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?

Most will do well, but not all. Also, many will not fulfill their potential. Some schools are just horrific places to be. Add in low aspirations, disrupted classes, poor home support, disengaged or less academic peers and lack of financial resources...it's really not fair.

I don’t think a clever child will necessarily do well anywhere, even a child in a private school who has no motivation and who gets involved in a bad friendship group can end up with poor grades

I was very bright and went to a pretty shitty school and did not achieve my full potential (mid 90s).

The teaching was incredibly poor, think teachers just writing out chunks of text from a book on the whiteboard. Resources were lacking, there was no extra curricular options, the sports department made no effort whatsoever which was a real shame as I was very sporty.

It was just a massive let down tbh and ironically it wasn't the worst school in the area!

Out of interest did you still end up doing well in life/ are you happy with where your are at now?

I think 'a bright child will do well anywhere' is generally trotted out by those who are anti selective education.

Obviously a bright child or an average child has a better chance of doing well in terms of their potential in a calm classroom surrounded by other children with involved parents and who want to learn.

Throw in enough disruptive children and the rest of the class bright or otherwise will suffer.

The advantage of selective schools is that most of the disengaged are filtered out. But that leaves a higher % in the remaining schools.

My sister was head of humanities at a large comprehensive. The Geography department made the decision one year to put all of the disruptive DC in the same class and see the effect on the other classes. There was a significant improvement in grades in the other classes. No change for the disruptive ones.

So a bright child could do well in any school as long as the school takes measures to deal with its problem children.

I am a parent and I work in education. I guess it how you define "do well". Are you look at academics or social, emotional? Are you looking at comparing to a "potential" for that child? Or are you looking at a "good" to "brilliant" overall grade?

I mean purely academically, obviously a child who is capable of 10 6+ grades, including some 8s+9s can drop down to say a couple of 7s and a couple of 4s and then mostly 5s+6s and they still have enough passes to do A-levels and go to uni. Someone capable of 10 4s-5s drops down a few grades and they are left with just a few passes. So yes the brighter child has "done well", the less able child hasn't.

However, looking at "passing GCSE" is a very narrow definition of "do well". I would suggest, that "doing well" needs to be about achieving their potential academically, so if they are able to achieve higher grades, but aren't being supported to do so, then they are not "doing well". I would actually argue that a school could be getting lots of 5-7s, but if a lot of those children scored high earlier in the system, then they could be failing to push brighter kids. Equally a school could be getting lots of kids come in failing to really read or write, and their GCSE grades could be abysmal, but their "value added" to some of the less able students could be the difference between them being fairly successful in being independent and not really being.

That is without all the other, highly important, non-academic stuff, like whether the child is happy, has good self esteem, has made friends, etc. This stuff is generally more important to their overall well being, then the academic.

It’s not just about disruptive DC. Results also reflect that some DC just aren’t that bright and a grade 3 might be achievement.

@User3542564 What is the grade 4-9 percentage looking like? The secondary school I looked at earlier is technically a secondary modern as we are in a grammar county. The three nearby grammars are not super selective but the 4 secondary moderns in this town do still get some high achievers and the one I looked at earlier was 31.5% 5-9 at maths and English. So even with a grammar nearby, the results you quote are spectacularly low.

I have just looked at two more and they are 31% and 42%. So your school might have an awful lot of grade 4s but the grammar really won’t be taking 95% of the more academic dc. So where are the middle achievers going? Are they being wholly failed at this school? When did Ofsted inspect it?

My response to this is always "ah, but will they enjoy 'anywhere'?"

I was the bright kid, my parents were fed this line and I did indeed do well on paper. Pretty much straight As and a career in law.

I absolutely hated my mediocre at best comprehensive school full of people striving for a C or finding being clever uncool.

So I would ask where your bright child will enjoy the most. Because although the results destination is important, the journey is 5-7 years long. It would be better for them to enjoy than endure it.

I don't think that bright kids would do well anywhere, but over a range of average to good schools yep.

My girls, both bright went to different secondaries. One grammar, one middle of the road comp (both by choice). Both got firsts in their degrees.
The one who went to grammar needed to be stretched to perform well. The one who went to comp needed to be near the top of the class to feel comfortable.

All kids are different, so I don't think you can generalise that any bright kid would do well anywhere.

I was part of the worst year group to go through the worst sink school in our town... still managed 7 A* and 3 A GCSEs (also got the shock of my life when I went from there to one of the best 6th form colleges in the country!)

It's nonsense. There are so many factors why kids struggle in schools, it's not about intelligence.

"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?"

Yes, I think this is usually used to justify state over private. Which is a position I agree with.
But it's not really used about a sink school vs a decent average school.

I'm so sorry this happened to you. Where the hell were you parents in all this?

I always thought the full sentence was 'a bright kid with motivated, supportive probsbly MC parents will do well anywhere.'

It depends what you mean by "well".

I always did well in comparison to my classmates. Good, solid, reliable results, could be trusted to deliver predictably. The teachers could focus their effort and resources on helping the children who were struggling without worrying about me.
So my homework was marked, I'd get a B+, absolutely fine, but no feedback on how to lift my B to an A. No support on how to improve my essay technique, gain a few extra marks or even notice that I was being bullied and was very unhappy.
I did well at the school, but at a different school I might have thrived and fulfilled my potential in ways that I didn't know how to on my own. The difference between my experience and my children's is night and day.

