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.

"So, it really upsets me when teachers play at social engineering rather than get on with teaching."

You don't have to be a parent to be a governor. I actually think I am more effective as a governor in the school where I don't have a child than in the one where I do- I am able to be more dispassionate.

yes, being a governor where you don't have a child would allow you to be more dispassionate, but surely you'd also be less well-informed?

If you aren't living it every day, and rely on reports and statistics, then how can you really know what is going on until you get a complaint?

Statistics hide as much as they show. e.g. If a high % of children appearing to make expected or good progress is reported, how do you know that hidden in the figures isn't children like my two who hit the top grade available every time but who already no more than the test allows? So, next time when they are tested again, the reported progress isn't the actual progress.

Because you go in and talk to teachers. You question the SMT. There will be a person or a sub committee whose task is to look at gifted and talented students.

You are much more likely to know what's going on if you have all the reports and statistics, rather than going on the experience (as you understand it) of your own child.

I think you need both. For example, when my Dc were young, I used to ask them each day how their day had gone. They would say "fine" or "ok" every single time. So, after a while, I changed the question to "Tell me one bad thing and one good thing that happened today".
Suddenly, I found I was getting a very good insight into what mattered to my DC.
Sometimes the good thing was we had PE, or I did well on a test or my reading book got changed or x invited me to his party and the bad things were "The teacher swore at the class" or "We had an assembly that was so long that my legs were numb" or "the loos are broken again" or "the boy (with ASD) sitting next to me threw a chair and it hit me in class" or we missed PE again because x refused to do it and had a tantrum or the TA looked after us all afternoon. (All those were things that were really said and although they really happened and they really did impact my child, you can be 100% sure that the teachers would never have volunteered it.)

I would be concerned about any governor relying heavily on information provided by his or her own children in order to full the role effectively.

"In the 2012-13 academic year 57 per cent of teachers in service at any time during the year had at least one period of sickness absence compared with 55 per cent in 2011-12.
For those teachers taking sickness absence the average number of days lost
was 7.9. This is a reduction from the average of 8.1 days"
School Workforce in England.

I would too. That's why i write "I think you need both". No contradiction there.

You've pulled me up a couple of times for not reading every word carefully. Maybe you should follow your own advice?

8 days a year is quite a bit. That's 16 half days. What would that be as a % on a child's report? Enough to prompt a concern about attendance rates?

I have a problem that sometimes the state education system tricks me into believing that my daughter is ok, she is happy and learning and progressing as per her ability. Last night i had a question that 7 ounces of sweet costs £112 the how much £10 ounces cost and she couldnt work out in her head, it normally comes out very easily(year 3). So no matter how hard we are trying at home having some level of help/support at school for progressing is soooo important, any of these moments then I always question myself what I should have done more. Isnt she that bright?

No but I should never let it trick me, she is bright, she was just chosen in the school's chess team, she had no idea of chess until 2 months ago(join the club second half of the last term and never heard of chess as we dont know chess). She beated some others who has been in the team since year 1, know all the rule. So the slip moment is just because I havent done enough at home. Now its hard to build a system to track her progress over time according to "home schooling" too. How do you do it? How do you know your child is still progressing over time? Tks.

Maybe she was thrown by you using ounces?

"The teacher swore at the class" or "We had an assembly that was so long that my legs were numb" or "the loos are broken again" or "the boy (with ASD) sitting next to me threw a chair and it hit me in class" or we missed PE again because x refused to do it and had a tantrum or the TA looked after us all afternoon."

Which of those things do you think should be taken to Governors?

I think all of them give an insight into the actual experience, and risks faced by the children in the school on a daily basis (well not the swearing - it was a one off, but the teacher losing her temper in the class was fairly frequent).

The governors should be aware of them all and should not treat them as one-off lapses. They are all issues, as was the lack of teaching for the most able.

Do you think they are in the reports the governors receive or the teachers readily share that sort of info with them?

Well, governors would know about the broken loos unless it was just a one off- there are people with responsibilities for premises. They would also know about the injury. The swearing teacher might well have ended up with disciplinary action, which governors would also have known about. The assembly- these things happen. Possibly not the missing PE because of Xs tantrum. And governors will be acutely aware of staff shortages.

But surely as a parent you enquired into all these things yourself?

"I would too. That's why i write "I think you need both". No contradiction there."

I would be concerned about any governor, even working together with others who don't, relying heavily on information provided by his or her own children in order to fulfill the role effectively. Parent governors are important, and can certainly provide a useful perspective, but they need to be able to put their own children's needs - and stories - to one side in a way that is, for obvious reasons I suppose, not terribly evident on this thread. They need to understand what should be dealt with as a parent, and what is a matter for the governing body.

And they definitely need to realise that there is "a point" to being a governor, even if one's own offspring doesn't stand to benefit from it.

I have to be very stern with myself about using information my ds gives me when I'm in a governor role at his school. And about seeking out information I wouldn't otherwise be interested in about his class, teachers and so on!

Particularly if he told me something very critical of one of his teachers. I would pursue it within the school as a parent. It would be wholly unprofessional to use my governor role in that context.

Broken loos - I asked the class teacher once. She confirmed but said that she hoped things would be better once some builders came in a few months hence.
Governor knowledge - probably as a generality but not with the urgency that a full bladder brings!

Teacher swearing - I told the HT but mixed in with a more general concern about the shouting and the low morale amongst the children, frequent tears, nightmares etc. The HT replied that the teacher's style was not what she'd choose for herself but the teacher was popular with the children (I knew most of the parents and the children. I can only think of one child who liked her, the rest had different levels of bad experience. Basically the HT was either lying to me or to herself).
Governor knowledge - swearing I don't know. Aggression - it was the talk of the playground for a whole year so it surely must have reached a governor's ears, especially as there were a number of formal complaints made.

