How do we ensure all UK children regardless of back ground/ability receive high quality education?

[happygardening]

Contrary to what some may think I'm not anti state ed and as someone who works with disadvantaged children it really matters to me that they receive a high quality broad education and they fulfil their potential. But sadly in many cases they are not (there are I know exceptions) frequently their parents cannot assist them for a variety of reasons.
Is there an answer to this problem or are they condemned by their circumstances which are not of their own making to remain at the bottom of the heap?
No judgey DM comments please.

Oh Word, that is silly. Assuming I am one of the 'guys' who isn't interested in the top 10%. A 'normal childhood' sounded to me like what the child described on the other thread was having: doing maths with the sixth form was 'normal' for him, and he and his parents were happy with it - just and your ds and his parents are happy with the way things are working out for him.

It is ridiculously reductive and emotive to say that anyone is saying children shouldn't have a 'normal childhood', and even sillier to say that anyone is being 'cruel'.

One can care about, and even be the parent of, a child in the top 10% without necessarily thinking the same way about how he or she should be educated as everyone else.

Out of interest Yellow you are advocating secondary moderns. Would your dcs be going and have you experience of people who spent their lives feeling failures because they failed the 11+. Bring it on and watch tutoring go through the roof!

The top 10% are those that have an IQ of 120 and above. Within that top 10% there is a huge range - IQs of 140 aren't that rare (1 in every couple of hundred people) and even IQs of 150 are pretty common in selective schools.

Just as, not and sorry.

I'm not sure that DC that are able to outperform the curriculum by a substantial margin but not given the opportunity to do so have any useful impact on the rest of the group.

Coming late to this thread, only read first and last page, here is my tuppenceworth.

The sooner schools accept that parents won't or can't help at home, the better. Young children have a long school day as it is and all their learning should come from school within the school day and older children should be able to do their homework at school and have staff to help them if necessary. My dd's school has this but only for selected children. It works very well.

The disadvantaged are suffering from social segregation and that has created a massive imbalance in schools. This can be addressed by ensuring lottery placements where schools are oversubscribed.

Disadvantaged children will benefit from having vocational courses valued as highly as academic courses. A decent minimum wage based on qualifications will help students appreciate that their courses have value and that they are valued. Why do a 'business management' course when all it gets you is a job in McD's for the same wage as the completely unskilled untrained person?

All of this will hurt the advantaged, their house prices will go down, they will have to pay tradespeople more money, they will not gain an advantage by spending £££s on private tutors, because all children will have the equivalent, for free, in school.

Well nit I think you just see what you wanna see and hear what you wanna hear!

You liked the sound of that kid doing maths with students older than him cos it fitted with your view of comprehnsive education.

Yes every time posters come on these threads and talk about themselves or their own DC (as opposed to some vague kid they once knew in a comp) you dismiss everything we say. Absolutely everything!!!!!

So I'm sorry, but that to me smacks of not caring and frankly it is effing cruel!

That's a different kind of top 10% then, surely Bonsoir? I had been basing my responses on the top 10% of children out of the 100% of them in the specified area, and I think many of us were thinking on those lines.

My Dcs both get the coach to school with children from reception to sixth form. This is for an hour a day. Is this cruel?? What about dcs doing music and extra curricular stuff with older kids. Is that inappropriate?

losing a school that has some of the top 10% taken away (I say some because not all will want to go to a super selective) will not be a secondary modern!

losing - why is the flip side to keeping the 10% , not keeping the 90% happy. I don't understand that argument.

.. keeping the 10% happy

I grew up under the full grammar system so of course I know people who went to secondary moderns. I'm quite happy to advocate the return of secondary moderns though obviously life has moved on and plenty of improvements and adaptations should be made. Surely we all fail and succeed at different things? Why does it matter? I think the overall sum of happiness and productivity would be met by re-introducing vocational schools instead of all kids being straitjacketed into one system and pretty much everyone at either end losing out.

