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?

Xenia - I haven't seen you on MN for ages until this thread and it saddens me to see that you are still spouting the same old nonsense. What you don't seem to understand is that private education is an option for only a tiny minority and just because your children have had that option doesn't mean that everybody else is in some way failing their children by not sending their children to private school.

As far as I am aware, many private schools demand neither a teaching qualification, nor even, sometimes, a decent degree, from their teachers. I know people who have taught in private schools whose only experience of education is that once upon a time they attended school. Compare that to the state system.

I am against private education and CHOOSE to teach in a state school: not because I am not a good teacher but because I want to put something back into a system which gave me free education. I CHOOSE to send my children to state school and wouldn't go private even if money suddenly came to me that made it easy to do so. We are extremely lucky in this country to have a free education system, with many, many dedicated professionals working to help ALL pupils, not just those with moneyed parents. Surely it is the ones with fewer opportunities provided from mummy and daddy who deserve the best teachers?

I don't know which planet you live on - but it sure isn't the same one as I do.

Oh, and it is utter bollocks that there are more graduates in the private sector. Far more likely to find non-graduates there - the DFES has reuired state school teachers to have both a degree and a teaching qualifications for years and years. Private schools cannot always be so selective - often because the pay is not so good.

Quite a lot of children at some private schools are pretty thick, actually. And not all are wonderful environments either. The HMC private school and the very selective grammar we visited were pretty appalling in terms of some facilities. We could afford to pay (only just) and I know DS would get in to a super selective grammar or private. But we've chosen not to use that route.

The issue is that schools are different, and kids are different. 'Comprehensive' and 'private' as labels on their own are no guarantee of anything. I thought the atmosphere at the grammar school was poor: teachers did not want to engage with parents and wanted to be left to get on with it; the boys were diffident, rude, and not particularly 'rounded'.

I realised, as part of the selection process with my son, that I want more for him than just 'the very best qualifications'. I expect him to do his best anyway (and we are fortunate in having enough knowledge and resources to support that in any educational system). But I valued the huge commitment of the teachers in the local comp, and the proper mix, and the idea of it I suppose - I have been talking to DS about why it is important to work with and alongside other people less fortunate than yourself, as a talent in and of itself. He's going to be a part of society, so living with that, instead of just trying to leave it behind, is important.

But I'm not completely sure: he hasn't started yet and so the lack of streaming in some subjects, low level disruption and poor teaching may well come back and smack us in the face later. We'll see. I just don't think blanket labelling is ever very helpful.

Lots of private schools are for children who aren't very clever. However my stats are accurately - something like 50% of children at good universities from private schools and 6% of children may be up to 10% at private schools at A level level. Now that might mean the rich have chidlren who are more clever. It may be those who do not have political issues with private education might prefer their child at Bristol instead of an ex poly. It may mean the universities discriminate in favour of the private schools but I suspect a lot of it is simply the better teaching in the private sector. it's our private schools which are admired the world over and even exported abroad. No one wants to franchise the British comprehensive model abroad do they?

Notice above though that I am comparing the better private schools like North London Collegiate, Habs etc. Some private schools are not very good and some state schools are better. Luckily although Labour is against it we still have choice in the UK although they are trying to impose their box ticking left wing stuff on the private sector at the moment. Thankfully they are nearly on their way out and the Etonians will shortly prevail and we will be back to some normality again.

'The Etonians will shortly prevail and we will be back to some normality again'.

Oh I love you Xenia, you are wonderful.

waves at Xenia

i like the way loads of people have used this thread to wag about how great their kids are.......

mine are G&T too of course, especially the 11mo, talent just shines out of him...

at Xenia. You're great, you are.

Cos Tony Blair was so very comp wasn't he?

The sad truth is that many not v.bright children at private schools end up with better 'results' than their equivalent in a state comprehensive. You may not think qualifications alone are the be all and end of everything, they certainly aren't. But, in reality, they open doors to much more opportunity and choice.

As far as I can see the education system has shot itself in the foot. They (who do I mean by they? the government, I suppose!) have managed to achieve exactly what they set out to change, ie more and more privately educated children getting the places at top unniversities.

Xenia's offspring may find the debating skills of state school educated students at 'top' universities abysmal, but my older children and nephew, all also at 'top' universities find some of the privately educated students with straight A grades rather lacking in actual intelligence. So it works both ways.

