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.

AprilLady, "These children are as different IQ wise from the bottom child in the top set ... as that bottom of the top set child is from the child who's IQ is exactly average"

Yes. Except at DD's eight-form entry comp they have two parallel instances of [set1, set2, set3, set4], which doesn’t seem to be that unusual because it helps with time-tabling or something. This is very rough with a maximum resolution of 1-in-100, but if we assume a perfect ability distribution then in terms of standard deviation the weakest set1 child is +0.7 and the strongest is +2.3. Set1 has a class average of +1.2 and contains twice the ability range of set2.

How this on-paper theory translates to the real-world is beyond me, but DD is one of the whizziest few in maths and they're much faster than the rest. Differentiation is getting to and completing the more thinky questions at the end of the exercise. Assuming there are some for any given topic. Then twiddling thumbs for 15 minutes.

”This has turned into something of an essay, sorry.”

It was interesting to hear a bit about life on the private selective side.

I worry that I'm one of the parents coming across as over-estimating. Without teaching DS at home, it's hard to tell. He's saying to me every day that maths lessons are too easy and boring, so I feel I have to talk to the teacher. And when I do she says he can't do things that he blatantly can, or he can do things but doesn't understand them (strong implication that we've hot-housed, except we haven't). So I suspect a scenario a), but I honestly don't know.

I'm inclining towards giving him more challenging stuff at home if only to get a better idea what he can do.

My DH as a child was e)'d about the whole state system by his LEA. Accelerated 2 years in private but still allowed to coast. He reached university never having really been challenged in maths, and guess what, he didn't actually know how to work through problems that were hard for him. I guess that's what we're all trying to avoid with our gifted kids. It's not the difference between an A and an A, the gifted kids would get an A two years early with a hand tied behind their backs, it's the difference between a child who's learned to think in their strongest area and a child who's never had to.

While I don't see a huge amount of point in doing maths A-level at 15, if they have - they could get them going on Olympiad material. Minimal to no teaching input needed. If they don't find anything there challenging, a) they're world level super-genius material, and b) they'll have come to the attention of top university mathematicians who will advise you.

How interesting, PiqueABoo, that your DC's school has four streams rather than eight.

I absolutely don't believe that explaining topics to others improves learning, when a topic is already grasped.

However, it can help improve the ability to break down tasks into a logical sequence, and explain them succinctly and accurately, which is a skill much in demand in exams. My DD is very good at breaking down reasoning and explaining steps. Her brother isn't. DD's results in maths are correspondingly better, even though my gut instinct is that DS is more "gifted" at maths.

In terms of additional interventions for the brightest students, I have found personally that they work best when they are not explicitly targeting an individual student. For example, DD's history teacher last year encouraged the students to enter a national history competition (bobo will be familiar with it - concours de la résistance) and she put her three most able students together in one group. They produced a 10k word dissertation with zero adult input - the teacher was unfortunately absent for most of the time so unable to give guidance, but for me this wasn't a big issue as the important thing the process and not the result.

I don't find the Old Norse story especially unbelievable, for a student gifted in languages. DD reads and writes Spanish fluently, and she certainly didn't learn to do that at in four years of middle school Spanish ;) and she has done some Italian at home too - she could probably pass a GCSE in Italian with very minimal effort.

Teaching yourself Spanish or Italian when you are a native speaker of French is quite a different undertaking to teaching yourself German when your mother-tongue is English.

Rubbish bobochic, German is quite approachable if you're determined, because it's phonetically regular. You just need some books and DVDs and a good memory. I taught myself enough over one summer to survive as a teaching assistant at a German uni. (Seriously outing myself now, waves to anyone I know).

catkind, what age is your child? I can point you towards some 'has my child mastered this area of Maths' materials for KS2 - KS3, similar to the ones we use, which might give you a basis for talking to his teacher without actually 'teaching' him IYSWIM?

It looks at fluency (the 'automatic doing of calculations'), common misconceptions, application, explaining reasoning and problem solving for different areas of Maths at different levels within the new NC.

April it's good to hear it from the other side, thank you.

teacher that's a really good idea, thank you, and something that the current school would definitely be on board with. I'll work out the most promising contenders and then ask for that.

Pique, don't know if it's the same school, but one of the secondaries we are looking at has exactly the same system for Yr7 and 8, and I definitely see it as a disadvantage.

teacher my DD is Yr7, could you point us to 'has my child mastered this area of Maths' material?

Teacher, thank you, maybe worth me looking at KS2 ones? DS is only in year 2 but am thinking he's going ahead of that at least some degree.

Pique, DS / DD's school has a similar structure in Y7, for timetabling and logistics reasons. Y8 onwards they have a structure that reflects the 'normal' distribution better - basically a single top set, 3 parallel pairs of higher middle, middle middle, lower middle, then one small set of SEN / very low ability.

