Grammar School Expansion ?

[RedPanda]

Oh dear!

I think you too want to believe any thing anti-grammar. As any other report pointed out is government report, done by some other think tank or business, implying unreliability. Then why should we believe in other reports prepared by other think tanks, which also have clear links to leftist politics or political parties?

And if those research are to be ignored or taken with a pinch of salt, then what is left? Our own experience and gut feeling where we think our children will achieve their potential.

I see you picked up on my point regarding the validity of the research. You are right, there is some poor research in there but there is also a lot of good research. I thought that would have been obvious, so I didn't say it at the time.

In amongst the piles and piles of research and data there are valid reasons to support selective education. That shouldn't surprise anyone. I pointed out a couple of examples in this thread and I'm pretty sure Amber agreed with them or at the very least didn't challenge them. By the way, I don't have all the answers. I have very few to be honest.

So, spin that on its head for a second. Is it possible that there are valid reasons to oppose selective education? Could there even be more? Could the balance be one way or the other.

By the way, using gut (feelings) is a good way to look at a problem but it should never be the only way. 'De Bono Hats', anyone? @Guest55 - feel free to comment on my example of a thinking tool

[yoyo123]

This debate is going round and round in circles!

sorry, that should read.... it's still going round in circles!

[mad?]

In which case can we get back to the bit where we all fan girled Anotherdad? It was more fun and we almost all appeared to agree? Then we can just all stop?

[RedPanda]

This debate is going round and round in circles!

sorry, that should read.... it's still going round in circles!

Sorry yoyo. I'd penned the response in between something else and crossed. I suspect you'll need to close the thread if you want it to end

I'll stop now regardless.

[mystery]

Well, I've just read the article that started off this thread. And I'm a bit puzzled. It shows the number of pupils in Kent LA as having dropped since 2009-10. Is that right? I thought that many Kent schools (not just grammars) were needed to take in more pupils because of a rise in population so that puzzled me. Or is the rise in numbers on its way?



If they had done this on 2017-2018 year 7 numbers, Weald of Kent ( a girls grammar in Tonbridge, Kent) has expanded so massively as that is the school that opened an annex on a different site 10 miles away (in Sevenoaks). The boys' grammars in West Kent are taking in more boys to keep pace,it would seem - the boys' expansions will provide economies of scales, as the article suggests, but WoK will not for a long time as it involved a brand new building on a different site (not funded by the academy themselves) which is filling up year group by year group. Some staff and pupil movement between the two sites was required too.

But the biggest puzzle of all is, "what is a grammar school?" these days. It's a selective school. But just how selective varies enormously from school to school. And there's no set curriculum which makes it a "grammar school".

I've just been looking through an AQA approved textbook by Oxford for GCSE Biology for the new 2016 9-1 specifications. It has more content, and more advanced content, than my JMB Biology O'level back in the day at a very selective former grammar gone independent. And it is a course which good non-selectives will be able to offer if they're large enough and fully comprehensive enough to have the uptake?

So, surely one can't properly compare "grammars" and "comprehensives" no matter how long one has to do a PhD. Because they are all so different in their intakes. The only thing that we can say for sure is that the bottom end of some sort is gone from all "grammars" but is present in some way in most "comprehensives".

It's cutting fog.

But here's a good trick with statistics:

Take a secondary school year 11 population - let's say Bucks. Rank all those children by GCSE points score. Take the top 10% by points score and find out the average point score per child. Do the same for the remaining 90%. So this is what the results could look like if you had only 10% in grammars and 90% in the secondary mods.

The split it top 30 percent and remaining 70%. (probably a bit more like the Bucks split) - the average point score will have gone down in both the grammars and the secondary mods.

Split it 50/50. The average point score per child will have gone down still further.

So ........... this is not a good way to compare schools but it's easy to fool people. And in the areas where grammar numbers are going up but the population is staying the same or shrinking, with the wrong calculations one could think that results were getting worse overall - both in the grammars and the non-selectives when in fact the authority as a whole was just staying the same. And one would think that results got better by being more highly selective - when in fact the overall result is just the same.

[tiffinboys]

Perhaps some independent think tank (is there any?) should be tasked to do research on the impact of grammars and non-selectives for the similar children. Recent government report suggested that bright children were not achieving their potentials in the non-selectives. Former Ofsted Chief, not a grammar lover, made similar claims. So instead of some selective research, how about independent think tanks doing research. My query would be how the children (level 5 or 6 in old money) performed in selective and non-selective schools, without settings, with settings, without streaming, with streaming etc. Then we can say if grammar children performed better or at worse, didn't fail to achieve their potentials.

[anotherdad]

Perhaps some independent think tank (is there any?) should be tasked to do research on the impact of grammars and non-selectives for the similar children. Recent government report suggested that bright children were not achieving their potentials in the non-selectives. Former Ofsted Chief, not a grammar lover, made similar claims. So instead of some selective research, how about independent think tanks doing research. My query would be how the children (level 5 or 6 in old money) performed in selective and non-selective schools, without settings, with settings, without streaming, with streaming etc. Then we can say if grammar children performed better or at worse, didn't fail to achieve their potentials.

Only if you promise not to dismiss the think tank and its findings and revert to gut feelings if the study doesn't come to the "right" conclusions.

Your proposed study is rather narrow in scope. I think most reasonable people are more concerned with the holistic effects of selective education on society and the economy, rather than taking the relatively narrow-minded approach of wanting to know whether the most academic children achieve 11 A*s in one system rather than "only" 10 of them in another.

I'm off to modify my car engine. I've got a new ECU chip that gets an extra few bhp out of the engine and improves the top speed slightly. It increases the noise and emissions by 20% but I'll get to work three minutes earlier every day, so it's justifiable.

[mike1880]

A somewhat partial paraphrase of the last 40 pages of mutual incomprehension:

"Most children do worse in a selective system."

"I'm not interested in improving outcomes for most children, I'm only interested in improving outcomes for the minority."

[Moderators]

Time to draw this topic to a close!

40 pages are enough ....