to think Gifted and Talented in schools should be scrapped?

[MotherGaGa]

DS is 9 and now in year 5. When he was in reception/year 1 he was identified as being G and T in literacy. I was a bit unsure about it at the time because I hate the idea of attaching labels to children and also was worried that it would mean extra pressure on him.

I read lots about how G and T children are often just developmentally ahead of their peers and that eventually the differences even out and most children end up on a similar academic scale. And this is basically what has happened to DS.

The pressure of being labelled G&T has given him really high expectations of himself and he is now getting frustrated because he actually isn't that far ahead of his peers anymore. He gives himself a really hard time when he doesn't get things right. He gets very upset in class and at home and is not enjoying school at all.

Its like this label almost sets children up for a fall. The reality is that very few children are genuinely gifted and talented and to be labelled as such only to struggle to keep it up in later years is very damaging to a childs self esteem

Serendippy Wed 29-Sep-10 11:18:30
"Children should not be told that they are on the G&T register, in the same way that children should not be told they have SEN."

Sounds a bit of a generalisation. Ime lots of children do need to be told they have SEN as it helps them to have an explanation of why they can't do the things their peers can. And the other children need to be told so they can support their friend and accept that the teacher isn't being unfair.

MotherGaGa it got worse with each result; it was very uncomfortable to see/watch.

The child concerned had bullied my DD mercilessly for 2 years.
I have to say that I despised the child for her cruelty.

By the end of the Summer term, my heart was going out to her, and I wanted to just snatch her up and take her home with me.

It is ridiculous and most teachers I know hate it. Can you imagine having to face a parent and tell them - no your child is no longer G and T this year, the reaction is not usually pretty. It causes stress and usually does not help bright children.

Teachers are also put in a position where you have to "invite" certain children to G and T workshops every year. These children are often not at all interested in going.
However, there are always slightly less able but very keen children in the class would love to go and are devastated not to be invited. The invited children often go because the parents say they should. They return and tell us it was boring. The other children in the class are really sad not to have had the chance to go.

I would like to see a system where all children were offered one enrichment activity a year that they can choose because they are interested in it.

It also brings about a situation in which the most able in the class will stay the most able. The most able in creative writing are continually sent on creative writing workshops. Guess who is going to be most able in creative writing next year.

There is much Arse talked on this subject and wildly diverging views in educational circles.

Discreet extension makes the most sense and in extreme cases extra lessons - I mean those kids that go to Oxford age 11.

But day to day it's a minefield in practice. Ds's primary school takes them out to watch the odd sporting event. Arse.

Last year I was involved in the selection procedure, for want of a better phrase, in the school where I volunteer.
I was asked to pick out who in mho was gifted at literacy. Truth? None. Literacy levels are low. So picked a little chap who I think is quite imaginative.
Lord know what happened next, if anything. The class teacher made it clear she thought it was all a farce.

Contrast to my DCs school where we don't have G and T. I just assume the teachers know each child's abilities and interact with them accordingly.

I agree, at ds's school the SENCO spent a whole term word processing the school's G and T policy into a great morass of nonsense diagrams. And moaned about it in gov's meetings.

A better use of his time imho would have been to spend time with some of our kids with special needs who are desperate for some one on one.

Putting aside the G&T labelling why shouldn't the higher achievers get extra enrichment . They have special needs as well it's just at the other end of the spectrum.

Telling Parents that their child is G&T is a no no; given my (albeit limited) experience.

Until I did the school gate thing, I would never have believed that so many parents "live their lives" on the basis of their childrens' achievements. It's unnerving and frankly scary.

Backwardpossum's method is the obvious answer. Teachers that pro-actively educate.

Sadly In the UK, my experience of teaching is that it has been geared to "box-ticking".

Prepare just for SATS ..check

Run around for the Ofsted Report..check

" 2 x Gifted"...check

Gone on a stupid TED day to learn how to learn another stupid way of teaching Maths that the Parents will never understand...check

etc.etc.etc.

A number of friends that are Teachers agree.

My DS1 was identified as G&T (in most areas) when he was in reception. Officially it is the top 1% of pupils in a school. If it wasn't for being on the G&T register at his school, he would get no extension work, and would be left doing classwork in Y4 that he was capable of doing in Y1. While I do agree that the top 1% in one school may be nowhere near the top 1% in another school, but what about dc like my DS1 who has been assessed as being in the top 1% of dc his age nationally, if they have parents like DP and I who are on an income of £16,000 before tax, and cannot afford to give DS1 the extra input at home from extra-curricular activities/ tutoring that other dc in that situation may well get. DS1 would have none of that if he wasn't on the G&T register.

And I'm not 'boasting' about DS1 being G&T, it's impossible to be boastful, when you have 2 other dc that are SN and learning difficulties. AND it pisses me off that DS1 gets more hel than DD/DS2 at primary, the help should be split between the dc who are G&T that need it, AND the SN dc. Which it isn't. Because putting money into G&T makes the school look better, while putting money into SN doesn't necessarily. (rant over)

So, YABU, G&T shouldn't be scrapped, but there should be just as much, if not more, money spent on DC that have SN, especially SN that aren't quite severe enough for a full statement, but are still struggling on SA+.

I think the G&T label is a joke. The number of pupils who get told they are G&T is ridiculously high. G&T should only be used for the rare child who has a talent or gift. Being bright at a subject doesn't make you gifted.

