GFTU BGCM Minutes 2017

not be 20% but whatever that is. Good teaching alone cannot compensate for

the absence of enrichment which a fully comprehensive cohort contributes to

collective achievement.

The Government should be focusing on existing underperforming schools and

ensuring every institution can provide a good education for all its students. The

addition of grammar schools to the menu is likely to exacerbate the problems.

It can be no coincidence that the development of grammar schools comes at

the same time as cuts to school budgets which will hit the schools with the

poorest intake and thus undermining the education of those children, providing

less opportunity for a broad and balanced curriculum, for adequate numbers of

teachers and thus sharpening social inequality. More money is likely to be

syphoned off to support the grammar school system, as was the case with

Gove’s academies and free school programme.

The nature or the ethos of selective schools (i.e. grammar schools) is to

segregate children in a way which will characterise the nature of their academic

careers which will stay with them for a lifetime. It is potentially harmful to

attempt to accurately assess a child’s individual overall ability at age 11,

especially via one of testing. Children mature at different ages and many

entering year 6 at the beginning of a school year in September with an early

birthday are significantly advantaged in terms of age when taking a test or

exam in the spring and summer term. Passing or failing a test at 11 does not

accurately predict an individual’s potential and the impact of failing may have

significantly deleterious impacts on their lifetime choices and chances. There

may be many of us in this room who, indeed, passed or failed, one or the other,

their 11 plus examination and did or did not go to grammar schools, but we

have to remember that those who did attend grammar schools did so at the

expense of others.

The impact of failing can have personal costs as well as costs for society.

Eleven is a very early age to be told you are a failure and think how much

worse for those children whose parents invested in tutors, special homes in

special areas, but did not become part of that winning group. The Government

59