This shouldn't turn into a private v state school rant but the knock on effect of state comprehensive school teachers 'dumbing down' will be that soon only the grammar schools and private schools actually teach academic subjects up to the level required for university entrance. If the comps upped their standard with their top ability pupils they surely could be in serious contention with the private schools who are, after all, in the main more mixed ability than a highly selective grammar school.

Fettes College is pretty low in most league tables, certainly not in the top 20 anyway. Not in the Eton, North London C league but I bet the fact his parents paid made it easier for him to get to where he was, whereas it's mroe of an achievement that his wife succeeded and more chance she would not have done. The good education narrows the odds you won't slip through the net and join the common herd on £20k a year etc.

A proper comp in an area with no grammar and few religious schools (which presumably is what newcastle is like where I am from as they abolished the 11+ in about 1970) would probably need in most areas to bus children from the worst council estate to leafy suburbs and vice versa to be fair and true.

You do get private schools for all children whose parents can pay but those comprehensive types where you can get in if you pay are not really comprehensive because most parents will try to get their children into the academic ones like St Paul's and therefore it's the rejects and lower IQ children who edn up at the private schools which take virtually all comers so those schools do not really end up being comprehensive as the clever chidlren have gone elsewhere.

I don't think it's a sad truth at all that if you give good input to one child and not to another that the first does well. UIt's life. It's how our species has advanced and survived. Survival of the fittest. It's a wonderful thing. It's responsible for the Ascent of Man and even Woman. I don't want a society of clones and I want to be able to advantage my chidlren over others whether that is through loving them to give them good emotional health, feeding them good foods, helping them enjoy books and getting them into good schools. It is a rare parent which does not want to do their best for their child.

Was that aimed at me Edgar? Possibly - I do think my son is bright, so sue me. I also think that in the wrong environment, however it was funded, he would be a prime candidate to become a bully. He also has a much, much higher risk than average of developing a serious mental health disorder as a young adult. Of course I worry about his education - I would be inhuman not to. Sorry if it comes across as boasting, believe me there are some pretty dark fears underneath that.

i see that one escaped the bitchiness filter....my apologies.

but i just want to have a good mixed bility vs setting argument, and no-one's taking me up on it....(well, no-one is flying the flag for mixed ability at any rate..)

The quality of the teachers in the state system is the only thing that gives it any credibility at the moment. The real problem with state education is right at the top with the people who are constantly fiddling with the curriculum, dumbing down the exams so that they are impossible to fail, and who are training the new teachers.

As I said in an earlier post I find it alarming that someone who is apparently so influential in the training of new teachers (Mr F in the article) believes that Year 9 students of English will never need to know or use the words, negative, eternal, distinguish etc.; that he states that a grammar book extolling the use of such words is boring and dangerous; that he had written an academic paper appearing to suggest that illiteracy was not really a problem. (Although as I haven?t read the paper myself I can?t say for certain that he does suggest that.)

In addition, it seems that Ofsted are more concerned with giving schools good marks for how conscientiously they are implementing the more political aspects of their brief (like diversity and community awareness) than actually teaching children to read, write and add up.

During the annual summer fuss about A level results it was pointed out in many papers that increasing numbers of private schools are abandoning the GCSEs and A levels in favour of the IGCSEs and Pre Us and IB. The two tiers which currently exist in education are in danger of becoming even further apart, but that won?t be the fault of the teachers.

Most comprehensives set. Grammars obviously are selective and most private schools have selective entrance and sets once in there. I've had children of mine in all levels of set but one interesting issue is if you have a very bright child I think they're better off educated at primary level from age 5 with children who are say the top 15% by IQ.

Xenia - while I agree that very bright children will learn faster and be happier when educated with their intellectual peers, it also holds for mediumly bright children that they will move ahead faster if there are very bright children in their class, and the dimmest children also do better when in classes of brighter children. The DSSs suffer badly from being in (French) comprehensive schools with no setting at all bar for English, from age 13 (they are both top of their whole year group of 180+ for English and learn very little at school).

Too wide a range of ability and those at either extreme suffer.

JeffVader, I agree. It isn't the teachers' fault. They are just doing their job. They are constrained by the 'system' as it is. Many of the teachers in the state system are excellent.

I haven't had time to read all the responses (but will do) but wanted to add my tuppenceworth.

I am an English graduate, working as an LSA in a "better" comprehensive. I wanted to do a PGCE but the kids got in the way, and now I am glad I didn't as secondary teaching in English is a lot less fun than I expected.

