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.

I am a teacher in a disadvantaged school working with a very transient population.
My lower ability children have priority to teacher time, as many of them are far far below the rest. To function in life they need to get to a minimum standard, or we risk turning them off education even more.

Now, my higher ability and middle ability children benefit from whole class work, pair work, differentiated tasks, active learning etc etc. They do get individual teacher time, I don't stick them with a worksheet and leave them to get on with it. But when it comes to conferencing time with the class, my lower ability kids need to be first in line.

Misti seen the large amount of people who had high abilities and then went to have no alevels, sometimes even poor cgse all because they ended up playing and been disengaged rather than working, I would say that high ability students can be harmed quite badly by poor teaching.
And then you have the ones who were left to coast and can't cope with Uni etc etc...
And thats wo talking about MH issues that teacher was mentioning.

Mistigirl but why should separating children into different ability groups mean that the low ability child is going to be poorly taught? It's not as if all the good teachers are going to choose to teach the more able leaving the low ability ones with the poor teachers. Judging by teachers comments I have seen on mn over the years,many would prefer to teach the less able because they find it more rewarding. So, that means, if anything, it would go the other way and the least able would get the better teachers.

Unless you mean that the less able benefit from having the most able in the room with them? I know some people argue that but I have never thought that it stands up to scrutiny.

Iora no one is arguing that high ability students should have equal time or more time than lower ability students.
What I would argue is that they need some specific attention, which might well not be translated into teaching time but more into specific work they can get on with etc...
Their needs are completely different so lets use that to their advantage.

ie In French, dc1 would benefit from being given specific work whilst the rest of the class is learning the basics. He doesn't need someone to speak with him, explain at length or whatever. But he does need the teacher to do some preparation work so that he has work that help him progress, a test that reflects his abilities (rather the same ones that the rest of the class), etc etc. He doesn't take time from the teacher during the lesson.

And just as I press "post", there's iorura describing her personal reasons for favouring the less able.

teacher if you re-read my post you'll see that I said "are less likely to be harmed" not that they will never be harmed.

DS was harmed by poor teaching in his village school (where he was selectively mute). However, tbh, his vulnerability to harm was more a question of personality than ability - yes he is very able, but he also has some aspergers-type traits which make him more vulnerable to poor teaching.

My point was more that bright children are usually able to make up for a year of poor or missed teaching. My DD's (french) literature teacher is useless, and she's been absent for the last 2 months. So she's missed at least a term of literature this year, with her bac coming up next year. I can say with absolutely certainty that she will be the least disadvantaged of all her class by the poor teaching and missed lessons.

Iora,

I think there is - perhaps on another thread - a discussion that could be had about the relative benefit to society of prioritising the needs of those of lower ability (who may otherwise fall out of education altogether, with obvious consequences in terms of the ongoing cost to society) vs the needs of those of higher ability (as someone pointed out upthread, the contribution in terms of discoveries, breakthroughs, even 'over and above economic contribution' of those who were 'clever at school' is not vastly different from those who were not identified in that gifted group at that point).

I know that upthread, Lurked felt that there was little societal benefit in addressing the needs of the less able disadvantaged, because she felt that the school could not do enough to compensate for the other disadvantages in their life so it was not worth it, as the probability of doing good and lifting the child out of their background was too small.

I have absolutely no issue with what iorarua wrote above. Her practice is pragmatically, economically and ethically defensible. I'd expect my childrens teachers to do the same.

I also agree with almost all of what teacher has said, and indeed have had experience in the past of some of the issues on her post of 17:21 for example that some teachers in selective schools are less good at recognising and differentiating in the class than may be th case in a school with a wider ability mix.

What is perhaps different, is that such schools will more regularly have experience of true outliers, be more likely to recognise them and have developed strategies for dealing with them - like moving a child up a year, which I have seen happen at my DC's prep school.

The recognition of outliers is itself an interesting issue, the standard ability tests like the CAT test used by many schools have a ceiling of 141 and are therefore likely to fail to identify those at the extreme end.

multi as I said early in the thread, I wanted your utopia up till dd started y7. When I first realised that academic peers offer something that no amount of individual challenge does.

