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Labour And Lib Dems 'would Fight Grammar School Plans'
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I'm surprised that these new plans by Mrs May hasn't been mentioned on AB before. For me, I think Grammar Schools should remain in the 1960's.
I'm surprised that these new plans by Mrs May hasn't been mentioned on AB before. For me, I think Grammar Schools should remain in the 1960's.
Answers
I definitely agree that grammar schools should be a thing of the past.I passed the 11 plus and went to a grammar school but hated pretty much every minute of it.My son however went to our local comprehensiv
17:26 Tue 09th Aug 2016
@andy_hughes (page 6)
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That is elitism in the employment world - we are talking elitism in education, starting when children are eleven, which is well before they are at employment age.
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Employment and education are inextricably linked. If schools aren't meeting employer's needs, in terms of supply of low, medium and highly-educated people, for all the various job roles that they cookie-cutter for these identikit people they expect us to be then they are wasting time and taxpayer's money.
Via Corporation Tax (where applicable, cough, cough), employers have a stake in this as well, just as much as parents (and non-parents).
There is another linkage, with positive feedback attached to it: academic success leads to both higher salaries, so a bigger income tax take and increased innovation and corporate success, in the long term.
I can't link to any unequivocal figures but I'd be willing to bet that GDP(per capita) correlates positively with educational scores (if you exclude oil production from GDPpc).
//
That is elitism in the employment world - we are talking elitism in education, starting when children are eleven, which is well before they are at employment age.
//
Employment and education are inextricably linked. If schools aren't meeting employer's needs, in terms of supply of low, medium and highly-educated people, for all the various job roles that they cookie-cutter for these identikit people they expect us to be then they are wasting time and taxpayer's money.
Via Corporation Tax (where applicable, cough, cough), employers have a stake in this as well, just as much as parents (and non-parents).
There is another linkage, with positive feedback attached to it: academic success leads to both higher salaries, so a bigger income tax take and increased innovation and corporate success, in the long term.
I can't link to any unequivocal figures but I'd be willing to bet that GDP(per capita) correlates positively with educational scores (if you exclude oil production from GDPpc).
@andy_hughes
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A fair and funded education system, that gives opportunities to everyone?
//
Fine, in principle. But what if you dial up the funding by 5%, but get only a 3% improvement in education scores? And then increase another 5% and get only 2% increase in scores?
The law of diminishing returns, in other words.
What if the urrrgly truth is that cramming increasingly difficult concepts into minds which failed at 11-plus stage only succeeds in consuming this enhanced budget, at a rate of knots, while turning the unfortunate children into youngsters who think everything in the outside world is meant to be equally challenging and are thus baffled by the stupidly easy tasks employers will set them. Or, worse, the daily failure to understand new concepts leaves them with the lasting image of themselves as "a bit thick"? (Delusions of incompetence, if there is such a thing).
//
It's only a matter of money - but then, you can't provide military aggression abroad and a billion pound 'deterrent' and have a decent education and / or health system.
//
Even if I agree with the sentiment, that is a separate thread. Suffice to say that no nukes means our puny army will be powerless to stop Putin dropping an airborne division into central London. I think they have parachutable tanks, which could lead to some rapid 'diplomacy', on our part. i.e. handing the keys over. The Russian oligarchs, who hedge their money on London properties, to keep P's mitts off their money would be mortified.
Why don't we have hypothecated taxes and let those with most to lose cough up for national defence and we can chip in for health & education, etc.?
(Referring back to that Victoria Derbyshire prog, even Sir Robert Winston expressed horror at the idea of hypothecating 1p in the £ to the NHS. To me, hypothecation is like voting for what you want annually but it is a unversally loathed concept, for reasons I cannot understand).
…and now I've strayed way off topic! D:-/
< test
//
A fair and funded education system, that gives opportunities to everyone?
//
Fine, in principle. But what if you dial up the funding by 5%, but get only a 3% improvement in education scores? And then increase another 5% and get only 2% increase in scores?
