A thread to discuss state selective education.

[Hakluyt]

I am conscious that this debate is clogging up other threads in ways which are not helpful and must be annoying for those threads' authors. I tried to channel the debate to a separate thread yesterday, but got it badly wrong. I hope this will work better, and will be allowed to stay.

The principle or idea behind schooling, is to enable pupils access to either employment or further/higher education. Therefore, if a school or system has not achieved either of those "it has failed". The schools your DD attended are seriously at fault if a child who's potential was A and A* grades leaves school without at least C grades in the two "Compulsory" subjects of Maths/English. This is regardless of whether your DD has missed regular schooling though behaviour or depression.

I also agree that no "child" should be written off either academically or in terms of employment because of a failure at 16 to attain C grades in English/ Maths. (like myself). However, sadly the system at the present time does just that "writes" off people either academically or in their career pathway based on "failure" at 16.

Sadly no amount of praise for any school that tackles or helps pupils in difficult circumstances , means anything if the said children are unable to go forward.

"These children are able to get 5 Cs. If most of this group aren't getting them, then the school is not doing its job."

There are 5 schools at the bottom of the league tables in my borough where fewer than 50% of children get 5 Cs.

Every single one of these schools has hugely disproportionate numbers of

• children on FSM
• children who have EAL
• children on school action plus
• children who are 'low achievers'

"Therefore, if a school or system has not achieved either of those "it has failed".

The vast majority of all children who leave school will achieve employment, even those with poor GCSE grades.

"Sadly no amount of praise for any school that tackles or helps pupils in difficult circumstances , means anything if the said children are unable to go forward."

Well, maybe the answer is to identify those children who seem to be hugely resistant to even good teaching in well organised schools, and give them access to the sort of educational environments and resources that the most successful children in the UK have access to. Maybe they could be seeded through top ranking private schools across the UK, and this could be a condition of private schools keeping their charitable status: that they use their expertise where it's most needed, to educate children who will otherwise end up on society's scrapheap. ;-)

"The schools your DD attended are seriously at fault if a child who's potential was A and A* grades leaves school without at least C grades in the two "Compulsory" subjects of Maths/English. This is regardless of whether your DD has missed regular schooling though behaviour or depression."

What do you suggest they should/could have done?

A child who doesn't wish to learn can't be made to learn.

Teachers are teachers, not fecking miracle workers!

Comments like yours make me think that you are completely unconnected with reality. Are you a parent? Do you know anything about teenagers?

mini I don't think independent schools have any expertise in helping children who are highly resistant to education. Why would they?

IMVHO these children should not be in mainstream education where they are ruining the education of the majority of pupils who want to get on and get their 5 GCSEs and making teachers' lives more difficult than necessary.

These children need highly trained staff to help them who can focus on their needs and where those needs are not competing with the majority.

minifingers
TBH if you lived in my city, your DD would have been excluded for a term at a time to the PRU where they would have worked with her to onion peel to the source of the problem.

It is not fair on anybody to have kept her in mainstream school.

No private school would take her as the impact on their other pupils would be unacceptable.

Effective use of PRUs is something that really needs to be built up because it is what can turn around the children who cause the middle class flight

I am Sorry that by saying a system has failed a bright child achieve her potential has led to such "Intense feelings". There is plenty of testimony on here from parents whose children that have struggled that have achieved their potential via PRU or Mainstream education. Your Incinerations about me are "very harsh" and untrue.

I guess I have only come in to contact with hard "working" middle class children, again this is untrue.

Another thing Minifingers without knowing what your DDs problems are and not being a "Professional" how can I possibly have any answers. However, I am correct to say that any child who leaves Primary Education at/near the top of their cohort and leaves Secondary Education not achieving the "required" grades for "progression" has been failed "UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES".

I am correct to say that any child who leaves Primary Education at/near the top of their cohort and leaves Secondary Education not achieving the "required" grades for "progression" has been failed "UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES".

But those reasons may be completely outside the control of the school or the family

thinking of kid in DDs year whose problem made national headlines but he'll bounce back in a year or two

"Another thing Minifingers without knowing what your DDs problems are and not being a "Professional" how can I possibly have any answers. However, I am correct to say that any child who leaves Primary Education at/near the top of their cohort and leaves Secondary Education not achieving the "required" grades for "progression" has been failed "UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES".

My dd's is not ill, has no learning disabilities, and no behavioural problems prior to becoming a teenager and deciding that she didn't want to study.

Really, there is NOTHING anyone can do to make a child who doesn't want to work, work. There just isn't.

It really isn't the fault of her teachers. She's not always even disengaged in lessons - she often enjoys bits of them and doesn't believe she's badly taught. She just doesn't want to do the work and that's really about all there is to it.

Your argument is about as valid as insisting that someone who has an incurable illness has been failed by doctors who have not made them well. Sometimes there isn't a 'cure' for a situation, except, in my dd's case, the passage of time. She'll grow up and most likely stop behaving badly.

"I am Sorry that by saying a system has failed a bright child"

You deserve harsh words.

You assume that children are like machines - that with the right 'treatment' they can simply be 'fixed'. They are not machines, they are individuals.

And I repeat - it's obvious from your words that you have no experience of parenting a teenager.

"It is not fair on anybody to have kept her in mainstream school".

Her school has an internal exclusion unit, where she has spent quite a bit of time.

Our local PRU's are hideous and ineffectual. I know they're not all like that, but every single teacher, youth worker and social worker I've come into contact with has strongly advised me to try to avoid her being sent to one.

