Schools

[Judy1234]

The telegraph has some interesting articles on schools today - one about the BFS schools scheme - to rebuild every school in the UK although that seems to be giving some local councils an excuse to close successful schools.

And another below about clever children in state schools not being stretched because they are in mixed ability primary school groups.

Schools failing to nurture gifted children

By Julie Henry, Education Correspondent
Last Updated: 1:25am GMT 06/01/2008

Bright children are being failed by teachers who do not stretch them enough or give them the individual attention they need, Government research has found.

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Gifted pupils are routinely put in the wrong ability groups and are set targets that are too low, a study by the Department for Children, Schools and Families discovered. In many schools, young people who show early promise are left to fall behind.

Schools failing to nurture gifted children
Government has spent almost £400 million in the past decade on gifted and talented programmes

Almost a quarter of the 140,000 children who achieve an above-average level 3 in assessments at the age of seven do not go on to score high marks in tests at 11.

The results are a significant blow to the Government, which has spent almost £400 million in the past decade on gifted and talented programmes in an attempt to convince many middle-class parents that bright children will be nurtured in the state sector.

The report, Able Pupils Who Lose Momentum, found shortcomings in the 37 primaries across England visited by Government advisers.

One of the key problems uncovered by researchers was the failure to put children into ability sets or groups. Even when children were put in classes with children of similar abilities, clever children were still grouped with other "lower ability" pupils when carrying out work.

"Children often worked exclusively in mixed-ability groups and rarely worked with children who were making similar rates of progress," the report said.
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"They often perceived themselves as additional support to less able pupils. But the majority of children said they would have liked more opportunities to work in ability groups or independently."

Less than half of the schools had good systems to track and monitor children's progress.

Reviews of how children were doing were infrequent and it was not uncommon for targets to remain unchanged for more than a term.

In about one in four primaries that were visited, the targets set for bright children were often pitched at a low or rudimentary level.

Teachers over-emphasised simple functional skills, such as "join up your handwriting", "finish more worksheets" and "be neater".

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School advisers also found that some of the pupils, particularly girls, were "invisible children" because they were quiet and undemanding. As a result they received less of the teachers' time.

"Many children said they rarely received help from the teacher when working on their maths," the report said.

"Some expressed the view that their teachers always work with the pupils in the 'lower groups', while others said a few able children monopolised the teacher's time. Some children talked about wanting to do the more challenging work that these pupils were given."

The findings come as ministers announced a new measure in school league tables to show how bright children progress, in yet another attempt to force schools to focus on talented pupils.

Under guidelines, schools are expected to provide extra help to bright pupils, giving them more challenging work, after-hours classes and registering the most able with the National Academy for Gifted and Talented Youth, established by the Government in 2002.

In reality, 35 per cent of primaries still do not identify their brightest pupils and one in 10 secondaries do not give them extra support.

Stephen Tommis, the director of the National Association for Gifted Children charity, said many pupils were still being failed by schools. "There is greater awareness than there has ever been, and gifted and talented children are on the political agenda," he said. "But it seems to be taking an awful long time for the idea to permeate through to the schools.

"Too many schools give no extra support. In some of the others, it is a matter of ticking boxes rather than sustained provision. Teachers need to realise that it is not elitist and it is not going to go away.

"During a career, teachers will meet hundreds of gifted children. They can provide them with opportunities or they can deny them.""

I can relate to the ""invisible children" because they were quiet and undemanding" but with my DS not a DD.

ds is probably an "invisible child" , which is why he is at a private school with class size of 20 (not the lowest around I know) and grouped into smaller numbers for core subjects. He still seems invisible to certain teachers even so .

Yes, depends on the child too. I don't think if a private school has selective entry you need tiny class sizes because then everyone can work around the same level. It's the mixture of abilities what must be harder to teach from the average IQ which is 100 up to 140 or whatever.

I have just started work in a school and it is a real eye opener!
I have always helped out in school and thought I was pretty well aware of "school life" but being there everyday, all day is enlightening.

In what ways?

Mostly the behaviour of the children, sadly.

Poor behaviour is the single biggest obstacle that I face in teaching children. Not the only one, but the worst. And the school I work in is far better than many in the area.

In the worst schools teaching is really nothing more than crowd control.

At the induction day for the secondary school my DD will be attending next year I expressed my concerns to the Head at the appalling behaviour, both in and out of school, of many pupils. His reply was that 'your DD is bright so she will be in top streams and with luck will not have to mix with the troublemakers.'
I find that deeply depressing on so many levels.

