The glass ceiling for very able children

[var123]

Has anyone else encountered the sense that the school is merely paying lip service to the ideals that they will challenge all children and work to bring all the children in the class to their potential?

I bumped along it a couple of days ago in a face to face conversation with one of the teacher's at my children's secondary.

He was full of buzzwords (like resilience and challenge) but there was a complete vacuum when it came to detail about how he planned to achieve that wrt to my children. In fact, he kept lapsing into telling me how my DC might help the others "by inspiring the less able".

Honestly, has there ever been a human being born into this world, who feels inspired to keep ploughing away at something due to being in the presence of someone who learned to do it without breaking stride?? People who struggle and then succeed are the inspiring ones because they make you feel like if you can do it, then maybe you can too. The ones who always find it easy and are just waiting for you to catch up so they can move on are just disheartening to contemplate.

Who knows bert?

The GCSE curriculum in a number of subjects is not particularly challenging (we will see what gives with the new syllabi).

But the highly able can still be appropriately challenged if the teaching staff are a. so minded (many seem to have your view. That's it's all a bit tant pis for those lucky enough to be clever ) and b. have the skills and resources (which is generally linked to critical mass).

Oh god. BR. You have just opened the anecdata floodgates. Again....

bertrand you seem to have missed the point that there aren't many children who find nothing interesting, but rather a few who do and because they are a small minority, they are marginalized by the existing uninspired choices in public/state schooling.
Not sure why you think that my very accurate description of my high school geometry teacher was disparaging....I did omit the fact that she was also a crap teacher...now that's disparaging. But in those days I didn't feel that I had license to express that to anyone, so I sat quietly in class being bored to death and using the Geometry that I taught myself to measure her part. On the other hand, if my dc's have a crap teacher, I encourage them to express that (politely and respectfully) to the adults around them who have a responsibility to ensure that they get a good education.

By not tolerating crappy teaching, pique. It's not rocket science. Or snake oil.

"ertrand you seem to have missed the point that there aren't many children who find nothing interesting, but rather a few who do"

I didn't ask about children who find nothing interesting. I asked another children who would be completely unchallenged by what it takes to get an A*.

@multivac, "By not tolerating crappy teaching"

But that begs a definition of good teaching that will work in practice. Not add more to the typical teacher workload etc.

Yes, it does.

bertrand Yes you did with a dose of double negative.....But I also find it hard to believe that there are many children for whom nothing in school is interesting.

Just wanted to return to the original point made by the OP....Has anyone else encountered the sense that the school is merely paying lip service to the ideals that they will challenge all children and work to bring all the children in the class to their potential?
Yes, I have encountered not only that "sense," but that reality.

Oh, right, sorry. I did.

But I actually think it's not very helpful to talk about children who don't find anything interesting. If my child said he didn't find anything interesting I would regard that as a parental failing, as I am sure you would, Sophia, based on your earlier posts. It is helpful to find out how many children find nothing at all in what it takes to get A*s challenging.

I guess that being disengaged means that you mind is not open to finding something interesting, by definition.

Its obviously one of those things that its better to avoid in the first place, than have to find a cure for. However, that does not mean that those DC who are disengaged should be abandoned, but rather that huge efforts must be made by everyone - the school, their parents, the DC themselves - to get them back on track or else they will be miserable until they leave school and they'll likely continue to hold school in low esteem when their own children reach school age.

In answer to your question Bertrand, maths is mostly practice so yes, its the easiest one to get an A* in because once you know how to do something, then you know how to do it.

However, for other subjects quite a bit is general knowledge. I get the impression that DS1 has many lessons getting an introduction to something that he already knows in more depth than the school plans to go to.

I'm not sure I want some schools who select children age 11yo according to their abilities.
It reminds me of the German system where, if you aren't quite there at the end of Primary school then you are sent onto a different path, one that will lead only to more 'practical' qualifications and from which you will never be able to go to Uni.
In the same way, putting children with very high abilities with children at the bottom of the scale isn't good either. Both for the ones who are struggling and for the ones who are ahead. In particular some subjects will allow to do a lot of differenciation (let's say talking about the Plague in History) whereas others don't (Using capital letters, which is was dc1 is doing in English atm)

However, a system where you have some nice streaming and some differentiation within the class sounds a really good idea.

I have to say I'm a bit baffled by the system here. One where everyone should be able to always stay with their age group, ie the assumption that the spread of academic abilities isn't that great. Yes it will work for the majority of children. Yes the system allows for measures for the children who have specific issues (ie SN, very low achievements etc..) but somehow children on the top of the Bell's curve don't seem to matter (Or are they? Are they the ones supposed to be in private school and only those?)
There is clearly this assumption that if you are bright, then you will always be bright and therefore will always succeed. So there is no need to ake allowances.

