Grammar schools

[Sprotyrover]

I for one welcome Mays Grammar school programme as soon as we see 4 or 5 in Doncaster we will see an uplift in the areas academic performance.
I am speaking through my own experience of having Attende Adwick Comp in the 70's two thirds of the kids didn't want to be there and therefore didn't want to know I got lumped into a class of 'Mongers' in Maths and English for the first two years our teachers didn't want to challenge the behaviour hence every time I opened my text book in maths one of the gang of morons I had been made to sit with would spit in it!!! Hence I left school with Cse 2 in Maths and somehow scrapped a 1 in English.
My plight only improved when the gang decided to beat me up after school sadly it went very badly for them as they hadn't studied the story of horatorious on the Tiber bridge and didn't realise that Sproty
Could fight like a Tiger.
One broken nose and three black eyes later they learnt to behave in class.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Sproty

Nice story. Trouble is, grammar schools do not improve the performance of either the cohort of kids as a whole, or for bright kids from poor backgrounds. What they do is to improve the performance of kids from well-off backgrounds relative to those from poor homes. That much is well established.

Which is kind of the reason that the Tory right want them...

[Sprotyrover]

I don't agree Billy I grew up in Highfields,my mum was a Pit widow we were as poor as church mice, but there were a lot of families in Highfields in a similar plight and they managed to get their kids in Percy Jacksons before it combined into Adwick comp. those kids all did well for themselves and they got a better education than us that we're 5 years younger.

[BillyStubbsTears]

It's not about anecdotes Sproty. It's about dispassionate research over many years.

[wilts rover]

Do you think there isn't bullying at 'posh' schools Sproty, have you never read Tom Brown's Schoolday's or seen the film If?

I also doubt very much there will be '4 or 5' Grammar Schools in Doncaster. There will be 1, 2 at the most. The money will be targeted towards affluent areas & current and future young Sproty's will have less chance of getting in to them then you had back in the 70's.

And then where will they go? What will be the future for the mass of children left behind? What sort of education will they get?

Grammar schools are all about creating an elite, with the taxpayer paying for it, fine if that's what you want.

[Glyn_Wigley]

How will creaming an elite from half a dozen schools improve their academic performance?

[tommy toes]

I went to Percy Jackson Grammar and for me and all my mates from Skellow who went it was a complete waste of time.
They were only interested in the really bright kids.

[Sprotyrover]

Yes and we need an elite,why should the private schools have the monopoly on university places.

[BobG]

I can't believe you actually said that Sproty.

If you're in favour of creating a latter day version of the secondary modern school, bereft of investment, bereft of the best teachers, bereft of the best pupils, just what future do you think all its students are going to have? Come on! Why, why, do you think this government is so in favour of this scheme? What's in it for the vast majority of the population of this country?

Jesus wept.

BobG

[Donny Dub]

Coincidentally, only today, a friend of mine has told me he's recently discovered that he's related to the former union leader Rodney Bickerstaffe.  Bickerstaffe, a former pupil of Doncaster Grammar School came from a very underprivileged background, unmarried mother, broken home etc.  Grammar school got him to university and a probable peerage had he accepted it.  Grammar school education certainly worked for Rodney.
Good luck.

[BobG]

Of course it works DD! That's the whole point of the thing. Them that get there have the best of everything. Best buildings, best teachers, best books, best support. They'll have to work hard to fail. And that's where it's all so wrong. Cos the poor saps in the second class school down the road get none of that. And guess what? The bloody testing that underpins the selection process? Well, it's been known for 40 years that different kids develop at different rates. So a failed test today does not mean the child is dim. It means he may develop a lot in the next 12 months. But of course, it'll be too damn late for him under a grammar school system...

Like I said. Jesus wept....

BobG

[LongbridgeMGRover]

I have mixed feelings on this.
Firstly, hands up, I went to Donny Grammar.
And predictably on to university and have had a comfortable life, despite being redundant three times!!

But how might my life have been different had I been to a comprehensive?

Well I did go to a comprehensive, Ellers High school, for two years.

This was as part of a hybrid scheme where kids in Donny in the late 60s did not take an 11plus, but went to their local comp for two years and then, based on performance and development, by negotiation and discussion with parents, some of us went to Grammar school while others stayed.

So there was no decision on one test at 11, no scrapheap, no entry to a 'better' school through postcode, wealth or extra tuition.

