Grammer schools.

[alfredmizen]

A grammar school took me, with a brain but no family money, into the stratosphere. Comps are find as long as they have streaming so white van man kids who have a job lined up working for the old man can sit in a room where they can take the piss and leave those who need to earn a living by their own graft to suck up the education they need to survive. There were plenty of WVM kids in my school (HGSB) but they were in the D stream if they had decided to not engage. Elitism works, as long as the elite are pritected, and entry into the elite is based on talent and a willingness to engage. 'One size fits all' fits none.

Spot on.

 

[alfredmizen]

My wife and I both went to Grammar Schools in the 1960s and in to the very early 1970s. We would both argue that our two daughters, who went to the local comprehensive in the 1990s received a better education in every way than we did - better taught, better everything. I went to Worthinh High School for Boys and, although we had some very good and inspirational teachers, we also had some lousy and lazy teachers.

There are two schools where we live in Chandlers Ford, the one which estate agents choose to advertise properties as being in the catchment area of and the other one. Our girls both went to the other one, partly because of catchment areas but mostly through our choice because we deemed it a better school - not so good with results (not an exam factory.) but better at dealing with the whole range of children that was its intake, taking each child seriously. And the daughters both did well.

A lot of our education system is moulded in my view by the prejudices, short-sightedness and ignorance of parents. An excellent OFSTED report from a couple of years ago does not necessarily say anything about what the school is doing now.

The thought, though, of people being "selected" at the age of 11, or 13 as used to happen as well, fills me with horror. But the main place where serious action is needed is in the very early years at infant type age, which is where people's life-chances are mainly shaped. Some kids won't be bothered because they know they will be working with their dad, as has been mentioned elsewhere, but others won't because neither they nor their parents think they will ever achieve anything in life and so write themselves off. That is the biggest crime.

Maybe we should have a referendum on it........ but we'd probably get that wrong as well.

We got the last one right.

 

[Albion my Albion]

What a peculiar comment.

Sent from my G7-L01 using Tapatalk

If you haven't figured it out I enjoy being peculiar and feel enlightened to do so--I will not say I'm a Scientologist any longer because I have never belonged or given money to that so called "church."

 

[BBassic]

I've always found success in life, work, whatever to be much more down to your willingness to put the effort in than your education.

I'm from working class roots, I went through school happily enough and one year of college before deciding formal education isn't for me and I went out to work at 17. I'm 31 now, working, what I consider, a better paid job than most of my university educated friends and own my own home.

Sounds like a not so subtle brag (and I guess it is), but my point is that you can do well in life regardless of your circumstance if you're prepared to work hard.

 

[DavidinSouthampton]

We got the last one right.

Oh no we didn't...........

Swiftly followed, for no particular reason but in pantomome mode, by "Behind you!"

 

[dazzer6666]

I am from a hard working, working class family and went through the school system without any real encouragement from parents or teachers. I never really had any understanding of how important qualifications were, particularly the right qualifications and it was fully expected that the boys in our school would walk in to manual labour or join their fathers in the family plumbing business etc .

The subjects I was taught had no relevance to the types of jobs available and in fact one employer laughed and said that he did not need to see my ( humble ) qualifications as they " mean nothing in this job ".

I now find myself in a dead end job with little prospects other than drudgery. So, if Grammar Schools can actually inspire and teach modern relevant subjects to pupils from all backgrounds then I have no problem with that. If however, they are little more than a cosy little club putting little rich boys on to the first rung of the ladder of the Old Boy network then I would not be so happy.

Completely with you on the first two paragraphs - bumbled through primary school and comprehensive secondary, followed by (failed) bad -choice A levels because it was what I was 'expected' to do being in the top stream for O levels. I'd rather have got a trade at the time. Parents both left school at 15 and were clueless/no help. Only a decent careers officer and fate stopped me ending up in a dead-end job. The irony for me is that the industry I'm in is very much OBN and I've been asked loads of times which Uni I went to (and it's the kind of question that the person asking it hoping to feel superior because they went to a better Uni).

