To think extra lessons for top students isn’t fair?

[Beepboobeep]

My DD’s state primary school has a “top maths club” and “great writers club” for the top performing students in yr 5 and 6 held outside of school hours. There is no charge for this - so it’s free childcare and free tutoring. You have to be invited. This has been running since the second week of the school year and is restarting on the first day of this half term.

By contrast, my dyslexic DD is in a group for those needing more support in writing, also outside of school hours. But they only managed 2 sessions last year and it hasn’t started back up this year. She gets ad hoc in school support; where it happens she misses other lessons that aren’t then caught up on, putting her further behind in the those.

I appreciate these children deserve challenging, but surely that could be done in class with different work and the teacher’s out of hours time, if available, used to help those struggling?

Is this even allowed in a state primary?

It’s actually a problem that the children are given additional work instead of alternative work at an appropriate level. They shouldn’t have to spend extra time doing schoolwork just to get appropriate provision.

Not providing work at the right level causes damage. Students don’t learn to develop study skllls. Eventually everyone hits a wall with subject matter that they must actually spend time figuring out. If everything has been ridiculously easy and the student never learned how to learn, they are now suddenly adrift, but at a high level.

I am not sure what relevance you being an 'ex-teacher' is, if anything it confirms that you are understanding of how education is now delivered is our of date. My Mum is a retired teacher but her experience is not relatable to the current state of affairs in the classroom. There is a difference between the theory of teaching and what is being delivered in classrooms up and down the country, frankly your notion of what is happening in the classroom is, 'wishful thinking'! Equally, the integration of LLMs in education settings has introduced even more problems for the attainment of equitable delivery as there is simply not the knowledge or understanding by teachers of the risks.

That should read, " your understanding of how education is now delivered is out of date." Not 👆

I dont agree. I have a severely dyslexic child, who attended a dyslexic specialist school for a time. The head of English told me that an adult functioning literacy age is about 8 1/2 years. So they put everything into getting their (at this time secondary school age) students to that minimum level. That meant those students could function in society, contribute, work, gain some quals. It is better for us as a society to have adults contributing. The bright students you would support as a priority are already at that minimum level, and most probably will find ways to stretch themselves.

I can see it from both sides, one of my children was consistently forgotten about in class because he was one of the highest achievers.
He completed his work and then would help other children, when I asked the teacher if he could be set extra work he explained that without a TA there would be no one to explain the extra tasks to him.

The teacher said that was achievement level within the class that spanned about 5 years, the ones who were below the expected level who he had to work closely with once the work was set, the ones who were at the expected level who could crack on with the tasks once they had been explained and then some like mine who were working above where they should be, knew how to do the task and then finished it in minutes.
The ones that finished the task then went to help anyone that still needed further explanation/examples in the middle group whilst the teacher stayed with the ones struggling.
My other son was in the group of children that needed high input from the teacher when he was in primary and really struggled, there wasn’t additional help outside of normal classes particularly but I knew the teacher had to spend a lot of time with that group which meant any children who were above expected in that class probably were on the same situation as my other Son and left to their own devices.

I would have loved it if my son had been able to do extra harder work after school in a writers club because it would have made up from some of the lack of input during the school day.

Like you we paid for tutoring for the child that was struggling, he is now flying at the local school after finding his stride in secondary and our other son attends a grammar school.

Schools are between are a rock and hard place and despite having worked in them
previously I was quite taken aback when the teacher told me quite how many years were being spanned attainment wise within one class without a TA as I assumed (wrongly) that most classes still had a TA available to help.

There is a lot of tuition online now

This particular school is in a grammar area, which makes it slightly different to the vast majority of school areas.

I actually can't believe anyone is spending £2k a month on clubs, £500 a week, allowing for 2 days off thats £100 a day, even if its £30 an hour thats about 3 hours a day doing stuff.

When does the kid get to chill out?

The OP doesn't paint a picture of kids on FSM or disadvantaged in any way at all being members of clubs titled, 'The Top Maths Club's and 'The Top Writer's Club's. It's just a nonsense to suggest this is a) equivalent to running a choir club for example b) that it isn't a cynical attempt to push as many children as they think is realistic into obtaining a place at the grammar schools.

Yup my DD is left to it with worksheets, her teacher is great, no issues with her at all, theres only so much she can do inside the classroom. Her little group don’t get anywhere near the one to one children who are struggling get all the way through the school day.

On the plus side they get on with things independently on the downside it isn’t possible to provide proper stretch especially since within that group you have different skills that need individual attention (one is an excellent writer, one is a little maths head etc ).

