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.

TBF though, children of all ability levels disengage with academic learning.

I sometimes think that the process of schooling does not suit as many DC as we think it does .

I do think year 7 is a shock for many kids for all sorts of reasons. If our child doesn't seem to be dealing with it the way we want them to, we tend to think it's because of whatever thing about our child is currently in the forefront of our minds.

So with my dd, I would have assumed it was because a particular couple of girls were being horrible to her- with ds, I would start with him getting sidetracked onto music or football or simply messing about. Or thinking "Oh, I know all this"- only to get a horrible shock a bit later on.(slight tendency to arrogant gittery, as I've said before)

I've never heard of the policy of putting the worst teachers in year 7- is it widespread? In my experience, some teachers like and are good at year 7, and they tend to have those classes. At ds's school, with its huge cohort of disadvantaged kids, year 7 needs a very special type of teacher........

"I sometimes think that the process of schooling does not suit as many DC as we think it does"

I think this is very true- I use the expression "school- shaped". Most are- but many aren't. And it's absolutely nothing to do with ability.

Yes I agree Eric and that's a real shame.
I'm really hoping that dc1 (and dc2) will carry on loving the process of learning. This, imo, is essential. They are so many thing to learn in life, not just academic stuff. But wo the ability to be curious, learn new ways of doing things and knowing/wanting to look for that information, there is little space for growth.

“he has stopped reading as much as he used to. (Big red flag for me there too)”

Y7? Y8 DD’s reading-for-pleasure slowed down significantly in Y7 and I suspect that isn’t unusual. It has picked up again, but their lives keep filling up with [stuff] and I doubt we’ll recover upper-KS2 reading levels, even with some school-side nudging this year re. future GCSE (= some of them were recently told to go read Pride & Prejudice).

”I've never heard of the policy of putting the worst teachers in year 7- is it widespread?”

Yes. Read last year’s Ofsted “KS3: The wasted years?” report. The relatively unique point about that one is that they surveyed lots of children, rather than attempting to pull everything out of dodgy assessment/progress data.

Thank you all for your perspectives on this issue. I need to remind myself of all your points over the coming months. We are in the process of moving ds (6) to a school which isn't constrained by the National curriculum. He will be able to be taught in higher year groups in small class sizes and with an emphasis on challenging them and setting work which is hard enoughfor them to make mistakes. He is very excited about the move, he often says how little learning he is doing. I know it will be difficult initially with friends etc but reading your experiences confirms how influential this could be for him.

multi of course crappy teaching isn't ok. But credit where it's due, differentiating across the entire ability range takes truly amazing teaching, and not every teacher has that, no matter how good they are in other ways, or willing to learn. Differentiating across a large range takes very good teaching. So a teacher doesn't need to be crap just to struggle with it. Average teachers can. The Spoons teacher might be great with a group who need to spend 6 weeks talking about spoons, and great with the group who just need the teacher to say 'try making and icing a wedding cake, I'm over here if you have any questions'. So not a crap teacher. Just crap in that mixed group.

bert re very mixed ability top sets. If you look at the results for some subjects at gcse, then the low numbers of top grades in some schools dictate that to make numbers up to class size, that top set will have kids that achieved a* down to a c in some cases.

Also if the comment about walking to 10as was inspired by me, that isn't what I actually said. In reference to my catchment school, I said dd would have no challenge getting a in all available academic subjects. Which wouldn't be anywhere near 10, they only offer the legal minimum of gcses in academic subjects. I'm sure I also said something along the lines of getting a in one language doesn't offer challenge, but alongside 2 others it likely would. And other such comparisons. My main point wasn't that my dd is gifted enough in all subjects to get a in them all, but that a very limited number of subjects she wouldn't be challenged to get a*.

As to having no interest in all subjects, I felt like that. I still mentally seperate history into fascinating, and school. A lot of history is cause and effect, and if you've already grasped that, the interest is in who/ what/ where happened. Not participating in a lesson explaining cause and effect, whilst leaving out all the interesting bits. I also loved reading, especially the classics. Therefore sitting in a classroom with everyone taking it in turns to read something you already have is not interesting. Especially if every 2 pages the teacher stops you to share her at best basic, and at worst, uninformed thoughts. I wanted to discuss the deeper meaning and all the theories put forward about the book/ author. Not listen to someone tell me their opinion as though it was fact. Or just read a different book myself.

Good point re the fact that if you have one very able child within lots of much less able children, even top sets will be at a lower level.

I saw that with my own dcs.
dc1 in primary, one child (him) far ahead. Teacher struggled to give any relevant stuff so with time he sort of 'lined upp' with the other children in the to set. Even when they did some specific stuff for the level 6 in maths for SATS, he was still saying that he got the idea after one lesson but all the others had to work on it for 3 or 2 more sessions (and not all of them 'got iit')
dc2 in a class where the overall level is high, lots of children are working at a high level so the opportunities to do challenging work are better. Not as much issues as with dc1.

