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.""

For many subjects, mixed ability teaching in secondary school is quite rare.

We set for English, Maths, MFL, and Sciences from year 7 onwards. For all other subjects they are taught in mixed ability groups up to the start of GCSE. At which point, if there are sufficient students to have more than one class, the students will be placed into sets, based on ability.

In the LEA where I teach this is the norm.

"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."

Enid continues on her trawl of mumsnet, finding plenty of statements to remind her why its a bit shit.

And the solutions remain the same too:

get rid of inequalities in society and you will get rid of inequalities in school. Schools do not work in isolation.

get rid of the inequalities which exclude children who are from deprived backgrounds (selection by money, faith, ability to buy uniforme etc)

smaller class sizes

more support for families

better education about parenting (and education) before and during parenting

Better support and early identification for children from troubled backgrounds or with learning difficulties

and so on...

totally agree Hurricane

which I know makes me a hypocrite, since I pay for mine to go to a private school

Me too Martian but, like you, I teach in the state sector.

I think the main thing I want to keep arguing is that a 'good' school is not just one that gets good results and has lots of nice boys and girls wearing clean uniforms and being quiet and respectful. I don't believe that the school where my dc go is really any 'better' than any of the schools I've taught at in terms of teaching, commitment, hard work ...

However, because of its intake, the supportive parents, the threat of kicking out anyone who behaves badly etc it can offer a much more challenging and less disruptive environment for my kids. I know my decision to opt out is selfish but it does not mean that I don't have faith in the principle of state education.

In our school we set for Maths/Science from yr7. English from yr8 and MFL partially from yr8.

Humanities, Art, Music, IT, Technology, PE, PSHE, etc. are all taught mixed ability to the end of yr9.

i.e. in yr8 most students will be in sets for about half the week only.

Don't know about other schools in the LEA.

I also find Xenia's professed concern for bright kids in state schools very difficult to stomach considering she and her kids went to private schools so she has no direct experience of the state sector and no direct interest in it. If she cares so much as I've said before she should put her money where her mouth is rather than sounding off on threads like this which always feels like a kind of thinly veiled extolling the virtues of private school and boasting about how fortunate and high-achieving she and her kids are.

I teach some very bright kids English. Have just got a girl into Oxford though she has been entirely through the state system. As at AS LEvel and predicted As for A Level. I genuinely believe that we do challenge and support bright students in class (and the government funds programmes for G & T students and to raise aspirations for all studnets as extras) but we can't make up for what they're lacking in terms of parental support and other sorts of opportunties. I find as an English teacher it's hard to try and develop a student's vocabulary and compensate for their lack of reading or theatre trips etc over a life time when they come to me at 16. These are so much the domain of the middle class family. And a wider vocab, wider reading, ability to engage in disussion with confidence etc are exactly the sort of thing which could help a student get an A grade.

I disagree about the uniform. You can buy our primary school uniform for FAR less than most non-uniform. Four pounds for a pair of trousers? Two pounds for a white polo shirt? At our school we can also provide good-quality secondhand logo'd sweatshirt for FREE.

... well on uniform some state schools have apparently been keeping out the poor simply by requiring an expensive uniform which is not very fair.

I can be concerned for bright children in state schools. Lots of people who were educated privately are. We want clever children do the best they can because it helps this country and helps businesses if they fulfil their potential. I think it would be better to remove the brightest and give them free places at private schools. But that's only needed if we agree that comparing now to the 1960s it is harder as a state school child to get to university. Ignoring what labour did in introducing fees because hopefully the very poor don't pay so much, there seems to be more of a divide than there was when the whole country have grammar schools.

Our C of E primary has a very cheap uniform (cheaper than mufti). So do the state primaries in all the villages around here and in our local towns. And secondhand stuff (good quality) is available.

How can you say that it is harder for a state school child to get into university.

When you hark back to the good old days of grammar schools it's really worth remembering that 'In 1959, around 9% of 16-year-olds got five or more O-levels, and more than a third of grammar-school pupils failed even to get three.'

Here's a link to Fiona Millar's article reviewing a book called 'State Schools Since the 1950s: the Good News,'

In fact, I'll save you the bother of looking up the article and quote a chunk here, 'It makes a simple case, based on evidence rather than the usual lazy prejudice that informs so much of the debate about education: schools have improved over the last half century, and the 1950s were not a "golden age" subsequently destroyed by social engineers.
There may have been many wonderful schools and great teachers 50 years ago, but large numbers of working-class children went to secondary moderns, the higher social classes were clearly over-represented in grammar schools, and low expectations of children from poorer backgrounds were prevalent in all schools, whether selective or not.