I think it’s amazing that teachers are giving up their time to provide this kind of thing for the more able students. My Dd’s school is moving towards offering similar which I’m grateful for.

Also Op you are saying those children are only more able due to tutoring but you then say you also spend an extraordinary amount on tutoring yourself, so it can’t just be the tutoring making them more able can it?

It's not going to make any difference to those who apparently receive lots of tuition. Would she necessarily know whether some of those pupils had free school meals at some point?

Thats exactly it, its about pushing as many kids as possible into the Grammar school.

And I get the feeling if Ops kid was going to make the grade for grammar she probably wouldn't be looking at private school.

In case people are interested, some of the organisations doing work on maths circles for students who don’t have access to tutoring/extension material:

axiom
https://axiommaths.com/

brilliant (Simon singh)
https://parallel.org.uk/info/students

i was briefly involved with parallel and the funding requirements were that one in every three participants had to be pupil premium.

Op wouldn’t know.

schools go to quite a lot of effort to make sure fsm kids don’t stand out socially these days.

in addition pupil premium covers significantly more than fsm. Plus it’s kids that have had fsm in the last six years which she definitely wouldn’t know.

we didn’t call our pp clubs “special club for poor kids” fgs.

Not necessarily, they may not be prepping for the 11+. I was in a mini group at school where we would have “lessons” on maths etc, it was often stuff like the etymology of decimal etc. useless for a maths exam, really interesting as a kid.

It’s probably broadening rather than accelerating.

It's important to challenge the more academic kids and strive for excellence. Special educational needs occur at both ends of the spectrum so I hope both are addressed.

I know what schools do with that data, I worked in it but in a totally different field to teaching, have exited now (thank goodness) as I don't have young kids to be around for. I know what the terminology is and of course they don't advertise it to all and sundry but your naive if you think other kids and parents especially at the school gates in primary school don't have a clue about other socio-economic background! The OP seems to know of the children in the group and then attending summer camps that are expensive, in certain schools in the country you won't even get more than one sometimes no children with any challenging circumstances. The idea that you have a whole class load of G&T pupils but meeting the definition of deprived and/or disadvantaged in for example an expensive part of Surrey, is laughable and complete fiction!

@Beepboobeep Can't believe some of the posters on here. Or maybe they didn't read your updates.

The school is supposed to give extra support to those struggling in maths and English. Only 2 sessions were given and they then stopped because there weren't any funds/teachers available. Instead they start an after school activity for gifted children.

This is not a private school but a state school so should have some ethical guidelines. I have 2 ds ; one who struggles and one who is gifted. I would def think my ds who struggles should be the priority of a state school. Gifted kids are very easy to challenge outside of school- they don't need more teacher support.

Yanbu- contact the local newspaper.

That should read, 'you're' not 'your' obviously!

True but it does seem like a bit of a coincidence if they are also in a grammar school area. Seems unlikely that all pupils receive private tuition and possible these classes are to increase numbers of those getting into grammar school.

Again, why is a class of high achievers deemed to have special needs?

Writing as a STEM academic in an excellent School I am appalled by your conceptualisation of ‘struggling kids who are frankly not going to amount to much.’ I can assure you that a number of Nobel laureates, Fields medallists and other STEM practitioners of their calibre would likely be diagnosed with SEN today and may have benefitted from early intervention. Some of our top students are ND.

The larger point is that all children deserve a good, appropriate education. It is just as wrong to sacrifice OP’s DD to the needs of the G&T as vice versa. The problem is that this is a very tall order.

BTW, you say OP should seek external support for her DD as you have done. Did you miss the bit where she discusses paying £2000/month for this?

I have not RTFT yet, so I apologise if I am flogging a dead horse.

This is fantastic, thank you!

Just imagine what a shit film “Billy Elliot” would have been if the teacher saw how talented Billy was but instead of offering him private tutoring gave everyone else and extra hour instead….

do you see?

Please explain why you think it isn’t?

Their needs are different to the norm, thus special. No?

Where has OP ever implied that tutoring is a contributing factor to the abilities of the more able children?

She has only argued, consistently, for parity f instructional opportunity. Sounds reasonable to me, and personal circs would lean me towards favouring opportunities for the G&T.

I write as an academic who believes in using tutoring cautiously. To keep up at grade level or with a university course, definitely. To get back on your feet, by all means.

To gain an advantage for the next level? My family have never needed it, and in my professional life I have seen too many land above their comfort zones and fail to thrive, sometimes with major health consequences.