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.

Comprehensives teach 60% to mediocre standards,leave 20% barely literate, and leave 20% underwhelmed. I understand that is a generalisation,and that some "Selective" Comprehensives get their high DC"s achieving to their highest potential. How do you get the bottom 20% able to be , literate enough to hold down employment. Dont the bottom 20% drag down the middle 60% in comprehesives. The time that should be spent on the 60% is spent on the bottom 20%. Maybe the bottom 20% should be in different schools, teaching them the literacy levels needed for employment,not french not chemistry or even history, just literate english and basic common sense maths adding+ subtraction not even division that can be done on a calculator.

Oh, backbeat, you do talk bosh!

So, is the majority view that the best way forward is superselectives for the top 10%, and nearly-comprehensives for everyone else?

seeker ask away .

Where DS goes to school, he really isn't consdiered that bright. He's not even in the top set for some stuff!

In those subjects he seems to be working at a high level GCSE IYSWIM. So they stick vaguely to the curiculum, with lots of tangents. Lots of off piste stuff. I think he might take some exams next Summer (year 10).

In the subjects in which he's most able, he's doing GCSEs now (year 9). Then he will be offered a variety of things to do with his time. New subjects. Continuing with that subject but at a higher level etc.

Bonsoir maths isn't somehting anyone in Casa Wordfactory excels at .

Nit, I think you know very well that the attitude that Word was referring to as cruel, and which I agreed with her was accurately described y that term, was the one where the brightest kids are consigned to doing extension work in their spare time so that they can get an appropriate education. Or the one which says I don't care if they are bored so long as most kids aren't or the one that says being an unpaid TA is a good thing for these kids to be doing.

I went to a comp - and I was one of those kids, too. I didn't do advanced chair throwing. I did do advanced reading under the table, and super advanced sleeping with my eyes open. I was bored, but fine, I was at a great school and I was still bored. But I was fine in some ways (not however in others and I think I'd be a different person had I not been bored out of my skull for those crucial teen years). Others might not be.

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?

They probably go private, parents having believed all the ridiculous bumphf about how a state school can't possibly be good enough for the little darlings.

Every year our local mediocre high school seems to send at least 1 out of 100s up to Oxbridge. But that must be an aberration, or perhaps it counts as a terrible result since it's only about the same as the national average for England. Must be.

Russian, you do know that nobody is saying any of those things, don't you?

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.

That's very interesting.

Wordfactory Being in the top 10% of intellect has nothing to do with an education. Oh, right.

seeker people have said those things on this thread and on all other threads about selective education.

wordfactory -

Well quite. There is no differentiation at all for those top 20%. They either self-extend and ace their exams on their own merits, and then secure themselves a good uni place where they can excel, or they get bogged down by the essentially mainstream standards and difficulties of existing in a classroom with disaffected youth.

And yes, the mainstream classrooms I have been in of the ink chucking types, there are at least 50 % of the class that are being seriously let down and unable to learn because of the antics of the ones that don't give a jot whether they pass or fail any exams, ever. And if this happens year on year until the magic streaming point and options, most of them will probably have become as disaffected with the system.

I was okay at school. Noted to be the brightest. Spent hours in lessons livid because kids took it in turns to see who could make the teacher flee in tears. Fat lot of teaching going on there. And thirty years later I see it happening in classes. Nothing at all has changed.

They haven't you know. That is how some people have interpreted what people say, but I have never seen any regular poster say anything of the sort.

Actually I'm being unfair to DH.

He did an A level in it. Got an A I think. But it was through sweat of the brow not natural talent IYSWIM.

I'd be shocked if DS wants to do it at A level. And DD is like me, can't wait to run away from it .

I think people who have a real gift for it, have different brains. My colleague calls numbers 'my little friends'...hmmmmmm

"Well quite. There is no differentiation at all for those top 20%"

Really?

Oh there is definitely a natural talent attached to maths.

Strangely, in DD's school, in among the maths they do verbal reasoning. I am beginning to suspect that anything whatsoever to do with logic is classed as maths in France. Arts subjects, like French and Philosophy, are "not logical" .

Thank you poface. I would have been in the bottom 20%. In a previous post i have said that children in the bottom 20% must not leave education until they are literate enough for employment,and they must have the opportunity,latter in life for self improvement should they wish.

It concerns me that some seem to feel that say the 'bottom 20%' are some sort of rabid breed to be kept away from their precious 'top 10%' for fear of some terrible damage to them.

Keep the donkeys away from the race horses type attitude. Horrible...

Schools are there to help a child reach a decent level of education, not to enable them to become superhumans. Where there are a minority of children so advanced that they can't survive in the same class as mere mortals then they have additional educational needs and usually get the curriculum adapted for this. But as you know that's not the point of this thread.

You G&T lot have completely derailed this thread and I would quite like to know your reasons for that, I'm not here to listen to your smug bleatings.

Not at all.

I have three gifted kids, two of which have significant disabilities.

To try to teach everyone in the same classroom, with so many different needs, is a nonsense.

And I say that as someone passionately committed to inclusion.

Intellectual ability has very little to do with the issues in many classrooms, where most teaching is compromised by behaviour and discipline.

Whether the behaviour and discipline issues are caused by disaffection or by sn, or by lack of respect, matters, because then you can find the solution.

But it isn't a one -size-fits all.

It just isn't.

I don't like the use of the term G&T as schools in the state system use it for their top 10% even if their top 10% that year happen to be as thick as a plank. University and grammar school IQ level used to be about 115 - 120 and that is probably about right as the indicator of who is bright and who not. 100 is the average and plenty are under 100.

Private school parents have more choice of school which is why make sure your daughter pick high paid careers as it will give them choices for their own children. Plenty of private schools are for chilren who are not very bright. Every area of the Uk will hvae a privare school hardest to get into eg Manchester Grammar and then a range of private schools right down to one who will take lots of children with special needs, low IQs and a good few schools which cannot even fill every place.

If we abolished state schooling and gave parents a £5k a year voucher to spend where they liked we might find the sorts of schools parents want emerge thriving from such a process.

Well, Russians I do think that a lot of the perceived cruelty you're talking about is partly due to interpretation.

I did disagree on the idea that you could effectively teach Latin by pairing children so the brighter one would help - but whilst I think that idea is flawed, I don't agree that it equates to 'let's use them as unpaid TAs'. The poster in question did, to be fair, genuinely think that was a good idea for both concerned.

It is the same with Word's interpretation of responses about her ds - now, saying 'I don't think a whole education system should have at its heart children like that any more than any other kind', is not the same as what Word said, which was that people were saying her son should not have a normal childhood.

This isn't a thread about G&T, top 10%, 'bright' children or 'dull' children. It's about the childrens background and how that is dealt with by schools.

I think giving parents a £5k voucher would indeed give all children an education which is at the appropriate level, but it would not enable children from deprived backgrounds, those with underachieveng or uneducated backgrounds an equal chance to progress or reach their full potential because their potential would be determined by their parents expectations of them.

A £5k voucher idea would be a disastrous one for the most disadvantaged - the only ones to perceive a benefit would be those who'd quite like to educate privately and currently can't afford to.

And actually, I think a selective system is much crueller than a comprehensive one. I won't rehearse again what has happened to my child in a selective system, but how anyone could not think that cruel is beyond me. But enough. Can we just assume that everyone on this thread is not cruel or uncaring, and has the best interests of all children, not just their own, at heart.

But we can't make education policy based on the specific needs of any particular group. We need to find a system that is flexible enough to adapt to anyone.