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 personally don't believe this and it annoys me when people say it, whether they mean to be positive or kind or whatever.
Doing well requires support from family and/or teachers to give the 'bright child' the chance and tools to carry out and develop their learning... either that or the child is exceptionally knowledgeable and mature, and knows how to develop their own learning without help.

One of my friends here in Ireland faced the where do I send my child to secondary school? Her nearest secondary school would be ok grade wise but it would have a certain number of kids who are disavantaged. The same kids could be disruptive in class, not really care about homework and the parents would not really care about school.
My friend 1st child was bullied in primary school and the bullies were going to the local secondary school. My friends 1st child needed some learning support but her other kids are far more accedimic.

She managed to get her 1st child into a good accedimic school with good pastoral care a few miles away. Her child got some learning support and is doing far better in exams. They also have friends, a social life and are far happier than they were in primary school. The child knows the school rules will apply and bold kids are dealt with and not let disrupt classes.
This school has a wide range of subjects and good results. They encourage and support all kids to achieve their own personal best.

I know another child who was bright in primary school and was teased about this. They went to a good accedimic school for secondary school and thrived there because doing well in exams was encouraged and expected.

I know a few kids who went to a good secondary school with good teachers and results. They did well. They were also friendly with kids who had a bit of ambition as well and whose parents wanted them to do well in school.
I personally would not send a child to poor school because long term it can have a huge effect on them.

My DM has said this- I think it's bollox. I went to a school where achieving really wasn't cool. I dumbed down so as not to stand out- and I'm pretty sure there were other girls who would have done much better in a different environment.

No one pretends a bright child does well no matter what family they are brought up in, so why say the same about schools? Unless you're confident no school is awful and doesn't have a cohort of students who lack aspirations, for whatever reason.

No one pretends a bright child does well no matter what family they are brought up in, so why say the same about schools?

Completely agree.

When I was a governor the Head wanted Quality First Teaching. Just about everyone knows well taught DC in a stable environment do better. Being friends with like minded dc is very helpful as is parental attitude to learning. Schools really struggle when they have poor teaching, lots of turnover and too many supply teachers and unsupportive parents.

Schools with minus progress 8 are not adding anything. In fact dc progress is diminishing. So of course they achieve less than they could elsewhere. I’m not sure the ultra low 5% is accurate though.

Their grades would definitely be elevated if they went to a private or grammar school compared to a bog-standard comprehensive or secondary modern (in grammar school areas).
Universities try and take the grade elevation into account but I’m not sure it completely compensates, especially when it comes to things like interview prep or supra-curricular activities.

That's true, it was a school which a lot of parents tried to avoid in favour of another but it's all relative.

What I would say though is that it had a strange approach to GCSEs which made it very very difficult to do STEM A levels - there was so little demand for them previously that the school hadn't needed to consider it. I can explain if you like, but wary of going a bit off thread.

Depends what you mean by "do well" but basically no. If the school doesn't cater to the top end of the ability range the child will under achieve.

I could understand the 5% pass rate if a specialist school for learning difficulties / disabilties but very surprised at the low rate. Is the data correct or is it 5% at the higher grades 8/9?

No. It's just a saying. There are many, many bright people on minimal wage jobs because they "messed up" their studies.

The issue is less the teachers or the school itself, in my view, than their peers. If they are surrounded by pupils who don't care about education and have low aspirations, that's going to rub in. And the learning environment will not be conducive to excellence, unfortunately.

@thing47 I think lots of schools did not (and some still don’t) have coherent curriculum policies. Assumptions were made which were not accurate.

Out of interest I’ve just looked at my local ish UTC. 4.5% 5-9 maths and English and -1.38 P8. Grade 4-9 is 28.8% in maths and English so very different. Middle/high (?) achievers lumped together, but P8 for them is -1.76. I’m thinking the school the op is talking about must be a UTC or similar . The one I’m quoting it RI from Ofsted, unsurprisingly. Disadvantaged pupil P8 is even worse. Pretty poor.

A bright child will do well anywhere but if you want to progress as a nation, you have to invest where it will make the most impact. So concentrating resources on the brightest children regardless of class seems like a good strategy, which means that the UK will not do it LOL

Homeschooled outside of school hours then you mean?

I completely agree OP. It’s a fallacy. A bright child might do ok in a poor school but without a lot of extra help, they will not do anywhere as well as they would do in a decent school.

And every single inspection since it opened has been RI. Every one. It got different sponsors via an alternative MAT 3 years ago but essentially it’s got recurring academic and attendance issues. No improvement. I’d like to know what type of school the op is talking about and whether it’s avoidable.

