What does good differentiation look like?

[catkind]

DD is due to start school Sept 16, and is showing signs of being very ahead in academic stuff, e.g. she's reading fluently now.

She's very different from DS and I wouldn't rule out sending her to a different school, though obviously it would be less than ideal. What are we looking for in a school? What questions should we ask?

Phonics worries me particularly as DS spent a lot of time in reception learning phonics, and DD knows as far as I can tell everything he learned in that time. Should she wait for the others to catch up? Or be taught on her own? Or is there some middle ground? I'm worried that she will get into bad habits in reading and spelling if she isn't taught phonics at the level where she's at. Perhaps that's a daft thing to worry about and she'll just pick it up the way she's picked up reading so far. But then again it seems a bit arrogant to say she doesn't need teaching.

Maths I am more able to cover at home, though I guess there will be less time around school than there is around playgroup for her to follow her interests.

So, what do we actually want, ideally? I'd like to go to open days in September-October and ask questions, but what questions, and what answers are we looking for? And I guess I'm thinking about reception-year 1 as that's all we've seen so far with DS, but also what do we need to think about for further up the school?

That is weird. DS is in Y8, not in the UK, and this year they have done several complete works including Tristan and Iseult, a Jules Verne (abridged but not simplified) and a historical adventure novel set at the time of the crusades. The literature programme is explicitly linked with the history and geography periods/ themes studied during the year. They are always expected to read the complete work, although whether all the kids do I have no idea (probably not). It's a top set and the level is just right for DS who is able but not brilliant in literacy.

Well we have a clear leading contender on the G&T policy basis. Only one of the obvious candidates had one, and it looks really good. Not DS's current school unfortunately.

Teaching literature without reading the books sounds nuts. No idea how you can teach anything at all on that basis At least they could read the originals at home I guess.

For maths differentiation in secondary, I'd think Olympiad-type stuff is your friend. There are loads of different levels, from junior school right through to international olympiads, don't usually need much if any extra taught material. At the higher levels they learn key skills for university maths - thinking through multi stage problems, and writing proofs. And it's fun.

The other schools might have G&T policies, just not on their website. Call the the reception desk/ school office and ask.

Basically, when it comes to marketing themselves, many schools are incompetent amateurs. That's ok though, IMO, since you want them for their teaching and nurturing skills not their business acumen.

var, in what years are they not studying the book? (As an Eng Lit graduate I am trying to contain my horror here).

year 6 (mixed ability) read the books (slowly)
year 7 (mixed ability) read one book - Gaiman - but ran out of time and couldn't finish it.
year 8 (top set) read one book - Morpurgo - completely and basically read the synopsis and extracts from various Shakespeare plays and several Dickens.

I usually buy the books and let Ds read them at home so the story isn't completely ruined by the slow pace at school.

However, I thought Shakespeare was too complex and Ds would need someone to help him through the language (he disagreed). He was so fed up with it all by the time they got around to Dickens that he didn't want the books at home. I think we have copies somewhere on the bookshelves but he simply didn't want to know.

I have a feeling that they also watched one of the shakespeare plays on dvd - in cartoon form!! I think it was Hamlet. I am not joking!

FFS

The parents' evenings here are initially a meeting with the form tutor and at the last one we diplomatically mentioned that Y7 English seemed less challenging than in upper-KS2. In response FT first asked Y7 DD what she was currently reading and then whether that was some 'retold' version by Forgettable Author. They were visibly surprised and temporarily dumbstruck when a confused DD explained that no, it was the original Sherlock Holmes written by Conan Doyle.

If DD had added that she read the majority of the (unabridged) Sherlock stories back in 2013 then perhaps that reaction would be more justified, but I struggle to believe that coping with this kind of level/genre is so rare for an 11-12 year-old with shiny SATs results.

A few weeks later I discovered the form tutor is the English HoD.

FFS, again. With knobs on. When we get to secondary, I am going to ask about when English is set, with Yr7 being the only really acceptable answer.

But what I also want to know, is what's happened since we were at school, when the expectations were, in the main, a lot higher.

When I was at school being good at their subject was prized by the teachers. I do not see much evidence for that any more.

The exams changed too. When the exam system was invented the idea was to mark out those who were very able. Now, its about everyone passing. That's why they scrapped the two tier exam system (CSE and O'level) and replaced it with a single exam: GCSE.

Recently, there have been attempts to make the GCSEs harder, and if you look on the other parts of this forum you will see people asking "but does this mean that some DC will not be up to answering all the questions" as though that's a bad thing.