I think the G&T stats on 2008 SATS tests will be enlightening. They will apparently show % of students who achieve 2 levels higher than the 'standard' - i.e. students who achieve Level 7.

I know the results for English in our school, it was 0 in 2006 and 1% in 2007

I am very interested to see how other local schools compare.

..."Almost a quarter of the 140,000 children who achieve an above-average level 3 in assessments at the age of seven do not go on to score high marks in tests at 11".

But how much of this can be explained by the children merely being ahead for their age? I always think learning to read & write at infant level is like walking - just because you could read fluently at 7 or hop at 18mths doesn't mean you are academically gifted or headed toward Olympic athletics. You just did it early.

A better comparison would be SATS at 11 into GCSE/A level.

And if they compared those figures and I missed it, sorry, must go bath DCs. Back later!

I tihnk various studies have been done even of very bright 3 year olds and their ultimate outcomes and I am sure the school they go to and family they are from has an impact.

I just don't see why mixing children of similar abilities in a school never mind a class is such a holy grail. I see in the Sunday Times today a suggestion the best schools in all sectors have about 800 pupils including St Paul's Girls and the best comps and those comps with more do much worse.

Behaviour, local children were leaving some graffiti near us on the way to the local comp. Various people have been to the school and seen the police etc. The school is absolutely covered in graffiti on every surface including in the school sign. Why are the local private schools not (except occasionally or on the loo doors)? Is it like litter- you need zero tolerance? Or may be it's your only way to express yourself if you're poor and disenfranchised and have no hope or something.

I'm interested in the article you mention Xenia. Can you link to it?

There was some highly-regarded NFER research recently that said the most effective schools were 11-18, with a large sixth form, single sex, and 180 students per year (factors listed in order of statistical importance).

So, I'm not at all sure why the government insists on building these 1200+ 11-16 schools.

My son was one of those bright-but-invisible boys. He doesn't make demands. I have every sympathy with the teachers and TAs, who deal with dreadful behaviour and rudeness, but in general they never really had time to spur him on.

I moved him last year to a private school where teachers have time to crack a joke with him. He loves it and is slowly coming out of his shell and becoming less shy.

R- cos someone else is paying ( or anyone chip ina a quid and you can be in charge seems to be the plan for ours )

..."Almost a quarter of the 140,000 children who achieve an above-average level 3 in assessments at the age of seven do not go on to score high marks in tests at 11".

This was being discussed in a staff meeting at the school I work at recently - the SENCO was saying at least part of it is because KS1, esp in Maths, tests only basic skills, not the application of them to other situations eg problem solving, which becomes much more important in KS2.

Many children can grasp the basic skills easily, so do well at KS1, but can't so easily make the jump to applying the skills - so they may know for example that 5 x 4 = 20, but if faced with the problem "x has 20 tins and wants to put them in boxes of 4. How many tins does he need?" they don't know how to start.

Sunday Times article on "big" schools is at www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/education/article3136524.ece

thanks xenia

What strikes me most about school of 1200+ is that it's difficult to have a sense of community. And it's much easier for children to get 'lost' in the crowd so to speak, the teachers, partiularly the Head, can't possibly know them or speak to them regularly.

One of the arguments for super-schools is that they have better facilities - well that maybe but that many children can't possibly be able to use them all the time can they?

I'm not a huge fan of IQ testing myself, I think it's a bit of a blunt instrument, but having said that a child of IQ 140-150 is as different - in needs, learning styles, capacity and so on - from the average as is a child of IQ 50-60, and no-one doubts for a moment that in the latter case very specific help (whether integrated into a mainstream school or at a special school) and special training for the teachers is appropriate and necessary. On the other hand, there's a lot of resentment about any special provision for the brightest (in contrast, say, to special training for our most gifted athletes or musicians), which seems unfair. In quite a lot of schools, if not most, having an IQ of 150 is probably as much of a disadvantage as having one of 50.

Sorry But I totally disagree with your last statement.

A child with an IQ of 50 will need significant amounts of assistance if they are ever to master basic life skills. Being very clever, while it may lead you prone to some bullying, is a gift.

The two situations are simply not comparable.

All parents worry about their children, but the parents worries about a child with an IQ of 50 are in a totally different league than the parent of the bright child. Wondering how on earth your child will cope alone when you die just isn't the same as worrying if your child makes it to Oxbridge or 'just' the Russell Group

At senior level if you have an IQ of 140 - 150 you don't really need special provision like someone with an IQ of 80 might but it would certainly benefit you to be in a school where only children who have an IQ of 120 say go there, which I think was the old 11+ basic requirement and used to be what people who went to university tended to need to have.

