That glass ceiling! Part 2

[var123]

Continuing the discussion about artificial limits placed on G&T children, and the resulting impact on their health and happiness (not to mention futures).

Do they really matter less because they have a perceived "advantage"?!

original thread here:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/gifted_and_talented/2507232-The-glass-ceiling-for-very-able-children?

It wasn't a range of schools. it was one particular Parisiene school. My friend said that the rest aren't as good as the good English ones.

Those people I worked with though... wow! I worked with others who'd been to Oxford and / or Cambridge too, as well as MIT etc, but those French ones just spoken in tongues as far as I was concerned. I really could not even follow what they were saying half the time, never mind be able to replicate it.

OK, let's agree to disagree about maths (I have French students in my classes but not that many). I do agree that the French system has changed, perhaps for the worse, in recent years. I hear from my colleagues that there is now huge pressure to dumb down maths and physics in the universities (cf grandes ecoles), with the incoming students being much weaker but lots of pressure from above that none of them fail.

Oxbridge (and HE abroad) and anything that would facilitate it is completely off 99.9% of French lycee teachers' radar screens.
Yes I understand however the French are rather partial to international prestige and the IMO certainly provides that.

I very much agree with your last post, disquisitiones. Though the better lycees still go way beyond the curriculum in maths (or else the best prepas won't admit their pupils).

French lycees are entirely oblivious to international prestige.

var GCSEs do differentiate.

There's a world of difference between a C and an A*. And the candidate received their raw score too. Big difference between 85 and 100.

The new style exams are meant to differentiate more though.

We'll see.

Of course whatever the mark scheme, there is nothing forcing teachers to remain strictly within the GCSE curricula. They can introduce any additional material they like.

Except of course it's not that simple.

Their top set msy include pupils that need to remain inside the syllabus for a top grade.

And they will come under pressure from the SLT and parent body not to do anything that risks those top grades.

I know they differentiate, but they don't fully differentiate. Someone said upthread (maybe you?) that when offering university places, you are faced with many highly similar applications - or did I misread it?

If my child can get a level 7a when still 11, and a level 8a a few months later, which I am advised equate to a C and B at GCSE, but he's no genius, then it tells you something about how hard the GCSEs really are.

I agree with the bit about how schools can theoretically go outside the curriculum but for practical, risk averse reasons, they don't.

Going outside the curriculum throws up all sorts of practical class management issues in mixed ability classrooms. Why are some DC being required to do so much more work than others? DC of whom less is asked are not fools and realise pretty quickly that the teacher doesn't think as much of them as of others.

With all due respect var you cannot base a opinion on one GCSE.

It's like those idiots who take one maths paper at home, with a cuppa and nothing riding on it and declare it 'easy'.

Well yes.

But the average GCSE taker will be 15/16. They will be taking 10/11/12 GCSEs at the same time with very high stakes.

Come back when your DC have taken them, achieved 10 Level 9s and we can talk turkey.

As for universities, GCSEs are not the basis upon which offers are made.

The majority make offers based on predicted A2 grades.

The most selective universities use a slippery mix of GCSE grades, AS grades, pre tests, school work , predicted A2 grades and interview.

All that information gives us a very good basis on which to differentiate between candidates.

That said we're not simply looking for students with the highest IQ. If we were we'd just do IQ tests, right?

But NC levels have now been abolished, in anticipation of the new GCSEs being harder.

The draft maths A level curriculum is harder than it was in the 1980s. If it goes ahead, it will be challenging even for the top set of students.

On the other hand it's very hard to envisage that this curriculum could be taught to all the students currently taking A level maths - the curriculum is not sensible for students currently getting Bs or below but it
will be disastrous for the UK's economy if the number of students taking maths falls drastically.

Overall the changes to GCSEs and A levels may well help the children being discussed on this board.... but at the expense of many of their cohort, who will struggle and fail on material that used to be taught to the top 10-20% of the population only in the 1970s/1980s.

bobo indeed it is hard in a mixed ability setting. Critical mass yadda yadda.

Everyone in DS eng lot class had to study three Shakespeare plays. Done deal.

That would have been an insane tactic in DD's school, even in top set.

Sorry- I know G&T doesn't just mean Maths- I said that in a cross moment. But honestly, reading this thread it might as well be. Other subjects- particularly the liberal arts- are barely mentioned. People seem simultaneously to be talking about a need for broader education, and focussing in on the needs of highly able mathematicians. If I had a young secondary school child who was very able at Maths, I would be saying- "OK- let's see what we can do to get your other subjects up there too."

Everyone has to study a Shakespeare and a Victorian novel under the new criteria.

In the lower sets at our school that is proving a real struggle.

var, that 'equivalence' between e,g, 7a / 8a and GCSE grades is a slightly slippery animal, though, and will depend on how it is tested.

