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.

Talkin, are those events arranged through school for ds? Or personally?

The national curriculum,does not help the bottom 20% because it forces the school to teach, subjects not relevant to that group. Why teach these pupils mfl,science , history and geography. How can it be relevant for the bottom 20% to know about "Scafell pike" or the "Tudors". Of much more importance, would be to manage their finances better,and to understand the dangers of "DEBT" and not being forced to use "PAY DAY LOANS" because of a lack of knowledge. These are part of life skills that are more relevant to this group. They should also be getting lessons on apperance for interviews among other things. A question for Seeker is a county level runner with poor english skils, G&T. YOU DO MEAN GIFTED AND TALENTED, NOT GIN AND TONIC BRIGADE DONT YOU. The point is that a county runner might be academically poor, but excels at sport. You would still be select the DC away from the others, so why is that wrong for education. Seeker also says how kids are devastated, when in their minds, they have failed because they were not selected for a certain school. Its not as bad feeling as a 17 year old footballer who has been with a pro club from 11 getting released and told he is not going to be a pro footballer. I know you are all going to say what is the relevance. The relevance is that in life and education you just have to pick yourself up and , do your best and think where your future career lies.

Well maybe it is Bonsoir, but I wouldn't reach that or any other conclusion based on how it's represented on some bits of Mumsnet! G&T threads sometimes make it onto Active Conversations, and when they do they don't seem to me to reflect all that much reality - far more 'is my 2 year old exceptional' than anything else.

Yeah- because somebody in the bottom 20% isn't going to be interested in history or geography or anything, are they? Just shove them in a corner and teach them about pay day loans!

Pay day loans. Riiiight.

And obviously money management and avoiding debt are completely irrelevant to the other 80%!

Ah nit, that's because there's so much animosity towards gifted kids on mn that they've all gone to a safer place to chat. A bit like the playground really, much less the braying G&T brigade nonsense. you wouldn't dare admit your kid was quite clever in rl.

seeker - a relative of mine is in the bottom 20%. She couldn't read until she was 18 and her grasp of numbers is still pretty shake, aged 30. She just about manages independent living and taking care of her family, providing she lives in a close-nit provincial community.

I'm getting excited about beatback's special class-based curriculum. You could teach the top set why it isn't always a good idea to get a veg box, and which farrow and ball paint goes with which kind of room.

Te he....

Well seeker I see you've reverted back to being against SS .

Plus ca change.

Youb ask what the rest of the country who don't have access to them are doing with their top 10%. The answer is nothing in particular.

And no one's come up with any decent suggestions as to what could be done with them in comprehensives. Ceratinly nothing that could rival the education being received by my DS, or yellow and russians DC...

Perhaps it's just better that we should count our blessings. After all our DC are sorted...

But neither has anyone come up with what happens to the 90% left in comprehensives - well, apart from the payday loans idea....

I think that a more targeted, and more direct, implementation of G&T programmes would certainly be a good idea - although disagree that 'nothing in particular' is being done anyway.

Do you think that the top, say 2%, would be ok with the other 8%? Because surely if you took the top 10% of 11 year olds, you're going to get everything from the child who got 5b in Maths at SATS, and the child who's almost ready for a GCSE in it. That 10% still wouldn't be a homegeneous group, would it?

I've actually pretty much given up. I know that none of my dc are reaching their potential, but I don't have the cash to pay for a better service. We don't live anywhere near any schools with bursaries, we are out of the catchment area for the nearest selective (over an hour away) and I have exhausted my relationships with the schools.

Their needs for both sn and academic potential are pretty much being ignored, despite official dx of everything under the sun.

I'm cross with myself for having given up so easily (after only 9 years of liaising with schools lol) but other than give up work, sign up for benefits, and home Ed, there isn't a lot left I can do.

Please can mine move in you with you, word?

It works best if you take a critical mass of top 10%ers...then you apply setting within that.

This is how super selectives work. But you need the numbers.

For example 120 boys start at DS school at 13.

Those 120 will all be somewhere within that 10% I think.

There are between 6 to 8 sets (though sometimes a couple run parallel).

So when you say 'critical mass of top 10%', do you mean actually a smaller group than the top 10%? Because I would have thought the top 10% are the top 10% - unless you had a very, very few schools.

No, I mean all the boys within DS school would have an IQ that put them in the top 10% of IQs nationally.

To get 120 of those type of kids, you need to have a wide catchment area.

Yy, that's going back to superselectives again? So not possible in a comp environment?

Oh, so by top 10% we mean specifically in an IQ test.

So why would that group be less diverse than the population at large?

Our local (well, nearest) takes iq over 125 as their selection criteria, I think. We are too far away to access, as we are rural, but if we were in catchment, I would have at least considered it.

You certainly would! If we were going by IQ (which brings its own problems), I think you'd have to have very few schools to make sure you had the nationally-agreed top 10%. And you could have some geographical areas which sent far more children than others.

I think the other problem is that you couldn't rely on consistency in terms of what the parents of those 10% want - some may like the idea of early exams and more of them, but some might prefer the approach where you do fewer exams and do them at the usual time. I doubt there is one single view and ambition held by all such parents, or an agreement on what they mean by 'pushing' - and indeed, whether they think it's a good thing!

(certainly would need a wide catchment, I mean).

And now we have got the question 'how do we ensure all UK children regardless of background/ability get a good education' down to 'take the national top 10% and see to them first'.

There are two in the closest city. One is a straightforward 'gifted' Ed establishment, with a traditional rigid academic extension mandate. The other is a green learning academy (also for gifted students) but that advocates student-led learning. Very different ethos. (That one is private, the other isn't).

Either way, we are too far away, but presumably there is room for both types of setting in major urban conurbations?

Not at all. It's just one part of the conundrum, and happens to be the one currently under discussion. We could go to discussing special schools next - although generally speaking the discussions around ss have been done to death on the sn board. With exactly the same pros and cons.

Dd2 went to an ss for day release at nursery. It has subsequently been closed down.