The shame is that this was only ever a transitionary arrangement.

I feel that different pathways and routes should be available to all.

[The Red Baron]

Selection of some kind would be far more effective at 13-14 rather than 11. Of course many schools effectively do that via streaming or setting.

Personally I doubt this policy will get very far, apart from maybe in areas where Grammars are already established. Theresa May has a small Commons majority and no majority at all in the Lords. She also has no real mandate for the policy, unless she's willing to seek an early General Election.

I think this is her saying that she doesn't want the next four years to be about Brexit and nothing else. The truth is that it probably will be, whether she likes it or not.

[Donny Dub]

I an ex alumnus of St Peter's Balby ( secondary modern) and I am quite happy the way things are for me.  There was a Doncaster Technical School at the time and that might have suited me better.  Not everyone is academic enough for a classical grammar school and many like myself would be better being streamed into this sort of technical college.  Lumping everyone together into a modern comprehensive was a mistake and often results in mediocrity hence the movement to attempt to bring British education back to world standards.
Good luck.

[BillyStubbsTears]

DD

As I said before, the evidence is that, apart from a small number of able kids from wealthy backgrounds, EVERYONE does better in comprehensives.

Counterintuitive, I know, but them appears to be the facts.

[Donny Dub]

Excepting that the brightest pupils often do not perform or achieve their full potential in a comprehensive environment.  Too much teaching time is wasted with behavioural and discipline issues.  If the country wants excellence then motivate and fast track the high achievers.
Good luck.

[Sprotyrover]

My own experience of Comps is that they are a waste of resources,I recall visiting Armthorpe for a day, there were 7 youths stood out in the corridors during one period and two more were being marched  (very meekly) to the heads office.
In my day they would have got a pasting off the few effective teachers or the cane or slipper off the heads.
No wonder it under achieves so miserably and it's typical of the schools in our under achieving borough.

[Hounslowrover]

Excepting that the brightest pupils often do not perform or achieve their full potential in a comprehensive environment.  Too much teaching time is wasted with behavioural and discipline issues.  If the country wants excellence then motivate and fast track the high achievers.
Good luck.

So where is the evidence for this statement. The best performing authorities in England are in London - not a grammar school in sight and plenty of pupils going on to further education and I'm sure disruptive pupils too If you have grammar schools, as in Kent, you then have secondary moderns by any other name. 

[wilts rover]

My own experience of Comps is that they are a waste of resources,I recall visiting Armthorpe for a day, there were 7 youths stood out in the corridors during one period and two more were being marched  (very meekly) to the heads office.
In my day they would have got a pasting off the few effective teachers or the cane or slipper off the heads.
No wonder it under achieves so miserably and it's typical of the schools in our under achieving borough.

Its very difficult to have a conversation about standards of schooling and improvements in education when someone regards schools as 'a waste of resources'.

In your view/opinion, what should happen to the vast majority of Doncaster schoolchildren, several thousand I presume, who are going to be left behind when a Grammar School opens? Do you really think that no resources should be allocated to them?

[roversdude]

Like Longbridge I went to Doncaster Grammar following 2 years at Balby High from there it was to the university of life down a big black hole - although there was further education thrown in
I quite enjoyed my time at DGS even chasing eggs - the tradition was still there and instilled some pride

[LongbridgeMGRover]

Rdude, good that you mention Further education (FE), as I have spent the last 25years in that sector, and what a forgotten yet amazing thing it is.

FE changes lives, turns people around, gives repeated chances to all.

But while Universities charge £9k a year, and pay Chancellors £250k a year, and while all the focus is on Academies and now Grammar Schools, FE gets cut after cut in funding. That is the tragedy in education not being talked about.

[Iberian Red]

I for one welcome Mays Grammar school programme as soon as we see 4 or 5 in Doncaster we will see an uplift in the areas academic performance.
I am speaking through my own experience of having Attende Adwick Comp in the 70's two thirds of the kids didn't want to be there and therefore didn't want to know I got lumped into a class of 'Mongers' in Maths and English for the first two years our teachers didn't want to challenge the behaviour hence every time I opened my text book in maths one of the gang of morons I had been made to sit with would spit in it!!! Hence I left school with Cse 2 in Maths and somehow scrapped a 1 in English.
My plight only improved when the gang decided to beat me up after school sadly it went very badly for them as they hadn't studied the story of horatorious on the Tiber bridge and didn't realise that Sproty
Could fight like a Tiger.
One broken nose and three black eyes later they learnt to behave in class.