I have not seen any teaching to a standard as low as the article describes in the school I work in - and I see many different teachers.

I didn't finish the article so I don't know whether the author got her PGCE or not, but the tone of the article struck me as "I failed my PGCE, it was everyone's fault but mine and this is why." Apologies if she passed!

She describes being told off for teaching semi-colons the wrong way, and seems incredulous. But she was given a lesson plan to follow and didn't follow it! What did she expect? A PCGE student not following the lesson plan she has been given is unlikely to be greeted with: "Wow! That was SO much better than what we asked you to do! We must all resign!"

I won't go on.

There was a poster who described the "17 year old boy who was having terrible problems. He couldn't get a good job, and he couldn't go to college because he couldn't read properly." and who had 7 GCSEs. I do think this is a problem. If reading and writing is not cracked early it is hard to improve it at secondary level as there is not the time. The student in question probably had a reader/scribe for his literary difficulties and that was why he had passed 7 GCSEs. The fact that he had not been able to access literacy support at college would imply a lack of pastoral care somewhere along the line - it is certainly available.

Ref GCSEs. I sit in on plenty. Getting easier? Maths - God yes. You never hear about Genius 7 year olds passing Maths GCSE any more do you? It's too commonplace. My bright 7 year old could pass the lower level GCSE (with coaching).

English, though, I am not so sure. I remember one essay question from my English Lit O level of - ahem! - years ago. "Who was your favourite character and why?" Hardly taxing. I sat in on an Eng Lit poetry paper this year and looking at a question with 18 marks relating to a particular poem, reckoned that I would struggle to find 18 things to say about that poem. Or even nine things, if they were throwing the marks away.

In summary, in my opinion, there is no need to despair.

'The common herd' eh? Oh ffs.

Goes off to stick head in oven.

I went off to do that ages ago, Janeite

Message withdrawn

So, bloss, why do the lecturers spout such drivel? Who decides this nonsense?? It is absurd. I am genuinely interested as to where it all comes from. Can't wait til Ed Balls' children start secondary school......

I'm not sure what proportion of my university students are from private schools- I expect quite a reasonable one even at our very non-stellar university. With ABC entrance requirements we are not of course getting the 'top' students from anywhere.

I find that my best students tend to be girls, full stop. I haven't actually looked into the background to this but find it very interesting!

I do remember that where I went to university (Oxbridge in 90s) the 'thickest' students and the vast majority of the 'average' students were generally from private/public schools. Comprehensive school students had to be better to get there in the first place so it made sense that we were better when we got there There were of course exceptions, genius types from private schools, etc...it is clearly hard to generalise but patently, average ability pupils from private schools are taking up a huge number of university places they quite possibly do not 'deserve' in terms of actual academic potential.

I do also think that there is a massive problem with the 'customer' model of higher education especially in a results-based system. My students seem to come in expecting not to work or actually learn new skills let alone get a broad education (dirty word now in Mandelson-speak?) but to be 'trained' to become a lawyer with the minimum of effort. Thus we see an ever increasing number of utterly astonishing requests to 'help' them with assessed work (one student recently asked every member of his teaching team individually to 'grade' his family law essay before he handed it in and 'tell him how to get a better mark') and appeals against fails and low marks on the basis that 'I did the work and I deserve better'. I remember one student who had been given a bare pass and had clearly not bothered to do any work whatever for his assessment coming to my office to indignantly request 'another chance to do the assessed essay'. Is it me or did this just not happen back when we were students?? It makes me laugh at times but also makes me despair...

btw Xenia, you will never stop the 'very poor' and those selfish members of society who have taken low-paid jobs in public service (imagine the tax they could have paid if they'd only thought to become corporate lawyers!) from bringing up intelligent, articulate children who will knock the socks off the public and private school clones

I moved DS1 out of his supposedly excellent comp after experiencing 2 years of precisely the nonsense described in that article.

I lost all faith in the second year when a teacher at the open evening said DS should do no more than 10 mins homework on any one subject and he should have a "snack-break - a packet of potato chips, or a Club biscuit between 10 min homeworks if he had more than one subject".

I really think the NC and SATs have a lot to answer for. I went to a state grammar and it was marvellous and I loved it. Each teacher's lessons were different; there was creativity, individuality and frequently the lesson veered off at a fascinating tangent.

Imagine the History Boys with the NC and SATs?