DD is a total enigma to everyone. She can be brilliant and can (and sometimes does) produce good work and be great in class. Sadly she can also be a nuisance, and she has never, in 5 years of secondary, done homework. Nobody can get to the bottom of it and as her mother I'm inclined to think it's just a case of a much loved and extremely strong willed child from a stable and supportive family, having a horrendous and dysfunctional adolescence.

.

We have a comprehensive school that selects 10% of its pupils based on an NVR test (which apparently identifies aptitude for technology!) Not in london.
We also have significant inequality when it comes to attending local comprehensives as half of the schools have a catchment area, whereas the others have feeder primaries. So if you move during primary school from the catchment area half of the town to the feeder primary half and don't or can't change your DCs primary school , you can find yourself not in the catchment area or feeder primary for any school.

Why because my children their friends and "peers" have or will meet their academic expectations (without putting extra pressure on teachers or causing disturbances within a classroom environment). Since you are a regular poster I am sure you have seen previous postings about my "circumstances" (children /family) that have caused great "hilarity" with some "nasty" posters on here. If you have not read any of my posts do not keep on saying I have no Teenagers , when clearly I do as is evident from my previous posts about my family and children.

mini from your previous posts it is clear that your DD has been far more than a nuisance in class.

But I completely understand your reluctance at accepting a PRU.

You are choosing to put your own DD and her education above the needs of the others which is what parents tend to do...

TheWordFactory - that's a pretty hateful comment.

I know you've got high achieving children at private schools. What do you know about what it's like to feel scared for your child ending up with NOTHING? To worry about putting a vulnerable and troubled teenage girl with seriously low self-esteem into an educational environment where the vast majority of other students are difficult and alienated teenage boys? How dare you accuse me of acting selfishly in a situation as difficult as the one I've been dealing with with my dd.

I leave it to the school to make important decisions about classroom management. I have never tried to over-ride their discipline policy. If they decided to exclude dd I wouldn't challenge their decision.

In any case, she's just walked in flapping her mock results at me aggressively. Bizarrely (considering the complete lack of work) it seems she's on track for enough passes to get her onto the BTEC she's been accepted for in September, (c's and a handful of 'B's', including science, maths and English), so the school's decision to keep her on was the right one.

"Why because my children their friends and "peers" have or will meet their academic expectations (without putting extra pressure on teachers or causing disturbances within a classroom environment)"

Oh, ok, because you have children who have achieved highly at school and behaved themselves you have some sort of special understanding about what's possible for children who are the complete opposite? I really don't understand. My dd isn't like your children or the children of your friends. Their and your experience of schooling is completely bloody irrelevant. I did a quick search, and saw your post about your Year 11 dd being seen walking around town with some 'undesirable non-grammar school boys' while sipping beer from a can. Is this your idea of challenging teenage behaviour?

And the parents I know who choose selective schools often do so, not because they think that the alternative is educational disaster, but because they are ambitious for their children to get into a top university. How does that motivation compare with mine, which is to keep my dd safe?

Mini if you actually read what I said, instead of over reacting, you would see I said your efforts to keep your DD in mainstream school are entirely understandable.

I suspect most parents would do exactly the same.

But of course it's motivated only by what's good for your DD. It's not remotely good for other DC to have their education disrupted by the few. But it's not your responsibility to consider the cohort. It's your responsibility to consider your own child.

Perhaps then, it might behove you not to endlessly lecture others on the choices they make for their DC. You don't know their lives or the contexts of decisions they've taken.

And I have no idea what post you're talking about! Please link, because I suspect it aint me!

Presumably mini's child would not still be in mainstream classes if her teacher thought her presence was disruptive to others?

And I disagree profoundly that a) it is always an unmitigated bad thing for children to have challenging peers in their classroom and b) that we have no responsibility for the cohort-only for our own child.

Not neccessarily hak

The management teams in some schools have policies whereby they will not give up on a pupil unless the circumstances are extreme.

That doesn't mean the class room teachers, or indeed the other pupils are a. happy about it or b. that it is not affecting their education.

Some schools opperate a policy of endless internal exclusions. It's horrendously disruptive. If I had my way, I'd like to see more schools with attached PRUs, so that disruptive pupils can be removed from lessons for longer periods, but can more easily be re-integrated if and when behaviours settle.

I represented DC in the care system for years, so I've seen a hell of a lot of PRUs.

Some excellent, some dire.

When a local PRU is dire, this often feeds into mainstream school doing anything and everything they can not to send kids there. But obviously this has an impact on the other children.

And I'm still waiting for a link to my supposed post about my DD!

I'd like you to come back on this thread and admit you've made a mistake there mini ...

Mini if you actually read what I said, instead of over reacting, you would see I said your efforts to keep your DD in mainstream school are entirely understandable.

I suspect most parents would do exactly the same.

But of course it's motivated only by what's good for your DD. It's not remotely good for other DC to have their education disrupted by the few. "Perhaps then, it might behove you not to endlessly lecture others on the choices they make"

By 'endlessly lecture other parents' I assume you are referring to me expressing the view that a system where the most privileged, best supported and most able children tend to be selected out of the 'comprehensive' sector and often out of state schools altogether, is disadvantageous to the majority and fundamentally unfair?

Is that what constitutes 'lecturing people on their choices' in your view?

Word would like children like mine cleansed from the classroom.

I take it you'd probably feel the same way about my ds who has Aspergers and whose behaviour, while usually reasonable, can sometimes take up a disproportionate amount of the teacher's time.

Maybe also children with EAL too? They can drag a class down with their regular requests for support and explanations.

mini can I assume then that you didn't make a mistake about my supposed posts? That you just made it up?

Go on. Admit you just told a big fat lie...

I am sure that I can remember the posts about the non grammar school boys and I think I remember the poster, not thewordfactory but somebody else on this thread,