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?

I feel embarrassed really to have bought my sons' way out of the education system.

DS1 has just had his first offer from med school for this year. He has had another interview about which he is confident and he has another interview in the new year. He is still waiting to hear from his 4th choice. Over 50% of our doctors are educated privately, in spite of only 6% of the population being educated privately. And in spite of Labour being in power for 11 years.

Report about lack of social mobility to the professions from the Sutton Trust http://www.suttontrust.com/reports/ST_MilburnSubmission.pdf here

here

Don't feel embarrassed. All British governments endorse the private education sector and are grateful that parents are still prepared to pay steeply for their children out of taxed income to receive a better education than the taxpayer can afford to give them. The country would not be able to manage without the private education sector.

Unfortunately, there's a solid practical rationale for 'teaching at C level'.

ALL our local 6th form colleges expect C in English for the vast majority of courses. You can get on a basic BTEC with a D, if you agree to re-take. & not many apprenticeship/employment options going begging round here, either.

So - given that I could probably get my cat a grade C GCSE, assuming it was willing to 're-draft' its coursework a sufficient number of times, & given that my boss expects me to get Cs for everyone in my lower ability set (7 sets, mine are set 6) - yes, there's a certain amount of pragmatism & teaching to the test.

I don't like it, but I'm buggered if I can see an answer - let 'em fail? When St Whatever's down the road is cheerfully getting Cs by the good old 'coursework as cloze exercise' dodge, &, for that matter, so's one of my departmental colleagues?

What I don't see, on the whole, is this notion gobsmacked2 has of schools limiting the higher ability students. IME most teachers live for their brightest groups - I've just spent 2 hours marking (genuinely) A* essays & it's a joy to do (not much marking I'd say that of!)

The state schools are doing worse than ever, sadly. There are fewer state school children doing well than in the 60s. Either that's because the private schools have got even better or because the thick and clever have all moved classes up so the underclass will remain as it is as any mobility it had a chance of has gone in that sense or simply because the grammar school route out of poverty which helped so many very clever poor (but certainly not all of them) has gone.

By 18+ it's a bit late to help the child who is now 18 who had huge potential at 5 but never really learned to read and write properly and did badly at state secondary. I think it's ridiculous to social engineer at 18 and give preference to university entrants if their parents did not go to university for example. You need to intervene at primary level.

I agree with those who have said that there are external factors that state school teachers (particularly) have to adhere to that come from above. Obviously, they do have to teach to the exam, so are at the whims of the awarding bodies and the QCA (and I do mean whims).

The government has also violated the sacred cow of telling teachers what to teach and how to teach it. The 'how' to teach it was traditionally left up to the professionalism of the teacher. Now, state school teachers have to have, when observed, a three part lesson - starter, main and plenary. Sometimes this lesson structure is appropriate, but not always, but teachers are being told it has to be this way. Pah!

Xenia, will you please stop using the word 'thick?' I see you using it in posts all over the place. It's inappropriate and offensive.

Thank you, yet again aginggoth, for backing up what I think, that distinctly 'average' students from private schools are getting the places at 'top' universities.

Even better that you are Oxbridge educated yourself, and your experiences there show that the 'thicker' students are from the private schools.

Surely the obvious thing to do is for the state education system to emulate the private system in the way they teach their students.

Xenia's posts exemplify everything I detest about private education, ie a mixture of arrogance and ignorance and a horrible sense of 'entitlement', the main reasons why I chose (yes 'chose') not to educate my children privately,

But, unfortunately, one has to accept that whatever private schools do, it does most definately work in getting
'average' students top grades, as opposed to those children of the same intelligence in a bog standard comp. Depressing but true, I am afraid, and it is outrageous that only money should buy a child a decent education, unless, of course, you have the luxury of living in a grammar school area, like I do (and your child is clever enough to pass the admissions test).

Those that don't get into the grammar schools in my area and go to the excellent comprehensive (indeed many choose not even to take the grammar school test) will find that there is no question, in the long run,that those going on to 'top' universities will be from the grammar schools (quite rightly so because they are academic children).

What is interesting is that those who don't get into the grammar schools but who then go on to independent schools, rather than the local excellent comp, will get much better exam results. How is that? Have they suddently become more intelligent? I don't think so.