Chair throwing and my child being hurt. I asked the teacher who confirmed it. I said it wasn't the first time my child had been hurt by this boy (he sat next to him so was in the way when things got too much for the boy and he became violent). the teacher said that there were no safety issues in the class and ignored my question about how come I get notes home telling me they scraped their knees in the playground but no explanation at all for things like this that cause significant bruising. I didn't pursue it because the boy has ASD and I didn't want to cause his parents any more trouble. However, the teacher did decide a little while later that the time had come to change the seating plan.
Governor knowledge - I seriously doubt it as no record was kept, or at least i didn't receive my little note to say my child had been hurt.

Numb legs - well the HT does like to talk and the hall is small so tall children just have to fold themselves up like the 4 year olds do.

OK. I give up. Everything is rubbish and useless and there is no point trying to do anything because everyone employed in schools are feckless, time serving and committed to producing the worst possible outcome for all pupils. I see it all now. Thank you for opening my eyes!

What a strange turn this discussion has taken.

One of the reasons that teachers are off sick a lot should be obvious to anyone with a passing familiarity with working conditions in British state schools (and if not, go and take a look at the TES workplace dilemmas forum to see how often school management practices are implicated in stress related sickness).

I can't think of a single profession which is held so accountable for performance measures that are often outside their control, where management expectations are so thoroughly unreasonable, and where the standard of "management" is so often lamentably poor.

No wonder schools can't fill posts and teachers go off sick!

(NB: I'm not a teacher).

I think @MistiGri's point re. workload/stress is broadly true.

I know a couple quite well, both with plenty of busy/responsible private sector life under their belts before they became teachers and like many in that position they say it's much, much harder. Like most they also blame SLT for a lot of unnecessary work and a very regular supply of dim unnecessary criticism. It does look like a lot of SLT haven't quite caught up with what Ofsted do or don't expect etc.

There was a thread about the Junior Dr's strike the other day that took an amusing turn. It went off on a tangent about how (badly) hospitals get managed.

The upshot seemed to be that people with no training on particular competence running an organisation, but plenty of medical knowledge, and lots of experience of working for hospitals find themselves organising rotas etc with the result that hospitals are run inefficiently and the front line staff bear the brunt.

Maybe schools are the same? Excellent teachers get promoted and promoted again until eventually they are managing the school. There's no HR dept to guide them, little or no training on how to actually get the best out of your team. Its all left to their innate competence and whether they can keep their head in a crisis, or whether they turn into bullies when under pressure to perform.

I sympathise with both the newly appointed SLT and their employees. I was 25 the first time that I managed a team. It was really hard getting my head around the fact that I had to care about things that bothered them even if I thought the issues no big deal. Also, I found it hard coming to terms with the fact that they might not be as committed to getting the job done well as I had been when at their level, and yet I had to take responsibility if things went wrong because they took a risk on a short cut. It made me a control freak. I was checking everything and leaving nothing to chance. It must have been horrible working for me then.

I'm less sympathetic. I don't want to tar them all with the same brush because there will probably be a significant number of admirable exceptions alongside some of your relatively innocent Peter Principle types, but I think the system has been selecting too many wrong 'uns. In part this is because of Ofsted, especially their reforms around a decade ago.

A head-teacher essentially lives or dies based on the Oftsed verdict (largely based on school data). I don't think the job appeals that much to excellent vocational teachers, because they tend to be intelligent enough not to want it. This leaves a pool comprising the less astute and/or more bullying, morally dodgy characters who are willing to live with the bureacracy and embrace their role in maintaining what is typically a blame-culture.

The HTs in the three closest primary schools here were Corrupt, Useless and Nasty respectively. We went for Useless because they were the lesser evil, it was the closest school and also CoE so I knew it would be easy to call them out re. any lapse in their ethics. Useless is still there, Nasty left and Corrupt's career flourished i.e. they clearly fit into that level of the system quite well.

I used to believe teachers were different (maybe some are) but over the years I became jaded.

Headteacher dropping the school in the s* with no notice because they got headhunted to a higher paying school. The 'acting' replacement uncovered massive problems that had been brushed under the carpet and really messed up the whole years GCSE.
Teachers having a small 'incident' in school that leads to back pain and over a year off work. Supply for the year. Bump into them in local supermarket, nice chat they are doing well...
I have many teacher friends and I hear all the scams they use to get time off, the stress itself needs them to have many days off a year to recover from handovers.

Yeah, so I am jaded and dont believe teachers are in it for the children, anymore than I believe doctors striking has nothing to do with more money. Its a job and they are in it for the money, the feel good factor of helping others is secondary.

I'm a teacher and I certainly don't use scams to get time off, nor do any of my colleagues!

And if I were really in it for the money I would have left as soon as pay progression became linked to how children match up to their target grades.

Back to the topic at hand- I think in a classroom it can be incredibly difficult to stretch the most able. It's tough differentiating and teaching 36 kids and ensuring all their needs are met when you are 1 single person and you teach 100s of students in a week and some kids can't spell their names, while others are reading A level standard books.
I'm not saying it's right, but it's true. I try to inspire all my students and really give challenging and stretching activities to those who are 'gifted' (whatever that means). I routinely spend time out of lessons giving students more opportunities to learn further and deeper.

However, the incentive isn't there. I struggle to pay my rent. I'm in some debt. Last year I had a class of year 11s and had to get 85% to target grades. The girl who was on track for an A with a target of just a C could have been pushed to an A* with effort from me, but the three boys at G who I could raise to an E were a better use of my time according to the appraisal system.