New Statesman article on schools

[UnquietDad]

very interesting

Shows how the perception of state schools is skewed in the media, sometimes deliberately, by journalists and writers anxious to reinforce their own "choice".

(Who are all these writers who send their children private? None I know can afford it...)

Smee m- GB's children are still infants/junior. Just watch him wriggle when it comes to secondary.

FM and AC DO criticise politicians for not sending their children to state schools quite openly.

Yes, will be interesting to see what GB, Ed Balls et al do at secondary level. At least FM/AC have stuck to their guns, as it were.

Metella - why is that do you think?
People are forever asking why I won't trust the state system when both my DH and I did well from fairly dire comps.
My answer depends on my mood.
Sometimes I point out that I lived on a shit estate too but don't feel the need to replicate the experience for my kids.
Other times I point out that I cannot abide the NC, SATS and the interference from the state.
Whatever I say, never seems to be good enough - everyone's a socialist when it comes to education.

In my group of friends there is a complete mixture, privately educated who send their children to state schools, state educated who send their children to private schools, state and state, private and private...

We discuss it all on a superficial level but it all gets too personal to discuss in any depth really. More contentious in our group is the comp v grammar debate rather than state v private. That's why it's interesting to discuss on here...no-one gets TOO offended

Bags - I think people ask me outright becauese I'm from very working class background ( dad a miner, council estate etc) and I hold a lot of views that are considered left wing.
I really don't mind discussing it though sometimes people actually don't want to listen to my answer they just want to have a dig.

I'm from a strange background...working class on one side, climbed out of working class and 're-invented' on the other side. Most of my friends who educate privately are from a working class background whereas the comprehensive parents are from quite elite public school backgrounds, the grammar school lot are solidly middle class (DH fits that bracket...) Make of that what you will

Can I chip in that I have taught in both sectors, and the thing that shocked me most about teaching in comprehensive schools was that I felt many children were underachieving for fairly simple and straightforward reasons, yet many colleagues seemed to regard this as normal and acceptable. In one case I even experienced out and out resentment for tackling it in my own classrooms.

This attitude was alien to me, as I felt they could have been much more exacting about things like: regular use of dictionaries, legible handwriting, correct spelling of the technical terms to do with the subject, appropriate layout of work (eg dating, page numbers and so on) so the thinking behind it was logical and good records of classwork were kept, individual use of modern text books rather than sharing scruffy old ones between three or even four pupils, appropriate physical layout and tidiness of the classroom to promote an ordered and scholarly environment, visually attractive, regularly updated and thoughtful displays of excellent work, annotated marking of pupils' work, and other things like that. All this should be the stock in trade of any school that has pride in the job, but disappointingly this was not always the case where I taught.

It seemed to me that some children were allowed to amble through the school day in a kind of underachievement haze, roaming from room to room carrying their worldly goods around with them like nomads, never properly settling, and never actually completing anything properly. I think this is an important part of tackling underachievement at source, recognising the need for stucture and order as a basis for a thorough education and more creative and holistic elements interwoven through this.

When parents are shelling out for independent education, I believe this is mainly what they are buying into, and this is one of the reasons I hope for more ebb and flow between the two sectors in the future. If more teachers worked in both sectors, and more parents used them, then it would soon become apparent that different practices were existing alongside each other, but that some were more effective than others. I honestly think funding doesn't always even enter into it - it's about an attitude of mind in many cases, and knowing what the possibilities are.

I am not criticising the maintained sector wholescale in this posting, by the way, as there are many excellent maintained schools that do all the things I have described and get good results accordingly. But I do think that instead of slating the middle classes for making an intelligent and informed choice about what they want for their children's schooling (very on message politically since the 1988 Act, so they are only doing what they are told they should be wanting to do), it would be more productive to free up the two sectors so that it was easier for children to move between both, and more children got the opportunity to experience both. That way we would be looking at standards and social inclusion at the same time, and we might make more progress, because the two are inextricably intertwined. To an extent this has happened in Early Years settings, so perhaps we need to roll this out even further. I think that has been part of the motivation behind the Academies programme, for example.

BoffinMum - and did you ever see children in the state sector who were fulfilling the highest standards possible at school but who still were not stretched to achieve their best vis-à-vis their own talents?

