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.

Well... here we have very little streaming/sets.
None whatsoever in primary because the schools around here are all so small that there is only one class per yuear. Sure you have tables in the classroom and work is differenciated u to a point. But that's it.

Secondary, maths are in set (4 sets only though) from Y7. Nothing in science until Y9, english is in set from Y10. They do have an accelerated progream in french from Y8 so that children can also do German from Y9.
That's it.
The rest IS all mixed abilities as in proper mixed.

Which makes me dream of a setting similar than anpopther secondary on our area (that you can't get into as not in catchment area) where all subjects are streamed from Y7.

On and we have no grammar schools either!

And the you need to put things into context. We are also very close to one of the poorest/most challenging area in the country. so actually compare to what is available around, we ARE in a very good position. Just not a good one at all compare to an area where you can find plenty of grammar schools etc...

Whats the difference betyween sets and streaming btw?

Woodheaven: Sets = ability-based groups by subject.
Streamed = divided into the same ability-based streams for all subjects.

So in a 'set' school, a child can be in top set for maths, lower set for English. in a streamed school, that child might well be in the lower stream for everything, including Maths, if the streaming is based on 'English-related' criteria.

Setting is more responsive to individual profile.

multi I wasn't seriously suggesting my spoons theory was a suitable to teach cooking. It was an analogy to explain the difference between doing something mindless on your own terms, and the mental frustration of being forced to do something mindless in a classroom setting for hours each day.

I'm not changing my take on spoons at all. That was my experience through most of school, it was mostly spoons.

"You can statistically only get a peer ability group of outliers with selection surely?"

A 1 in 100 'able' child in a true mixed ability school of 300 intake, would be one of 3 children of the same ability in the year group.

In a Kent grammar (roughly top 20%) intake of 300, then you might have a peer group or higher of around 15.

In a superselective (roughly top 5%) intake of 300, then you might have a peer group or higher of around 60.

However, for a 1 in 1000 'outlier' child, there would be:

• No peers in a true mixed ability school
• 1 peer in a Kent grammar
• 5ish peers in a superselective

However, that is a very, very crude analysis - even in a top 5% school, the lower abilities will be more common, due to the bell shaped curve - and also supposes that
a) selection is perfect
b) selection is on exactly the type of high ability that your child has.

So selection by musical ability at a national level for a music school DOES result in a group of near peers. Selection on 'general academic ability' for a superselective grammar may still give very few if any peers in your 1 in 1000 child's particular area of strength. Selection on a national, or even international, level for some highly selective top private schools is more likely to give more 'near peers'.

What selection, or going private, can do is to remove 'the children who might take up disproportionate amounts of teacher time', and also remove 'subjects / facilities that the school needs to offer to fit the aptitudes and learning needs of the full range of pupils' - and so very able children may have more of the 'available cake' within a school directed roughly in their direction?

Yes, I understood that. You just didn't seem to have any response to the suggestion that everyone/anyone else in the class might have been having a less than optimal experience at school, with such poor teaching. Not just the super-able.

...or, in other words, not just you. Not just your child.

I think, btw, that it depends very much on the overall philosophy, culture and position of the school what experience a very able child gets - and this is not always predictable from the overall 'type' of school IYSWIM?

A very rigid, traditional grammar school may think that its 'entry selection' is good enough, and then teach in a very undifferentiated way based on its 'large majority of quite-able students'.

On the other hand, a school with a very wide range of abilities may have a culture of teaching in a more individualised way, which may in fact be more adaptive to the needs of its few more-able pupils.

(And a school that has been labelled 'failing' by Ofsted or has to keep its eyes very, very firmly on league table position / Ofsted criteria may also be exceptionally rigid and focused on a group of children just below a specific borderline that is crucial to its survival ... whereas one that is luckier in terms of intake or age of Ofsted report may be much more flexible)

No multi what I said was that it takes excellent teaching for mixed ability, and the teacher who is crap at it could still be very good at teaching similar abilities. I wasn't actually thinking about any particular ability group. Spoons teacher could be equally good with 'make me a wedding cake' group and 'how to open the kitchen door' group, and everyone between. But a rubbish teacher with all the groups together.