They closed my local grammar school the year I was due to go there (we'd taken the 11+).

 

[Collingburnian]

I went to a rural Grammar School in the late forties/early fifties and have never regretted the education I received there. I come from a very working class background and going to that school helped me avoid going in to a totally dead end job. There was no parental help as both parents and all their siblings had little formal education. There was nothing wrong with what is now called an elitist education. What was wrong was the totally crap alternative of the secondary modern schools in those days, where kids just attended until the age of 15 and were then thrown onto the unskilled jobs market unless they could get into a technical college, which really no longer exist. Bring back grammar schools but also geive a decent alternative to those who don't get through the selection process.

 

[The Antikythera Mechanism]

I went to a Grammar School (boys only) from 1st Form to Upper 6th. The whole experience was marred by sadistic, bullying "Masters" I did, however, get a very good education because you had no option other than to learn or suffer the consequences. A levels then were all on final exams, no account taken of course work. I still have nightmares where I'm turning up for an exam only to find I'd revised the wrong subject.

 

[DavidinSouthampton]

I went to a rural Grammar School in the late forties/early fifties and have never regretted the education I received there. I come from a very working class background and going to that school helped me avoid going in to a totally dead end job. There was no parental help as both parents and all their siblings had little formal education. There was nothing wrong with what is now called an elitist education. What was wrong was the totally crap alternative of the secondary modern schools in those days, where kids just attended until the age of 15 and were then thrown onto the unskilled jobs market unless they could get into a technical college, which really no longer exist. Bring back grammar schools but also geive a decent alternative to those who don't get through the selection process.

You are talking about your own situation over 60 years ago, before I was born, and I'm a Grandfather.

I DO strongly agree with the idea of good provision for everyone, but think that the best way to achieve that is not by turning the clock back.

 

[Gwylan]

I went to a Grammar School (boys only) from 1st Form to Upper 6th. The whole experience was marred by sadistic, bullying "Masters"

You went to Varndean didn't you? Talking about the Mad Axeman by any chance?

 

[beorhthelm]

so it sounds like the policy is to allow grammar schools where there is parental demand for them, but no wholesale change to endorse or promote them. in a world of academies and free schools, why not allow selective schools (the only defining feature of grammars)?

 

[The Antikythera Mechanism]

You went to Varndean didn't you? Talking about the Mad Axeman by any chance?

You got it

 

[Lawro's Lip]

so it sounds like the policy is to allow grammar schools where there is parental demand for them, but no wholesale change to endorse or promote them. in a world of academies and free schools, why not allow selective schools (the only defining feature of grammars)?

That will be interesting as, by definition, 75% of parents will find that their child goes to a non grammar school. Parental choice is not what you get with selection. When Margaret Thatcher became education secretary in 1970 she knew that polling evidence in her Finchley constituency showed 80% in favour of scrapping grammar schools.Hence she did not reverse the Labour government's 1965 decision to turn them into comprehensive schools.

 

[nicko31]

The Tories have already divided the nation once this year and they are at it again, and seem quite serious about it.

You'd think they'd have enough on their plate without trying to take the Education system back to the 1950's...

 

[Neville's Breakfast]

The Tories have already divided the nation once this year and they are at it again, and seem quite serious about it.

You'd think they'd have enough on their plate without trying to take the Education system back to the 1950's...

I don't think they are looking to take the system back to the 1950s. It seems more of an extension of the Blairite fragmentation of state education. In the context of free schools, religious schools , academies etc the Grammar school proposal probably fits as it's just another different entry requirement. You either have a system of comprehensives admitting pupils solely on geography or you have the current system. Seems churlish to allow selection on religion but not ability. Perhaps we need to get rid of both ?

 

[Gwylan]

Seems churlish to allow selection on religion but not ability. Perhaps we need to get rid of both ?