There's another point that the opponents of grammar schools often make and I wish I had some data to argue against it. They say that smart kids don't do any better with separate classes for the smart and they don't do any worse in classes of mixed ability.
How do they know that? Smart kids get top scores in mixed ability classes. They can't get any top-er. How would we know that they wouldn't learn more if they were in a more challenging environment?
> How would we know that they wouldn't learn more if they were in a more challenging environment?
I wish we separated exams from teaching. Like, you go to school where they teach you, but at the end of the year you go to another institution where you take a test. (If you fail, no big deal, you can try again the next year.)
If you are homeschooled, you take the same test -- that's how we compare homeschooled children to the rest of the population. And if you are a gifted child, you are free to take tests made for older students. (Actually, anyone is free to take any test.)
Among other advantages, in such system you could compare gifted kids from mixed ability classes with gifted kids from separate classes, by checking how many of each successfully took tests for older students.
I brought up two daughters in Streatham and I’ve now got a son at school in Teddington. The girls did OK at the state schools they went to, but they didn’t think much of the experience. Living among the rich people of Teddington is like living in a different country; the school has far more resources and the parents have the time and inclination to be far more involved, so the teachers need to spend less time on the basics and they can spend more time on the fun stuff. It is, or course, impossible to know for sure, but I have a feeling my daughters would have enjoyed education more and thus have done even better in less deprived schools. But I felt, at the time, that it was my duty to “sacrifice” them for the greater good.
I was just reading Freddie deBoer’s post on a similar topic and he talks about how much extra money is spent in deprived areas to break even performance-wise with affluent areas. We had a lot of fun on extracurricular stuff like plays and sports. My kids schools did too in a posh school in California.
Oh yeah, thanks to the Blair government’s Sure Start funding arrangements the Streatham school had the resources to do lots of fun things. Honestly, before I saw how the other half lives I thought it was a great school. But… remember how you used to think 720x480 looked fine but now 1080p looks a bit grainy? Anyway, it’s hardly relevant, parents need to make the most of whatever school they get. Rich or poor, nothing improves things for your kids as much as volunteering or becoming a parent governor.
Ragged - another crossover - we have had a parallel life! I passed the 11+ in Orpington and got a direct grant place at Bromley High. Ended up at Grammar School in Manchester because we moved for the umpteenth time before the start of term. So grateful for the education I received there as I was the first person in my family to stay at school beyond the age of 15 and the first to go to university - and the only one until my children went. The abolition of grammar schools shut off a path of hope for children like me.
My daughter is now a teacher despairing at the state of our schools. The stories she tells me make me want to weep for our lost civilisation. She has decided to start recording her experiences in a Substack - Miss Supply and Demanding. Literally just posted her first piece.
My mother worked in St Mary's Cray - Electro Dynamics - still remember the name of the company. My dad was in the Met. We lived in Forest Way, Orpington and I went to Poverest school. Never went swimming! My parents had no interest in teaching their children anything useful like that!
I broke my front teeth in St Mary Cray station when I was 11. I was doing a crazy vault thing over the railings and my legs hit the ceiling and I fell six feet onto my face.
I enjoyed this piece - thank you for sharing it. As a ‘90s kid, I am constantly learning about the educational history of our country and how the ripples are still being felt.
It’s an argument I hadn’t considered but I’m not convinced. State schools will always have powerful advocates in the education unions and political left, particularly given an overwhelming majority of the voting population uses them. At the individual school level many governors have kids at the school, so are well motivated.
I get that a significant proportion of our political class were educated at public schools, but that doesn’t seem to stop many of them ‘acknowledging their privilege’ by trying to pull the ladder up behind them.
I think you’re right about it mainly being a cynical throwing of red meat to the base. There will be resistance but it’s a bit like fox hunting. Quite an easy statement to make at minimal cost (political or financial).
One of the challenges I see emerging now is that we are so wedded to the concept of "helping those who fail" that we aren't seeing that requires helping people succeed. You need a path and example for success for the failure to be eradicated. Mitigating it's worst effects just makes the failure tolerable. We need someone to collect the bins. It's a dirty, hard job and it deserves to be paid a wage that means you aren't also doing Uber deliveries to pay rent.