The law of diminishing returns, in other words.
What if the urrrgly truth is that cramming increasingly difficult concepts into minds which failed at 11-plus stage only succeeds in consuming this enhanced budget, at a rate of knots, while turning the unfortunate children into youngsters who think everything in the outside world is meant to be equally challenging and are thus baffled by the stupidly easy tasks employers will set them. Or, worse, the daily failure to understand new concepts leaves them with the lasting image of themselves as "a bit thick"? (Delusions of incompetence, if there is such a thing).
//
It's only a matter of money - but then, you can't provide military aggression abroad and a billion pound 'deterrent' and have a decent education and / or health system.
//
Even if I agree with the sentiment, that is a separate thread. Suffice to say that no nukes means our puny army will be powerless to stop Putin dropping an airborne division into central London. I think they have parachutable tanks, which could lead to some rapid 'diplomacy', on our part. i.e. handing the keys over. The Russian oligarchs, who hedge their money on London properties, to keep P's mitts off their money would be mortified.
Why don't we have hypothecated taxes and let those with most to lose cough up for national defence and we can chip in for health & education, etc.?
(Referring back to that Victoria Derbyshire prog, even Sir Robert Winston expressed horror at the idea of hypothecating 1p in the £ to the NHS. To me, hypothecation is like voting for what you want annually but it is a unversally loathed concept, for reasons I cannot understand).
…and now I've strayed way off topic! D:-/
< test
I think not having an 11+ causes more problems. I may have passed an 11+ but as it was all the say so of who went where came down the head of our primary. I'm not sure if that's when people screw up, or if it happens later. Maybe get people to stand on their own two feet, rather than rely on education or training? There's not one perfect system.
@Marshwarble
Eh? Are you seriously saying that Primary School heads have the power to countermand 11-plus passes?
(I'm reacting in overly-dramatic style as a way of saying "that's news to me". My instinct is to request proof but I don't see how that could adequately be shown as working practice guidelines don't usually become publically accessible, via the 'net).
I can understand scenarios like kid A, who is a marginal fail but wasn't well on the day and is thought capable of doing well at Grammar school or kid B, who excelled themselces and passed but is apt to drift along or is not cut out for the stresses of academia. Kid C: "artistic temperament" and so forth.
Who would have thought that such an example of "invisible hand" was at work in all our lives?
Gulp!
Eh? Are you seriously saying that Primary School heads have the power to countermand 11-plus passes?
(I'm reacting in overly-dramatic style as a way of saying "that's news to me". My instinct is to request proof but I don't see how that could adequately be shown as working practice guidelines don't usually become publically accessible, via the 'net).
I can understand scenarios like kid A, who is a marginal fail but wasn't well on the day and is thought capable of doing well at Grammar school or kid B, who excelled themselces and passed but is apt to drift along or is not cut out for the stresses of academia. Kid C: "artistic temperament" and so forth.
Who would have thought that such an example of "invisible hand" was at work in all our lives?
Gulp!
I suppose I'll leave it to andy to reply properly if he wishes, but from my point of view a 5% funding increase leading to a 3% return in improving standards is hardly wasted money. But even that aside it seems a bit of an oversimplification; I hardly think you can measure the returns so confidently. For example, without significant increases in funding, exam pass rates (about as good a measure as you can imagine in theory of judging academic standards) have been consistently increasing for most of the last 30-odd years. Of course, a cursory glance at exam papers across the period would suggest that this apparent rise in standards is at least partly attributable to exams getting "easier". This is a separate debate but the point here is that unless your funding increase was accompanied by a freeze of all other changes to the exam system, measuring the precise impact of funding is at best very difficult. It stands to reason, though, that the more resources you throw at education the better in general the outcomes will be, up to a presumed ceiling that surely no-one really thinks we've reached yet.
