Grammar Schools in Scotland?

[McSpreader]

I agree with AyrExile. The concept of faith schools is a far more insidious and divisive development than Grammar schools

[Silvio Tattiescone]

It's something that the English don't understand. They have no problem with faith schools because what they imagine is the local CofE school. They can't comprehend Catholics and Protestants in the same street getting bussed off to different schools.

[AyrExile]

1 hour ago, McSpreader said:

I agree with AyrExile. The concept of faith schools is a far more insidious and divisive development than Grammar schools

On top of the divisive aspect I also wonder about funding streams for these as to whether both sides are getting the same deal. Also are there extra costs being incurred by having duplication in areas. 

[Cream Cheese]

Grammar schools anywhere in the UK are doomed to fail. British kids are fucking stupid, the only ones that would go to grammar school are the snobby b*****ds who don't actually need to bother learning anything meaningful as they already have an easy life ahead of them.

[banana]

What we need is a school system separated first by sex, then by brighteness (i.e. like grammar schools), then by religion, then by race, then by sexuality.

So for example you have thick, black, Catholic, straight women at one school; bright, white, Muslim gay men at another school, and so forth.

[WaffenThinMint]

2 hours ago, NewBornBairn said:

It's something that the English don't understand. They have no problem with faith schools because what they imagine is the local CofE school. They can't comprehend Catholics and Protestants in the same street getting bussed off to different schools.

There are grumbles about religious schools in England, but it's different to that up here which has more to do with Scotland's institutionalised recreational bigotry of the lowlands.

There are Catholic schools in England on the public purse as well, and in areas where the Catholic population is negligible they've been effectively operating as Grammar schools for decades.

In Bradford there was the fiasco of St Bede's (boys only) and St Joseph's (girls only) "topping up" from the entire of West Yorkshire, picking & choosing who they wanted & all on the public purse to the extent thousands of kids whose parents got their kids pretend they wanted to turn Catholic (to the extent of getting confirmed in special ceremonies during their school years) for the five or six years to get them their A-levels to get them to uni - knowing the only education that was better was at the expensive Bradford Grammar. Eventually there was a long overdue outcry about it & the two were forcibly merged two years ago, but as a voluntary aided school it's still the public picking up the tab & still them getting to pick & choose who they want based on academic ability.

May removing the 50% rule (whereupon "faith schools" can only select up to half of their students on the basis of religious affiliation) is going to make a bad situation worse - the voluntary aided religious schools in England will be free to use an extremely elastic interpretation of their faith to pick & choose even more than currently, all on the public tab. Can't see parents in many localities faced with further education cut backs putting up with this nonsense for much longer.

[hehawhehaw]

2 hours ago, banana said:

What we need is a school system separated first by sex, then by brighteness (i.e. like grammar schools), then by religion, then by race, then by sexuality.

So for example you have thick, black, Catholic, straight women at one school; bright, white, Muslim gay men at another school, and so forth.

But what about binary, non binary people on a transgender journey

[banana]

21 minutes ago, hehawhehaw said:

But what about binary, non binary people on a transgender journey

That's certainly a problematic challenge that more intersectional conversations need to be had about.

We should not stop until we can sub-divide all of our children into identity categories such that every individual child is truly unique and has their own personal school built so they can feel safe and special snowflake #1.

#cisgenderhellenicbisexualhalfasianhalfarabgingerablebodiedgirlprimaryschool

[John Lambies Doos]

Before worrying about grammar schools should Scotland not be having the debate over whether kids should still be split by religious beliefs in the year 2016.

Spot on

[The_Kincardine]

9 hours ago, AyrExile said:

Before worrying about grammar schools should Scotland not be having the debate over whether kids should still be split by religious beliefs in the year 2016.

Given my team and profile this is not a debate I should get involved in.

5 hours ago, WaffenThinMint said:

There are grumbles about religious schools in England, but it's different to that up here which has more to do with Scotland's institutionalised recreational bigotry of the lowlands.

Maybe a debate about Muslim schools but no issue wrt CofE schools.  When my weans went to primary they had a choice of 6 schools in our catchment.  5 of them were run by The C of E and there was no quibbling about it.

We also have a C of E Secondary which the mums clamber to get their weans in to if they fail the 11+.  I know two families who makes a 40 mile round trip each day to avoid their wee preciouses going to non-Grammar schools.

[WaffenThinMint]

10 minutes ago, The_Kincardine said:

Given my team and profile this is not a debate I should get involved in.

Maybe a debate about Muslim schools but no issue wrt CofE schools.  When my weans went to primary they had a choice of 6 schools in our catchment.  5 of them were run by The C of E and there was no quibbling about it.

We also have a C of E Secondary which the mums clamber to get their weans in to if they fail the 11+.  I know two families who makes a 40 mile round trip each day to avoid their wee preciouses going to non-Grammar schools.

Rather selective snip of my quote there dude, the point I was making is that in England the religious schools are often a means to allow themselves to be run as grammar schools, picking & choosing who they want because in an increasingly secular society there simply aren't the number of adherents to justify their existences - the Church of England schools have at least a partial excuse as most of the population are nominally C of E, but in the entire of England and Wales there are a mere 4 million Catholics. Yet they have almost 2 500 schools - two-thirds of all the faith schools in England & Wales by 2009 & over 10% of the schools in England & Wales despite only one in twelve being Catholics.

