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.

Sorry, one more thing, regarding this: "By secondary stage there will be some children who try as they might simply struggle with certain parts of the curriculum and would benefit from being taught at a different pace to the brightest in the year"

This is true, of course. The kids in the school to which I'm referring are taught as individuals. Access to one-to-one tuition is standard, not just allocated to those perceived to be struggling or excelling.

"So how did she get to be so good at maths?"

Could you define your terms for me?

Somewhere in Blackburn there's a man called Paul. He's about 36. If he sees me he's going to say "When am I getting my extra work, Miss?" Because he and I both knew he needed it and he never got it. Mixed ability working is rubbish. Helping the less able along is crap, its not a child's job. Sometimes it can be a positive experience but not if its all you're offered. Setting works.

"Sometimes it can be a positive experience but not if its all you're offered"

Absolutely.

Umm - if Boaler is bollox - (which I personally totally disagree with), then why are the countries which consider all children can learn, and expect all children to make progress the ones who do best in international tests? China/Japan/Finland.

There are plenty of top Mathematicians (Field's medal winners or Einstein) who weren't thought of as great at Maths in school. Sometimes because they are deep thinkers, but slow thinkers. BTW neither I nor my children know our timestables, there are other ways of solving Maths problems.

Knowing the "basics" doesn't help with problems like "Susies Sweets" being able to apply knowledge creatively does.

And having seen Jo Baoler's ways of working with mixed ability, it works. Unlike what I experienced of mixed ability which was me being expected to help those who didn't get things as fast as I had (and being looked down on by the really good Mathematicians). Problem solving, and looking at different routes to solve the same problem, can both stretch the most able and help those who are struggling.
Being told to find a way to solve a problem, and then being told "the best way is..." does not. (And I have observed this happen in a Primary Maths classroom).

Multivac not setting is awful when it's not managed properly, dd is in year six and the school have just abandoned literacy sets. Now dd is in a mixed ability class and is bored because she spends most of her time helping the bottom table who can't be bothered to do the work and expect dd to do it for them. Dd thrives on challenge and got this when they were in sets because she wanted to be the best but now they don't set across the year group she's the best in her class without making any effort and misses the challenge of working hard to be the best as there are some really bright kids in the other classes who she wanted to be like and so had to work hard.

Any educational arrangement is 'awful when it's not managed properly'.

Just ask those who were at secondary school at the height of the compulsory 11+ system.

Teaching other children while the teacher teaches less able are norm for my ds. Sometimes he said he has taken over whole class. I complained in yr1, because it was happening all the time, and it stopped. But started again in yr3. I don't care anymore. He said it's ok because he can learns at home.

I just don't buy into mixed ability teaching in maths. Seating, yes if the teacher is capable. 'expected progress' as a means of measurement doesn't convince me either, as the expectations don't cover all abilities.

Other subjects I think can be taught in mixed ability, assuming there isn't a huge gap in ability.

Nor do I believe 95% of children can be high achievers in maths with the right support.

As I say, lurked, that's fine - I don't need to be believed.

I would also expect most posters on this board (but not all, by any means) to be in favour of streaming/setting by ability - as most of the damage it does tends to impact on children who aren't on the top tables. And indeed, it tends to be slightly better for those children than mixed ability teaching.

Most parents, naturally, put their own children above abstract principles when it comes to education. I expect I would do; I'm just fortunate enough not to have had to test that... yet!

Sorry, not 'those children'; 'top table children'.

"why are the countries which consider all children can learn, and expect all children to make progress the ones who do best in international tests? China/Japan/Finland."

They don't believe 95% of their children can reach some high level and they don't. Their PISA bell curves are just a bit further to the right and in some cases stretch out much further to the right which suggests their top children have fewer problems with ceilings.

Finland doesn't look so good these days and you can find Finn's talking about problems with their top-of-the-range children. TIMSS (maths) says Finland is essentially at the same level as England.

China is actually Shanghai in these international tests i.e. essentially testing higher IQ children and claiming they represent the entire country. The average Singapore IQ is significantly higher than here. The Japanese average IQ is also higher. Ditto for Korea. There might be a clue here, even before we get to maths, language and working memory.

We know English academic achievement is strongly influenced by a roughly equal share of genes for intelligence and genes for behavioral traits. Intelligence and hard-work. Different culture, some of which I expect is rooted in genes for behavioural traits, obviously applies to all of those countries e.g. children working a lot harder in their own time, not being quite so 'fighty' etc.

