The death of L6/Janice & the Giant MN Stereotype

[PiqueABoo]

"Moreover the creation of level 6 SATs papers, a harder test designed to stretch the most able, has led to a flurry of competition. The numbers entered have doubled in a few years, with parents begging schools to include their kids, even if this means extra lessons, pressure and after-school tutoring. They boast about their 'gifted and talented' offspring on Twitter and Mumsnet. All for a test which doesn't matter at all." - Janice Turner, Times today.

I've enjoyed some of Janice's articles and the overall direction was OK so I'll likely forgive her, but unlike her DC my DD wasn't headed to a private school and L6 was a blessing because it gave her something to enthusiastically engage with in those core subject lessons after a bit of a new-stuff drought.

At Y7 DD's comp the KS2 SATs results were then used to set for maths from day one and create flight paths i.e. predicted outcomes/targets. I see the latter as a kind of minimum guarantee for a high ability child in a state system that is increasingly difficult to trust because it's now so concerned with getting low ability children to floor-levels and closing dubious gaps as opposed to credible ones. Some of this even extends to disadvantaged children now with a quite weighty lobby lined up behind the idea of redistributing half of the pupil premium from the high ability disadvantaged and adding it to the amount given to the low ability disadvantaged.

There clearly was some of that ickiness, but that's not a reason to dismiss the whole and I think it's a pity L6 is now officially history. What happens with the pace being taken off the menu in favour of depth in primary will be interesting: I can't see much room for depth at that stage of education so suspect it will often be repetition unless you're lucky with school/teacher.

PS: "most able" has essentially been defined as the top 50% now so it's largely useless for anything else.

Noble not saying chucking them at bright kids is a solution, instead chucking them at all kids is a small part of the way there.

Kids have to understand what they are doing to fully grasp maths. Yes teaching a D/C borderline group through understanding for a year is unrealistic when they can be "trained" to pass exams but we should be exposing ks3 kids to all of this stuff on a regular basis.

Ks2 should be full of it too, there is plenty of scope for breadth withing maths before grappling for higher levels.

Pique I am no expert in the new ks2 curriculum but there will be areas to expand your child's knowledge should the teacher show willing. Dare I say, part of the problem with ks2 is the level of maths of the people teaching it (opening a new can of worms).

They have unfortunately stuffed the new GCSE with so much extra content that there will be little opportunity for that sort of thing in secondary anyway. Kids will be too busy learning geometric sequences and Venn diagrams. I understand that they have done the same thing in primary. No chance to give little Jonny a puzzle to solve when he has to learn to add, subtract, multiply and divide fractions aged 4, or whatever it is now.

"I know what the phrase means, but I do not understand it in this context?"

My original post comment about pupil premium and high ability disadvantaged children is a perfect example, but there are lots.

With respect to mindsets, there is an idea being sold to school-world (by Matthew Syed amongst others) claiming that you must never, ever label a high ability child because they will automatically acquire a fixed mindset which will inevitably ruin them, hence G&T and the like must all go for their own good. But I think that's a smokescreen and this is clearly aimed at the "self-worth" of the low-ability who must never feel bad about themselves, regardless of consequences for anyone else.

"Is she [Dweck] that good?"

My amateur view is that her work is at the more respectable end compared to much thrown in the educational ring and some will likely persist, but far too much has been made of it lately to support an ideology.

"Pique again what you describe isn't mastery."

Correct, but surely it was apparent that I was talking about the temporal location of various items in primary school? The issue is that mastery removes pace and my charge is that you'd swiftly run out of breadth and depth with a child like DD if in Y4 you constrained them to the curriculum stuff tagged to Y4.

"Chucking a few nrich puzzles at your bright kids isn't a real solution either."

There probably isn't a good one, so what is adequate solution?

@noblegiraffe, like algebra in primary the fractions have been spun. I thinks it's still the half a cake stuff in KS1.

But pique half a cake in ks1 is fine, it leads in to adding and subtracting fractions, counting fractions on a number line etc.

I would rather have a pupil that can explain why a half plus a quarter is three quarters arrive to me in year 7, than a pupil who can add fractions with a common denominator but has no idea why.

An adequate solution is the correct implementation of mastery.

There is ample breadth and depth with the curriculum pegging, you just have to look for it. A qualified maths teacher would hopefully find breadth and depth with ease.

