Ambition...what can schools do to foster ambition amongst their pupils?

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I've been asked to take part in a debate about the above and frankly, I'm not sure what I think.

Can schools do much about fostering ambition? Or does it come from within? Or encouraged by the family? Is it even a good thing to have anyway?

What do parents and teachers think about this?

I'm only a parent, but in my mind, ambition is directly linked to expectation. If a child can see that, realistically, it is possible to achive something, and the expectation of it's parents, teachers and peers is that they can achieve it, then they must be more likely to strive towards it...

And it is a good thing, provided that it is realistic.

Is it reasonable to foster ambition? For some children doing a dead end job on a minimum wage is sensible ambition. Not every child is university material.

Unrealistic expectations cause a lot of unhappiness.

But it doesn't have to be academic ambition. It could be ambition to travel, do a job that helps people, do well at a sport, art, garden etc

Celebrating those who go on to sporting excellence
Celebrating those who go on to breed the prize winning bull at the county show
Celebrating those who are the first in their family to go to higher education
Celebrating those who get into top universities
Celebrating those who successfully set up their dream business at 16
Celebrating those whose bands headline local music events

NONE of which can be achieved by bunking school
THAT is what leads to dead end jobs.

There is a huge range of ablity among people. Ambition has to be realistic for the individual concerned.

Some people have an IQ of 80 and prehaps doing the washing up at cafe or stacking shelves at tesco is a reasonable aim. Prehaps someone with more serious learning difficulties, the ambition might just be learn to live independently. For some people a dead end job is a good outcome.

I agree that we should encourage a range of ambitions and look beyond the academic. Even the highly academic child may have some ambitions like having children that should be planned for.

I think schools should aim to maximise the health and happiness of its pupils.

I think it partly comes down to pride in yourself, your sense of self worth. If you think you are a valuable person with a right to take your place in the world then I think you are more ambitious to acheive something (not necessarily academic).

As TalkinPeace says celebrate acheivements. Further recognise what is a personal acheivement for a child. Standing up and saying 3 lines in front of the school is an enormous acheivement for a very shy child but their personal victory may be overshadowed by the all singing all dancing class star performer who gets the kudos.

I worry though that some kids have an over inflated sense of their self worth and have no concept that in education and in the workplace you're often only worth what you produce. Who you are is not going to get you an A grade or get you paid (unless you're a supermodel or something).

fivecandles I think one way to counteract that attitude is reward achievements that come from effort where possible, so to some extent, its the effort that earns the reward rather than the end result.

I was about to say bring in lots of people who can inspire them - whether it be a local sports person, a nurse, etc.. but I think TalkingPeace2 sums it up better.

And what about a 'take your son/daugher/grandson etc.. to work' day?

Hmm... it's very difficult to measure 'effort'. It's also not always fair on kids to tell them they're doing really well when what they produce is of a poor standard compared to others'. I teach students who've not got a Grade C in their GCSE. They're mainly boys and often over confident. Of course, some of its bravado and masking the fact that they may well be insecure but they haven't yet been able to make the link between effort and results. I think part of the problem is that they, like many kids, find it hard to judge their own performance against other people. THis will naturally be harder if you come from a school where there are lots of troubled or poor performing children and standards are low. I increasingly feel that we do students a disservice by not being honest about how poor their work may actually be. I also really notice that kids who've been educated in other countries are often much more realistic about how hard they need to work and about how competitive life is in the real world. Increasingly I think we're too careful about protecting kids' feelings and ultimately this doesn't protect or prepare them at all.

I am NOT in favour of rewarding "effort".
Because it is an artificial construct.
We will reward you because you tried REALLY REALLY hard to make that building safe.
I don't think so.

Every individual has SOMETHING they excel at - find it and encourage it.
I've worked with expert lock pickers, expert yard sweepers, expert hole diggers.

Effort is worth diddly squat in the real world .
AND it means that the good queit kids get rewarded less than the loud mouth fools who decide to be good one day.

Yet research shows that praise for effort is actually more likely to foster a good performance because children do make a link eventually between effort and results.

This is not the same as saying prizes for everyone no matter what. Its about setting realistic though stretching goals for a child and acknowledging the effort put in to achieving that goal. If a child who was on course to get a D works bloody hard and gets a C instead that, for them, may be as much of an achievement as someone elses A grade.

