Equality of Outcome: why?

[mmzz]

I genuinely don't understand why anyone would believe that equality of outcome is what schools should be optimising on. To me, the fair thing is equality of opportunity.
Please can some tell me why equality of outcome is fairer or better in any way, even economically for the country?
Who does it help? Who does it hinder? Is that fair or good?

How do you know that he is not making progress the rest of the time? Have you analysed his work against the national curriculum goals? If you think he is not making progress, and the school should have evidence one way or another through their progress tracking software, then speak to the Head of Maths.

All children should make progress. Sometimes children plateau and sometimes they steam ahead. The school must track progress and let you know what his progress looks like. So ask them rather than assume he hasn't made progress.

The national curriculum clearly requires children to be taught new things. Have you seen the curriculum that applies to your DS? Does he get "mastery" topics once he needs more advanced work in the topic? If not, ask why not? I think you are making very sweeping generalisations without understanding the curriculum and how progress without levels is measured. I would get up to speed with this and ask the school for info.

If he doesn't learn anything new and just repeats what he can already do, then he's not making progress.
I know what's in the GCSE curriculum and there's not much he doesn't know. Everytime he is shown something new, he gets it quickly.
I have tested this myself, by showing him one or two things and its true: he does. He asks me things from time to time - like the other day about proving the sine rule - halfway through my explanation (provided verbally as we were in the car - so no graphs etc), he'd got it and finished my explanation for me. He just picks logical stuff up very quickly.

The HoD is his teacher, unfortunately. All I could do is appeal to the SLT. I've been very tempted sometimes, but DS doesn't like to cause a fuss - this is also the reason why the teacher has got away with things for so long. He asks me not to, and DH shakes his head and say "look let's just get him out of there".

about tracking progress - its a question of what you are testing.

Taken to an extreme, you could test a five year old genius who could get an A* at GCSE tomorrow on whether they know their number bonds up to 20. They woudl get 100% and then the following year, you could test again this time asking about the 2x table and again they'd get 100%. In the same way you could keep going and keep showing progress as far as the form filling is concerned.
You'd be able to demonstrate progress to an Ofsted inspector but it wouldn't really be progress, would it?

DS is not a genius, but he's never been tested to find how much he knows and he always get near perfect scores on any test. I don't think there is anything left on GCSE maths that he either can't already do - I'd have to check - but officially the teacher will keep on introducing new material until March and making the class practice and practice it over and over again.

One last example and then i'll stop - the teacher has analysed what each student can't do and set them some online work to complete by next month for their weakness. DS has been given every single exercise, not a subset (because there are no weakness when you get near perfect scores every time).

Its supposed to be hours and hours of work, but DS calculated that he can do 5 questions per minute and so it will take him 2 hours to do the lot. He thinks its a waste of time, but he does 5 mins here and there just to get it done.

Oops! I have just realised I'm cross posting between threads today.

Anyway, suffice to say i know there's no progress

Can't think why he hasn't already taken the exam and sailed into A level then. He should be stretched and doing the A level syllabus would help. Could he not start this himself if he's interested.

I do think you need to talk to the school about how they assess progress though. You don't go to all his lessons and you need to ask for him to do A level work. Or have an easy life and get him to concentrate on his other subjects or is he 100% in all of these as well?

In schools I know who have gifted mathematicians, (and my friend had two boys go to Cambridge for maths) they joined classes higher up the school to widen their knowledge and challenge them. Ask for this. This was in a grammar school and they were happy to push them.

We (DH and me) did think about it but decided that it would mean that either DS would seems up with a break for any maths for a year or two either before A level or after A level but before university and that didn't seem like a good idea.
Also DS IS desperate that no one resents him for being good, he thinks his peers won't like it if he appears to be saying that he finds something easy that they have to work hard at. I think he already gets about of this but it would be a lot more if he was currently preparing to take his A level.
The third reason is that the school has a policy of not supporting students taking their gcses early, unless it's a MFL GCSE in their mother tongue.
We've tried, and failed, to get the teacher to offer extension work. Now DS had signed himself up to a further maths course that the school doesn't know anything about.
He's not 100% on other subjects. He finds the maths elements in science easy, but otherwise he had to work hard, just like everyone else.

My earlier posts were meant for another thread. I'm sorry to anyone reading that I detailed here.

And yes, those pupils of a lower ability should be receiving more attention than those of a higher ability - the more gifted children are intelligent enough to work by themselves.

I agree with this. It doesn't cost much to put the most able children in a large set and let them steam ahead.

From a very personal perspective, I hated this at school. School "didn't believe" in setting, and was completely focused on getting those from a B to an A that they didn't care about those of us who were a) bored stiff and b) aiming for A*s. We didn't even finish our A level syllabus in some subjects as we'd spend every lesson rehashing stuff that half of us had understood within 5 minutes of the first explanation.

Yes, able kids should be able to go off and revise alone/teach themselves by the textbook, but it's important to remember that they are young, and many may not struggle academically, but do struggle motivationally. I find it difficult even as an adult to force myself to learn independently - I was absolutely hopeless at it at 16!

It's a very good point Winthorpe. High academic ability is not the same thing as being emotionally mature. I find it odd that teachers sometimes forget this.

Empress yes, that's exactly what I meant but you put it much more succinctly!

"Equality of Outcome means all three of them staring at the fence. "

And you have so badly misunderstood what Equality of Outcome refers to.