Lurked,

To a very rough approximation, better teachers are better at teaching mixed ability groups than poorer teachers - because teaching a mixed ability class is simply harder, and required higher level and more flexible skills of planning and differentiation, as well as delivery, than teaching one of like ability.

The exceptions are some exceptional teachers for either end of the spectrum - exceptional SEN teachers and exceptional teachers for the most able are both 'specialists', who may actually be poor at teaching mixed ability groups or groups outside their specialism.

I would contend that excellent teaching for 'the middle of the bell curve' looks very like excellent teaching for the more able, because even 2 students of apparently like ability will have slightly different learning needs, and it is the flexibility and adaptability - the knowledge of when to linger and explain, and when to move on - that distinguishes the good teacher from the less good one.

That's what I was trying to get at in a ham fisted way teacher. Because even excluding bad teachers, not every teacher has the skill for mixed ability. So whilst in theory every child can be taught in mixed ability well, in practice its much easier to meet each childs needs by narrowing the ability range.

Lurked,

Actually, in practice that often doesn't happen. Even in a narrower ability range, there are still a range of pupils with a range of different abilities across the range of topics.

BUT because it is labelled e.g. 'Set 1', the teacher - good or bad - is MUCH more likely to think 'Oh, the same work for everyone will be fine'. Whereas in a mixed ability group, the teacher would NEVER think that was possible. So narrowing the ability range, by increasing teacher 'complacency' about the range of ability, can in fact hinder the progress of children at either end of the ability spread that exists within that set.

teacher - the Kent grammar schools don't all have a similar IQ profile within the top 20%. The superselectives, such as Judd and Tonbridge Grammar, cream off the children within the top 5%. DC commute by train from places like Ashford to go to Judd.

There is basically a three-level hierarchy within selective state education in West Kent.

So a way of 'isolating'/ reducing the impact of a teacher who isn't very good COULD be to use them to teach a very narrow spread of ability, usually possible in a middle set. However, that doesn't make them a particularly good teacher, even of that group - and as middle groups are often those who straddle the key 'league table' borderlines, one would hope that it wouldn't happen.

Bobo, I know. I was just using a 'shorthand' to distinguish 'slightly selective' grammars from 'very selective' grammars. Apologies if the terminology confused you.

There is absolutely no reason at all why every teacher couldn't have the skills needed to teach mixed ability groups well. And no reason why poor teaching should be tolerated for any child, or arbitrary 'group' of children. It doesn't take a magical, innate ability; and it shouldn't be down to luck.

Differentiation within a mixed ability classroom is less effective that rigorous streamed classes taught to the same level.

than

yes, but meanwhile we are in the real world, dealing with teachers who range from amazing to pedestrian (and sometimes worse, I have the scars), with children who sometimes cannot be catered for in mixed ability classes.

So while I would love to live in this utopia - and really I would, I hated having to take my child out of the very local primary school she began at - we don't. And so we have to work out the least bad way of going forward.

It's not some utopian vision. It is utterly, pragmatically achievable.

multi take the crap and indifferent teachers out of it, and leave just the good ones who want to be excellent, and it still doesn't work for every good teacher. I believe its a skill in its own right, in the same way being a brilliant uni professor or senco have specific skills. And that's before we even look at the fact schools are struggling to recruit full stop. They aren't in a position to say look, it's simply not good enough that you can't teach the entire bell curve in the same class, so improve or resign. And even with that option open, it's unfair, because some teachers are great in other ways.

shrugs
I disagree, lurked. I think it's about recruitment, training, and a considerable cultural mind-shift.

And of course schools are struggling to recruit right now. It has little or nothing to do with whether or not there are enough people able to teach well, though.

Tbh, multivac, your posts make no sense to me! I understand each word but there's nothing convincing in your statements.

Thinking about it, its because you never seek to explain.
Take this latest one...

I think it's about recruitment, training, and a considerable cultural mind-shift.

And of course schools are struggling to recruit right now. It has little or nothing to do with whether or not there are enough people able to teach well, though

So you are saying we need a considerable... shift, but you don't say what the shift is to (or from). The last part is even more vague. What's your point?