This is so great Ragged. Sorry it’s taken me a couple of days to get to it. It feels like nothing has changed in a way. ‘We are going to promote equality by taking away opportunities for working class people’. I can’t quote the figures, but I believe that social mobility has taken a real nosedive over the last few years. It’s yet another indictment of the terrible Tories.
I did my 11+, I think it was perhaps the last year when it was universal, I didn’t go to a special grammar school, it was the area Catholic school which I think did much the same job. Grammar schools might not have been perfect, they change the lives of so many people. I think it is a crime that they were abolished.
I think the drive towards egalitarianism hurts the people it is supposed to help. When your policy is that everyone should have a chance to go to university, the ones who don't make it are left with nothing. Better to tailor the education to match the student as Mr Butler intended.
I'm not sure where I stand on the issue. Middle-class kids are just always going to have better life chances than poorer ones. The only way you could prevent that would be by stopping middle-class parents from helping their own children. And obviously nobody's going to be the guy who opposes a parent's unconditional love.
I agree with this Alex. Middle class parents are always gonna do what's best for their own kids — but at least the 11+ + grammars gave smart working kids a bit of a leg up too.
What’s your take on labours plans to put VAT on private schools?
Feels to me like it will be an inconvenience for the wealthy but a big blow to a lot parents stretching every sinew to keep their kids out of a state system they see as broken.
I’ll be interested to read Miss Supply and Demand to see how valid that perception is.
I have mixed feelings. I think it is mostly a cynical ploy to rile up potential voters against the tories. That doesn't mean it is completely invalid though.
There is some merit, I think, in the idea that giving affluent parents a way to avoid the state schools that poorer kids go to takes away some of the potential for advocacy at state schools. When I lived in Manhattan, the public (public in the American sense) schools were atrocious because all the rich kids — and their parents — went to private schools. It's not so bad here but the principle is the same.
Same deal with the NHS. If no one with political power uses the NHS, no one with political power will advocate for the NHS and the NHS will get worse.
There's another point that the opponents of grammar schools often make and I wish I had some data to argue against it. They say that smart kids don't do any better with separate classes for the smart and they don't do any worse in classes of mixed ability.
How do they know that? Smart kids get top scores in mixed ability classes. They can't get any top-er. How would we know that they wouldn't learn more if they were in a more challenging environment?
> How would we know that they wouldn't learn more if they were in a more challenging environment?
I wish we separated exams from teaching. Like, you go to school where they teach you, but at the end of the year you go to another institution where you take a test. (If you fail, no big deal, you can try again the next year.)
If you are homeschooled, you take the same test -- that's how we compare homeschooled children to the rest of the population. And if you are a gifted child, you are free to take tests made for older students. (Actually, anyone is free to take any test.)
Among other advantages, in such system you could compare gifted kids from mixed ability classes with gifted kids from separate classes, by checking how many of each successfully took tests for older students.
I brought up two daughters in Streatham and I’ve now got a son at school in Teddington. The girls did OK at the state schools they went to, but they didn’t think much of the experience. Living among the rich people of Teddington is like living in a different country; the school has far more resources and the parents have the time and inclination to be far more involved, so the teachers need to spend less time on the basics and they can spend more time on the fun stuff. It is, or course, impossible to know for sure, but I have a feeling my daughters would have enjoyed education more and thus have done even better in less deprived schools. But I felt, at the time, that it was my duty to “sacrifice” them for the greater good.
I was just reading Freddie deBoer’s post on a similar topic and he talks about how much extra money is spent in deprived areas to break even performance-wise with affluent areas. We had a lot of fun on extracurricular stuff like plays and sports. My kids schools did too in a posh school in California.
Oh yeah, thanks to the Blair government’s Sure Start funding arrangements the Streatham school had the resources to do lots of fun things. Honestly, before I saw how the other half lives I thought it was a great school. But… remember how you used to think 720x480 looked fine but now 1080p looks a bit grainy? Anyway, it’s hardly relevant, parents need to make the most of whatever school they get. Rich or poor, nothing improves things for your kids as much as volunteering or becoming a parent governor.
Ragged - another crossover - we have had a parallel life! I passed the 11+ in Orpington and got a direct grant place at Bromley High. Ended up at Grammar School in Manchester because we moved for the umpteenth time before the start of term. So grateful for the education I received there as I was the first person in my family to stay at school beyond the age of 15 and the first to go to university - and the only one until my children went. The abolition of grammar schools shut off a path of hope for children like me.