The more I think about this the more I realise that league tables have a lot to answer for.

The exams get easier, the children get taught to pass the exams rather than how to think and apply knowledge. Without the pressure of league tables, I think teachers would have an ability to be more creative about engendering a love of learning.

Incidentally, there's touching faith in state grammars shown on this thread. Only looked around two but it seemed to me that 'Scenes from a PGCE' could well have been set there.

BalloonSlayer, I wasn't given a lesson plan. I was told to teach the semi-colon, and given an example. Did this mean that I couldn't offer an explanation, or other examples? Apparently it did.

That would be - well, unusual, gobsmacked2.

Semi-colons (& other punctuation marks that aren't full stops & commas) are one of the easiest & most obvious tools to use in order to hit that grade C on a GCSE writing paper. I have students who couldn't write a coherent paragraph on what they had for tea tonight; but if they tried, it'd be semi-colon-tastic.

I'm very surprised that anyone would try to interfere with your teaching of punctuation basics, provided the kids were actually learning.

What was this school like? (Apart from apparently being staffed with caricature Gradgrinds). Can you tell us something about the students?

It is true that children scoring the same CAT scores on entry to independent schools achieve somewhat higher grades than children with the same scores in state comprehensives. The MidYis predictions take the school type into account for example so as to give more accurate predictions. So there is definitely a higher 'value add' for independent schools, but I don't think it's anywhere near as pronounced as 'average' students getting top grades, to be honest. (I used to know what it was in terms of average increase to GCSE grades, but I've forgotten).

However unpalatable it is, the average intelligence of independent school kids is likely to be higher than those at state comprehensives (even true comprehensives) and this will also be a factor in their over-representation in top universities. Some of the reasons for this discrepency are:

firstly because the scholarships/bursaries do succeed in attracting the very brightest children who would otherwise not have been able to afford it;

secondly because some parents with a very bright child make extra sacrifices to send that child (and often not others in the same family) to private school because they believe, rightly or wrongly, that a selective school is the best environment for them.

thirdly because the average income of the parents is higher and for some reason this correlates quite strongly to educational outcome in all types of school - so for some reason (be it nature or nurture) children of rich parents achieve better, quite likely due to higher average IQ - caused by either genetics or nurture (more enriching upbringing), who knows) or maybe by the extra help being available when needed. This doesn't have to be a huge effect and is the most controversial I think, but it does seem likely that it is there at least in some measure.

lastly because many independent schools (more than half I think) are selective to some extent and filter out the less able applicants this will also contribute to the average intelligence of the overall independent school child being above the national average.

Having said all that there is clearly a huge overrepresentation of private children at top universities that is unlikely to be anything like fully accounted for by the above (quite possibly even including the extra value-add) and is probably more down to school and parental expectations and guidance.

That said, I do think having been taught well and achieved high grades and gone to a top university that a child might not otherwise have got too isn't necessarily a disadvantage. Lots of children in that position still go on to do well - having learned how to learn they are able to continue to surpass themselves. As I think all of us tend not to fullfill our potential there's plenty of scope for people to cope with courses that maybe they wouldn't have been able to access if they'd got lower grades from another school. If they've had a good well-rounded education many people can build on that and take it further.

At university (Oxbridge) the people I knew that struggled most were evenly spread across school types. The privately educated struggled mainly not due to lack of intelligence but excessive partying; those from state comprehensives that I knew well struggled academically most (but I also knew several who didn't at all); and those I knew from state grammars also struggled academically and also quite a lot from the change to independent learning as well. All anecdotal of course, and I'd really hesitate to jump on anyone's anecdotal observations (where people tend to see what they want to see in any case) to support a theory, but it shows that not everyone observes privately educated children floundering through innate lack of intelligence.

ravenAK: The schools in which I was placed were comprehensives with 800-900 students, just outside a medium-sized city in a prosperous part of England. Very few of the students were immigrants or children of immigrants, so they were nearly all native speakers of English. It goes without saying that there was a very wide range of abilities. A few had serious behaviour problems, many more were lazy, but at least as many were good-natured and willing to learn.