Hmm.
I have experience of both ends of the spectrum.
I have one child (ds1) who was on the Sen register for all of his primary school life (severe dyslexia officially dx in year 4)
The school did nothing to help him or provide specialist teaching. This is normal ime. Mainstream schools just do not have the funds nor specialist teachers needed to help kids with Sen.
(He is doing very now as his dx prompted me to help him myself. Lots of interventions later and he is in year 8 and achieving to his potential :))
I also have a child (ds2) who is very able. Top of the class for everything. Running out of room for all the certificates he gets (you get the idea!)
Mainstream school has been good for him so far but he is only in year 2 - I wonder what secondary will bring?
If he is not being stretched I suppose I will do it myself (as I did with ds1)
Sadly, the state education system (like the NHS) has been starved of funds and subjected to continual re organisation for decades and it's becoming a depressing reality that children who do not get support at home/additional help/tutoring will not achieve their potential.

I do have to say though that both my children have had some wonderful teachers.

I found that dc1 doesn't want me to stretch him at home because anything he learns at home means he will know it at school and therefore be even more bored!

"I found that dc1 doesn't want me to stretch him at home because anything he learns at home means he will know it at school and therefore be even more bored!"

Oh, for goodness sake! There are a million things he could do that don't match what he's doing at school! And he is only a third of the way through year 7- a bit soon to give up yet!!!

I think there probably is scope to find something that your Ds could learn at home that's not covered at school. What is he interested in?
If its English Lit, then try the classics (not much chance the NC will touch them!)

If its Geography, try some human geography - schools do very little of this.

Ifs its History, well there are vast tranches of history that the school will never come near.

etc., etc.

He'll be stuck though if its maths, science or a particular language because you do have to go through the basics first before you can learn stuff that school will probably not do.

"Also if the comment about walking to 10as was inspired by me, that isn't what I actually said. In reference to my catchment school, I said dd would have no challenge getting a in all available academic subjects." I can't remember who it was- but even if it's only 6 subjects we're talking about I would be surprised whether anyone could get A*s without doing any work at all-and actually the non academic ones can be pretty challenging too....

Yes I was talking about maths and science, which are really his things
Language he is bilingual in French so he speaks and reads very well indeed. What he needs to do is learn spellings and grammar (but of course that puts him ahead of his peers by quite a few years! !)

I have found quite a few things, websites and blogs he could read to learn more about science/chemistry. They are not about learning as such, more about general subject, making relationship between the real world and XX idea. But seriously he just shy away from it, even though I know he loves it.

Oh, I think the non-academic ones are extremely challenging if you aren't any good with your hands and don't have an eye for design. However, why would you want to study something that has no kudos attached to it and won't be useful to you personally?

So just let him get on with it. Startjng secondary school is difficult ant tiring! He's only 10- or just 11. Plenty of time.

He must be 11 or 12. The youngest you can possibly be to start year 7, is 11 years and one day old.

Maybe point him at another branch of science that won't come up in school lessons? Or it could be something related to maths? Psychology can be interesting. Or programming? Or statistics?

Dc1 is 12yo, one of the oldest of his year.

What would work very well for him is to be moved ahead one year. He has the knowledge and the maturity to fit in wo any issues (as acknowledged by a few people I know who are teachers but not teaching him iyswim)

"Oh, I think the non-academic ones are extremely challenging if you aren't any good with your hands and don't have an eye for design. However, why would you want to study something that has no kudos attached to it and won't be useful to you personally?"

I was including Art and music and drama and PE and all the other non core subjects in "non academic"
And as for your last question- well, because you like learning new things, because you're looking for new challenges.........isn't that rather the point?

At home, we are currently working on DT (aka helping daddy redoing the wiring, putting plugs in the wall etc) and food technology (aka come and help mum or dad to put the meal together).
Comments earlier on about playing with food colouring etc has given me other ideas of things to do with him.

At least that helps re his mood even if it doesn't help with school.

I'll say from experience that skipping a year is only a temporary fix, because it's all about speed of learning rather than being a fixed distance 'ahead' if that makes sense.

DD is skipped a year and the extra work involved in catching up kept her challenged for about 18 months. She's now exceeding the expected level for the year in all subjects, and is having to get differentiation for some lessons/homework. I think we would still do it again (at least for primary where she is now) but it's not a universal cure-all.

Comprehensive local to us has started having 8 sets in Maths (because of the new 9th grade in the GCSEs) and the highest ability also get involved in maths competitions with other schools etc. So it is possible to stretch children in a comprehensive

I was a year ahead as a child's s it worked very well for me too.

YY about being involved in maths competitions but I had a blank, embArassed response when I asked about it ..,,