Atm in English, dc1 is learning about Capital letters. Something he has learnt in Y2. He is in Y7 and works (as others in his class btw) one or two years above. That's 7 years difference in academic learning...

"I get the impression that DS1 has many lessons getting an introduction to something that he already knows in more depth than the school plans to go to."

Do you actually know, though? Have you looked at the curriculum for the subjects concerned? I'm sorry to keep bringing things back to my ds, particularly as he isn't super-able, but, for example, he has always loved history, so when he was in year 7 before they set for history, they did a project, which involved as much research as you wanted to do- and the marks they got for the finished piece of work ranged from something like 3a to 7. They all did the same piece of work, but the finished output was hugely different. He also learned that just because somebody else wasn't as knowledgable as he was didn't mean they couldn't have interesting conversations. The reason I remember this was that there is a boy in his class who's brother is in the EDL and DS frequently came home with reports of lively classroom debates. He also once came home with a black eye when the ...debate...spilled out into the playground, but that's another story.

I have the same experience than var. It's not that dc1 doesn't find things interesting. He does, OUTSIDE school. At school, he has disengaged and therefore isn't interested in anything (Bar one subject tbf, DT).

Even at home, he has stopped reading as much as he used to. (Big red flag for me there too). The one thiing he is engaging with fully is sports maybe because it has nothing to do with school

The way I look at it is that he is getting disinterrested in everything, the same way that someone whoo is depressed would.

I'm making flapjacks today, by the way, which is even more boring that cupcakes, so I'm relying on you guys!

"The way I look at it is that he is getting disinterrested in everything, the same way that someone whoo is depressed would."

Can you, or he, put your finger on why?

I know that my ds knows many things in more depth than the school plans to go to. Of course I've looked at the curriculum for all his subjects. I would guess most parents of children who are struggling do. In fact, many teachers here in the US (maybe not the norm in the uk) require parents to sign off on having received a copy of the curriculum. And in any case, ds talks about his classes all the time. I can usually tell which ones he is learning something in by whether he is talking about the subject matter or the things he invented in class.

I know exams aren't the be all and end all, but they are a measure. Sofia- are you saying your child could go into his final school exams now and pass with flying colors? A poster on here recently said that her child could get 10 A*s having done absolutely no work at all- is that what you're saying about yours?

Dd experiments with colors and ingredients to keep her flapjack making interesting....speaking of daydreaming when bored. We were crawling in Los Angeles traffic today and dd asked me if it was illegal to change a freeway sign to say a personal message. I told her that it was, but that didn't stop people from hacking them anyway. She got very excited and said that that's what she wanted to do when she got older. I said that she should probably take a programming class in that case. She looked at me like I was crazy and said.."I'm not going to do it myself...I'm going to hire someone to do it for me." Dd is highly gifted, but only demonstrates her math abilities as such when it involves money or baking.

Sadly, my customers know what they want. And what they want is apricot, chocolate and walnut. In basic flapjack colour.

No, absolutely not. Ds does not have and probably will never have the executive functioning skills to manage great grades. However, I am sure that he knows more about some of the subjects than those who do get the A's. The problem is that children like ds are marginalized because they don't perform in standard ways. Ds might do extremely well on an exam, or he might get distracted by a single question and fall down that rabbit hole. That's what will make him a great scientist or artist or writer some day, but it doesn't serve him well in a conventional educational system.

For example, Ds could tell you more about the history of the Mona Lisa than anyone except an art historian would know, but might not even know what century Picasso lived.

oooh how about apricot chocolate and walnut all in one.

I had Kogi Food Truck tacos for dinner. They were not all they were cracked up to be and now you are making me hungry and it's the middle of the night here.

ok... yes i actually know. Not by looking up the curriculum policy but by looking at what's in his book at the end of the topic. I am not complaining about this though - only about maths where he is bored and disengaged. (Maths is streamed btw - so that annoying girl is in the top set.)

Bet if I was asking dc1, he would be adamant that he is fine, that he just doesn't fancy reading atm etc...
From what he says, he had great expectations as what would happen in Y7 (Not from us, I knew Y7 would be a slog). So it was a really big shock for him to find himself in a situation where he was doing columns additions ... again... (and to know some of the children were actually struggling too...)

Add to that issues with teachers (see the high level of supply teachers). And the fact that some teachers are actually resentful that dc1 is ahead ....

I have been told that at that school, they first put the teachers for the Y10 and Y11 and put the really good ones there. Then they fill, Y9, Y8 and finally Y7. So in Y7 they have all the crap ones, the supply teachers etc...
I think dc1 can feel that even if he can't put that into words.

I can slowly see him crawling out of that hole. (At least now he is playing with his db again, something he had stopped doing too, opting for laying in his bed daydreaming). Whether he will regain his enthusiasm for learning withing the current setting, I don't know.....