The drive to create a democracy in education by ability (nothing to do with social class) goes right across the education spectrum. When I was at university - mid-80s, I remember a lecturer telling us that just by being there, it meant we were in the top 7-8% by IQ.

A few years later, i read a newspaper report saying the govt wanted 50% to go to university (i.e. 50% in higher education not further education). Clearly, the universities were going to have to change if that was to be achieved as there's no way that someone with average ability could do something meant to challenge the top 7-8%. A quick google shows that 49% now go to uni.

Blame the "Blob" i.e. decades of progressive ideology. A lot of the media coverage has been on relatively petty squabbles over phonics and Mice & Men etc., but beneath that there is an extremely significant battle being fought.

I've disliked Gove since reading a couple of the young journalist's Times columns way back, but although their solutions are far from perfect (a few offend me) I do understand what he was up to and tentatively approve. A key point is that this is not really a political left-right thing, which is clearly why Labour have been so quiet on education.

Which of Gove's solutions did you particularly dislike?

I understand he was much maligned when Education Secretary but I never saw specific objections, more just generalised complaints that he didn't know what he was talking about or was damaging the reputation of the teaching profession.

"Which of Gove's solutions did you particularly dislike?"

The implementation of free schools and new-style academies, the trust in the market. It's not universal, but too many "wrong 'uns" appear to have derived personal advantage from that rush to divorce schools from the pillars of the educational establishment. Then despite the significant cost, many of the rest appear to be the same as they were before conversion. I'm a bit of a romantic and think education should remain a vocation, not so much a career. The SLT bloat with so many assistant and associate HTs already annoyed me and now we have Executive Chief Principals on ridiculously inflated salaries etc.

Gove was scrupulously polite about teachers who tended to be the "best ever generation" etc. in speeches, but the broader PR war was clearly fought with journalist's instincts for stories that appeal to the mob, so yes I think it damaged the reputation of the profession. Perhaps their was no other way in the perceived time-scale, but I'm not convinced they had to let everything seem so polarised. For instance, the very vocational and hard-working teacher I know is probably as contemptuous of 'trendy' educational crap as Gove and you can find the same sentiment on teacher blogs.

The issue that faced Gove (and now his replacement) is that if you insist on all children studying the same curriculum and taking the same exams, you either have to dumb down the curriculum or accept a very high failure rate.

They do this here in France: there is a relatively ambitious curriculum with a single "15+" exam sat by everyone (except a small minority of students with special needs). Approximately two thirds of students fail the written papers; they get their school leaving diploma via the rather more generously marked coursework component, because clearly a 50%+ failure rate in a school leaving exam would be a political disaster. It is a system which works rather well for "above average" students but fails the rest abysmally, even in good schools, and provides little motivation and almost no teacher time for extension work for the brightest (even before sitting the final exams my DD and two other students in her year are already certain of getting the top grade).

I'm not sure what the answer is, but more resources and better qualified teachers delivering a more ambitious but more flexible curriculum is surely part of it, with less emphasis on a single round of exams.

I completely agree with Mistigirl. The problem lies with GCSEs and A levels being fixed exams, typically taken at a fixed point in time.

For many its a struggle to learn enough in time for them, for some its impossible and for G&T the issue is what else they can usefully do whilst following the programs for these exams (which start in year 1).

I've got a strong suspicion that the formation of academies and free schools has a political motivation. I suspect its a sustained attempt to break up a perceived left wing grip on education with its associated promotion of comprehensive, non-selective schools etc.

My guess is that, Gove believes that :-

• Various LEAs are controlled by Labour and promote Labour policies at local level, including how schools are run, even when there is a conservative govt in Westminster.
• Teaching colleges are typically left of centre, so young teachers are being influenced by lecturers etc who wish to promote a left wing approach to teaching . This is why they lost their monopoly on training teachers.

• Teachers themselves are more likely to be labour voters than the general population and carry those views through to the classroom.

All these factors combined to make it difficult in practice to truly reform the education system for Conservative governments. So, Gove set about encouraging the break up of the old system. Perhaps he thought it was better off in private hands than in the control of the left wing??

I completely agree though, that there have been some very unfortunate choices made around setting up these new schools.

It may be that since 2010 no one really expected a Conservative Govt to be in place after the 2015 election, so there was a race to change as much as possible before a new Labour Govt was elected and all the efforts were undone and that is why proper checks weren't done in the way they might have been if Gove had 20 years to turn things around, not 5.

