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?

But why should a university have pre-requisites that go beyond the school curriculum?

Universities don't have pre-requisites that go beyond the school curriculum. Name one example.

They do however have pre-requisites for studying certain courses - sensible subject choices, which prepare the students for tertiary study. It is the latter which is an enormous problem. Every year I see students applying for maths with A stars predicted in maths, but they don't have FM and their second and third subjects are law, psychology etc (which are not suitable preparation for top level maths courses). The students have often been told that they don't need FM to be strong candidates for Oxbridge or Imperial because "FM is not needed for state school applicants". These poor kids often only find out in the summer of y12 that the latter is not true.

There is thread after thread on the higher education board from academics saying exactly the same thing - candidates for chemical engineering without the required subjects; candidates for law at top universities not knowing that law A level is a hindrance rather than a help etc etc.

The universities did try to step in, I believe successfully, for example offering such students a first year course spread over two years, to help them bridge the gaps in their knowledge and then enable them to join their peers at the right level in their second year.

The UK has foundation year courses to do exactly the same. The problem is that these are not properly financed at the moment. There has to be a method to pay for foundation years for those who took the wrong A levels.

Clearly universities do moan about maths A-level being inadequate or we wouldn't have this ridiculously hard new maths A-level being introduced with major input from universities!

I said the very top universities require it, btw, but plenty of RG universities don't, and given that very few students aim for Oxbridge and co but would be very happy with Bristol, then many bright students won't think it is necessary.

Again, unis who moan about students being crap at maths when studying biology don't include it in their entry requirements. That's their fault!

So, basically is the advice to Y11 students who are thinking about A level choices: don't take the careers advisors word for it. Download the prospectuses and check it out for yourself?

And we're back to maths again. I really do get the feeling that every time any other subject is mentioned it' "Yes, yes, they can read around the subject. Now back to real highly able people".....

BertrandRussell, Noblegiraffe is a MATHS teacher. Its normal that her replies are going to be from a maths perspective.

Which subject would you like to talk about, and what would you like to say?

Universities don't have pre-requisites that go beyond the school curriculum.

Ok, the discussion was along the lines of able students needing to be extended beyond the school curriculum. Parents pay for this in other areas like sport and music. I said that able students should be able to go through school, get good results and go to a good university without needing extra resources being spent on them.

Var said that universities might need more than that because the curriculum is 'dumbed down'. I said that if universities needed more, (like the moan about poor maths), then they should include it in their entry requirements.

Basically, if you want to be an international tennis player, you can't expect to be taught everything you need in school, because that's not the job of the school. The school should provide everything you need to access top universities, (and it's agreed that universities should only require stuff in the school curriculum in their entry requirements) but schools don't have the funding or resources to provide more than that, and so parents shouldn't have it as an expectation. The glass ceiling is inevitable in state education, and if more is required, then other agencies should be providing it, not schools.

(I don't know if I agree with this line of thinking btw).

Betrand maths is always going to come up in discussions like this because parents of the able in music and sport accept that talent needs to be nurtured out of school. Those talented in English or History can be given demanding books to read at home, or be asked to write their essays in more depth. They can write a novel or join a debating team or whatever.

But maths. Parents of those bright in maths don't just take them to a chess club or coding dojo or buy them Martin Gardner puzzles to work through at home. They come in and want their child to be taught level 8 maths in a level 6 class, because they can only see mathematical ability being challenged as acceleration through the curriculum beyond their peers. And a school that doesn't do that is failing their child, though the same is certainly not expected in other subjects. Parents often have a very narrow view of maths, and think it has to be done in school lessons, and it has to be the national curriculum.

Why isn't there some relatively simple central web site, whatuneed4uni.org.uk or whatever, where you just turn up, pick the degree subject and get the page with a generic recipe and tick boxes for the A-levels to filter which ones will or won't have you with a given combination?

12yo DD came home from school this week and announced she wanted to do maths at university. That was essentially prompted by a female maths teacher who appears to have a slight bias for the boys. DD is very reliable about these things, so I can't decide whether to diplomatically Say Something or leave her a bit fired up and determined to make a point.

Anyway, double maths is a given but to keep the Oxbridge option open does it really have to be '+ physics'? If so, the prospect of shutting down humanities etc. hurts a bit, although it's another school that likes EPQ so I suppose some little flame could be kept burning there.

Thank you, giraffe- what I was thinking, but didn't know how to express.

I do feel there is a hierarchy of giftedness. Like many people, I am always incredibly impressed by people who are good at Maths, because I'm not. And there is something awe inspiring about somebody very young being very mathematically able. The same with music. And it is easy to measure. But English - well, it's just reading, isn't it. Anyone can do that!

It's also a good stick to best schools with- because it's easy to measure..

PiqueaBoo- I'm sure there is- I remember my dd using something like that. Can't for the life of me remember what it was called, though.

The Russell Group wrote their Informed Choices booklet, and the government, I believe, is going to league table how many facilitating subjects each sixth form student takes.

Yet it all turns out to be pretty crap advice compared to which subjects students who get university places actually have.
www.lkmco.org/what-a-level-subjects-do-russell-group-universities-prefer/

noble, we completely forgot about the monkey peach! Thank you for reminding. We will do it later. (We just came back from library, and he is building something with K'nex at the moment.)