Well, I take offense at the idea that I don't care or am cruel.

I have no idea whether I'd like, or any putative maths whizz child of mine, would like that set-up, but the child described did and all concerned were happy. WHy does that concern you so much?

I do not think I have dismissed anyone's child - though I'm not drowning in examples of anyone engaging with anything I've said about my own, or my children's experiences (or perhaps we are the 'vague kids', I dunno). I'm sorry if I've seemed dismissive.

Everything I think about education is based on caring! It is not about my children. I presume we would all say the same thing - but this caring takes different forms, no? I still haven't seen you explain how the caring will extend to those children who don't pass a test if selective education were extended.

losing going on a coach is a hell of a lot different to sitting with them in maths/english/science/french etc!

Why would you think a 13 year old would feel comfortable with that? Why would you think it a good idea?

Also, 17/18 year olds of course are devoting far more time to a subject than a 13 year old could, so how on earth could that work? How could you juggle that?

word Exactly. Cruel is a very good word. It's also worth noting that despite government manipulated stats, IME a significant non trivial proportion of the top 10% have some SEN conditions. Which bring their own challenges to the education environment.

"seeker you claim not to be able to ubnderstand this? Really? Would you be happy for that t happen to your DS? I mean it would easily solve the prolem of his being at the top of his year, no?"

It doesn't need to happen at the moment. There is a wide range of abilities in his set, and so far the whole set is doing the same work but with different expectations. But if it needs to happen in the future, I wouldn't mind at all. I don't think it's good for children to be completely out of year, but I can't see a problem with him working with a higher year in English, for example, or Spanish.

nit well why not try to imagine yourself a 13 year old. Or your DD when she was 13! It's not that big a stretch surely?

Or why not actually listen to what yellow or russians or happy have to say about their DC?

I have listened to what you have said about your DC. They are happy in comp. Good. Excellent. I'm pleased. Can you really really not even consider that might not work for all bright DC?

And as for the remaining 90%, I have repeatedly said I don't think it will have a detrimental impact. I keep asking what it is that these magical DC do?

seeker well now imgine it for quiet a few subjects.

I accept the system is going too far trying to get all children to go the academic route but selection at 11 does not solve this issue as it leads to the more switched on parent making damn sure their dcs get into grammar whether they deserve to or not. It also assumes that all those who have a high IQ are not going to prefer the vocational route or that they will have the work ethic to persevere at a grammar. These traits are often still not apparent at 11. It does not allow for the Maths whizz who is limited in English and the kids who is brilliant at English and then because of that good at history, politics and the associated subjects. You are advocating that that child should be best suited in a vocational environment. Why?

Well, I am just about used to having bought a leafy house for a billion pounds which means I'm able to think there are good things about my children's school.
And to being wilfully blind to all the terrible things about state schools - which, apparently, is better evidenced by saying good things about them than it is by opting out of the system altogether
I'm used to being willing to settle for less, for accepting that my children will sink to the middle, blah blah blah.

I am not used to being 'effing cruel' in my belief that it would be better for children not to be segregated by wealth or intelligence, and I disagree that that is 'a good word' for anything I've ever said on the subject.

I need a bloody break!

A child in a school catering for 90% of the population is not going to be in a solely vocational environment.

I am sorry Word but I really do not see the difference between sitting on a coach and sitting in a Maths, English, French group. What is the difference and I was only talking one year so it would be Ann example a child born in September sitting with a child born in Feb of the same year. What is so magical about a September cut off making subjects within different year groups such a cruel concept?

Well nit when you come up with anything better than sticking these kids in the top set or making them study with the A level students (bearing in mind lots of schools don't even have a sixth form)...then let me know, and I'll reassess!

I was responding to Yellowtip: I think the overall sum of happiness and productivity would be met by re-introducing vocational schools

A 'vocational school' sounds heavily geared toward the vocational to me.