Home-school links were often minimal, and many children were taught an unstimulating curriculum in large classes and crumbling buildings by poorly trained teachers who regularly resorted to caning because, amazingly, children were badly behaved then, too. One 1950s pupil recalls: "My friends amused themselves shooting cigarettes out of each other's mouths with a slug gun".

Many young people left school with low levels of literacy and numeracy, which partly explains why so many adults are struggling with maths and English today even though they were educated in the "golden age". In 1959, around 9% of 16-year-olds got five or more O-levels, and more than a third of grammar-school pupils failed even to get three. All this in an age when society was arguably more stable and schools didn't have to take responsibility for coping with family breakdown, mental-health issues and the influx of non English-speaking pupils.

Heard of the book? Probably not. It doesn't satisfy the media appetite for gorging on bad news. It doesn't use the weaknesses of the least successful state schools to characterise the entire sector, while allowing the gleaming spires of the top public schools as cover for much that is mediocre in private education.'

The fact is that the state education system IS doing a great deal for bright and poor children. Are you aware of EMA where students from deprived backgrounds get an allowance to encourage them to stay on in education post 16? At my own college we offer extra programmes for those students with the potential to get A grades and top Bs in every subject. We have to write on our lesson plans how we propose to stretch the most able. I have been in to schools and offered extra sessions to G & T students and put on twilight sessions for them to sit additional GCSEs. And this is all part of Excellence in Cities so this kind of initative is happening nationally. Each school has to have a G & T co-ordinator etc etc. Yes, of course, more could be done but there will never be any aspect of education, state or primary, where you can't say that.

I actually think a lot of children at the top of state schools or labelled gifted and talented benefit from being at the top in a way that they would absolutely not benefit from being in the middle or struggling in a grammar or private school.

I have no problem with you being concerned about bright and poor children Xenia but since much of your arguments are sloppy and ill-researched, since you have no personal expereince of state education as teacher, parent or student and since you have opted out of the system it simply smacks of hypocrisy of the very worst kind.

and IIRC secondary modern kids had far less money spent on their education than those skimmed off the top. A quarter of the money I think.

And you know hurricane that teaching clever children well is normally easier to do cheaply than those who are struggling.

Because they can cope better in larger groups, you can do more small group work with them, they often need less diverse methods of teaching since 'top sets' are prodominantly full of kids who are visual/ auditory learners, they are generally better behave, need less LSW support etc etc etc

I thought fewer poor clever children were getting into good universities now than in the 1960s. That was what the Sutton trust found because the grammar school route had gone and the private schools are better. if that is not wrong and more from state schools are getting in as a percentage then that's great and there isn't really a problem.

I teach at a (small) independent school which is non selective. Because of the size, we have to teach mixed ability classes. We have been consistently in the top 10 schools in the UK for GCSE results and in last year's Year 11 all the pupils had c's and above with about 70% A and A*.

Ww use and approach called Consciousness based education. (Everyone in the school does Transcendental Meditation. I know this might cause some different objections in this thread ) What we do with this type of education is to develop the pupils, in other words increase their ability to learn. I have seen pupils come to our school with no hope of even being entered into GCSE and then end up with C's.

I think what I am saying is that all the state and independent schools are putting plasters on the wounds without trying to prevent the wound from appearing in the first place.

That's interesting firefly -does your school have a particular religious affiliation? is this an approach based upon the vedas? I ask because I read Sanskrit, though I'm afraid I don't know much about these techniques in practice.

Sounds like a good school. Most of the Time top 100 state and private schools get over 90% A and A* but obviously they aer very selective entry so 70% is okay for a non selective school. But the question is would your best pupils have got better GCSEs at a more academic school and do they kind of downgrade to the lower mean? A mean which obviously is a lot better than many state and some private schools.

I must say for many a C is virtually a fail at GCSE these days it's so easy to get.

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The question is not just about GCSE results.....for me the question is about the whole child and whether we should produce narrow minded snobs who think they are better than everyone else just because they went to private schools.

My hackles are well and truly risen here.... especially at the idea that the brightest state school kids should be sent to private school... what's that going to do to the local comp?

It's what we used to do. It's why very poor background men and women fill the house of commons and the BBC because they were given the grammar school get out jail free card which is now denied the next generation who don't have that leg up and social mobility which came with it.

Private schools produce the most rounded children with the best ethics. They certanily are not snobby and they are more holistically educated in a very broad sense with opportunities to expand their minds and bodies much further than in the state system.

Not at all a sweeping generalisation there Xenia!

Could you reference a study on that? (particularly loving the "ethics" bit...)

I would have done but the sutton trust web site seems to be down. The found that fewer children from poor backgrounds were getting into the better universities in 2007 than the 1960s and more children from private schools. Seemed like the demise of the grammar schools was part of the problem.

No no.

About private school pupils having the best ethics. That's what I'm after...