Comprehensive school teaching - is it really this bad?

[jackstarbright]

I have just found this very disturbing article published in the Reader a few months ago. It's Gabriella Gruder-Poni's essay, 'Scenes from a PGCE'. here.

It provides one woman's view of teaching methods in a comprehensive school. Any comments?

Dcs school is streamed for english in Yr7 and further more now have a lesson once a week with a different teacher specifically devoted to grammar in YR7.

I agree! I don't think comprehensive schools can work properly without streaming. I remember when they were first introduced, and I thought that the idea was that it prevented children who might be late developers from being shunted off into secondary moderns and forgotten. If you developed late in a comprehensive, then you could be moved up into the stream that suited your abilities.

I was very interested to read gobsmacked's follow up comments. I find it extremely alarming that people who have such a powerful position in the educational policy and training in the UK seem to have such negative attitude towards the young people for whom they are responsible.

Not all private schools are perfect by any means, but this article does provide one reason why the gap between the private and state sectors has widened over the last decade ? in terms of access to the top universities for example.

Many of my friends are teachers (although mostly at primary level) and I know that most of them feel like Fifth Columnists; paying lip service to the regime and doing what they can to make up for it in the classroom. If you have a sympathetic head, quite a lot can be done.

Our local secondary school has NO streaming except in maths. It also has a very mixed intake. Some children enter year 7 with level 3 SATS whilst others have achieved level 5. At the open evening in September, the head was asked how the school managed to teach such a wide range of abilities within one class. He was very defensive and would only say that the "school caters for all abilities". I am very worried that our local school embodies the same sort of approach to comprehensive education as set out in this article.

very worrying article....I hope this is not typical.

I can't say if this is typical but what I can say is that in the primary school where I volunter the children's literacy skill are woefully low because the parents do not read with their children at home.
I try to listen to the children read but can't get through them all in the hours I'm prepared to give. And ther TA is more not there than there because of long term health issues.

By the time they get to the secondary school they simply will not be able to 'access' more difficult texts.

To incorporate these children and ensure they achieve a C grade, the course simply has to be dumbed down.

Is this still on the BBC website somewhere and I am missing it?:

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4486306.stm:

Did a search on the site but had no luck.

Gobsmacked2 - Thank you for your post and for writing the original article. Best of luck in whatever career you choose.

Jeffvader said:

'.....I find it extremely alarming that people who have such a powerful position in the educational policy and training in the UK seem to have such negative attitude towards the young people for whom they are responsible.'

I agree! Anyone any idea how this could have happened?

I'm sure none of them would see it has having a negative attitude towards the young people - they would see it has having respect for the young people, their cultural choices and their interests.
I was talking to dh about this earlier (showed him the article & thread - Gobsmacked, you & he would probably have an interesting discussion about it all) - he's a university mathematician who is heavily involved with maths education issues, has done consultancy for exam boards etc, and he said that maths GCSE has dumbed down less than other subjects because there is broadly agreement among teachers that the hard stuff is worth doing, unlike in some arts subjects where the teachers seem to feel that it is the traditional skills themselves that are not worth having.

Very interesting. Thanks for coming on, gobsmacked. My two DSs are in years 6 and 4 in the state system. One of them is very very bright, the other I would describe as bright-to-middling. I am struck by the low expectations that seem to be inherent in the state system and intend to send them private for secondary education, even though we live in a grammar school area and the eldest has just passed the entrance exam (in the top 1% of the cohort)

Kathy - that's very interesting.

Acanthus - so do you think a private education will be significantly better for your bright son than a state grammar? I had kind of hoped grammar schools were comparable (even though the question is academic in our case because we're nowhere near a grammar school area) - do you think even they don't push the brightest enough?

' they would see it has having respect for the young people, their cultural choices and their interests.'

Kathy if you are right and their actions are well meaning, they are still damaging children's potential to progress beyond those cultures and interests. Does thIs mean social mobility is nolonger a goal of comprehensive schools?

"Does thIs mean social mobility is nolonger a goal of comprehensive schools?"

No, jackstarbright. It just means they aspire to the LCD - the social mobility is downwards!!

To be fair, I don't think it's the goal of comprehensive schools but is sometimes the result!

I teach in a comprehensivr secondary school and it sounds a million miles away from my working life.

Morosky, please tell me more if you have time? - I'm about 1cm away from home educating ds after reading that.

I clearly can't tell you about your particular shool but I find it quite offensive to be told that I am dumbing down education and am trying to stifle debate. I run a debating society for a start.

I find gobsmacked2's comments on the thread and the Indie article a bit disingenuos and/or naive tbh. I can't access the original piece so I can't comment on that.

This is someone who chose not to be a teacher after her PGCE, right? And who's only experience of teaching in said secondary schools was on placement? And whose evidence seems to be mostly based on offhand comments from tired staff, perhaps in the staffroom but not particularly in any formal capacity - at least that is what most of the comments seem like.

LOTS of people who teach like to moan about their pupils in private, it's part of the backstage culture. Sometimes they ARE cynical old gits who dumb things down for an easy life; sometimes perhaps it IS more like policy to do it that way. But I would be utterly shocked if real unbiased and unpartial research on teaching truly showed up the things gobsmacked2 has written about.

I'm not really going to accept the anecdotal stories of a disaffected junior in the profession who decided it wasn't for her and needed to carve out a story for herself elsewhere, in the media or whatever. Sorry.

hahahahaha

who's/whose/who the fuck knows? That's comprehensive education for ya!

Can't believe I've missed this one.

I'm a parent of a secondary school age dc going to a 'good' comp and this article bears no relation whatsoever to my dd's school.

Although the article makes some good points, quite frankly after ploughing my way through it I've come to the same conclusion as Wilf. It reads like a piece of tittle tattle and the author comes across as someone who set out with her own agenda from the start and intended to do things her way. Like it or not, that's not necessarily what training is about. It's based on placements and not on any type of longer term experience. She says tehre's no personal vendetta then practically gives out the names of her supervisors through a series of heavy hints. comes across as highly unprofessional imo.

Yet another slag off state education thread. Sheesh.

"I'm not really going to accept the anecdotal stories of a disaffected junior in the profession who decided it wasn't for her and needed to carve out a story for herself elsewhere, in the media or whatever. Sorry."

Agree entirely. This is a non-story from somebody who couldn't hack teaching, by the sound of it; so wants to slag off teachers to make herself feel better.

Sour grapes and all that...
Not everyone can afford or chooses to educate their children in private schools that might demand more from their students.
However, dismissing the article as 'tittle tattle' is quite naive.
Our state primary, idyllic, very well fundeded, 'tres' posh' village school with 8-12 pupils per teacher ratio etc. got the most glowing and utterly outstanding Ofstead report this year. Parents are terribly pleased over it, naturally. But reading the 'prize essays' on the school website makes one weep....
The secondary it feeds to is one of two comprehensives in the county that were rated outstanding. Yet how much trust could one place in these reports?

There are some serious issues there that don't deserve to be written off glibly though, aren't there?

I did visit our local state (grammar) school with DD and y'know it didn't feel very academic to me. Not a bit. All about rehashing stuff from Wiki to get A/A* grades, a library so small that it was practically invisible, blah blah.

Agree with Wilf that this is a bit of a non-article, which strings a load of anecdotes together to come to a rather sanctimonious and highly self-righteous conclusion.

I do think there are issues with secondary teaching, and IME it is perfectly possible for students to get 2-3 As at A-Level without any understanding of grammar or how to structure an essay/argument.

However, IMO these issues are very much tied to the criteria for A-Level marking, and IME affect students from 'good' independent schools as much as those from 'crap' comprehensives.