I don't agree that Effort is worth diddly squat in the real world. To be brutal would you prefer that the doctors tried and failed to save a dying person or didn't make the effort because the result was likely to be negative.

One point about bringing in people to inspire them - which is a great idea.

Find people from a similar background to the children if you can. I work in Investment Banking and in the team of 8 I work in one was educated in another country, 6 were privately educated (3 in boarding school) and I went to a comprehensive.

If you are in a state school and you wheel out my privately educated colleagues (all of whom are great) if the kids ask them about their schooling then it is very easy for them to discount my colleagues' advice or experience because "they had it easy / went to a better school etc."

Talkin Peace - weren't they experts because they put effort into what they did?

To encourage ambition I think you do have to explain about effort. It makes the difference between gifted students who don't make it because they couldn't be bothered and mediocre students who do make it because they gave 100%. Too much these days comes at the press of a button. Why put in the effort to learn to play real tennis or footie when you can win it from the sofa on a Wii or online game?

Persistence. : Not giving up. : Keeping trying till you get the
RESULT
yes, effort was put in
but that effort resulted in a tangible outcome
I'm a bone idle straight A student - teachers LOATHE my type!

Ambition I think is having a dream/vision and the will to see it through to fruition, the determination not to be knocked back at the first hurdle. It's about understanding that you can achieve what you want if you are persistent no matter what your family or neighbours or teachers tell you. Hopefully this will be in positive directions.

duchesse the debate is about what schools can do to foster ambition so the idea is that they are promoting it, not squashing it. The question is how.

word I think they need to get practical, not be content with aspirational statements on websites/ from the DfE etc. Tutors need to know their pupils as individuals and differentiate properly to see each pupil gets to the best place he can. That may well not be the place he stands to make most money I guess.

Ambition has to come from the schools as well as the students. At our school, (Scottish industrial town comp) the idea of applying to Oxbridge (for example) was unheard of; not considered either by pupils or teachers or careers service. Not that there weren't capable people there but just not done by "our" kind of people. Then I accepted that was our lot. Now I find it sad and disturbing.

I suppose what I mean is that some schools inadvertantly teach limitation by expectation. The pupil who will rise above social and peer norms and strive for things above and beyond the boundaries, expectation and imagination of the infrastructure they are taught within is rare indeed.

The best schools do this - you could look at the websites of top state schools.

Re applying to Oxbridge - the kids have to take a massive risk; the stakes are high, and the chance of succeeding pretty small for some. Good schools celebrate the act of taking the risk and having a go at it.

As a (former) teacher, start by making sure the teaching staff really do not believe that children cannot achieve because they are poor, refugees, have EAL, some special needs. Sounds simple but many of the teachers I taught alongside justified poor attainment and poor expectation with "well, what do you expect for a child with x/y/z going on?".

Pupils are in classes where they are never expected to find anything difficult- difficulty has all but been eradicated from their academic lives. If the pupils have trouble understanding, it's because the teachers haven't explained it well enough. Teachers are now expected to be bland curriculum deliverers and whilst an awareness of different learning styles and abilities is a wonderful improvement on what went before, I feel that the pupils should be putting in more effort than their teachers in learning things. I trained in 2000 and burnt out in 2003 on 70 hour all singing all dancing weeks trying to entertain my perfectly theoretically able pupils (very few real learning difficulties there but a lot of unwillingness to do anything).

Ofsted reports of the school I was in noted a singular reluctance to do anything among the pupils despite excellent teaching and highly enriched school and extra-curricular day they were receiving. As a staff of 70 we worked our hands to the bone for those first few years of a privately-managed state school yet made very few inroads among the older pupils. The younger age groups were achieving very well despite arriving in the school from their feeder schools below-average (most pupils' reading age around the 9yo mark, very few exceeding their chronological age, about 1-2 per class below 7yo).

Not sure what the solutions are really- you can lead the metaphorical horse to water... I get the impression that such a huge amount comes from the family environment and that trust in the school plays a crucial role.

I'm aware that some parts of that are contradictory and/or make no sense but it's late and I have to be up in 6 hours so will have to wait till morning.

duchesse: 'Teachers are now expected to be bland curriculum deliverers' .

Not where I come from they aren't. Sorry you've had such a bad experience of contemporary education. Mercifully I can't believe for a moment that it's representative.