The Church of England and the Roman Catholic church have a nice little racket. By helping mainly middle class parents keep the grammar school system by sleight of hand, they can boast of the "superiority" of their education (& by insinuation their code of life), justifying everyone continuing to cough up for their perpetuation in a never ending circle of entitlement - little more than a form of private schooling on the public purse. It's part of the routine downright dishonesty in every day life that's turned us into such a nasty cynical little nation of swindlers.

[Jacksgranda]

19 hours ago, Joey Jo Jo Junior Shabadoo said:

My memory of school (I have no idea what it is like now) was that it was pretty selective from day one anyway. Certainly when you hit 3rd year everyone got split based on ability. Is it necessary to have completely different campuses for something that already goes on? I doubt it.

We never did Latin so I have no idea whether campuses is correct, but I'm going with it.

I did Latin and I'm pretty sure "campuses" is correct. Whether that is due to 5 years of Latin or not, I'm not sure.

[Jacksgranda]

18 hours ago, Joey Jo Jo Junior Shabadoo said:

I'm still a virgin, I wish I wasn't, I caught 'internecine Lanarkshire squabble' off a 'dirty' sock that was used for masturbation purposes, 'Athlete's Cock' is an all encompassing term for fungus on the tadger, and you used to be able to buy 5 pairs of sports socks for £1 on Argyle Street.

Hope that clears things up. Reading back I'm not sure I understand either. It made perfect sense at the time.

I thought it was a sock that caused the problem in the first place?

[The_Kincardine]

4 minutes ago, Jacksgranda said:

I did Latin and I'm pretty sure "campuses" is correct. Whether that is due to 5 years of Latin or not, I'm not sure.

It's usually a matter of style.  Thus 'codices' is an acceptable pl of 'codex' but anyone who uses 'stadia' is an utter tool.

[Jacksgranda]

11 hours ago, NewBornBairn said:

As I understand it, the system was that the academically bright (the top 20%) went to Grammar Schools where they basically were prepped for University. Far more academic subjects - Latin, Greek etc.

The other 80% went to Secondary Moderns where the syllabus was more heavily weighted towards vocational skills - Engineering Science instead of Physics, more practical stuff like metalwork, woodwork and secretarial skills. They were being prepped for working in factories and the like but their route to further education was colleges.

This all worked when there was full employment and you could walk into a job days after leaving school. It was also a time when only the top 10% or so went to University. Not sure it would work now when the emphasis is to get more people into university and we have relatively high unemployment. We also don't have the mass employing industries with fairly standard working practices any more. We don't have the shipyards creating a demand for hundreds of metal-bashing apprentices every year for example.

Agree with a lot of that, but just as a matter of interest where did the half of grammar school pupils go who didn't get into university? (Only joking.)

In my day it was only the brightest of the bright who went - or were even allowed to apply for - university.

The rest of us were "encouraged" to look at other third level educational facilities viz polytechnics.

Of course, my old polytechnic is now a university.

[sparky88]

10 hours ago, NewBornBairn said:

It's something that the English don't understand. They have no problem with faith schools because what they imagine is the local CofE school. They can't comprehend Catholics and Protestants in the same street getting bussed off to different schools.

To be fair, most right thinking folk in Scotland can't comprehend it either.

[Cream Cheese]

9 hours ago, banana said:

What we need is a school system separated first by sex, then by brighteness

Same thing imo.

[Ad Lib]

There isn't a cat's chance in hell that Grammar schools will return to Scotland. The political climate isn't for it, they would only ever come from a Tory administration at Holyrood, and they'd seriously struggle if it wasn't a large minority or a majority administration. I suspect there isn't much appetite among the current Tory leadership in Scotland for Grammar schools anyway.

The evidence for them is chronically weak. Most studies into it suggest that the areas of England that still have Grammar schools have more acute class-based stratification across schools, produce barely better results for the working class kids that go to Grammar schools, produce overall worse results for working class kids as a whole and predominantly benefit upper middle class kids and even then the impact is small. Even if you could correct demographically for admissions it wouldn't make a dent in social mobility or academic attainment.

What you are more likely to see in Scotland is experimentation with schools run otherwise than by direct local authority control, or our own model of academies/free schools. Something like that might begin to weaken the grip that post-code/catchment-based admissions have on the system here. Whenever local authorities try to change catchments and the effect is to move primary schools in very middle class areas into a perceived less good secondary school, it causes utter bedlam with pushy parents at council level and they often end-up capitulating (see Aberdeen City).

[McSpreader]

10 hours ago, banana said:

What we need is a school system separated first by sex, then by brighteness (i.e. like grammar schools), then by religion, then by race, then by sexuality.

So for example you have thick, black, Catholic, straight women at one school; bright, white, Muslim gay men at another school, and so forth.

Awesome !

[vikingTON]

State funding of denominational schools has in fact been one of Scotland's chief success stories in terms of direct government action in the last century. It played a hugely significant role in not just breaking down the widespread, sectarian employment practices in working-class roles (on either side of that divide) but also ending an exclusive, Scottish Protestant culture that used to surround Scotland's old universities: rarely by any conscious policy from the universities, but because that was their only source of higher education students. The fact that religious upbringing has little impact on social or economic outcomes in 21st Century Scotland is a direct legacy of the enormous progress achieved by high-quality denominational schools over several decades. 

Scotland is more than capable of maintaining a pluralist approach to education - so long as there are sufficient taxpayers to fund them and sufficient public demand for school places, denominational schools of any description should exist. That was the liberal basis by which they were first incorporated into the state education system nearly a hundred years ago and there is no good reason to change that approach.