A bright child will do well anywhere

[User3542564]

I keep reading on threads that a bright child will do well anywhere. I'm just curious as to whether people honestly believe that about all schools? My DC are still in primary, but our nearest secondary has an English and Maths pass rate of 5% and a Progress 8 of -0.98. I cannot see how a bright child could do as well there as they would in a school with just average results. Am I missing something? It's been made into an academy, several changes of SLT over the last decade and just gets worse.

Or when people say a bright child will do well anywhere, do they actually mean will do well in any nice middle class school with above average results?

I was a bright child but went to a terrible school which impacted my confidence and I left with mediocre results. Couldn't wait to leave which also impacted on the way I viewed further education. I just wanted out of the education system altogether. Took me years to build my confidence up enough to re-enter education. I now have a 1st class degree and about to start post-grad study (mid 30's).

My DC are still in primary, but our nearest secondary has an English and Maths pass rate of 5% and a Progress 8 of -0.98.

@User3542564 , I would be interested to know what’s going wrong at this school. Are there a lot of social problems? Parents who don’t support the teachers? A high percentage of pupils who don’t speak much English when they start? A pass rate of 5% sounds unusually low.

Some of the brightest kids in my sink school were the main disrupters and mean girls . No doubt they went on to rule the roost when they started work. I know one did and became part of the factory management and a Queen Bee .

This. People generally take on the behaviour of others around them. A bright child capable of A/A* will not fulfill anywhere near their potential at a school with a 5% pass rate.

First answer nails it.

No I don't agree that a bright child will do well anywhere. My parents believed this so instead of paying the bus fare for me to go to the better school half an hour away, they sent me to the local (inadequate) school. As a result of severe bullying, I couldn't concentrate on my work and the A*s I was predicted became a disappointing spread of A-Cs and even a couple of Ds.

Yes, 5% in both English and Maths. Sorry I wasn't clear.

Both DP and I were very bright kids who ended up essentially dropping out of school because of being in big state comprehensives with no support or provision for gifted kids and rife with bullying (from both other kids and from teachers). Both of us ended up at Oxbridge through our own efforts, but were pretty much autodidacts.

Even 25-30 years ago you could do this, but it would be unlikely to work today because the education system is much more standardised, and with less wiggle room for people with an unconventional route through.

I was a bright child from a dysfunctional background in a poorly performing school.

I did really well because I channelled the dysfunctional background and basically moved in to the public library to study. But I had few friends at school, and was picked on because I was getting good grades. Parents and some of the teachers were also unhelpful. I went to University and in to a well paid career.

My sibling who was equally bright became part of the cool gang (drinking smoking, cannabis, under age sex), regularly truanted and passed no exams at all. Now lives an unhappy hand to mouth existence.

Anecdote not data. But it is a myth that a bright child will do well anywhere.

I went to a really rough school many years ago (subsequently forcibly merged with another terrible school nearby, converted to an academy, then closed down). There were good teachers there (though most trying to leave), and there were initiatives to support bright children, but it was an uphill battle for the staff. I was 'bright' and didn't have the local accent and was evidently such an anomaly that I wasn't on the bullies' radar. Anyway, I got 11 x top grades at GCSE a year early but I was pretty fucking miserable and didn't have many friends.

The school had a sixth form though it was quite small as not many stayed on to do A levels, maybe 30 out of a year group of 300. It was noticeably the more middle-class kids who did stay on, and they tended to do okay. I don't think the pupils at the school were deliberately dividing themselves up along class lines, but that's how it usually turned out so I suspect when people say 'bright kids do well anywhere' they mean middle class kids whose parents expect them to go to university.

I think it's a load of old tosh that people trot out to suit their narrative. A bright child will probably do better than the others kids anywhere, but whether that can be classed as "doing well" is very much open to interpretation. The more input and support children have, the better they do, no matter how clever they are.

From my own perspective, yes - I went to average comp where pass rate was about 40% and got a string of A and A*s. It was heavily streamed though - I was in top set for everything so I had peers who were like me.
I would not send my child to the school you described- i would worry that a high staff turnover meant no consistency in teaching and no overview of how kids were doing. No-one is going to take any responsibility for any results if the teachers constantly change.

My 2 bright children didn’t do well in one school.
One learnt to do as little as possible ‘to fit in’ and not be bullied. The attitude of ‘working and revising is for stupid people’ stayed for a very long time. (Aka after A levels)
The other was an expert at making himself forgotten. Which means that he was forgotten about by the teachers and, in the words of his maths teacher when he left, could have done much much better because he had been failed - by him and the other teachers.

So no.

And the school you’re describing I’d give it a very wide berth

I do not agree with this. I had a "bright child" who was in a class of 30. There were several children with behavioural issues (hitting & violence) and also mild learning difficulties. The teacher spent most of her time dealing with these issues. My child became withdrawn and fearful of the classroom.

We moved her to another school and she has thrived.

Also I think what people often mean is ‘a bright child will cope with not good enough teaching methods’.
As in theyll learn. Maybe not as well as they could have but they still lean something. Vs others who won’t.

