If a greedy child who usually eats nine slices of cake suddenly has to surrrender a couple of pieces to someone else is she losing out?
The Telegraph thinks she is.
Today's splash is headlined "Middle class pupils lose out on place at grammars". This is an absurd distortion of a slight change to entrance procedures for some of the 164 grammars that survived the comprehensive cull.
Let's inject a bit of reality here.The idea is not to take places away from anyone, but to ensure that those available are distributed to children with brains rather than children whose parents have money.
Grammar schools offer, as a former teacher once remarked, "the best education money can't buy". Most state primary schools do not, however, routinely teach the logic and deduction skills required to pass the 11+.
Why this should be so has long baffled SubScribe, since these are life skills with a value beyond that particular test - and most children find them fun. (So do adults: go on, you know you can't resist those quizzes that turn up on Facebook, Buzzfeed, Twitter etc).
Parents can, however, compensate for this gap in the curriculum by teaching verbal and non-verbal reasoning at home. There are loads of books on the market. Or they can pay for a tutor.
Pay for a tutor. This is where the problem arises. Some parents send their children to primary schools, often private, with a good record of getting pupils into a grammar; others pay for a tutor to prepare them for the 11+. Some do both.
The result is that children, like athletes, are coached to reach their peak on "match day".
The trouble is that the game doesn't end with the letter that arrives on March 1. It starts there: seven years of hard work lie ahead, and when you are in the company of the brightest of the bright, the pressure is intense. Many of the middle-class children who are now going to "lose out" find themselves struggling because they have been coached to pass the 11+, even though they don't have the natural aptitude the test is supposed to measure.
Universities noticed the same phenomenon several years ago. They found that many upper-middle-class teenagers who had been trained at private schools to pass A levels did not have the critical thinking abilities required to flourish at university. Some universities, such as Bristol, started looking for better grades from students coming from such schools - and grammars - than they required from comprehensive school children.
This is what the grammars are doing now. The philosophy is not borne from a cynical chase for government cash (though they'll be pleased to get it). It comes from a desire to make sure that those who will most benefit from the education on offer have access to it - and that those who won't be able to cope don't claim a valuable place because their parents have cash to splash.
The grammars are looking at various ways to achieve this end. Here in Essex, the 11+ is being redesigned so that it can't be "taught" and catchment areas are being redrawn so that rich pupils from 60 or 80 miles away can't buy their way in.
The doors aren't being closed on talented middle-class children. If they have the brains, they'll get in. And if poorer children don't have the brains, they won't get in.
Schools are not about to sacrifice their academic records to a social readjustment exercise. They want the best in their classrooms and they think that some people are manipulating the system to prevent that.
In Essex, everyone who took the 11+ was given a ranking. There was no pass mark. If a school had 120 places, the first 120 children who chose that school got in. Simple. The schools had no say in the matter. Changes afoot mean that a proportion of places will be reserved for children living within a certain distance of the school.
The proposed changes in the Midlands reported today suggest that there will be a pass mark and that less well-off children who achieve the required level may have an enhanced chance of a place. There is no suggestion that posh kids who come top will be rejected in favour of council estate children on the borderline. There should not be a decline in standards, but an increase.
It may come as a shock to the Telegraph (and to the Mail, which took the same approach to the story, albeit inside), but middle-class people are not cleverer than everyone else just because they have more money.
Case study/confession
Gameoldgirl sent her daughter to a private primary school from which she progressed, without hot-housing or extra tuition, to a grammar. She is now at university.
The local primary school was ideologically opposed to grammar schools and did not teach verbal reasoning or enter pupils for the 11+. The private school down the road did.
Gameoldgirl believes that this is how grammar schools became the preserve of the middle class. If state primaries taught their pupils to think and to reason as well as to read, write and add up, then children of all backgrounds with the necessary natural ability would have access to the excellent education on their doorsteps. Then the grammars really would be reaching - and teaching - the crème de la crème.
The Telegraph thinks she is.
Today's splash is headlined "Middle class pupils lose out on place at grammars". This is an absurd distortion of a slight change to entrance procedures for some of the 164 grammars that survived the comprehensive cull.
Let's inject a bit of reality here.The idea is not to take places away from anyone, but to ensure that those available are distributed to children with brains rather than children whose parents have money.
Grammar schools offer, as a former teacher once remarked, "the best education money can't buy". Most state primary schools do not, however, routinely teach the logic and deduction skills required to pass the 11+.
Why this should be so has long baffled SubScribe, since these are life skills with a value beyond that particular test - and most children find them fun. (So do adults: go on, you know you can't resist those quizzes that turn up on Facebook, Buzzfeed, Twitter etc).
Parents can, however, compensate for this gap in the curriculum by teaching verbal and non-verbal reasoning at home. There are loads of books on the market. Or they can pay for a tutor.
Pay for a tutor. This is where the problem arises. Some parents send their children to primary schools, often private, with a good record of getting pupils into a grammar; others pay for a tutor to prepare them for the 11+. Some do both.
The result is that children, like athletes, are coached to reach their peak on "match day".
The trouble is that the game doesn't end with the letter that arrives on March 1. It starts there: seven years of hard work lie ahead, and when you are in the company of the brightest of the bright, the pressure is intense. Many of the middle-class children who are now going to "lose out" find themselves struggling because they have been coached to pass the 11+, even though they don't have the natural aptitude the test is supposed to measure.
Universities noticed the same phenomenon several years ago. They found that many upper-middle-class teenagers who had been trained at private schools to pass A levels did not have the critical thinking abilities required to flourish at university. Some universities, such as Bristol, started looking for better grades from students coming from such schools - and grammars - than they required from comprehensive school children.
This is what the grammars are doing now. The philosophy is not borne from a cynical chase for government cash (though they'll be pleased to get it). It comes from a desire to make sure that those who will most benefit from the education on offer have access to it - and that those who won't be able to cope don't claim a valuable place because their parents have cash to splash.
The grammars are looking at various ways to achieve this end. Here in Essex, the 11+ is being redesigned so that it can't be "taught" and catchment areas are being redrawn so that rich pupils from 60 or 80 miles away can't buy their way in.
The doors aren't being closed on talented middle-class children. If they have the brains, they'll get in. And if poorer children don't have the brains, they won't get in.
Schools are not about to sacrifice their academic records to a social readjustment exercise. They want the best in their classrooms and they think that some people are manipulating the system to prevent that.
In Essex, everyone who took the 11+ was given a ranking. There was no pass mark. If a school had 120 places, the first 120 children who chose that school got in. Simple. The schools had no say in the matter. Changes afoot mean that a proportion of places will be reserved for children living within a certain distance of the school.
The proposed changes in the Midlands reported today suggest that there will be a pass mark and that less well-off children who achieve the required level may have an enhanced chance of a place. There is no suggestion that posh kids who come top will be rejected in favour of council estate children on the borderline. There should not be a decline in standards, but an increase.
It may come as a shock to the Telegraph (and to the Mail, which took the same approach to the story, albeit inside), but middle-class people are not cleverer than everyone else just because they have more money.
Case study/confession
Gameoldgirl sent her daughter to a private primary school from which she progressed, without hot-housing or extra tuition, to a grammar. She is now at university.
The local primary school was ideologically opposed to grammar schools and did not teach verbal reasoning or enter pupils for the 11+. The private school down the road did.
Gameoldgirl believes that this is how grammar schools became the preserve of the middle class. If state primaries taught their pupils to think and to reason as well as to read, write and add up, then children of all backgrounds with the necessary natural ability would have access to the excellent education on their doorsteps. Then the grammars really would be reaching - and teaching - the crème de la crème.
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