// What if the urrrgly truth is that cramming increasingly difficult concepts into minds which failed at 11-plus stage only succeeds in ... turning the unfortunate children into youngsters who think everything ... is meant to be equally challenging ... [and] leaves them with the lasting image of themselves as "a bit thick"? //
I hope the edited quote above is a fair reflection of your point. If not it's easily recovered. But anyway I thought Andy had already answered this because much earlier (see his posts on page 4 of this thread), he said that the high standard of education he wanted available for all, he wasn't restricting this to high standards of academic education. Clearly students who either cannot process advanced mathematics or have no real interest in it anyway should hardly be forced to study the subject beyond its practical uses; anyone who can't paint to save their lives shouldn't be having their time wasted sitting through art lessons when they could be instead focusing on what matters to them.
Where I disagree with Andy is that this situation is not really the fault of grammar schools themselves. Perhaps a government obsession with them has led more resources to be diverted into these at the expense of the required alternatives. So far as I can see, though, the system that Andy has in mind is almost exactly the same sort of system that was promised by the Education Act 1944, which in the first place included grammar schools as a vital part of the system, while adding the secondary modern and the forgotten secondary technical. Perhaps it was unfortunate that this idea was implemented at the same time as the country was flat broke -- at any rate, secondary technicals disappeared quickly while the secondary moderns took the "you failed the 11+" attitude a little too literally. To be fair, secondary moderns weren't meant to take on so much of the child population in the first place and again none of this should be blamed on the existence of grammar schools per se.
Restoring the intent of this system and carrying it out to its logical conclusions requires a great deal of spending commitment, and in particular would need to have the sort of safeguards in place such that the secondary moderns aren't just seen as dumping grounds for those who failed at 11. Again: "grammar schools are great. It's what happens to the rest of the children that's the problem".
// What if the urrrgly truth is that cramming increasingly difficult concepts into minds which failed at 11-plus stage only succeeds in ... turning the unfortunate children into youngsters who think everything ... is meant to be equally challenging ... [and] leaves them with the lasting image of themselves as "a bit thick"? //
I hope the edited quote above is a fair reflection of your point. If not it's easily recovered. But anyway I thought Andy had already answered this because much earlier (see his posts on page 4 of this thread), he said that the high standard of education he wanted available for all, he wasn't restricting this to high standards of academic education. Clearly students who either cannot process advanced mathematics or have no real interest in it anyway should hardly be forced to study the subject beyond its practical uses; anyone who can't paint to save their lives shouldn't be having their time wasted sitting through art lessons when they could be instead focusing on what matters to them.
Where I disagree with Andy is that this situation is not really the fault of grammar schools themselves. Perhaps a government obsession with them has led more resources to be diverted into these at the expense of the required alternatives. So far as I can see, though, the system that Andy has in mind is almost exactly the same sort of system that was promised by the Education Act 1944, which in the first place included grammar schools as a vital part of the system, while adding the secondary modern and the forgotten secondary technical. Perhaps it was unfortunate that this idea was implemented at the same time as the country was flat broke -- at any rate, secondary technicals disappeared quickly while the secondary moderns took the "you failed the 11+" attitude a little too literally. To be fair, secondary moderns weren't meant to take on so much of the child population in the first place and again none of this should be blamed on the existence of grammar schools per se.
Restoring the intent of this system and carrying it out to its logical conclusions requires a great deal of spending commitment, and in particular would need to have the sort of safeguards in place such that the secondary moderns aren't just seen as dumping grounds for those who failed at 11. Again: "grammar schools are great. It's what happens to the rest of the children that's the problem".
@jim
Best not look too deeply into my "what if" scenario percentages. Rhetorical buildup to "law of diminishing returns" and superfluous, to be honest.
Anyway, the purpose was to challenge this notion that increasing funding to "lower stream" schools would give rise to immediate performance increases because that, somewhat insultingly, accuses them of pootling, all these decades.
So I was trying to say what if these pupils are giving it their all, doing their best to understand what they're being taught and the teachers are putting in a 100% effort, not held back for want of funds? In such a scenario, throwing money at it gives zero gains, because the metaphorical pedal is already pushed to the floor.