The intake is very high ability, although it's not selective - many of the top set got L6s at the end of primary and end Y7 at mid-high L7 - so although there is a potential for 'outliers' not to be well catered for, those children who are '1 in 100' in the normal population are over-represented in the school, and do find like-minded souls even in the parallel groupings. Basically, 1 in 100 children will never have a peer group of a class of 30, but being in a peer group of 4 or 5 is always better than a peer group of 1.

opinioneers After I'd asked the usual questions at open eves, I also asked about what they offer for children in both top and bottom 1%, children outside the norm in any way whether that be social, sports, physical disability, Sen etc. Of course not all answers were relevant to dd, but amongst them I got the answer to 'what will you offer my gifted child?' Without having to ask it. And ime even the irrelevant answers tell you a lot about how the school operates. My findings matched up to opinions I'd heard from friends, local rep and the view I'd formed from stats/ open eve etc.

Re hot houses. I think that rep can be undeserved in many cases. One persons hot house is another ones perfect level of challenge

Agree with Lurked. A school that would be an unpleasant 'forcing house' for a child of 'just above average' ability might fit a very able child perfectly.

(It was interesting, years later, to meet fellow pupils of my own old, very academic, school. My perception was that it taught me well, wasn't particularly pressured, and had significant periods of boredom. Theirs was that it was almost unbearably hard and intense.)

It's not related to glass ceiling, but can I ask a question?
My ds has only one choice of state secondary. I was looking at performance table thing and only 30+% achieves A*-C and average score is D. Is this school would be a nightmare for able children? Or you can't tell from these? Do I need to seriously start thinking about other choices?
There are good schools in nearby town, but we must be out of catchment.
I really haven't got the clue about how state school system works.

Irvine, it is likely that there isn't a very large number of high attainers within he school, so a very high attainer may be isolated.

(As in, from those coupe of figures, it seems possible that either they have an average intake but do poorly by them, or that they have an intake skewed towards lower achievers)

However, I do know a couple of children from a school with similar figures (and one of the highest FSM % in the country) who got 10 A / A*s, one of whom has just got an Oxbridge offer. So it doesn't mean that an able child CAN'T do very well in such a school, just that they might have a rather small peer group.

if you felt able to PM me the name, I can look at the data for you - there's quite a lot of additional data about how high attainers fare etc that may be helpful.

Thank you, teacher. I will PM you.

You can't tell for sure, Irvine101. All you know from what you've written is that the median is quite low and therefore, the top set would be likely to be very widely spread. They could still really look after the outliers, but if you are relying on lots of other children of similar ability to make it worthwhile teaching them as a group, then you probably will be disappointed.

You can see that the school doesn't do a great job with middle-ability cohort, but what does it do with the high ability students?

Personally, I'd be looking elsewhere.

Maybe there is a good range of private schools locally and that's why the results are weak at the state school?

You child is only 6 or 7 though? There's tons of time to move or for the school to radically change.

sorry x posted, with teacher

irvine Dds primary looked awful on paper, high Sen, high fsm, below average sats, ofsted slated, low achieving cohort. And from what I read in this section of the forum, I hit the jackpot, for any child, but especially considering that dd posed different problems to their usual areas of expertise. By contrast, a local secondary that looks the same on paper is no good for anyone in the top 40%, let alone at the high end. But in fairness very good with all below it.

My worst nightmare school doesn't look too bad at first glance, slightly above average in a-c. Until you break it down and see its a-c or equivalent, with the majority being c's in vocational subjects. The grades for core subjects are awful, with the majority of passes at c. And the actual grade breakdown in any subject indicates they aren't fussed about any kids, unless they are on the d/ c border.

The school I liked for best for dd was very average, but fantastic leadership, staff and ethos. Second best not quite as good, but the cohort is very skewed to the top end offering safety in numbers.

Down to the fact the nightmare was the likely one, with a vague possibility of the great for low achievers only one, I went after scholarships and bursaries. And I'd strongly recommend you, or anyone else with doubts about their state choice and full fees not an option to research it closer to the time. Assuming of course that you have access to the type of independents that would suit, not Hicksville non selective tiny private school.

Thanks var, though he is 8 and yr3 now. Just reading what's happening with children in secondary made me panic a little. I maybe able to help him now, but in the future, I really don't know how.
We live in a very sleepy town, a lot of children don't even think about going to university, I think. And I also heard that all good teachers are left, and school have a very bad reputation. Thing is moving cannot be a good option, for a lot of reasons. We started saving for uni, but we might have to save up for secondary instead.

Thank you, Lurked.
There seems to be good private school in nearby town, but we never thought about it until now. I think we have to think hard about it, or just because we can't afford private, we might ruin his future.

Pique we have the same organisation at dc1 school. ONly 4 sets.
Your explaination re the distribution makes so much sense!

We have it too. It used to be 8 and things were much better then for DS1

So, I ended up looking at the website of oour local private school. They are talking about students being able to do an 'Extended Project Qualification' as part of Alevel.
Does anyone know what that is?
Is that available in state school (it should be but is widely done)?
The way it's presented, I'm thinking that it's exactely the sort of thing that would work for our dcs.

EPQ is widely offered in state schools and sixth form colleges. A number now make EPQ compulsory instead of A level General Studies.

EPQ is considered useful for humanities/social sciences degrees but is not particularly useful or relevant for many science degrees.

Schools like it because it doesn't involve teaching time or much support; they talk it up and claim that top universities like it a lot. The latter is an exaggeration, for many courses, although some students do get given alternative or very slightly lower offers, because of their EPQ.