Disclaimer: I am not expressing these things as my view. Just an educated guess about what the logic was.

I think this academy stuff is crazy. So LEAs are replaced by massive academy trusts. And this improves education how? Largely that government get to be a step further away from being responsible for the inevitable failures.

Making schools more effective for the full range of ability is a very difficult problem that will never be solved by ideological solutions, especially where resources are very limited. It needs less political meddling, more evidence-based decision making, and better resources.

Governments are terrible at making education policy - this is true on both sides of the political spectrum, of course - we are about to go through a secondary school reform forced through by the French socialist government that absolutely no one agrees with (except politicians) and which will reduce opportunities for the least and most able alike, in the name of equal opportunity. (NB - I am a left of centre voter).

The problem for us parents of very able children is that a rational education policy - ie one that delivers the greatest good for the greatest number - probably does not divert huge amounts of resources to the brightest children who, given decent schools, are likely to do well regardless.

I think it depends on the definition of doing "well". If its relative to the less able, then yes G&T tend to do well (as long as they have the mental stamina to withstand being pushed down all the time).

But they don't do well, relative to what they would achieve if they received half the interest and nurturing that their less able classmates do.

I think, any state, needs to get the best out of everyone if it wants to thrive. However, politicians are short-termist, always looking for the popular vote. They don't even think 20 years ahead, never mind 40 years ahead which is what they should be doing.

I agree to a certain extent var but I also think that in a school which is catering well for the average and less able students, the learning environment is likely to be favourable for the best students too. My dd is in a very very mixed ability class this year, but because of decent teachers and a bunch of good natured albeit not uniformly able kids, it's been a good year for her. Teachers who are not worn down by firefighting have more energy to provide the extras (for eg this year DD has done a language exchange and participated in a history competition).

I'm sure that if DD was pushed a bit more she could be working at a much higher level but I'm not convinced of the long term benefits tbh ... It seems to me that what matters is the manner of getting there and not how quickly.

The issue that faced Gove (and now his replacement) is that if you insist on all children studying the same curriculum and taking the same exams, you either have to dumb down the curriculum or accept a very high failure rate.

Definitely true.

We get told it's not a problem because "differentiation" will solve it. But of course, it doesn't.

One day, I am going to start a militant organisation for the parents of children like this, who are gifted and who aren't well served by a few extra work sheets and a g&t workshop once a term, if they are lucky. There's just such a thing in the states, and they even have their own school...

I'm sure that if DD was pushed a bit more she could be working at a much higher level but I'm not convinced of the long term benefits tbh ... It seems to me that what matters is the manner of getting there and not how quickly.

Mistigri, I agree totally, but this only works if a child is not being sat in the class, forced to do things they know already over and over again. If you can solve that problem, and find other interesting activities, then not going forward is fine. But often the choice is between nothing at all, and being ahead with the curriculum, in which case the pushing is often the least bad of the two options.

My DC went to a primary which did very very well with some of its Gifted children - but actually missed the fact that others were just as gifted (if not more so) but were a bit more "challenging".
They went on to a Comprehensive that is very good. They read whole books from year 7; but also extracts when appropriate eg. year 7 mixed ability class looking at the "Once more into the breach..." speech. They then worked on the skills they will then use with whole plays. Such as selecting quotes, and using them in their argument and analysing them thoroughly.
One of mine has been identified as G and T for English, although she has doubts about her abilities and used to be seen as firmly "average".

Personally at Primary I would be looking for probably slightly chaotic classrooms where everyone can work at their own pace (sometimes faster sometimes slower). Where there are lots of chances for creativity in the broadest sense, lots of chances to pursue their own interests, and lots times the teacher prompts them to think deeper. I don't like classrooms where they are told this is "the best method", but do like it when they are challenged to try to do things a different way (even if just this once).

getinthesea realistically there is almost no chance, assuming typical secondary class sizes of 25-30, of the brightest children never being expected to redo stuff they already know how to do. And I think that's OK as long as their need are being met some of the time (no child in any mainstream classroom has their needs met all the time, this isn't a problem confined to the brightest).

mummytime I think this is one of the fundamental issue with "gifted" clases actually - that the approach that suits one group of gifted kids doesn't suit others. Here in France you do sometimes find special classes for gifted (as in IQ>130) students - but they tend to attract a specific population of gifted kids, often those who have learning or social difficulties (boys very overrepresented). We looked at one for my DD but it would have been a very unsuitable environment for her.