It’s rubbish, most bright children will not do well in a terrible school. I think when people say this they are either trying to be comforting, getting at parents who choose private, or demonstrating “success bias”… so picking outliers (incredibly gifted children who then end up at oxbridge etc) when in reality most “bright” children are not exceptional.

my mother was a teacher at a really terrible comp during much of my childhood (1990s) and she still talks about it being almost impossible for bright children to succeed there. “Bright” kids were relentlessly bullied, most of the teachers were very junior and pretty quickly moved on (mum was amazing - it was like a mission for her), teaching quality was generally poor with the norm being that in many subjects kids were very underprepared for exams (not in my mother’s subject!), a huge % of the lessons was crowd control, no career or higher education advice, the culture was such that it would require unreal strength from young kids to step away from the problems of drugs, normalising skipping school etc etc. There were bright kids, but they did not succeed. I know that sounds v negative but it was (then) the reality.

I think perhaps a bright kid could succeed if effectively fully home schooled, but most parents do not have the time or skills for that and the child still has to survive the bullying.

Also most people when they say this actually mean that bright kids will do well at the very good local state school with an expensive catchment area, and therefore there’s no great advantage to private school. That’s true and what is usually really meant on here!!

If bullying is in the mix it becomes a different issue.

Bullying often co incudes with a crap school, but kids can also be bullied in a school that has good results, and a school with low overall achievement rates does not mean clever kids get bullied.

In the 2 S London comprehensives my Dc were at, bullying for being in top sets, or clever, was not a thing.

Just to be clear, a grade 4 is a pass in the new GCSE system, and it's more challenging to achieve in the new GCSEs.

I think culture is so important. Bullying rife? Not a chance will the bullied succeed.

No bright children do not do well anywhere. Ive seen so may intelligent children not get anywhere near their target grades due to all the other factors. Low expectations, no role models in decent careers, no encouragement from home, parents telling their children they dont care about parents evening and they dont attend or know anything about the child's schooling, poor choice of friendship groups, addiction, and if they are in a class of poorly behaved unmotivated students preventing adequate teaching, with parents who refuse to allow their child to do any sanction, they wont be learning.

Also GCSE’s are very content heavy after Gove. They are not the same exams as they were ten years ago.

I do think that a bright confident child from a family which values education can do very well anywhere, because I've seen it. I've seen children teach themselves from YouTube, if the school was poor, though it shouldn't be necessary.

A bright child is more likely to do well in a 'good' school with a school environment that works for them. Be that state, private or grammar.

Whether that same child fulfils their potential/has access to suitable after school clubs/experiences/finds their tribe/is overly stressed or is subject to bullying by those that do not value education in below average schools is debatable.

School is not just about the results and there is no student satisfaction measure provided for secondary schools.

^^This, absolutely. I was a happy child up to the age of 12, and then spent the ages of 13-18 absolutely miserable at my school, which had lasting terrible effects on my self-esteem (and on just about everything about me, to be honest). I still don’t think I’ve ever completely got over it really. I try not to think about it.

Bullying from other kids is devastating enough, but a fair number of adults - and many teachers - also think “clever” or “nerdy” children are a safe target and deserve a bit of bullying from them too, which is ten times worse.

I’m paying to send my DD (v v bright) private, not because I think she’ll get an advantage from it in the future, but because I want her to enjoy her teenage years at school; and not be made to feel like she’s weird and a target for people to make fun of. It’s not about the outcome for me, but her experience.

@marmaladeandpeanutbutter Ofsted inspectors always speak to some pupils and they used to quote what they said. Not sure if that’s still current practice but I still believe some DC are asked for opinions. As it should be. Also parents can advocate for DC.

I'd say a bright child should do okay in most places is nearer the mark.

I think it's something people say to try and convince themselves that it doesn't matter.

My df, who is very bright and very well motivated, failed his 11+ due to family situation.
He went to the secondary modern and ended up being the first (and only for a long time) pupil to take A-levels. He took his A-level maths at the same time as his teacher and got a better grade, and had to study for another subject at evening class because no teachers could teach it.
His A-level grades by todays standard are mediocre. But he should have, even back in those days have got top grades - but how could he get top grades with teachers that didn't know their stuff. He did a lot of working on his own, but also had to hold down jobs to pay his way?

My dc are bright, and went to our local comp.
My oldest is a perfectionist and very well motivated. She did very well. But there were times when she was basically left to work on her own because they knew she would. Times when she said she learnt nothing for days on end because the teachers were helping the bottom end (or the Ds to C pupils) or just doing crowd control. Sometimes they had teachers that she knew more about the subject than they did.
My other two are just as bright, but not particularly well-motivated. In particular my youngest tends to do enough to keep himself out of trouble/get to the next stage.
They would all have done better at a selective school with smaller classes. One because she would have been challenged academically and been able to have time with the teacher for things that she needed a bit more help with.
The other two even more so because they wouldn't have been able to hide behind the fact that others were doing worse and needed more help.

And that's before you get the situation of a child who is bullied and school refuses or decides the way to blend in is to not work, or the child who makes a friend who doesn't work, and imitated them; the child whose form isn't allowed to do science practicals because of the behaviour of a few (I know someone for whom that was the case); the school that can't get specialist subject teachers so ends up with someone who doesn't really understand/love a subject teaching it etc.

No, schools do make a difference.

@whiteroseredrose could be great in theory - but if a yeargroup is 120 pupils and they are going to be taught in classes of 30, what do you do if there are only 20 really disruptive pupils, with 5 moderately disruptive ones. Which 5 non-disruptive pupils do you condemn to join that class? And do you give up on the ones who might be redemable in the presence of enough good influence? And do you just stop trying with the ones who are disruptive because of unmet SEN who might actually start thriving if those needs could be recognised?

It's true that it is beneficial to the bright and diligent children to be in an environment full of other bright and diligent children. But doing that requires the most vulnerable children to be left behind. I can see that as a parent of a bright and diligent child one would be in favour of such segregation but for anyone with an overall responsibility to help all of the children access education (whether a teacher, head teacher or minister of education) it would be irresponsible to pursue that method.