Also, I'm not saying selection by means of a one off exam is the best solution. Just that I believe we need some way of practically offering the most able a suitable state education. Whether that be some super super selectives or something similar to inter school classes by subject. However, I'm massively against the selection by postcode/ religion system that exists in many areas.

I'd also expect my children's teachers to do the same. My DC are in years 7 &9 now so I have built up some experience and what Iora describes is quite common. I think it's unfair though when it actively disadvantages the same kids year after year all the way from reception to ...I haven't seen the end of it yet.

Var you are very welcome into my class to teach without "favouring" them, as you put it. It would be an interesting experiment. And I say that without wanting to sound snide, it'd be interesting but I dont see it as practical in the classroom.

Others who understand why I do it, I thank you.

Teacher - yes, I do wonder that myself too sometimes. My personal view is that equality does not mean everyone getting the same. I don't know that we will lift them out of their background, but we can give basic tools to navigate the world around them.
Would make an interesting thread, for sure! I will leave it there anyway :)

To clarify I would expect t my dcs teachers to do the same but I think it's an unfair thing to do to all the other chikdren (not even just the most able)

Ah you've posted again! Well, I hope your children's teachers are giving them more attention in areas they struggle in. That's how I try to work it.

teacher I truly didn't mean there was no point in helping those at the bottom, or wish to imply it's ok to ignore their needs. I was responding to someone who wanted to know what the benefit to society was in able provision, to point out we don't provide for other groups based solely on what society might get in return, and the most able shouldn't be viewed any differently. But if you are looking at it from the view of payoffs, then the most able are the ones most likely to do it.

Lurked, economically, are you sure?

The most able people I know are in low-paid jobs (academics, mainly, though some in 'creative' but not well paid fields). The richest, and those who create most wealth through employing others, are not those who were most able at school or at university.

I don't think it's practical to try to teach a wide variety of abilities at once. I think setting is the answer (into asmany sets as possible). However, I think special attention needs to be given to the top and bottom sets because they are the classes that are most likely to have the widest spread of ability.

What you do with the disruptive ones though? I have no idea!

I suppose my question is:

Is a £1 of money (in terms of teacher's paid-for time) better used to marginally improve the chances of Child A becoming economically active and staying out of prison, or to marginally accelerate highly able Child B further?

var, I think it is difficult to separate the impact of the 'academic' side of setting and the 'behavioural' aspect of setting because one is often a proxy for the other. Do the slightly more able do better than the slightly less able because of the reduction in the number of disruptive pupils, or because of the direct impact of setting them with like-ability peers?

I seem to remember that there s some research on behavioural setting vs ability setting - can anyone remember something along those lines?

Iora - well no their teachers don't. They aren't so great at least or art. So pe is a special case - it wants to win things. So the most able get the teachers at the after school club and the least able get sent to another pitchto have a kick about on their own.
Art - DS1 feels terriblly embarrassed in hismixed ability art class. The teacher regularly holds up the best work for everyone to admire. He looks down at his own effort and just feels ashamed. He can't wait to drop the subject.
(On the other handhe is very good at other subjects but I don't think the rest of the class has ever been asked to stop and admire someone else's work in those subjects). I only know he's good because of his NC levels.

Out of prison.

"But if you are looking at it from the view of payoffs, then the most able are the ones most likely to do it."

Really?

I think we should be doing everything we can to avoid creating an uneducated disaffected underclass.

Able doesn't automatically go hand in hand with a supportive mc family. And least able doesn't always mean poverty and an unstable home.

End results just tend to look like that, because a tiny minority of able kids from less affluent areas get anywhere.

bert and do you think holding back the most able is actually helping that in any way?

With disruptive ones we have a very detailed behaviour system var. Tbh though the disruption is ime often down to not understanding something...if you stick a kid who can't read in a senior classroom, they will probably switch off or lash out. Which brings me back to spending more time on those kids rather than the very able, I suppose...

And I would always spend the extra money on the disadvantaged.

I would support setting, certainly in Maths and maybe in English. I worked previously in a primary that did that and it worked very well. Sticking a less able child in with a bunch of children above his level does nothing for his confidence. And with the more able, it gives them a challenge and further stretching.

Lurked, I don't think it is a case of 'holding back'. It is a balance between 'where do you put your extra effort at any moment'. Do you put it into working with the less able, or the more able? The disaffected, or the well-supported?