If you overfund a public service, **ways will be found** to absorb any and all excess funds. I nicknamed this budgetitis and, if I stole the name then I forget where from (try Yes Minister).
I was going to throw this Q at andy but he hasn't returned, so I'll ask you, instead:
What is the standard 'reward' a public service body has dished out to it, by HM Treasury, in return for achieving a budget underspend, as at 31st March?
Best not look too deeply into my "what if" scenario percentages. Rhetorical buildup to "law of diminishing returns" and superfluous, to be honest.
Anyway, the purpose was to challenge this notion that increasing funding to "lower stream" schools would give rise to immediate performance increases because that, somewhat insultingly, accuses them of pootling, all these decades.
So I was trying to say what if these pupils are giving it their all, doing their best to understand what they're being taught and the teachers are putting in a 100% effort, not held back for want of funds? In such a scenario, throwing money at it gives zero gains, because the metaphorical pedal is already pushed to the floor.
If you overfund a public service, **ways will be found** to absorb any and all excess funds. I nicknamed this budgetitis and, if I stole the name then I forget where from (try Yes Minister).
I was going to throw this Q at andy but he hasn't returned, so I'll ask you, instead:
What is the standard 'reward' a public service body has dished out to it, by HM Treasury, in return for achieving a budget underspend, as at 31st March?
@jim
//
I hope the edited quote above is a fair reflection of your point. If not it's easily recovered.
//
It was two separate points, actually. I posited that, hypothetically
i) the students really are less capable (a stance deliberately left open to challenge) and
ii) force-feeding them anything (doesn't have to be academic, now you mention it) is going to hurt and possibly leave permanent damage to self-esteem if they are daily reminded that they don't understand things.
Previous renditions of this thread have touched on continental education techniques where, at infant and primary level, there is more emphasis on play and serious attempts are made to find out "what does this child like to do, most?", whether it be painting, counting, talking, story-telling, reading, building things, destroying things (!!) and reinforcing their strengths throughout their later development, so they get positive reinforcement, all the way to school-leaving age. This quickly separates the practically minded from the academically minded and the creatives from the inflexible thinkers.
To over-simplify again, assessing individuals, to find out what shape of peg they are.
//
I hope the edited quote above is a fair reflection of your point. If not it's easily recovered.
//
It was two separate points, actually. I posited that, hypothetically
i) the students really are less capable (a stance deliberately left open to challenge) and
ii) force-feeding them anything (doesn't have to be academic, now you mention it) is going to hurt and possibly leave permanent damage to self-esteem if they are daily reminded that they don't understand things.
Previous renditions of this thread have touched on continental education techniques where, at infant and primary level, there is more emphasis on play and serious attempts are made to find out "what does this child like to do, most?", whether it be painting, counting, talking, story-telling, reading, building things, destroying things (!!) and reinforcing their strengths throughout their later development, so they get positive reinforcement, all the way to school-leaving age. This quickly separates the practically minded from the academically minded and the creatives from the inflexible thinkers.
To over-simplify again, assessing individuals, to find out what shape of peg they are.
No idea what the answer to that last question is, I'd have to look it up. For the rest -- fair enough, although I don't think that we are nearly close to the sort of position you envisage. Not that this is a criticism of teachers in general but nevertheless resources are often lacking or less than perfect. Anyone can see this if they work behind-the-scenes rather than just in the classroom.
If the Grammar schools are deemed to be elitist and therefor to be discouraged, do we have to close say all sports academies that encourage and nurture any outstanding athlete, and the music academies that take on the gifted musicians, not to mention the specialist dance schools (i.e ballet for instance). If we value our high achievers in these disciplines, why is it not the case for potential academic excellence?
Togo - //If the Grammar schools are deemed to be elitist and therefor to be discouraged, do we have to close say all sports academies that encourage and nurture any outstanding athlete, and the music academies that take on the gifted musicians, not to mention the specialist dance schools (i.e ballet for instance). If we value our high achievers in these disciplines, why is it not the case for potential academic excellence? //
Because sport and music are specific talents which evidence themselves in specific individuals.