My daughter is now a teacher despairing at the state of our schools. The stories she tells me make me want to weep for our lost civilisation. She has decided to start recording her experiences in a Substack - Miss Supply and Demanding. Literally just posted her first piece.
Were you following me?
We lived in Footscray and my dad lived in St Paul's Cray after the divorce. We used to go swimming in Orpington quite often.
My mother worked in St Mary's Cray - Electro Dynamics - still remember the name of the company. My dad was in the Met. We lived in Forest Way, Orpington and I went to Poverest school. Never went swimming! My parents had no interest in teaching their children anything useful like that!
My parents never took us anywhere! I have another post coming about that 😎
I broke my front teeth in St Mary Cray station when I was 11. I was doing a crazy vault thing over the railings and my legs hit the ceiling and I fell six feet onto my face.
Ouch!!!
Just subbed. Best of luck to her!
Thank you! That's really sweet of you.
https://supplyanddemanding.substack.com/
I'll check it out. Thanks!
I enjoyed this piece - thank you for sharing it. As a ‘90s kid, I am constantly learning about the educational history of our country and how the ripples are still being felt.
My kids grew up in California so they had a very different education. I lost track of how schools in England are now.
It’s an argument I hadn’t considered but I’m not convinced. State schools will always have powerful advocates in the education unions and political left, particularly given an overwhelming majority of the voting population uses them. At the individual school level many governors have kids at the school, so are well motivated.
I get that a significant proportion of our political class were educated at public schools, but that doesn’t seem to stop many of them ‘acknowledging their privilege’ by trying to pull the ladder up behind them.
I think you’re right about it mainly being a cynical throwing of red meat to the base. There will be resistance but it’s a bit like fox hunting. Quite an easy statement to make at minimal cost (political or financial).
One of the challenges I see emerging now is that we are so wedded to the concept of "helping those who fail" that we aren't seeing that requires helping people succeed. You need a path and example for success for the failure to be eradicated. Mitigating it's worst effects just makes the failure tolerable. We need someone to collect the bins. It's a dirty, hard job and it deserves to be paid a wage that means you aren't also doing Uber deliveries to pay rent.
This is so great Ragged. Sorry it’s taken me a couple of days to get to it. It feels like nothing has changed in a way. ‘We are going to promote equality by taking away opportunities for working class people’. I can’t quote the figures, but I believe that social mobility has taken a real nosedive over the last few years. It’s yet another indictment of the terrible Tories.
I did my 11+, I think it was perhaps the last year when it was universal, I didn’t go to a special grammar school, it was the area Catholic school which I think did much the same job. Grammar schools might not have been perfect, they change the lives of so many people. I think it is a crime that they were abolished.
Thank you, Mr LSO.
I think the drive towards egalitarianism hurts the people it is supposed to help. When your policy is that everyone should have a chance to go to university, the ones who don't make it are left with nothing. Better to tailor the education to match the student as Mr Butler intended.
Absolutely. But we can’t have winners and losers anymore. We all must be the same. Say the winners.
I'm not sure where I stand on the issue. Middle-class kids are just always going to have better life chances than poorer ones. The only way you could prevent that would be by stopping middle-class parents from helping their own children. And obviously nobody's going to be the guy who opposes a parent's unconditional love.
I agree with this Alex. Middle class parents are always gonna do what's best for their own kids — but at least the 11+ + grammars gave smart working kids a bit of a leg up too.
What’s your take on labours plans to put VAT on private schools?
Feels to me like it will be an inconvenience for the wealthy but a big blow to a lot parents stretching every sinew to keep their kids out of a state system they see as broken.
I’ll be interested to read Miss Supply and Demand to see how valid that perception is.
I have mixed feelings. I think it is mostly a cynical ploy to rile up potential voters against the tories. That doesn't mean it is completely invalid though.
There is some merit, I think, in the idea that giving affluent parents a way to avoid the state schools that poorer kids go to takes away some of the potential for advocacy at state schools. When I lived in Manhattan, the public (public in the American sense) schools were atrocious because all the rich kids — and their parents — went to private schools. It's not so bad here but the principle is the same.
Same deal with the NHS. If no one with political power uses the NHS, no one with political power will advocate for the NHS and the NHS will get worse.