Agree, a bad friendship group can derail even a clever ambitious child more so than a bad school and they can come across bad friends in all school types

Poor achievers can evolve from private schools aswell except that their lack of achievement / poor grades is less noticeable as money is thrown at the problem / they join a family business / family connections to get them into good firms etc etc

This is one of those MN things that drives me insane. I went to a very academic secondary school where I did well. There were no behaviour problems and all our teachers were specialists in their subjects. This is what I regard as the absolute minimum requirement from a secondary school. My husband went to a similar school. Why would we have shortchanged our children by sending them to schools that offered less than that? Why would we think they would thrive in a school where teachers were unable to spend the lesson teaching instead of managing behaviour? Why would we think they would do well in a school where the teacher had a degree in a completely different subject (or no degree and/or training at all) and was barely more knowledgeable than the children? Why would they do well in a school where they had to cope with being around aggressive, angry children who might kick off at any moment?

In short: of course I don't think a bright child will do well anywhere. No child will do well anywhere if the conditions necessary to learn are not in place. Even if they do by some miracle learn something they may well be wretechedly unhappy and/or physically unsafe.

I think this ‘a bright child will do well anywhere’ isn’t really true. Otherwise schools wouldn’t perform so badly - the bright kids would pull up the results. They might do ok, but not reach their full potential. I also think it’s something people say to others feel better about their local school. There will be people here who say their bright child did well, but no one will ever really know if they’d have done better elsewhere. 5% pass for English and Maths is incredibly low, even the worse schools I know of are better than this.

@Anewyearanewday not necessarily homeschooled but I've always bought DD all the text books for her classes, helped her fill in the gaps where necessary she is very self motivated.

GCSEs aren't particularly difficult for a bright child. However doing well academically and thriving holistically and coming out the other end with robust MH or having had a positive experience are not the same thing.

There’s a correlation between low P8 and performance at GCSE. Minus P8 means dc under achieving. I’d like more info from @User3542564 about what type of school this is. It really cannot have many high achievers. So who goes to it?

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g I know the very politically motivated who have used UTCs. Not all parents make the best choices.

A quick google tells me there are no state schools with only 5% passes English and Maths in the UK - unless a specialist school (EAL, SEN etc).

And no, at that school a bright child would not do well. Bright ones can do well at an average school as they will be in sets with like-minded ability kids.

For my DD (year 8) she is bright/gifted, very capable student but I've moved her school because she was desperately bored and unmotivated, she had lovely friends but no enthusiasm for school work, didn't have to make any effort or do any homework or revision because she could cost through and teachers didn't look at homework. She was fine no major problems but moody and glum after school.

She's moved to a school when a place was offered out of blue from a long waiting list with a settled staff cohort, homework is marked with feedback, she's challenged and having to try and she thrives when she has a bit of an incentive to work and genuinely likes to learn. She's so much happier and has made new friends and I'm so pleased she said yes to moving schools as I feel she has a better chance to meet her potential and today after school she went for a run and has so much more of a glow about her.

Just been reading the responses: 5% is grades 5-9. Is 4 a pass in the new system? In which case it does better than 5%, but still miles worse than average.

It is not a special school, but there is a grammar within a reasonable distance which will of course affect local schools' results. However, other local schools are about UK average. I haven't drilled down into the data: when a friend's DD was starting secondary last September it got me thinking about where mine would go, hence looking at the results of all local schools. Then again and again I read on MN that a bright child will do well anywhere, and I wanted to know if people really think it - who would be happy with their DC going to a school like this.

I’m talking A level results plain and simple. Not mental health, extra curricular,, vocations and all the other reasons people choose their interests and career paths.

Buying textbooks isnt going to cut it. Tutors, online school, intensive revision courses are required of the parents who cannot fill the gaps themselves and many parents have neither the time or academic ability to teach A levels.

I went to a non academic secondary school. The bar was set at a relatively low standard. If you had an interest in medicine then nursing was encouraged, an interest in technology then computer science (it was the 1990s), and the majority were herded towards teaching or secretarial courses. When I started working with many people from different socio economic backgrounds, i realised they aimed higher from the outset. Their school’s mentality and expectations exceeded my old school in that way. Of course some people from my school did better than others, but after years and years of working, taking risks, doing further education funded by their employers, and these were not necessarily the more academic students. If they had earlier opportunities and higher expectations, who knows what they could have achieved at an earlier age.

• There is nothing wrong with nursing, teaching, secretarial or computer science. These are simply the courses that I remember many aiming for. I am in one of the above roles myself.

Sadly not. I speak from experience. Success also depends on mixing with the right sort of people.