Yes, I have one at the moment who is coasting and actually not very happy about it. Luckily he is about to transfer to secondary school and so we have found an unusual comprehensive school that is a bit smaller than our local one, and offers a more diverse and ambitious range of academic programmes, that I think will push him a bit more. We are not obsessed by achievement in this house, but we don't like to see children bored or doing sloppy work because nobody is marking it or taking them through their work properly, for example.

He did a trial day at the new school recently, and when he came back he commented on the orderly nature of the classrooms, the higher demands of him, and the better preparedness of the teachers, and said he liked it a lot more than the local comprehensive school, when he went for a trial day there, which proved to be much like his primary school has been. That was not how he wanted to be spending his days. I must stress our local school is pretty good, but clearly just not the right place for him at this time.

We did consider the private sector, where he would have probably been able to get a scholarship, but ruled it out on the basis that it is too socially exclusive and we felt he should have a group of friends more representative of the local neighbourhood.

Your situation sounds a bit like ours - DSS2 was borderline depressed last year in his final year of French state primary for want of being stretched. When DP raised his concerns with the teacher, the teacher couldn't understand what the problem was, nor could he understand why DP wasn't happy about the teacher using DSS2 as a tutor for underachieving children. From the teacher's POV DSS2 was achieving all that was expected of him.

This year in secondary school (French state collège) DSS2 is no longer as bored and is not depressed any more - he is however still right at the top of his class in nearly all subjects and seems to spend a lot of his day sitting around waiting for other pupils to finish their work. The school has suggested bumping him up a year but none of us want that for him.

I should add that professionally as well, I frequently saw pupils who would have been university-tracked at an independent school, but who fell by the wayside a bit because of their diverse social backgrounds. Similarly as a teacher I often set up little programmes to promote excellence with groups of pupils that had potential but little outlet for it, and put them through Associated Board music exams via low cost group teaching methods, taught them complicated part-singing, and things like that. You can imagine how popular that made me in the staff room sometimes.

Boffinmum - you have made a very good point.
I volunteer in our local primary and it is very chaotic and noisy in class.
Partly this is due to the huge size and no TA but also a lack of structure.
The teachers are quite demoralised due to class sizes and lack of parent support ( I volunteer even thouhg my own kids don't go there becuase none of the pupils parents will help) and seem almost to have lost the will to do a good job.
It is a dreadful shame because the kids are lovely but are already disadvantaged in respect of their socio economic background and could well do with school being a haven of order and high stanbdards.

xposts

I am sad to hear this, BonsoirAnna, but this is a very common scenario. Professor Joan Freeman has written widely on it.

I fear that part of the problem of being an academically able child is learning to put up with other pupils that may not be as gifted as you, or being used as their coach. I am afraid that is life, to an extent. My personal way out of it at school was to read ahead quietly in the text book while the others floundered about, and also to learn several musical instruments on the side, as well as a couple of less common languages. I eventually worked out that my brain was like a kind of beast that needed feeding, and it was up to me to find the intellectual fodder for it. It also helped that I was socially airlifted out of a rural maintained education system at the suggestion of my state primary school headmaster, and given a scholarship to an independent selective school, but even there I wasn't always sufficiently challenged, looking back.

Socially, of course, there was a substantial degree of asynchronicity, as I was in many ways immature for my age, and spent a lot of time puzzled about this until I realised it was actually OK to be forgetful about PE kits or fall out with other children over silly things, but still be reading Samuel Beckett in my spare time. I think this asynchronicity is a key reason for keeping children with their age group as far as possible (unless they are born really early or late in the academic year and are physically different as well), because children do need time to mature.

It wasn't until I got to Oxbridge I really felt I was with other people like me. As my DH describes it, Oxbridge is a 'day centre for the terminally bright' and I think that is quite well observed. It was a great relief not to have to hold it all in, so to speak, and actually find myself a bit lower down the intellectual pile (because there are some staggeringly intelligent people there). It took a lot of pressure off.

So in short, I think your son's problems are fairly normal for a bright kid, but frankly if he didn't have those problems there would just be other ones. Such is childhood.