A uni professor told me that although there were always students getting 1st class honours degrees every year, you only got one gifted student about every seven years. It's a shame that schools have totally diluted the meaning of G&T. They're making students believe they are something they're not, and allowing naive parents to believe that their children are better than they are.

Don't think it's any big deal really. DS1 is in reception and has been identified as G&T for reading.

I don't expect this to carry on through school. Others will catch up IMO. As a consequence I haven't actually told him. And as far as I'm aware the school don't say "you're G&T" to him. So being on the register/off the register will mean nothing to him.

However, I do appreciate the effort that is being made to provide texts in school that are appropriate, and to differentiate some of the work. I'd rather expect that to happen anyway, G&T or no, but I do feel more confident that this will be the case now.

Oh and I wouldn't mention it to anyone at the school gates - haven't told any fellow school parents and nor would I.

YANBU

My DD was labelled G&T. She loved it. We didn't think she was G&T. Teacher and Headteacher assured us she was G&T. We let it run for 2 years before her new Yr5 teacher reassessed her and questioned her G&T status. We sent her work for independent assessment by LEA which resulted in HT falsifying an LEA document by pretending to be the LEA staff member who had untaken the assessment for us.

We immediately removed DD to another local school. Knowing nothing at all about the background to our move DD was assessed and placed in a phonics group and given an IEP - this is the area where she herself believed she was G&T!

As a direct result of this DD has totally lost all confidence in herself and almost 12 months on still remembers the days when she was 'labelled' G&T.

Get rid of it - it ruins children IMO and IME.

Don't think children should be told they have 'special' educational needs, makes them stand out. All children should be aware that they may find some things harder than others and that if a teacher is giving more time to one child, it is because they find that particular thing tricky. Telling children they are on the SEN register, especially when they are old enough to really understand, coule make them feel like they have been labelled across the board.

Again it depends how the school approaches it. In the same way that sometimes the top 10% are labelled G&T whether they are or not, some children are labelled SEN when they are just in the bottom maths group.

My DD was identified as G&T (as said above, from dot).

At age 4 she could read fluently, write, do column addition and subtraction.
She could go into a Cambridge museum and identify a Diplodocus from the skeleton; much to the amazement of the Professor hosting the open day.

At age 8 years 2 months she was given a "special" reading test (without my express permission)and her reading age was given as 15 years 4 months. The first I knew was when she came back with "Anne Franke's Diary" in her reading bag. I was fucking furious.

Just because a child can read complex text; it doesn't mean that they can cope with the meaning/emotion of those words.

Conversely, she completely lost all confidence in Maths when she was taught four different mathods in Maths in less than two years. Budding, branching, pairing.

This was difficult for both DP and myself as we both have Math's degrees

I was also identified as "gifted". In my day that meant being put 3 years ahead of my contempories and being identified as a geek with no friends my own age.

I passed exams easily and ended up in a "prestigious" professional career that I hate.

I'm determined that my DD will see education for what it truely is; a wonderful exploration.

It has been a very positive experience for us.

In DDs last school, the children were not told they were on the list, so no labels were attached, but there was a 'writers group' for the top children in each year group (3 form entry, so 90 children per year) and they would go off and learn to do more challenging work. In year 1, DD was learning things like punctuation and using quotation marks and conjunctions properly in her writing.

Then we moved school, and it seems that the current school does nothing like this at all. She has gone from learning to tell the time to within five minutes, to learning to tell the o'clocks at her new school. DD says that occasionally she gets an extra handout, or her worksheet is harder, but that is the extent of it. She no longer gets to really do work that pushes and stretches her in the same way that her old focus groups did. Its a shame, because it was a system that really worked, and even DD misses the fact that she no longer gets to write exciting stories and the like.

Also, a lot of people's objections to it, are often not about the idea itself, but they reject the related issues such as the name, the labeling and so on... but not the G&T programme itself.

I think it should be scrapped for lower school but I do think it's extremely important to identify pupils with potential to get top grades at secondary. So my answer is yes forget it until 11 then review it at 13 for the late developers.

Give these pupils enrichment and educational visits/challenges at Uni etc so that they can see how their education can progress after school. It will catch the potential underachievers especially from less privileged backgrounds.

Loudlass - most G&T kids aren't like yours though. Most of them are just a bit better than average. If I were at school now, I'd be G&T and I'm really not gifted nor particularly talented.

I was listening to a discussion about this on the radio the other day and a woman who really was exceptional had decided to get her daughters to repeat a year at the end of primary school so that when they were in secondary, they were the same age as the rest of their year. I'm so glad that's changed - really didn't do me any favours being a year ahead once I became a teenager

I wish they would call it something different though, I think it's the word 'gifted' that people get their knickers in a twist about. If I see the name 'Mozart' on these threads again I will scream. Gifted doesn't mean genius or relate to one person in seven years at uni etc.

However, can imagine that if they called it bright and talented there would still be uproar.

www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/feb/02/gifted-talented-scrapped-funds-redirected

Didn't G&T get scrapped eight months ago??

yes the title is stupid
but the idea isn't - historically state schools have failed bright children. afaik this scheme was put in place to make schools identify bright children early, and to make sure they didn't let them down.

if DDs school didn't have this scheme, i would probably have sent her private. i know they would push her, scholarships at 7+/11+/exam results etc... are what they are all about.

as someone said on a similar thread last year, they should rename it "quite bright or sporty"

and yes, LublieAva, funding has been withdrawn. DDs school is still doing it though, not that much was ever done, 1 x week for a term, but at least the resource is there, and someone to talk to about behavioural/educational issues which i have found invaluable.