In particular, it depends on how much of the syllabus is tested. The 7a / 8a may be on KS3 tests (I know that when DS got those grades in Y7 and Y8, it was on adapted KS3 tests), which are based on the KS3 curriculum. Yes, someone getting those grades understands and can apply the KS3 curriculum really well, but it doesn't mean that they would score a B or C given a GCSE paper on the same day, because the latter would contain material that the child hadn't yet studied.

The other issue is what level the majority of the questions asked in a test paper are. If we look at three ways of getting 'a level 6', it might help to illustrate:

• Level 6 in a 'Level 4 to 6' paper: The child will score the vast majority of the marks needed for a 'Level 6' by answering Level 4 and 5 questions. Only a few Level 6 questions - maybe only a small amount of the Level 6 curriculum - might need to be answered to reach the Level 6 threshold.

• Level 6 in a genuine Level 6 only paper: All the questions on the paper are at level 6, and, depending on the pass mark set, a fair knowledge across the Level 6 curriculum might be assumed.

• Level 6 in a Level 6 to 8 paper: A child may get a Level 6 on this type of paper either by having a good understanding of the Level 6 curriculum (but no more) or by picking up marks here and there on e.g. similar types of question throughout the different levels.

bert I'm not talking about maths. I'm not even talking about STEM ( not my area).

Also I do understand the challenges that lie ability children will face with the new English Lit syllabus but the old one did need tightening up.

English lit is not simply an extension of Eng Lang. It has to cover the basics. IMVHO Shakespeare is a basic.

Like gravity in physics, or the past perfect in MFL, or parallel parking in a driving test. You can't leave it out because some people can't do it.

I like your analogies, Eric. I had to explain to DD's history teacher very recently that assigning four random Y7 pupils to prepare a PowerPoint presentation outside school hours was a bit like sending four adults on a car expedition without first checking they had a car each (laptop and Internet) and a driving licence (basic PowerPoint skills).

Ooh- I could talk about the English Curriculum for ages!

Yes, I agree it needed tightening up- and I like the fact that it's a closed book exam now- and I do like the poetry choices. I just think that surely it must be possible to have something more accessible than Shakespeare for the lowest of 7 sets in a school which has only the lower 75% of the ability range? There are so many fantastic books that might actually capture their attention and inspire them- I'm not convinced that Romeo and Juliet and Dr Jeykell and Mr Hyde are going to do the job.

Sorry- completely irrelevant side track. It's a hobby horse.............

The thing is bert it's not the job of GCSE Eng Lit to inspire pupils to love books.

It introduces and tests pupils on the cannon. And it has to include Shakespeare.

Tbf a pupil won't need to display deep analysis to get a level 4/5.

Also I do understand the challenges that lie ability children will face with the new English Lit syllabus but the old one did need tightening up.

I think maths and science did need revisiting too, but the proposed changes to maths A level are too extreme. Nobody else in the world teaches some of these topics at A level instead of at university level. This makes it even more pointless as STEM university courses are typically 20+% foreign students, often more, so the material will have to be retaught in university courses for the non-UK students anyhow (and for the UK students who didn't understand it at A level!).

teacher - you are right - the school used level 5-7 and level 6-8 papers to award the 7A and 8A.

Eric - To be fair, I thought levels were comparable across subjects. So a level 5 in KS2 or a A at GCSE in English (say), was the same level of difficulty as a level 5 or an A in GCSE maths. I thought that people always argued that there are no easy GCSEs, but is that not correct - there are easier ones and harder ones?

(PS. I know English splits into two - its just an example. ).

Also, taking Ds1 as an example, he does better at maths than anything else, but he isn't exactly trailing in the other subjects either. On paper, his grades look good. There's many a slip between cup and lip so I am not going to predict great GCSE grades for him, but I'd be very angry with the school if they weren't preparing him for good GCSE grades now as the pace really is quite ponderous (that Goegraphy homework example).

The thing that actually bothers me though, is that I get the sense that there's no depth to the learning. History maybe could be an exception, but otherwise I see Ds only getting superficial explanations. An analogy would eb the difference between looking at presentation and reading a book.

disquisitiones I think the proposed changes to maths A-level will be utterly disastrous and take-up at A-level will plummet. I suspect something will then have to be done like it was following the curriculum 2000 changes, to make A-level easier again.

I think with also losing AS and some students only starting with 3 subjects, students who might have got a respectable AS/A-level won't even be able to risk starting the course.

disquit - I am sure that you are right and that one else in the world teaches 18 year olds to the standard of the new A-level.

How many countries require their most able pupils to study a narrow range of subjects at 16-18?

Is it reasonable for England to pursue such a differentiated 16-18 school strategy?