On semi-colons: back at the department, Mr. F asked the assembled English PGCE students how many did not really know ? thought they did not know ? how to use a semi-colon. More than half of the trainee teachers raised their hands. (In case you were wondering: no, he did not give us a little lesson on the semi-colon. So I'm not sure what the point of the question was. Perhaps that the semi-colon would soon join the "traditional essay ? you know, introduction, body, conclusion" on the dustheap of history?)

I agree, it's all very surprising.

I must be very out of touch, are 'traditional essays' really out of fashion for GCSE and A'level now? ( =introduction, body, conclusion).

Doctors and journalists are professions massively over-represented by privately educated people, more so than lawyers and bankers. ANd it'sa growing problem. In spite of 11 years under Labour and the BBC being broadly left-loving. These are jobs not normally associated with chinlessness and Bullingdon excess and can't be neatly explained away by old school ties.

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Swedington could it be because indep schools provide classical education which certainly is a boon for a journalist and prob helps with those in medical prof?

Also I've noticed that science seems to be delivered in a much more inspiring way at indep schools. Just looking from own fairly limited experience of both sectors.

I've known some wonderful, inspiring, admittedly probably completely off the clock bonkers types teaching science at independent schools. At my school (state) they could not have found duller people to teach science. Oh the happy hours I spent drawing circuit diagrams in physics...

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Ravenak 'I have students who couldn't write a coherent essay about what they had for tea, but if they could it would be semi-colon tastic'(or words to that effect)

What do you mean by that? Do you mean learning the correct usage of a semi-colon is easier than learning how to write an essay?

Thank you Bloss for that explanation. Very interesting.

(However, it is just making matters worse for my middle aged raving about the current education system.....)

Quite a few of my sons' academically selective independent school teachers aren't trained teachers. Who cares? Give me a teacher who is passionate about his subject over a teacher who has a PGCE, any day.

A PGCE or a B Ed doesn't make a good teacher.

Bloss -= excellent post. I should have read it before I posted.

interesting article about the semicolon.

Bloss - what a fantastic post!

Years ago I worked in a corporate setting and I am now seeing techniques used there being applied to the school setting.

For example: constant reviewing, self evaluation and target setting (I've seen 'smart objectives' migrate from the corporate world into schools!)

The time spent doing the above, writing OFSTED proof lesson plans and data trawling detracts from the quality of teaching and learning IMHO.

As bloss noted people who choose to work in schools are generally 'people persons'!! Some days I feel like an auditor. I've also noticed that recent PGCE graduates are almost like robot teachers. They like to be given lesson plans and teach neat little power point lessons - passion and creativity scare them.

I have some experience of the grammar system - the ability range is larger than you would expect - and they are not exempt from behaviour issues.

The best teachers that I have encountered have been the ones who work in the 'sink schools' (for the thick, poor people )... it's a shame that the posh clever types don't have access to such excellence.

Gosh, quite a lot about.

1. Write "Definite" correctly spelled 10 times... back of the class. Red ink. It's wrong. It's actually a very common error of state school educated people. But it's my mother I remember - "defin".. and then loudly "ITE"

1. So parents have a huge input. I remember a period when we put more into our children at home and it came out more. Over 25 years as a parent my time has waxed and waned although hopefully all 5 have had a reasonable amount of parental attention, encouragement, love, good reasonably clever genes and a good private school environment.

1. My father who was a psychiatrist always said he thought it was about 50% genes and 50% environment. I think he is right. You do get sometimes much less clever (or very clever) adopted children which proves that but put a lot of input into certain chidlren, even a mentor at primary level seeing them for an hour a week and you get results.

1. So if you put in good input then even in relation to privately educated children who get half the best university places (and let's not forget the bias the other way at the moment though, the parents putting private children into that Cambridge comp at 16 etc supposedly to help them or perhaps parents need a tactical choice that their AAA private educated child goes to a sink inner london comp at 16 hardly turns up at all, has private tutoring and then gets preferred for university entrance etc etc....) then that child is stretched and the most it is capable brought out of it. Even if you take adults, we, now, we can all improve our memories, improve our knowledge etc . It's a continuous process. Some very very clever chidlren with no advantages leave school at 16 and still do well although huge numbers of hte prison population are dyslexic and were branded failures so it gets much much harder. Buying a good education helps reduce those risks.