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.
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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.""