Why aren't there schools for G and T children?

[DiracGirl]

After being told that our my nephew's abilities out stripped those of his class mates my sister began to panic.
There was no way she could afford the fees of an independent school and we don't live in the kind of place that offers a choice in state school.
Many, and there are many, of the independent schools in the area offer little in the way of help and none of them provide grants to 5 year olds.
This angers me.
Why isn't there...something!
These children are our future scientists, doctors, inventors and, well, anything they want really.
It's about time the government realised, these children have special needs too. They deserve a right to a standard of education comparable with their intelligence.
If you put a child with the classic idea of special needs in a class of "ordinary" children and ignored them there would be outrage. So why is it acceptable to waste the talents of the gifted?
Should a child with intelligence greater than that of his or her peers be left to rot in a dull stupor whilst the rest catch up??
I've spent hours trawling the Internet. ISC, Mensa, direct gov, the lot. All I can find is a poor child gets a nod of appreciation for making the government stats look good at exam time and not much else.
I know there are those of you who scoff and say "a bright child will do well anywhere!" but is that the best we can offer...do well???
How about getting the best from them? Or helping them grow to THEIR full potential? Challanging them?
Is it so much to ask?
Enrichment classes? A few hours to feel segregated? To be labelled a swat, geek or freak?
I say give them an a place they can be given the education they need, with like minded children and well trained staff that can cope.
There are a few gifted children in my family and I'm sure I'll be having the same rant in a 2 years when DS is in the same position, although I have planned for this contingency and have looked into independent schooling (13 years on value baked beans) but I only have one child, my sister has three. I don't need to show you the maths to explain a lottery win is in order.

ha ha ha ha.

I'm trying to decide what fruit or vegetable my kids are. Possibly mare's tail.

Did the teacher really say she couldn't teach this 5 year old? Goodness me.

plant or veg, sorry.

And wasn't WC's mother really horrible and he didn't get on with her terribly well at all?

Here's a thought.

Do average developers catch up with early developers because development isn't linear - and that's what we should expect?

Or do the average developers catch up and overtake, because the early developers were held back, got bored or missed their 'window of opportunity' to speed ahead?

Our state education system has a very high 'attrition rate' for 'at one time' bright pupils. In the independent sector it's not nearly so high.

Worth pondering why that might be.....

I think the national curriculum and SATs makes the extension of the very bright difficult particularly at primary age. I remember so much more flexibility at my 70s primary school - the extra hard maths group , in depth projects on topics of your choice, reading books specially chosen by the teacher and having to write a detailed review of them (I wrote a very extensive review of Charlie and the Chocolate factory at 6 not realising at the time that the teacher was singling me out for more challenging work).

In contrast DD2 was made to sit through an entire year of year 6 Maths that she had already covered in earlier years because the school said SATs preparation was too important to do any other work .

The removal of year 9 SATs has already had a positive effect and given more flexibility in secondary schools. Perhaps the biggest advantage of private schools is that they aren't tied to the national curriculum and so can have a more tailored approach.

jackstarb I think (though am prepared to be corrected) that the G&T programme was introduced in order to follow those children who were considered bright in the early years and ensure they didn't somehow drop off their achievement.

I'm sorry - I do not believe that any school said that a 5 year old was too clever for them to teach.

The primary school where my friend's DS attended didn't say that baldly, but his reception teacher did feel he needed to be put up a year, and admitted that wasn't the answer.

Indeed it wasn't the answer.

The school felt that by seven or eight he needed the stimulation and interaction with highly intelligent people.
He became very depressed. Awful to see, actually .

That said, he is a very extreme case.

Most children would not be remotely in his category, which is why the label gifted is misleading no?

Yes I agree that the label is the problem Litchick as most people have an idea of what they think "gifted" involves and it usually refers to the upper extreme.

Litchick - I think the implementation was a bit hit and miss. And in my local primaries it didn't really start until year 5.

Not that I was a fan of the idea, anyway.

In my last post I was pointing out that dismissing brighter pupils as just an 'early developer' might not always be fair.

I'd advise the OP's sister to follow her instincts and go down the prep bursary or even tutor route if she feels her ds is being held back.

Webwiz - you are probably right that fitting in with NC and SATS could hold back very bright dc's.

Once anyone is over an IQ of 130, there is no difference in their achievement outcomes. So whether you have an IQ of 180 or 130, the outcomes will statistically be the same.

Its all a big hoo ha about not a lot. This term 'gifted' and this obsession on here to only talk about really really really bright children ("the mn truly gifted category") is a red herring. Those with an IQ of over 130 will do better, but there is no difference in outcome from 130 - 180. Also, it is thought that schooling will only ever add 10 points on IQ - but that could be either way i.e. down as well as up.