They didn't teach punctuation at Adwick Comp.

[Sprotyrover]

The ad blush section was very poor considering some of the teaching staff were ex Percy Jacksons.

[Sprotyrover]

My own experience of Comps is that they are a waste of resources,I recall visiting Armthorpe for a day, there were 7 youths stood out in the corridors during one period and two more were being marched  (very meekly) to the heads office.
In my day they would have got a pasting off the few effective teachers or the cane or slipper off the heads.
No wonder it under achieves so miserably and it's typical of the schools in our under achieving borough.

Its very difficult to have a conversation about standards of schooling and improvements in education when someone regards schools as 'a waste of resources'.

In your view/opinion, what should happen to the vast majority of Doncaster schoolchildren, several thousand I presume, who are going to be left behind when a Grammar School opens? Do you really think that no resources should be allocated to them?

Wilts those kids have already voluntarily jumped the bus,they are already disruptive and ruining the education of kids around them who want to achieve.
Why should the Kids who want to learn be hindered by the mindless few,who incidentally soak up most of the teaching resources in their respective schools..

[Sprotyrover]

What the town really needs is a UTC I work near the one in Sheffield,the kids all want to be there and they are all walking into jobs or good Universities when they leave, local industry Reps are in all the time head hunting.
Doncasters engineering heritage must surely be a drawn for the investment.

[Mike_F]

Wilts those kids have already voluntarily jumped the bus,they are already disruptive and ruining the education of kids around them who want to achieve.
Why should the Kids who want to learn be hindered by the mindless few,who incidentally soak up most of the teaching resources in their respective schools..

Correct. When I was at Danum 20 years ago (shit, I'm getting old!) I was mistakenly put into set 4 for Geography and the kids in there had no interest whatsoever in learning anything. At the end of the first lesson I went to have a word with the teacher and was moved to set 1 immediately. The relief was incredible, I felt like I'd been incarcerated!

As long as comprehensives continue to use sets to keep the idiots from distracting the brighter kids there's no need for Grammars.

[Sprotyrover]

It was a talking point on the Toby Foster Show this morning, you had some beardie lefty from the NUT rabbiting on about fairness and equality and Foster quite rightly accused him of reverse snobbery.
There were four Grammar schools in Donny I ' m sure that the kids who went to them came from families that were interested in their kids education,that's not a middle class thing it' should be the ideal of all caring parents.

[roversdude]

Can assure you we were far from middle class
I think I had a very good education and could have gone on to uni but was offered a job for life with good prospects - should have read the small print about the plan for coal

[NickDRFC]

Wilts those kids have already voluntarily jumped the bus,they are already disruptive and ruining the education of kids around them who want to achieve.
Why should the Kids who want to learn be hindered by the mindless few,who incidentally soak up most of the teaching resources in their respective schools..

Correct. When I was at Danum 20 years ago (shit, I'm getting old!) I was mistakenly put into set 4 for Geography and the kids in there had no interest whatsoever in learning anything. At the end of the first lesson I went to have a word with the teacher and was moved to set 1 immediately. The relief was incredible, I felt like I'd been incarcerated!

As long as comprehensives continue to use sets to keep the idiots from distracting the brighter kids there's no need for Grammars.

What was the quiet word? "Caracas is the capital of Venezuela, now bung me up 3 sets"

[wilts rover]

There were four Grammar schools in Donny I ' m sure that the kids who went to them came from families that were interested in their kids education,that's not a middle class thing it' should be the ideal of all caring parents.

Exactly, that's what we have been trying to tell you. It doesn't matter how caring your parents are, these are elite schools for elite children. 15% of places for 'children from poorer areas'. How much of Doncaster is a 'poorer area'? The vast majority of children wont be going to them, what sort of eductation are they going to receive - and what life chances will they have as a result?

We are a modern society in the digital age, why on earth are we dragging up policies from the Edwardian era. You will be promoting the return of imperial measurements, currency and Latin lessons next.

Oh and I am a school governor and vice-chair of the finance committe and I can assure you that most of the teaching resources are not spent on a 'mindless few', the vast majority of our budget goes on staffing costs and building repairs.