The problem with the fence analogy is it implies that there is nothing else for the teacher to do once s/he has all three gazing over the fence.The reality is each of the three need to be continually elevated to greater and greater heights. Otherwise what's the point of going to school after one week?

Surely the meaning of equality of outcome is in the name - same results for everyone irrespective of natural ability or parental input?

Equality of opportunity isn't even possible because a well-fed, well cared for child from a book filled house, living with both healthy parents as part of a loving family, is going to have a bit of a head start on a child from a chaotic home where learning is not valued (to take some extremes).

I don't think it is so much to do with money, although it certainly helps, as to do with an environment that frees the child to prioritise their education.

No, it means that children of equal ability should be able to achieve the same outcome, whatever class, race, sex they are. I.e not held back or allowed to underachieve because of background.

It does not mean equality of outcome for children of different abilities.

There is a context to it.

As a PP who used the phrase that seems to have prompted this thread said earlier. She meant what I explained above.

And my last post described why different outcomes are likely despite identical abilities AND identical teaching. The only way to make them equal is to penalise the well-cared for child.

Equality of outcome is bollocks. Unless it refers to equality of outcome between similar abilities.

I have no issues with the fact my high achieving, socially successful, well adjusted dd is less of a priority than a low achieving fsm dc or dc with Sen. I hugely object to the idea she or any other highly able dc is less important than a mc, average achieving dc.

What I would argue is that is impossible to level the playing field (and therefore achieve equality of outcome) when children spend 18 hours or of every 24, plus 13 full weeks every year or of school.
The only two ways to equalise the outcomes would be:

1. follow one of the children home and become their parent (ie ridiculous) Or
2. Hold the better performing child back continuously so they progress at the same rate

You just can't do it in practice

And yet London schools are doing such a great job of narrowing the gap.

Pupil Premium, put to good use. Good comps that manage behaviour and instil aspiration.

My high achieving Dc have certainly not been 'held back' or 'penalised' by being in top sets with a very mixed intake, in a school with a high FSM ratio.

(They have been held back by the dread Nationsl Curriculum but that's another story)

And would you just not TRY to harness the full potential of all our young people? As a society we are going to need them.

Quite apart from the moral complacency in just allowing the socio-economicically disadvantaged kids to underachieve with a brush of your hands.

Another thing our society cannot afford is more division or polarisation.

You can narrow it, by diverting money that could be spent on teaching resources to employing social workers etc, but you cannot close it.

Don't get me wrong, i am not saying that children who have a poor home life don't deserve better (they do) or that it isn't worth trying (it is), but what i am saying is that you should not improve their outcomes by holding others back (and that does happen). I'm also saying that family income as defined by FSM is correlated with some social problems but you can have poor families who nurture their children and rich families who don't.

Indeed, no children should be held back.

But aiming to close the gap can often give a child enough of a leg up to then do their own work to meet their potential.

I have seen this happen time and time again especially through high quality extra-curricular activity that is properly supported.

Pupil Premium has given a substantial amount of money to some schools to close the gap if they have qualifying children. This does not mean that more intelligent children do not have resources and good teaching directed at them. I suspect your child would be better off in a school where there were more bright children so there was a teacher and a school-based syllabus designed for children who are exceptional at maths to include a lot of extension work. Sometimes teachers are not able to do this. Couldthey borrow extesbionwork from another school? There are very bright children in lots of schools so you do need to pursue why you feel yours is held back with SLT. Your child does not need to know you are doing this. If you do not like the school, then leave it.

This thread isn't about my child's school, or their educational issues.
Fwiw it's worth, I do like the school, whilst recognising its flaws.
I would think it bad advice to move seven months before the GCSEs. However, I am heavily considering moving for KS5.
DS has started attending a GCSE outreach program. The school does not know - has never heard of it. I might tell them if there is a good reason to.

I think the concepts of equality of opportunity and equality of outcome are both problematic. They are terms which rely on an assumption that society, knowledge and value are fixed which are, perhaps the concepts that we should be questioning in our consideration of the purpose of education.
To return to the fence analogy, what's so great about the view over the fence?

I don't even think pp is that straightforward. Not every pp child is a low achiever, with the odd exception of a high achieving pp kid. The problem is that many pp kids don't get the same quality of school, and are often the victims of low expectations. And iirc one study found that a higher achieving pp child only benefited from the pp funding in something like a third of schools.

It seems to quite often be ignored that the pp gap is an average on population level, compared to the none pp population. Pp kids are often behind none pp children of the same ability, but that applies across the whole ability spectrum. Rather than all pp kids on an individual level being behind population average.

I also strongly believe that closing the gap should mean raising the achievements of pp kids, not simply narrowing it by holding high achievers back. I also find the assumption that high achievers and pp kids are often viewed as two entirely separate groups rather offensive. They aren't, bright pp kids aren't exactly hens teeth.

Especially in areas where schools vary greatly in quality, equality of outcome could (and does) mean further disadvantaging brighter pp kids to benefit the lower achieving pp kids, which is wrong.

bubbles There are lots of bright dc who aren't held back in schools and for whom the normal extension work is suitable. However this has no bearing on the fact that in general the top 1/2% aren't having their needs met.

Fair enough that the top 1% won't ever fully work to full potential at school, but it's also not fair to ignore their needs so completely that they are put off education entirely and never maximise their potential after school.

I also firmly believe that unless you've experienced it yourself, or witnessed it in your dc, few people really understand how damaging it is to constantly find school work far too easy.

Because it is much easier to achieve than equality of opportunity and helps to disguise inequality of opportunity.