It was Hannah's Sweets most recently. Please do read the Thompson link I posted earlier because they know a lot more about cognitive science etc. than we do.

--
"Teaching other children while the teacher teaches less able are norm for my ds"

12 year-old DD's maths top set is still mixed ability and she sometimes gets asked to go help explain things to the weakest children. What is probably the national top ~20% is still quite a significant spread of ability and it sounds like that peer-tutoring rarely works. She apparently can successfully explain things to a child much like her though.

--
"as most of the damage it does tends to impact on children who aren't on the top tables"

Ah. The inevitable built-in bias in the polarity.

Can you point to any credible, independently replicated evidence showing a beneficial effect in having lower-ability children in a mixed-ability class in a typical English classroom?

Your 'damage' is definitely not proven, not least because there is no credible domestic research and for the most part this claims are founded on 27th-hand takes on some quite dodgy stuff based on other dodgy stuff and imported from the US as usual. The compelling theory for this is that relevant research doesn't get funded here because it risks undermining some of the cherished ideology common to the majority of the purse-string holders.

But the EEF have finally funded just a little something in this area so we might get to see. Perhaps it has changed since I looked, but the EEF also had a page on mixed-ability which (presumably because someone got hissy) mentioned 12 months progress from some G&T programs i.e. that might make a rough measure of how much of their potential is thrown away for the greater good every academic year.

shrugs

You have your confirmation bias, pique, and I have mine, I'm sure. You also seem to have a smidgeon of conspiracy theory in your eye there.

Sadly teachers are incentivised to teach to the average NOT to maximise the outcome for all children.

Getting the least able up to the average is rewarded (or at least not penalised) but getting the brightest child to the highest level they can achieve is not recognised at all in the target driven system we have.

Indeed, this carries on all the way from infant to senior school. Even in my DSs private school the very brightest scholarship children are not being stretched enough. This teaching to the average seems to have become instilled in the very fibre of education now. There is no striving for excellence in most schools - just hitting the target. Its not teacher's fault. Its just the system we have.

Completely agree ABetaDad

You put it far better than I could

It is certainly the system, but in fairness is there a system that would suit all children?

Multivac - I take issue with this line because it does not apply in practice.
No child need ever meet a 'glass ceiling' in maths, because the world of mathematics is full of open-ended

Maths is open-ended, but the problems set in class are not. Our DC are given specific problems to solve, often without being able to choose their own methodolgy. The whole thing is highly prescriptive and when a child can do the work with nigh on 100% accuracy, but without ever having to pause to think and this happens day after day, week after week, month after month, then you know that they are not being challenged.

So, then, as a parent, I made the teacher aware. Then I waited and nothing changed. Then I tried the head of dept and his response was to acknowledge that the work was unchallenging but to talk of how inspired less able students would feel when they see my sons do the work easily, and indeed how this is mutually beneficial because it allows my children to feel good about themselves.

However, you slice and dice it, whatever way you describe it, or measure performance and attainment, the fact remains that the school will not teach my children something new long after they have mastered the current work, even if the school acknowledges that they had mastered the current work before the current teacher started to teach it to the class.

That's the glass ceiling and, unfortunately, it does exist. It won't go away just by looking from a different angle.

But you don't have to agree with me, although if you teach my sons, then it would be nice.

I said 'no child need meet a glass ceiling. I didn't say they didn't.

mummytime There are plenty of top Mathematicians (Field's medal winners or Einstein) who weren't thought of as great at Maths in school.

Bollocks, Einstein was an excellent math student throughout his childhood education- always the top in his class. By fifteen he had mastered differential and integral calculus!

Out of interest, why would you not teach your children their times tables mummytime? Is it because you don't know yours and so don't see the point?

Of course there are other ways of doing maths but knowing immediately without even thinking about it that 7x8 is 56 is a massive advantage and makes maths quicker.

I don't know about mummytimes reasons, but dd and I have never learnt times tables in the traditional memorising by rote way either. Just calculated it at speed. And then when you've done that enough times its memorised I suppose through use. Never made any difference either way in terms of speed or accuracy to either of us, whether that be in a primary level times tables test, or as part of a complex equation.

But you know your times tables. So if you do a sum involving 7x8 you know its 56. How you came to memorise that is irrelevant really. I suspect most children nowadays don't stand there chanting like they would have in days gone bay.

by

Very good comment var123, that's how I feel.

Just reading the whole thread it seems to have started about gifted children yet now seems to be about setting/streaming for high achievers. For those of us with gifted children the two are different things it is a whole different ball game.