Litchick, I am so glad you are volunteering like this. You have put very well why schools can be exhausting places for pupils and teacher alike. Sometimes I think working in a school is like perpetually being in a busy shopping mall at sale time, rather than the haven so many of us think it ought to be, especially for children from unsettled homes.

I was very pleased the school meals issue has been tackled, by the way, as the physical care of children in these environments is also an important aspect of learning. I have my fingers crossed that they introduce free school meals for everyone in the future, as I am sure that will really improve takeup and overall nutrition levels amongst key target groups.

I couldn't agree more that "children need time to mature." Both my sister and I and my DP spent part or all of our school years bumped up to the year ahead, and all three of us are adamant that it should never happen to our children. A seriously (terminally) bright French friend of mine did her bac two years ahead of her year group and certainly as an adult has suffered from her accelerated childhood as she has great difficulty in her personal relationships unless the people around her are as bright as she is.

I also know a child who, like DSS2, became depressed in her final year of French state school because of chronic understimulation. Sadly, it went rather a lot further than a mere problem of childhood as she has recently spent most of six months in a psychiatric hospital.

BonsoirAnna, again sadly this is so very common, but the answer lies in academically-orientated summer camps, intellectual hobbies and also developing a zen-like philosophy about it all over time. At least then children get intellectual stimulation in bursts.

But this stuff costs a fortune. An hour on a principle instrument a week costs £40 around here with the (state) school music service, and two subsidiary instruments with half an hour's tuition each would cost you another £40 a week. So that's £80 a week - some people in the UK actually live on less than that. A Goethe Institut German summer camp will cost you £2000 plus flights. The UK Government-backed gifted and talented summer schools cost about £2000 as well. This puts enrichment activities out of reach of all but the most select group of people, and there aren't many bursaries.

Ultimately children have to fit in with the world, and the world won't fit in with them, harsh as that seems. Bright children aren't really cut much slack in this regard, because people think they have gifts and therefore they should be 'grateful'. So enrichment isn't very high on the agenda, usually. The link with mental health isn't very well appreciated.

I agree with all you say, BoffinMum, and we are fortunately able to purchase enrichment activities (language summer camps, music lessons etc) for our children. And we also do so because we are well aware of the link with mental health.

The link between chronic understimulation and poor mental health in children is very poorly understood here in France.

"did you ever see children in the state sector who were fulfilling the highest standards possible at school but who still were not stretched to achieve their best vis-à-vis their own talents?"

here

Thanks for the link, senua. That is indeed very dispiriting news.

The type of underachievement identified at the grammar school is also evident in some independent schools, if I am going to be very frank. Paying for it does not automatically mean it is better. Although it often is, of course. I have seen pockets of inexcusably appalling teaching in the independent sector, that goes undetected because teachers are working with bright children that get along reasonably well despite this.

A small amount of really bad teaching, as in the odd teacher, can be quite educational, though - it makes one aware of the difference between good and bad teaching and I think helps one better understand how to become an independent learner (which ought to be the ultimate goal of education in any case).

This is true - spoonfeeding and constant stimulation can do harm as well.

BoffinMum - I agree with you about feeling like a freak and under stimlated until I got to Oxford.

My DS1 is the same. Coasting along at the top of a class in a selective independent school and me and my wife having to 'coach' the school to give him more to do.

I also agree with you - paying for its does not guarantee better. It only guarantees smaller classes, better equipment and buildings (mostly) and better discipline (mostly).

I have wriiten before about my suspicion that some independent school teachers coast along in the luxury of having bright well behaved pupils to teach but do not produce excellent results when the material they are working with is taken into account.

When I do Oxbridge interviewing, it pains me to see so many bright, promising young people who have been denied real academic stimulus at school in the sixth form, and who have had little contact with their intellectual peers, which all means that they struggle to cope with really high level study. This phenomenon is by no means confined to the maintained sector, although there it tends to be much more prevalent.

More than once I have telephoned a head teacher to discuss this with them, and to stress the importance of bright pupils having the opportunity to mix with their intellectual peers regularly, only to be told that this is too hard to achieve in practice.

BoffinMum - could you do me a favour and pop over to this thread.
Ta