But school isn’t just that.
If you’re bullied for doing well and visibly well, it’s going to have consequences.
If hopes, like going to Uni, going to a good Uni rather than the local one, is laught about, why would a child get aspirations to do better? Or believe they can do better?
Who is going to direct them when they make ‘bad’ choices? Like making poor choices fir GCSE because they dint know better AND no teacher is telling them + that’s what everyone else does right?

You can look up the GCSE grades specifically in most schools.
So in our mediocre secondary, many kids get 3/4/5s but there is a little bunch of 8s and 9s in all subjects and various enrichment programs in place to support these kids.
I think it's a problem if you are bright but not noticeably bright, so you miss the enrichment and then are maybe bored in class and end up coasting.
I am fairly confident my kids would have done better academically, surrounded by a more aspirational cohort, but they have learnt plenty of people skills and confidence as they have grown and made lots of good friends.

Not a poor school no, but at an okay + school yes. I think the right placement for secondary is much more important than primary, and find it odd that so many people move heaven and earth in the area I live in to get their kids into the best performing primaries, when actually, all the primaries in the town are fairly good.

I think the most important thing a school can be is a pleasant, supportive environment. If your child is at a school with not the greatest facilities - but the teachers and pupils are generally lovely - I think this is today the most important thing. Because let's face it - a child can access literally all the books and information in the world at their finger tips! And there has to be internal motivation for success long-term.

I have a relative that went to one of THE public schools and came out with B's & C's despite all the cultural experiences, high quality tuition and tiny class sizes. He didn't manage to do much networking to any great degree either, and now has a pretty standard office job.

Also, have two relatives in entertainment. One failed the 11 plus but is hardworking and making a good salary in their mid 20's. The other went to grammar school, spent about 15 years in further education, has loads of qualifications, but has now given up on the academic career and is entry level in the entertainments business, well into their 30's.

I personally would avoid schools with accounts of bullying like the plague. Also, I think smaller sized schools are generally much better unless a child is particularly outgoing and confident.

I think they can do well anywhere, but the issue is how gratifying an experience school is going to be. A kid who wants to learn will be bored and frustrated in a school where kids constantly sabotage lessons, and underchallenged in one where the expectation is 'If you work very hard you'll pass some GCSEs'

In my limited personal experience I would agree, albeit I grew up in a grammar area. Where I live now there are no grammars and there are good and bad state schools. I know the better of the local state schools regularly gets students into Oxbridge, but you don't hear the same reports out of the others.

I went to a grammar school when I was 13. One of my schoolfriends in the secondary that I left was very comparable to me academically - we were in the same sets for graded subjects, etc.

When it came round to GCSEs, she got the best grades in the school. I, however, was a very distinctly average student at grammar, yet still got higher grades than her.

An average pass rate presumably includes the low numbers of bright hardworking kids who did very well as well as the ones who did really badly.

You need to see whether there are good results amongst high achievers.

Doing well also depends on attitude and outlook of a bright kid. If they are easily led, or themselves disruptive, lay, etc, then not so much.

There is a school nearish to me that has a selective stream that parents move heaven and earth to get their kids into. But the results are because the cohort is selected t be high achievers, the parents are aspirational and stay on top of it. The drug use amongst the mc kids with access to money in the school is off the scale.

IME young people do need to be happy to get the best out of their education and the culture of a school and its potential for your Dc being able to 'find their tribe' is important to though.

So no easy soundbite answer, IMO.

I think it depends on the attitude and ambition of the parents really. If DC is bright but falls in with a group of other children who are not encouraged to make the best of themselves then they won't be bothered and will languish in any school. If they fall in with a set of friends who are aspirational and want to do well then they will flourish regardless.

I also don't think these qualities are reflective of the school necessarily. You can get highly driven groups of friends in the worst state school and bored privileged layabouts at the most expensive private schools. But it is hard to shake a reputation of a school, which means people who are generally more ambitious will push to go to the schools doing better which creates a self fulfilling prophecy.

This.

Im pretty sure mine would have done ok wherever they went but the schools we sent them to meant they had an amazing school experience and great opportunities supported by fantastic staff - they were strongly encouraged to fulfill their potential and helped every step of the way to achieve it. They would no way have received that in the local state school.

I went to a terrible secondary school and did very well, luckily a good sixth form college was available for alevels.
If nothing else gained resilience in bucketloads.

But the huge gaps in my education still affect me as an adult.

And there were bright students in my year who did fall by the wayside, pregnancy, drugs, poor mental health due to bullying. These things can happen in any school but when the bar is on the floor, and poor grades the norm a lot gets missed.

I agree with this. I have a very clever, mature child in a very good state secondary but the difference between the effort the school puts in between the top set kids and the other kids is vast. My child has access to a lot of support and opportunities. The classes are calm and well structured. I can’t fault his learning and progress.

On the other hand, my friend has just pulled her DS out of the same school because he was in a lower set and her experiences couldn’t be more different to mine. The classes were bedlam, there was little structure to the classes, constant disruptions, it was just crowd control with the teacher fire-fighting constantly.