Education is the right of everyone, and so is the best education that can be provided.
Because sport and music are specific talents which evidence themselves in specific individuals.
Education is the right of everyone, and so is the best education that can be provided.
Academic excellence is also evident in some children also, but must be crushed and suppressed on the altar of equality. No one is advocating not giving the best education possible to the less able, or even the couldn't care less children. But some of us can see through the arguments of the resentful, and politically motivated Grammar School haters. Perhaps they fear that the pupils, who flourish at Grammar Schools, wont be so easily moulded to fit the pc template which is favoured by themselves.
@jim
I don't think you can look up the answer to this one…
//
What is the standard 'reward' a public service body has dished out to it, by HM Treasury, in return for achieving a budget underspend, as at 31st March?
//
A. A budget cut. "You managed find on 'n' thousand less than this, last year."
I would hate to think that schools get treated in this appalling way but there is little they can do. And when it is the devolved parliaments (except England), in charge of budgetary control, they have one hand tied behind their back because Westminster dictates their overall budget and leaves them to it, when it comes to the nitty-gritty. They can't put go-faster stripes on all their schools without dialling back on some other service they provide.
I suppose the acid test would be to find two, or more, schools where the funding is equal, to neutralise any accusations of elitism at the financial level and see if we find identical performance or if spontaneous differences do occur and, if so, the likely causes (e.g. some got lucky, hired ace teachers, did well in league tables, then benefited from "catchment area magnetism", as the middle classes move into the area, changing the demographics of the pupils).
I don't think you can look up the answer to this one…
//
What is the standard 'reward' a public service body has dished out to it, by HM Treasury, in return for achieving a budget underspend, as at 31st March?
//
A. A budget cut. "You managed find on 'n' thousand less than this, last year."
I would hate to think that schools get treated in this appalling way but there is little they can do. And when it is the devolved parliaments (except England), in charge of budgetary control, they have one hand tied behind their back because Westminster dictates their overall budget and leaves them to it, when it comes to the nitty-gritty. They can't put go-faster stripes on all their schools without dialling back on some other service they provide.
I suppose the acid test would be to find two, or more, schools where the funding is equal, to neutralise any accusations of elitism at the financial level and see if we find identical performance or if spontaneous differences do occur and, if so, the likely causes (e.g. some got lucky, hired ace teachers, did well in league tables, then benefited from "catchment area magnetism", as the middle classes move into the area, changing the demographics of the pupils).
@a_h
//
Because sport and music are specific talents which evidence themselves in specific individuals.
//
The bell curve applies to just about everything, including academic ability. Why hold them back?
//Education is the right of everyone, and so is the best education that can be provided.//
Except to the academically gifted who will just have to muddle along with the pedestrian (to them) offerings of egalitarian schooling and whatever reading material they het their hands on?
The devil makes work for idle brains. An intellectually unchallenging environment is the same reason that employers say "you're overqualified, you'll be bored here". Which is code for "you'll become a troublemaker".
Brilliant minds exist and you want to consign them to the kind of jobs that stay vacant because even mediocre people know they can get something better. Under-used for life. What a waste of talent.
//
Because sport and music are specific talents which evidence themselves in specific individuals.
//
The bell curve applies to just about everything, including academic ability. Why hold them back?
//Education is the right of everyone, and so is the best education that can be provided.//
Except to the academically gifted who will just have to muddle along with the pedestrian (to them) offerings of egalitarian schooling and whatever reading material they het their hands on?
The devil makes work for idle brains. An intellectually unchallenging environment is the same reason that employers say "you're overqualified, you'll be bored here". Which is code for "you'll become a troublemaker".
Brilliant minds exist and you want to consign them to the kind of jobs that stay vacant because even mediocre people know they can get something better. Under-used for life. What a waste of talent.
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