Correct implementation of mastery still short-changes high ability kids. They master stuff more quickly than other students.

I wish there was a "like" button on here so that I could use it for Noblegiraffe's post.

Honestly, you are the first teacher that I've ever met in real life or seen online who gets it, and yet, it is just plain sense isn't it? Children who are highly able master things more quickly, by definition.

To be honest, I don't believe that everyone else doesn't see this too, its just that they will not acknowledge it. Its about answering the blindingly obvious next question i.e. once a child has clearly mastered something, what are you going to teach him/ her tomorrow?

High-ability children are demanding by their very nature. Whether, they ask for more work or not, they are always ready for it. You spend time preparing something for them and they gobble it up and look for the next thing.

It would be ok if all children learned at a similar rate, but they don't. Trying to move every child in a mixed ability class must be like trying to shepherd a flock of mixed-ability sheep down a road! Most will move at 3 - 4 mph, a couple will be barely moving forward at all, a few will be doing 5-7 mph and then there's one who's going at 10 mph.

I can see how it is easier to just ignore the problem of the very high ability children, and I think this is what many of those education theories enable. They make it harder to see the wood for the trees.

For example, it is possible to think that you have solved the problem of what to do with the high-ability children by lumping them in with the next group down and giving them all "extension work" with a few mastery questions at the end.

You won't have solved anything, but if you look away, you can tell yourself that you have adhered to the very latest academic thinking and then get on with worrying what to do with the lowest ability children as well as pushing the middle group forward.

And I'll have a like button for both of yours.

I've said this before, but there is actually research which shows that gifted children learned less if they were forced to repeatedly learn a subject area.

Mastery actually sounds like a better idea for low and middle attainers. A chance to slow down and really understand the material before whizzing on. It doesn't sound so good for high-ability children who I think will be bored, bored, bored. I agree with other posters who think it sounds like an excuse not to set or differentiate.

I have a ds - considered G&T in some subject areas and offered the opportunity to do Maths and Eng L6 SATs last week. He is also most probably HF ASD and needs to use a scribe/ sit in a separate room to complete his tests.

He declined the offer to do the L6 SAT - he only told us in passing last week - as he did not really care about the tests as we (and the school) have taken pains to de-stress the situation - he is bright he is also 10 (won't be 11 till August). I do not think that L6 is a magic solution for gifted pupils. All people respond to different stimuli in their learning and motivations are different. Ds learns because he wants to know 'everything' he is fantastic on facts, grammar, rules and spelling / vocabulary but needs support to process complex instructions. The gifted child needs to be stretched but while some children thrive in highly competitive environments - some may struggle and get lost.

I do not take L6 tests very seriously - deepening his understanding of the subjects he is interested by is how ds will show his real talents and that is going to take a few years - I am in no hurry - I certainly do not want to hot house and burn out his current love of learning. But maybe I am a big fat lazy hippy. Peace out.

Those saying that mastery will be boring aren't understanding the nature of mastery.

The whole point is that while some pupils are trying to add in columns and mastering that skill, other pupils may be working backwards filling in missing box addition, high ability pupils may be given a task like

aa
ab +
ac

What are the possible values of a b and c. Is there only one solution, how many solutions can you find etc.

Argh pressed post!

The point is the lesson is based on the same skill, just that skill is being applied in different ways.

What I find interesting is that the parents of gifted children are all going, you know what, that's going to be so boring for them, along with one teacher.

The ones for whom that works, aren't necessarily the gifted ones, they're the very bright. Gifted is something else altogether.

I said this on another thread, but hey. I was so visibly bored in my maths lessons as a teenager that they took me out for private lessons twice a week before school - this was in what is now Yr10. I did the entire O Level maths syllabus in 2.5 terms. And loved doing it, it was the first time ever I got to work at my own pace. And I think i had mastery, I got an A when I took the exam at the end of the year.

Penelopepitstops - I think you've described it very well. We get what it is. Some of us have seen it in practice.
I want to say it doesn't work but I suspect that sometimes it does work for people who have not yet completely mastered the concept I.e the middle-attainers.
For the quick learners its... boring.

Penelope, while some kids are still trying to master column addition, the best kids will have finished (or got bored with) that task. Let's face it, it's not that interesting that it's going to keep the brightest kids occupied for long. If you're not teaching them anything new, then the 'mastery' tasks are going to end up being busywork.