If you do music you have lessons outside school, yes. But there's also a natural system to work your way up, you can do grade exams, join an orchestra, or work to join a county or national level orchestra, and the better you do the higher level tuition you will be offered. And schools accept and expect that music students will be learning outside school. They aren't expected to spend 5 lessons a week playing grade 3 pieces.

Kids who are strong in sports will be in school teams, which are usually coached well beyond the level of the class. And there is a similar out of school system to follow through. They aren't expected to limit their running speed or not try to score goals in lessons.

Kids who are strong in English can use the same essay prompt to produce a far higher level of work. And yes they may well read more.

I'm sure strong maths and science kids will be reading around out of school, I would certainly expect that in any subject, but that isn't a substitute for teaching appropriately in school.

If there were a lot more open questions asked in maths lessons then it would be much better - and it's great if some schools do that. I haven't seen any so far with DS at all. There tend not to be as they are teaching to exams and tests which are stuffed full of closed questions. Again, unlike in other subjects.

As far as I'm aware, the high level outside school system for maths is UKMT. Which, again to the best of my knowledge, can only be got into via school.

And then there's the fact that schools appear to strongly disapprove of parents teaching them maths out of school. "Don't push them ahead with the syllabus, it'll just make them bored in lessons." It's not hard to see why parents think maths should be left to school, schools keep telling that to us.

Bertrand - I wasn't at a conference as a spectator and I have no conference paper to link to.

bert I think high ability in English probably manifests itself later.

A child needs to have acquired a certain amount of maturity that has nothing to do with reading levels or early ability to produce 'stories'.

Also, most people ( wrongly IMVHO) feel that ability in English can be adequately nurtured by giving children books to read. So they worry less and mither teachers less.

I just had a quick look again at the peaches question, and these problem will definitely teaches him to be patient and think deeper. He doesn't like it, I assume. But that's what he really needs. He is good at quick mental maths, but hasn't got a patience to dig deeper, and learn to use his brain.

The problem there then, catkind would appear to be a lack of agencies providing extra curricular clubs preparing for maths competitions, in a way that there is provision for sports and music. Where are the UKMT clubs not run by schools?

Chess is a good outlet for able mathematicians, but many parents wouldn't consider this because it's not maths. Coding is also very mathematical, Alan Turing was a mathematician after all.

There's also tonnes of recreational maths. Parents do not need to teach their children the school maths curriculum outside of school in order for their mathematical child to have stuff to do. Teaching their child the maths curriculum just causes problems in lessons, it's a waste of time when they will be taught it anyway.

Kids who are strong in sports will be in school teams,

If anyone is thinking it, I'd just like to point out that no, it would not be possible for the school maths department to put on extra curricular activities in the same way that the PE department do, because the PE department are able to do that due to the much lower marking/planning load in their subject.

And how do you avoid that right from the start noble? Tell your preschooler you refuse to answer their questions because they'll be covered at school? Or tell them to be quiet when they want to check they're right about something? Not to mention that the most able make the leap themselves when it's logic based.

I've never once set out to teach dd, nc or otherwise. Covering parts of the nc just happened through everyday situations.

noblegiraffe

Interesting link, thanks. Although in part it's interesting because it's a McInerney article that hasn't made me very cross with her (she said very bad things re. 'gifted' before the last election).

Going back to your previous point, I don't think parents deserve too much blame for the ladder-climbing stuff. The only information we get from DD's school is a termly progress report. Predicted and target end-year level:sublevels based on two sub-levels progress per annum from the KS2 baseline, with traffic-light colour coding to indicate slippage. We're told this should be the basis for discussions at parents' evenings.

DD's reports are drowning in red (except for a couple of subjects including maths). Taken at face value this means that despite being one of the highest achievers in all subjects but drama, the 'basis for discussion' is that she's at least a whole level behind some unchallenging progress targets. What's a parent supposed to make of that? If a school wants to change the dialogue, then they need to start a different one.

Saying maths students should do chess (or coding or go or ancient greek) seems a little akin to saying the tennis player should go and do swimming because there's a local swimming club. Yes they probably should, but not as a substitute for tennis coaching, and taking swimming to a very high level would start to interfere with their tennis. While it will help a bit with strength and endurance and stuff, it's not the same skill set.

I quit serious chess playing in my teens, it just took up too much time from the things I was more serious about. And in itself I found it rather pointless and dull in the end, whereas maths I found more fascinating the more I learned about it.

And noble, you appear to be saying we should be providing for our children getting this high level tennis training at home without ever addressing basic technique because they might get that (5 years later) in a school sports lesson. Or high level music without teaching them theory. That's not the way high level training for anything works. To build up a truly strong sportsman/musician - and mathematician - you start with the fundamentals.

I don't think a lot of support is needed from schools mind you, maths-wise. Just allowances. Ask more open questions (than DS school do anyway). Give them some UKMT questions, let them skip some of the repetition and work on those instead. To stretch the analogy, the equivalent of spending some time practicing serves, and letting your best tennis players play against each other when you do tennis in PE maybe?

"Kids who are strong in sports will be in school teams,"

Akshully.. DD has recently stopped a school extra-curricular activity she has done for a few years because it became a bit too popular. They evicted the academic track children in favour of the ones they thought might take some sports qualification at 16.

[I'm not bothered, because her significant sporting activity has no link with school. Or clubs for that matter.]

Maybe I'm contradicting myself there.
Give them materials and let them get on with it is what I think I'm trying to say. UKMT and recreational maths are great once they have the toolkit.