11 Plus Exams Forum

There's a new report and commentary from the Sutton Trust linked below:
http://www.suttontrust.com/news/media/a ... the-times/.
As I understand they're hoping to get tax-payer funded places at independent day schools awarded via Open Access as "It is time we ditched our ridiculous class system".

.....but wasn't the ethos of Grammar schools to cater for bright children from lower income families? Why a perfectly good system was ditched in favour of mediocrity for all is beyond me .

Isn't this what the old direct grant schools used to do? I think the proposal is 50% state funded, 50% school (I'm prepared to be told I'm wrong, I haven't read it carefully), which I don't imagine would go down well with fee paying parents who might not want to subsidise. Also most schools have bursaries which cover this & it hasn't made a huge difference to the mix in indie schools.

There is an assumption in this article that those at the top, career wise, who went to independent school aren't bright but just rich.

Well that certainly applies to my DH!

Where figures are available it's apparent that the independent school population is brighter than average, but not as bright as it would be if selected for ability.

Mike

What proportion of the independent school population is selected for ability?

Many of the independents round here are non-selective, but they have an entrance exam, presumably to eliminate children with special needs.

Some independents are highly selective; some clearly have an entry score level that varies from year to year, so in high demand years the cohort might on average be more intelligent than in low-demand years.

I don't know the number of schools that are selective or how selective they are but the preps and independent schools we looked at all said that the children's overall ability at entry was higher than that in the maintained selective schools. When you see the independently educated who are in top jobs a lot of them went to the very selective independent schools.

Waiting_For_Godot wrote:I don't know the number of schools that are selective or how selective they are but the preps and independent schools we looked at all said that the children's overall ability at entry was higher than that in the maintained selective schools.

As Mandy Rice Davis famously said...

Seriously, if that is the case then they have nothing to 'fear'. Though given that the majority of the population are not in any selective system at all it is hard to see how this would be measured.

I always thought "Ability to pay only came from ability to think!"