I'm just finishing teaching top set Y11. They are taking an extra GCSE compared to the rest of the year, of harder maths. Even with that extra GCSE, some of them got an A** in their mocks in it in January. Pissing those lot about with puzzles to keep them busy while the rest of the class play catch up instead of moving them onto harder topics would be insulting.

I know that the recommendation is not to accelerate good students because it can lead to shallow foundations, but for some students it doesn't. They are just faster and better than the other kids at mastering the curriculum.

" I do not think that L6 is a magic solution for gifted pupils."

I agree, but it was useful for some of them including DD i.e. it helped preserve her love of learning.

She's a summer-born and thank $deity she isn't a few weeks younger and amongst the oldest in the year below.

It seems I'm not entirely alone re. mindsets (and on the same day too):

giftedchallenges.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/the-grit-talent-dichotomy-creating_19.html

"busywork". Yes that's all it is.

About this whole racing up the levels being a bad idea thing: maybe it is (a bad idea) but what other choice is there in subjects like maths and English?

People talk about broadening and it sounds good, but what is it practice?
Take maths as an example. I can barely think of anything fresh to learn that doesn't pertain to a higher level. There's only so many puzzles a child can do before they want to move on.
This is true but I suspect I will not be believed.

Ds1 (year 8) has a maths target of 8b or 8c this year. He was a level 7a at the end of last year. He is in the top set but many of the others have level 7 targets, so with 2 weeks to go to the exams the teacher told me that she hadn't taught the class any of the level 8 stuff yet. Ds1 is quite an insecure child and he was fretting about not being able to answer any level 8 questions. So, I got hold of a list of level 8 topics and taught them to him at home. Id say we spent about 15 hours on it, including time practising on his own. My aim was to get him to 8c but he got 8a. I believe he needs to practice more trig but apart from that I can see he has a secure understanding of the material and can manipulate the various concepts to solve problems.

Ds2 is in year 6 and did his sats last week. I knew he was expected to pass the l6 paper (he had passed every test paper ) but I got an attack of guilt in the week before the exam that I'd been taking it for granted. So I gave him a level 5-7 paper to make sure the questions had not been done before. I wanted to see if there was anything he would get wrong in the level 6 questions. I warned him that there were level 7 questions which he would not be able to do. Ds2 timed himself and was really content. I marked it strictly according to the marking scheme and he got a high level 7. I don't know how but he just reasoned out the stuff that he won't do until secondary.

of course it doesn't mean anything. Both boys will continue to move slowly through the curriculum until they do their gcse in 3 or 5 years time. The system isn't set up for anything else.

I can tell a story or two like that and have quite harshly dismissed as much as possible via dodgy horizontal (whole) level lines drawn though topics etc., but I'm still left looking a significant pile of inference which is supported by accounts from DD like: "Well I kind of figured out how I thought it worked and what I was probably supposed to do..."

My new angle is that DD spends a lot of her time at the synthesis level of Bloom's taxonomy. In fact I think she has the neural equivalent of an autobahn between that kind of activity and her 'reward system'.

Her Y7 maths assessment history via some reasonable enough internal papers has been 6A, 7A, 7A, 7A, 7A. That was the ceiling for the first one and I expect there was some of that inference in the next couple. It appears that there is a possibility that Y8 could be "interesting" then and it might be worth paying a bit more attention to the maths exercise book.

PS: 7A was the ceiling for the rest.

Are you German, PiqueaBoo?

Nein, but autobahns became famous for their lack of speed limits (outside urban areas).

It was phrases like "but I'm still left looking a significant pile of inference" that made me ask. I am updating translations from German into English today and this is the sort of thing I've been working through since first thing this morning.

Hope that doesn't sound too rude!

I'm too grown-up to find for offence in that kind of observation.

German-mode(!) is one of my problems i.e. I can comprehend for England and talk very fluently, but the writing varies and can be clunky. I need a mental off switch because by the time I've written the first few words my mind has impatiently wandered off and produced a dozen competing alternatives that tend to interfere with the next few words.

I suspect DD has a touch of this based on her fondness for doing two things at once. We had a few gentle run-ins until it dawned on me that she was doing both things successfully.