I don't know why, but I have been hearing a lot about education in the UK lately. Well, it's always a subject bubbling under the surface, really, so no mystery about that
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my nephew went to this school. In order to get in, he took an exam with about 500 kids. Most of their parents had paid for extra tutelage and music lessons before the exams. My in-laws paid approximately £3000 a year for the school's bus (they still had to drive him to the pick-up) and extracurricular (but so highly recommended as to be essentially required) programmes. Excellent school, and given that none of his father's family had attended school past the age of 16, and his mother is the only person in her family (Thai farmers) with any kind of higher ed, it gave him great advantages. He missed his place at Oxford by four points in his History course, and is at LSE now.
My niece is currently freaking out because there is talk that her school may be turned into an academy ... but at least she's happy at her school, which was less selective, but still not an automatic admission. But again, had her parents not paid for tutors to help her catch up after her learning disability was identified, she'd not be so lucky.
What is sad is that the system is perpetuated by people understandably wanting what's best for their children. It particularly... I don't know if to say saddens me or enrages me to read that the QE school was turned into a comprehensive (shudder) but then reverted to its traditional (hurrah!) selective status. Indeed. And it is undoubtedly a good thing for the few that get in...
I went to a comprehensive school on my council estate and was the first person in my family to get A levels and go to University. Grammer schools are just a throwback to Victorian education.
It's interesting how much class plays into it. My in-laws were very careful to let me know that the reason I wasn't invited to stay with them last summer had nothing to do with my nephew's missing out on his Oxford place (I'd given some advice on things he needed to clarify regarding his coursework, but I honestly wasn't as insistent as I should have been, because I didn't know the system and it was a modern paper -- but as it turned out, I think my nephew really just didn't *get* how to show he was thinking like an historian, and missed out his A by four points). But anyway, he's going to LSE. It was his 'fallback choice'. It's still, I think, a top uni. But for the family, Oxford is the degree that will get him the best job. That's what it's about. Not education for any other cause -- it's an understanding of an Oxford degree as a vocational degree.
In my day (before the advent of comprehensives) grammar schools were at least as much a way for the middle classes to access free good education as for helping up bright working class types from families which valued education, had books in the house etc. It was noticeable in my town that girls who failed the 11+ whose parents could afford it got sent to one of the several private girls' schools in the area, not the secondary modern or even the girls' technical school.
While I agree with you that UK state schools can be very bad, and that they all need improving, I think the grammar school issue is a distraction
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You missed "and there were a lot more places for boys in grammar schools, than for girls".
By the way: the grammar schools fiddled their success figures for years by not entering all children into exams. Once they were forced to, it turned out that being bottom class in a grammar school meant you got fewer quals than tp class in a secondary modern.
I went to a bog standard comprehensive by the way. Not a great school but several of us were also first gen at university. Grammar schools concentrated success at a time when the school leaving age was 15 at secondary mods and only grammar school kids could stay on, but I have yet to see an analysis that suggests they actually produced it.
However good grammar schools were for giving *a few* people access to superior education, what they didn't and don't do is improve the general quality of education across the board. Which was the point of my post (responding to purple mostly here, f). What they do do is cream off the best pupils from whatever other non-selective school is around, which means that pupils in that school won't have examples, peers to help them, and the precise knowledge that they start off as labeled as dumb. That can't help.
The schools you've gone to must have been a lot more civilised than the one I went to or the ones many of the people I know went to. The best pupils at these were not regarded as 'peers to help' but rather as freaks to be bullied and denigrated for being different - targets not tutors.
That's what my elementary school did to me. If you learn the stuff faster and better than the other kids, you're a Special Needs Child whom they don't have to cater to. My job was to STFU and not act out while they desperately and unsuccessfully tried to bring the slow kids up to speed. My parents, progressive educators who had given their lives to the public school system, realized how miserable the place was making me and rose above principle to send me to an elitist prep school, which saved me. I guess it did me some good; it vaccinated me against egalitarianism. Communism is like a big public school where they don't let you take advantage of your abilities and you never ever graduate.
That's good for you, but then again, your peers were starting from a very low baseline compared to your, if both your parents were teachers. From you parents point of view, the point is the individual child. From somebody who hasn't got a child, the problem is how to help the least able, because they are the ones most in need. Egalitarism doesn't mean punishing the poor and the rich alike for the crime of sleeping under a bridge.
Egalitarianism should mean everyone reaching the peak of their ability. Too often, in the UK at least, it means making sure everyone gets to the same average point, so those in need of being pulled up get assistance, as supergee notes (so it clearly happens in the US as well), while the brightest get left in the corner to become bored and demotivated and depressed.
The exam system in the UK even leads to this, where the top 10 or 15% all get so close to 100% on everything that you can't work out who the top 1-5% are. In terms of exam marks, it doesn't pay the school a jot to give anybody at that level anything extra, since that will never be detectable in the league tables.
This situation can be so bad that state schools often advise the parents of the brightest kids to take them into the fee paying sector.
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My niece is currently freaking out because there is talk that her school may be turned into an academy ... but at least she's happy at her school, which was less selective, but still not an automatic admission. But again, had her parents not paid for tutors to help her catch up after her learning disability was identified, she'd not be so lucky.
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By the way: the grammar schools fiddled their success figures for years by not entering all children into exams. Once they were forced to, it turned out that being bottom class in a grammar school meant you got fewer quals than tp class in a secondary modern.
I went to a bog standard comprehensive by the way. Not a great school but several of us were also first gen at university. Grammar schools concentrated success at a time when the school leaving age was 15 at secondary mods and only grammar school kids could stay on, but I have yet to see an analysis that suggests they actually produced it.
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The exam system in the UK even leads to this, where the top 10 or 15% all get so close to 100% on everything that you can't work out who the top 1-5% are. In terms of exam marks, it doesn't pay the school a jot to give anybody at that level anything extra, since that will never be detectable in the league tables.
This situation can be so bad that state schools often advise the parents of the brightest kids to take them into the fee paying sector.
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