence-based science and the latter a silly fantasy. Why? Because Peter Vardy who set them up (with tens of millions of pounds of government money on top of his couple of million) is a fundamentalist Christian. Not only then is this privatisation of the state sector, but it is utterly irresponsible in allowing state-sponsored ideological indoctrination.

And what is the logical conclusion of these academies? Muslim, Jewish and Christian business people having their brainwashing factories paid for by the taxpayer? Non merci. Why not allow a Holocaust denier to chip in two million quid and then top it up with another £20 million of tax revenue and let him decide what goes on the GCSE history syllabus and what doesn't?
Reply 9
ch0c0h01ic


<snipperoonie>

If the local comprehensives were better than the grammars, i would have gone there, but they weren't. We were told as we collected our grades that we were the next generation or doctors, vets, lawyers, teachers, etc. The same could not be said for the other local schools.


Maybe the teachers at the 'other local schools' weren't supplied with crystal balls.


Grammars aren't unfair, if you have the ability to get in, no matter what class, you can get in. The same can be said for universities. At my school i had people from all classes. And streaming schools, is in effect the same as creating selective grammar schools. And streaming a mixed school is a logistical nightmare. One school a friend went to had 6 different maths sets!


I'm assuming this friend didn't make it to university.
Reply 10

Selection on purely the basis of academic ability is fine....
I would personally prefer it to be based on Academic ability and a personal statement - like at uni!!!

The reason I say this is you'll generally find that uni offers fluctuate a little bit for the same course, mainly because one person could have a better personal statement than the next.

This will enable the school to balance the mix of personalities out a little bit, instead of having a load or people who are highly likely to clash.

Class selection is just pathetic.... If you select students based on location, you are effectively selecting them by class.... certain areas are predominantly lower class, middle class etc!!

Academic selection in state ran schools just makes sense.... clever people should be surrounded by clever people and vice versa!!

We don't want to turn our schools into businesses like American university....If we do that, then by definition we are selecting people by class!!

Apparently from next year the UCAS forms will be asking for your parents academic history... WTF is the point!!
I agree with most people, academic selection is the way forward, but the equivalent of 'secondary moderns' need to be better handled than perhaps they were. Selecting by location is a silly idea, I never understood it, academic seletion is better, as, if only for teachers, it is easier in the classsroom, since there isn't such a wide variety of ability levels.

I'm a little sad that the Tories have given up on that policy.
Reply 12
LIFE is unfair. Get used to it.
GerardT
It's probably just as unfair as selecting on the basis of where you live.


agreed, if someones smart and willing to learn i see no reason why there shouldnt be a equal oppurtinuty for them

but in sayng that if someone has an inate grasp of say.....calculus why should someone who cant do it hold back the other kids.but also those kids should not be ignored because of the brainier ones.
Reply 14
I go to a grammar school and while it is true that most of my friends come from middle-classes, there are still poor students like me. In fact, quite a lot of my friends get EMA.

I remember my dad telling me that if I got into a grammar school, how much schooling fees I'd be saving him(compared to private ones). XD The amount was quite shocking.

Also, like said above, if grammar schools are aborted, and all schools base their intake by location. The rich would still get better education because they'd live in the same areas, and afford better teaching, so in the end, still no equality.
I go to a grammar school and I couldn't be happier or more satisfied. I moved from a comprehensive to a grammer after Year 9, (I'm in Yr 11). The difference is immense.

I don't see why people are making this a class issue. A rich person is as likely to get into a grammar school as a poor one.
Reply 16
The problem is, while grammar schools on the surface are a great democratic system where, rich or poor, only the brightest get in, in reality the parents who can afford all the right coaching and tutoring can muscle their own even quite dim children past more naturally gifted but less heavily tutored, poorer children. So while it looks fair, to me, because brains are what matter, it's middle class pushy parents who are hoovering up all the places, regardless of how naturally bright their child actually is. Which stinks.

Comprehensive schools are even worse though, where everyone is brought down to the lowest common denominator.

One good thing the Tories had that Labour axed was the Assisted Place scheme, where brighter kids from poorer backgrounds received government assistance with private school fees (my mum got full fees paid to send me to one). However, my private school was also crap and not remotely academically selective (though it pretended to be), and I got treated very badly by them because all they cared about was money and I had none. It was very corrupt. I left in the end and taught myself at home, which was one of the best decisions my mother and I ever made.
I think the academic selection is ok. think of ot this way. thye says kids who live close should get in? thats like saying i should get a job to do investment banking regardless of my intellect, just becuase i live close. or i should go to this uni just becuase it is a 10 minute walk away.

The government, rather than getting eid of the better schoolsm so the toher ones look better, should try to improve the schools which arent as good. Then ti wont matter if a grammar school is better or not because then all schools will be of a good standard. this is just a feeble attempt for them to make it go oh look we are mqaking your sons education better relative to the avergae, by taking out grammar schools the vaerage goes down.
Reply 18
To be honest, I don't think public school students are really at any advantage over state school pupils.
I've come from a terrible school where a lot of the teachers are awful and the exam results are below average. Nevertheless, I gained top passes in all of my exams and have been accepted into medical school.
The literature is there for you to learn everything on your own, should you be driven enough. Certainly, last year, one of my subjects was effectively entirely self-study and I still got a good grade in the end.
I believe that, regardless of which school you came from, everyone should be able to get an A in any exam they wish - it's all about drive.
Perhaps public school students are at an advantage because they're spoon-fed but the lessons you can learn when you've driven yourself to achieve a goal are lessons which one cannot forge and will stand you in good stead when you've left the comfort of secondary school and your home.

Of course, there are extremes. Children from extremely impoverished backgrounds are obviously at a disadvantage - there may be difficulties funding their schooling and perhaps, the attitude towards education isn't conducive to gaining great greats which will open up opportunities for them.
At the other end of the scale, I've talked to markers of English papers and they've said that you can spot the essay of a public school student a mile off - it's clear that all students have been given templates by their teachers and told to rote learn them and regurgitate them in the exam. Another teacher described public school as somewhere where "parents paid for their children to gain top grades".

But, in general, after secondary school the aim for students, be it their persuasion, to attend University. So, when I'm at University my class will be made up of a mixture of public and state school pupils; what is the difference between us then?
We've arrived at the same end?
The difference, perhaps, is that their parents are out of pocket to the tune of, sometimes, £50,000 for their child's education and I've received my education for free.
Reply 19
Selection is unfair. Pragmatism is unfair. Utilitarianism is unfair. Taxation is unfair. Privatisation is unfair. Capitalism is unfair. Socialism is unfair. The Law is unfair. People are unfair.

Everything that favours anything or anyone at the expense of anything or anyone else, is liable to be perceived thus; the real question, rather, has to do with whether or not such measures are just.