Both my DSs are on the G&T register, and obviously they will go on to rule the world, but this has nothing to do with their names appearing on a subjective and irrelevant register while they are under 11 and occasionally being given an extra sheet of work to complete.

Dh is gifted at maths, and he did find primary school very unchallenging. When he was in 4th year juniors (Y6) he finished every maths resource in the school. The teacher told him to go back to the beginning of the book and start again.

He is in his mid 40's, and things have changed. Teachers are now trained with how to deal with gifted children. Some are better than others.

Repeating the maths work annoyed dh, but it has not held him back. He still went on do a degree in maths. He works as an IT/management consultant, and always says that his people skills have contributed more to his success than his techie skills.

Would he be as good with people if he had been removed from his peers (and possibly his family) and placed in a school for the gifted?

"No, he wouldn't"

"Would he be as good with people if he had been removed from his peers (and possibly his family) and placed in a school for the gifted?"

Ignoring the 'removed from his family' bit - we don't live in the 1970's USSR you know. - Why are we stereotyping very bright dc's as 'social inadequates'? In my experience bright people are as varied in personality types as 'regular people'. In fact they are regular people!

Fascinating thread . . . I have little to add other than that a school's ability to adjust what they are doing to suit the level of an advanced, early-developed or gifted child will vary greatly from school to school and teacher to teacher. Some situations would be fine, with teachers quite able to discern the need for and provide more advanced maths or reading materials (which are the only subjects that are 'levelled" in any real sense.) Other's won't be able to do so for a variety of reasons. For example, in one of our local primaries they bring in a man (!?!) just to teach maths. There would be little flexibility in that situation to address the needs of a student with more advanced learning requirements.

I went through what was considered a G&T programme in late primary, and I remember those sessions being a welcome relief from the normal daily fare of sitting in the front of class bored to tears as my classmates were perpetually disciplined.

swallowed fly the governments have been doing that deferred gratification trick with us for decades - it's called pensions I believe. They promised you two biscuits if you didn't eat the first one and then they took both of them away IYSWIM

Oh my ds loves his G&T stretch sessions, no doubt about that, he gets to do fun and off the wall stuff that he really enjoys. It's just that the evidence from the States, where they do segregate at 5 in many areas (even into different schools) is that if you look at how well the children do in comparison to their early results the children in the gifted streams are not doing that much better than those that are not - that is a large number of the children who were assessed as 'ordinary' are doing better than those who were assessed as 'gifted' so the test used really wasn't very effective at predicting the future. Perhaps not surprising as the tests weren't developed to do that and are said not to be reliable until about 11 or so. Children's brains are still undergoing a lot of development. Anyway if you are interested in this I can really recommend NurtureShock, it's a very interesting (and counterintuitive) book.

I can't read the whole thread. My head would explode.

But can I say my ds2 is at a special school because he could not function in a standard one - not to maximize his potential but so that he can be educated.

And sn support is to allow a child to access the curriculum, not to give them additional learning.

So the premis that children who are g& t should be given special schools ' like those with sn' misses the point that it is not adding to standard education. It is accessing it.

If a child who is g&t can access the curriculum then they do not have the same need for a separate education as a child with sn.
If it is about a better education then that is a different issue.

If their g&t thingy means they can't access the curriculum then there may be a case.
In my own little head this makes sense. I may be alone though

Haven't read the whole thread, but has anyone mentioned independent school scholarships for those voted in different ares?

nooka - I will look up nurtureshock, thanks. Have you a link to the research you mention - it sounds interesting. Do you know if they compared the children in the 'selection' schools with pupils in 'mixed ability' schools?

I'd be particulary interested in how the 'ordinary' pupils did compared with their peers in mixed schools.

Obviously, 5 years old is too young for a reliable measure of academic potential - yet even in our primary schools dc's compare themselves to their peers (not helped by ability group tables). So very quickly dc's can label themselves as 'clever' or not clever - even at 5 years old.

This is particularly detrimental to the 'younger in year' dc's - who (statistically) under-perform right through to GCSE.

Maybe - the absence of 'cleverer' pupils to be compared with enabled the bright (yet labelled ordinary) pupils to emerge?

Pagwatch - makes perfect sense - well said!

Ha!
DS (yr4) was G and T, up until 5 months ago when he changed schools - now he isn't G and T anymore!!

In fact at the parents night recently, one of the teachers laughingly said about his grades..."of course we never give out grade 1's, unless the child is really G and T"!!! Meaning that only a really outstanding once-in-a-life-time type of child would get a grade 1!! I nearly laughed and said that my ds was g and t according to his last school!
This whole G and T tag really doesn't mean much.

swallowed my friend's ds became very depressed. Horrible to see in an under eleven.

He just had all these things that he wanted, nay needed to discuss and little outlet.