Grammar School Expansion ?

[tiffinboys]

Is your question about movement from comprehensives to grammars for 6th form or about performance improvement at A levels from GCSE?

[Amber]

Is your question about movement from comprehensives to grammars for 6th form or about performance improvement at A levels from GCSE?

Neither. My question is this:

Tiffinboys, I wonder how someone as passionate about grammar schools as you are deals with mounting international evidence that selective education reduces overall attainment and is a strong contributor to social inequality?

Otherwise phrased like this:

I just wonder how someone like you who seems to hold grammar education as a kind of core belief copes with actual evidence that it is harmful to a society?

or this:

It would genuinely be helpful for me to try and understand what barriers there are to someone giving up or even questioning their own passionately held core belief despite massive evidence that pursuing policies premised on that belief is harmful to a society.

I am not sure how I can rephrase it to be honest. Perhaps something like 'how can you keep believing grammar education is a good thing for society when all the evidence shows it isn't?'

I didn't want to make it personal - it is something which would help me understand how to do my job better.

[tiffinboys]

Is your question about movement from comprehensives to grammars for 6th form or about performance improvement at A levels from GCSE?

That was in response to loopylala's comments/query.

[tiffinboys]

I am not sure how I can rephrase it to be honest. Perhaps something like 'how can you keep believing grammar education is a good thing for society when all the evidence shows it isn't?'

Achieving one's full potential is never a bad thing for society as a whole.

If some one who is passionately against grammars send their children to grammars, (eg. from Shirley Williams to Harriet Harmon to Emily Thornberry and others), then I do not buy the idea that grammar schools are bad thing for children for whom such education is beneficial.

Even Mrs JC wouldn't agree with hard Labour. She send her son to grammar and left JC.

[loopylala]

Is your question about movement from comprehensives to grammars for 6th form or about performance improvement at A levels from GCSE?

I'm not sure I could have made it clearer tbh:

I'm assuming there is no movement between non-selective and selective at 6th form level then?

Not sure what you are referring to by "performance improvement at A Levels from GCSE". If it is the progress score under the 16-18 tab on the DfE performance tables then a number of grammar schools don't appear to be outperforming all non-selective schools.

[Amber]

Is your question about movement from comprehensives to grammars for 6th form or about performance improvement at A levels from GCSE?

That was in response to loopylala's comments/query.

Sorry.
I went to a comprehensive school, see.

[tiffinboys]

Is your question about movement from comprehensives to grammars for 6th form or about performance improvement at A levels from GCSE?

I'm not sure I could have made it clearer tbh:

I'm assuming there is no movement between non-selective and selective at 6th form level then?

Not sure what you are referring to by "performance improvement at A Levels from GCSE". If it is the progress score under the 16-18 tab on the DfE performance tables then a number of grammar schools don't appear to be outperforming all non-selective schools.

There would be some movement between non-selectives to selectives; but I infer that that won't be significant due to preference for internal candidates, capacity issues at grammars' 6th form and grade requirements.

Also there is some movement from selective to non-selective due to subject choices, mixed school etc. But majority of movement from grammars is to Indies, specially if scholarships are granted. I know at-least 3 from my DC year moving to indies due to scholarship and opportunity to do 4 A levels / IB etc.

[Amber]

I am not sure how I can rephrase it to be honest. Perhaps something like 'how can you keep believing grammar education is a good thing for society when all the evidence shows it isn't?'

Achieving one's full potential is never a bad thing for society as a whole.

If some one who is passionately against grammars send their children to grammars, (eg. from Shirley Williams to Harriet Harmon to Emily Thornberry and others), then I do not buy the idea that grammar schools are bad thing for children for whom such education is beneficial.

Even Mrs JC wouldn't agree with hard Labour. She send her son to grammar and left JC.

Oh I see. So your dismissal of evidence is based on firstly an argument about potential and societal benefit which assumes that:

1. Children who go to grammar school achieve their full potential;

2. This benefits society as a whole;

3. It is irrelevant what happens to children who don't go to grammar school and therefore do not achieve their full potential because...

4. The advantage to society bestowed by those children who did go to grammar and thereby achieved their full potential outweighs the disadvantage wrought by those who didn't go and didn't achieve their full potential.

5. And to add support to this premise you argue that people like me whose children go to grammars when we are against them are actually tacitly offering support to the system and thereby helping to validate it. Even though there is not an alternative system we could access for our children.

It goes without saying that I would argue with every single point 1-4 above; and I would address point 5 by pointing out that as there is no other option open to us than to be in the system we are, then the laws of Biology and evolution dictate that a parent will always try to do the best for its young. And in a grammar school area, that means accessing a grammar school if one has the social capital to do so.

[tiffinboys]

These are your inferences, Amber, and attempt to put words in my mouth.

I remember quite well that we have gone through this discussion before.

[Amber]

These are your inferences, Amber, and attempt to put words in my mouth.

Well I apologise if that is the case. Perhaps you could clarify, beginning, crucially perhaps, with a neat way of establishing who has and who has not reached their full potential, and correlating this with grammar school attendance.

If at any point you need some anecdotes to support the hard evidence, I can provide at least 20 examples off the top of my head of children who despite a grammar school education have done precisely nothing of note academically or for society, and are either still sponging off their parents well into their 20s, are in jobs which they could have done without passing any more than 5 grade C GCSEs or are at new universities studying subjects which some of the snobbier types on here would shudder to name (not you TB, to be clear). And to counter that, I could offer a similar number of examples of children who have done rather well despite not having access to the hallowed wood-panelled halls of the nation's elite schools.

If you feel that we are rehearsing the same arguments then for the sake of others I will desist at this point. I have a thesis to write!