I suppose you could say any clever child should be able to go on line and look up what universities require. When I was 15 I was writing to university entrance tutors about various things entirely of my own initiative. But a lot of children say they want to do X because their friend is or because they liked the skirt of the lady who talked about that subject at school or whatever so I think they do need some guidance.

North London Collegiate has about 1050 girls including the sixth form which managed to get I think second best A levels/GCSEes in the country this year in the private sector so they didn't have a problem being over 800 pupils but they are not 1,500 or 2000 which seems very big to me.

martian - I didn't for a minute mean to denigrate the challenges and concerns for parents and carers of those with moderate or severe learning difficulties. But I do think there is a good deal of ignorance about the kind of challenges that parents and educators of the very very brightest face. And this is a very tiny group of course, which always makes it harder to serve, because even professionals such as teachers - as I am and I think you are too is that right? - will only meet children in this bracket very rarely, if at all. A parent with a child in the very highest IQ bracket isn't going to be worrying about Oxbridge vs 'just' the Russell Group either - they'll be concerned by the fact that even at Oxbridge - if their child doesn't drop entirely out of education long before that, as very many of them do - their child might struggle to find anyone who thinks as they do. Of course even loneliness or isolation of such an extreme kind, and the concomitant frustration, is not the same kind of problem as being unable to live independently, and I didn't mean to suggest that it was - just that in terms of an ordinary, mixed-ability school environment the child of extremely high IQ is as far adrift from what teachers and other children are expecting as the mentally disabled child.

Xenia & co, your ability to be amazed at the fact that research consistently throws up the fact that children who go to independent schools (followed by grammar schools and then faith schools and schools in wealthy catchment areas) get consistently good results while genuine comprehensives and state schools in deprived areas do not never ceases to amaze me.

As does your weird assumption that this is because of the state system is somehow holding children back.

I can only re-iterate the same arguments:

1.) Independent schools generally SELECT by ability but also by parents ability to pay (bursaries generally only kick in at 11 and a parent has to be aware of them and motivated and able enough to apply which excludes those who arguably would most benefit from them)
2.) There is a huge link between parental wealth, aspiration and education and their offsprings' academic success.
3.) You cannot surely be genuinely surprised that there is more likely to be graffiti and other sorts of bad behaviour in schools where kids may come from all sorts of troubled family backgrounds, may live in deprived areas, may have special educational needs, may have little or no family support, may abuse drugs, alcohol etc or live with families who do than there is in indpendent schools where students with special needs are excluded one way or another and where troublesome behaviour is not tolerated (because they can always threaten to kick out the student exhibiting such behaviour).

I think research which is more interesting to look at is the recent finding that where a child aged 3 has a higher IQ than another child of the same 3 but lives in relative poverty that child will be far outperformed academcially by the child whose family has a more wealthy background by age 5. That's age 5 so pre-school. This seems clear evidence that the input from parents is much more important that that of school. IF a child is not getting access to the sort of communication, vocabulary, skills and knowledge and support that educated, wealthy families find it easier to provide then they start school disadvantaged which means their self-esteem is damaged when they compare themselves to their peers, their motivation is affected and so on.

I teach. I teach very able children. I also teach children with SEN. I also do G and T outreach to primary schools in the area I work in, and have set up days for NAGTY.

The needs of a child of IQ50 (and I would agree with you that IQ is a very blunt tool) would be far harder for me to cope with than the child with IQ of 150 (and yes I've taught a few)

The amount of 1 to 1 assistance that they would need would be far less than the very able child, who can be guided 'at a distance'.

The isolation of such a child in a MS school would also be far worse than the able, since they often lack the social skills needed to function within a MS school.

Able children can, and far too often do suffer bullying, but at least they have the skills to make friendships if the school has a good anti bullying policy. The same is not true for the child with IQ 50, their isolation is far greater.

Yes, I realise if you select by IQ you get better results. I was just worried about bright children in mixed ability classes.

on the high IQ thing I think mine is supposedly 152, hard though that must be to believe and I was in a fairly non selective tiny private school where few went to university and it certainly made it hard to have interesting debates in the sixth form and that is partly why I wanted my children to go to slightly more academic schools.

There's probably a difference between high IQ and weird and high IQ and reasonably normal (the latte probably being what I was).