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.

With twins you have your own little social experiment....

What on earth is your point, beatback? Get the GP's children away from the children of the labourers? Perhaps we could dispense with a test altogether, and just do it by parental occupation?

Hi beat back you are making an assumption based on profession there. IQ does not follow profession. Generally kids do seem to link with like-minded children and not parents. The teachers kids will not better off in a superselectives just because of their parents' jobs. It does not bring the overall levels down.

One of our DC, DSS2, is mostly definitely in the top 10% - he was in the 99th percentile in both French and Maths SATS equivalents in France when he went up to secondary school, having been at an ordinary, albeit socio-economically quite comfortable, state primary. No tutoring or special help or anything.

We quite regularly have to contest with mild depression, lack of engagement and other issues to do with DSS2 not receiving sufficient stimulation or challenging objectives; he works hard and is conscientious and does well, but not as well as he could because no-one is expecting any more of him. And he is at a very good school (by Paris standards). Clever DC need a curriculum that takes them a lot further than DC in the middle of the spectrum. We are very attentive and take him out of school early nearly every year for some kind of enrichment activity in another country that does him good. For all that, he is the one of our DC who is the least well served by his upbringing and education.

This thread has focused so far on how you deal with socio-economic issues which give rise to divergent outcomes. How to make everyone equal in otherwords.

At the risk of going somewhat against the grain, I think an education system that aims at universal equality is part of the problem. Of course education should allow for equal outcomes for people from any social or cultural background (and I do not know how you should achieve this), but it should also embrace the fact that children learn in different ways and at different rates and that some will simply learn more than others. Again, I don't pretend to know how this should be achieved but it would be a start to acknowledge it. It is not possible to achieve an equal educational outcome for all children and never will be.

Continuing against the grain, my experiences have lead me to believe that sometimes it may be appropriate to exclude children with challenging behaviours for the benefit of the majority of the other children but this seems to be counter-cultural and against the exclusive ethos that schools seem required to have. However, sometimes schools simply cannot deal with a child and that child has a significantly negative impact on other children. Clearly this child has a right to an education but one in an environment that can offer support to their behaviours. I am not particularly comfortable with myself for having come to this view, but I struggle to see an alternative.

Lastly, we should drop most of the assessments we currently have. I have taught in a post-graduate context and dh is a professor. We both see that by the time the students reach us they have lost any genuine capacity for learning. Their only focus is on passing exams. If something is not going to be on the exam they have no interest in it. There is no "deep learning" only sufficient surface learning to churn it out in exams. This is not the mark of a good education.

My father is a driver. Did it affect my life chances. Absolutely not. He has a high level of education but got made redundant from engineering when the jobs went oversees. That is too simplistic an analogy.

faded yes indeed, a rather intereting little trial sample.

What I do know first and formost is that DC are not the same (even when they share a womb). What makes one happy, won't necessarily suit the other. A happy childhood can't be rolled out to them both by identical things.

Different schools has been a logistical challenge, I'd be the first to admit, but for the best...

Word- just say that you couldn't use private education. What would you want for your twins?

So comp for one and the selective for the other?

seeker I would put twin one in super selective, and twin two in a comprehensive (a single sex one if I could find it).

In case nobody has noticed this isn't a thread about how to ensure that children with the pushiest parents in the top 10% are catered for in schools, it's about how we ensure that "ALL children regardless of background ability receive a high quality education".

The top 10% already receive high quality education or they wouldn't be the top 10%.

wondering that is utter rubbish.

Being in the top 10% of intellect has nothing to do with an education. Plenty of DC in that category are not receiving a good education for them...

You have completely mised the point the kid who needs selective education is the kid with labourer father,that would enable he/she to achieve the same grades as the gp"s child. The child would be surronded by postive academic influences. Not by negative sterotypes from their family background.

losing definitely.

I think twin one wouldn't be served in comp and it would be wrong to try to shoe horn twin two into SS.

Yellow DD1 is still a bit...understretched...in her very best subjects, if we're being properly honest. But some of that is due to the curriculum. She has, though, been given the equivalent of 'extension tasks' in her two outstanding things (although since they aren't science nobody apart from the teachers involved, who have been magnificent with her, really seems to care much! ;) ) One of the beauties of not being pushed though, is having the time to do all the other stuff she does. And keep her Friends and Trek knowledge as finely honed as is apparently required.

I think that that is overwhelmingly due to the curriculum Russians. Precisely the point of getting these more workaday exams out of the way in Y10 is so that they can get on with the real stuff.

Nit They wouldn't go to either of the kinds of schools we're talking about though, would they word?

I'm not sure if you're talking about Word's kids or mine. But, if it was mine - DD1 goes to a superselective GS, and DS goes to the local comp for which their (currently in special measures) primary is a feeder. It's the best comp in the area in which we live but that is not necessarily saying much, it's not a MN 'good' comp, and it's certainly not the same sort of comp that I went to when I was a kid (my old school has a large number of MN threads devoted to it, because it's fabulous but also catholic). DS has been evaluated as being in the top 2% (as part of the extensive SEN evaluations he has been through) but he is a very different animal to his sisters, no less bright but a different sort of learner, different levels of application, and a different combination of SEN issues. He still might have done alright at the GS but he was adamant that he was not going to try for it. So that was that. He is very happy at his comp and we are. broadly, happy with the education he is getting there.

HTH?

russians one of things that has impressed me about DS school, is that they seem to spot talent in non-maths!!!!

DS best subjects are not maths or science! But I was contacted very quickly to tell me he was being accelerated in the subjects he is good at (if that was what he and we wanted).

No, I was talking about word's children - I thought that was the situation with yours Russian

However, I don't suppose we want to go down the 'your kids this, my kids that' route - it just seemed that losing was getting the impression that word was actually living what she's proposing, or that she would if that system was imposed on the rest of us!

Word, can I ask you something else? I'm sorry if I'm bringing up stuff from another thread, so please feel free not to answer. The way you have described your twin 1 seems to me to indicate that he is much brighter than top 10%. How does his current school manage him being at the top end of the ability range?

wordfactory - I know quite a few DC of two lawyers and maths is rarely their preferred subject!

Is there any research about what happens to these very bright children in the vast majority of the country where there are no super selective schools?

Well nit we don't live in an area with super selectives that aren't private!!!

Well, actually we probably do now as we week in London and weekend at t'other place. In London we could try an SS, but it's all a bit late now.

If I had no cash though, I absolutely would still go for SS for DS and comp for DD. Anthing else just wouldn't be right for either of them!!!

Yellow Let's hope so. After this morning's hospital visit she has spent most of the day putting together an application for a funded Thing which I heard about by chance the other day (and which she should really have been informed about at school). If she gets it (she probably won't though, she isn't actually old enough till next month but we checked and they said she could apply because she will be old enough by the time it starts) then it will probably be something she can use for her extended project - either to actually be it, or to inform it. She is suddenly seeing the possibilities offered by the future. :)

There are a number of options for such children Seeker: they can take advanced chair-throwing, turn to drugs, or share some of their lessons with the dangerous reprobates you tend to find in sixth-form maths classes.

Because one of the things I like about comprehensives is their cruelty in such matters.