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?

Thank you every one! I think I will start researching.

teacher we also have one like that. They appear to basically do the same as the supposedly outstanding one, i.e box tick and teach on one level, just a lower one. And then drag out the high Sen, fsm etc as an excuse for not accomplishing it. When in actual fact most of their dx Sen shouldn't make much difference, and it's their inability to notice more serious Sen/ social issues/ teach/ leadership etc that cause the problems.

DD's primary is as you describe, teacher:

"a primary where teachers are used to children of widely differing abilities, backgrounds, home lives, languages, then the process of 'adapting to the specific needs of each child' is very ingrained"

DD is fortunate that her school really does have the full spectrum of ability so while she is pretty much an outlier in most academic subjects, she does have peers who are very intelligent children.

I haven't found that other children have a culture of calling clever children nerdy etc at all or denigrating their achievements (which was certainly the case at my primary, only I don't think nerds had been invented then - different words, same meaning). When DD has done good things, her classmates have celebrated her achievements with no apparent resentment. They are proud to have her in their class, not least because she keeps winning the whole school weekly maths challenge which seems to allow the class to bask in some kind of reflected glory.

I have no idea how anyone not familiar with it all is supposed to navigate it.

Yes, hear hear! It is insanely complicated even if you grew up with the system here.

"I haven't found that other children have a culture of calling clever children nerdy etc"

Same here on the wrong side of the tracks. DD has never had any stick for being good at things i.e. no name-calling for being a bit quirky and clever etc. This might sound a bit precious, but I think the socially sensitive introvert looked around and put a lot of thought into how she could fit in and not offend anyone.

It's piddling primary school stuff, but when ordered (by perceptive teachers) to stand for elections she has won e.g. School Council, House Captain etc. The child no one hates, unlike some of the more um.. socially confident ones. She's been the class champion too, although for music rather than academic competitions which are still a bit too much for large swathes of the state sector.

There is a right-side of the tracks here with some too, too posh homes [that's a little literary reference just for you BR!] which send some children to both the primary and comp because it's a fair distance to any privates, but people who do that tend to be the more secure types who are much less inclined to plutographic bollox.

I chose two primary schools. First one went something like.... they have places, there is a house we can move to nearby, the Ht seems very nice. Done.

Result: It turns out Ofsted had good reason to give it a 3, and that was probably a bit generous. If you read between the lines, the ofsted report really was spelling out the problems but it was too oblique for me to understand until I'd lived it. The HT was plain mad (and not in a ditzy way).

The 2nd was OMG I can't believe how bad schools can be. I really need to get this right this time, and while I am at it, make sure I don't get into the same mess when Ds1 needs a secondary school place. So, I looked at exam results and Ofsted reports and prepared to move house to anywhere in the UK (I covered 450 miles in the search).
My logic in looking at league tables was that any school that could get 90%+ to level 4, must surely look after all ability levels. With hindsight, i think my logic was flawed there.

var123 - you placed an awful lot of trust in public services. TBH I think the days when we could do that are gone forever. Choice and competition have ensured market forces rule in the UK and you need to behave like an informed consumer at every turn.

True, but I had been living abroad for several years and had little to do with UK public services before that for a few more years.
I know better now. I still can't believe how bad a judge of character I was about that first head teacher!

I didn't really look at primaries from the aspect of having an outlier. I didn't think much further than the fact she would probably need the usual top table sort of provision. My own experience of my school pretending they were in anyway responsible for my results made me sceptical of taking results at face value. Atmosphere aside I was impressed that while their average result was low, they had a big range of ability, even without any genuine outliers at the top. And a kind of attitude that they didn't really care what any silly guidelines said they should be doing, they'd do whatever they thought best for every individual.

My logic in looking at league tables was that any school that could get 90%+ to level 4, must surely look after all ability levels. With hindsight, i think my logic was flawed there.

Interestingly, DD's school gets a low percentage of children to L4 compared to other local schools (leafy naice area etc but DD's school is more socially mixed than most). However, DD's school does better on expected progress for all groups of children than the school that parents are fighting to get their kids into. They also get a good percentage of children to L5+ compared to some of the supposedly better schools.

DD has also won School Council etc several years running. They are an absolutely lovely bunch of kids. Yes, lots of them are disadvantaged in many ways, some of them quite serious, but none of them are disadvantaged by prejudice or closed minds which is lovely to see.

a kind of attitude that they didn't really care what any silly guidelines said they should be doing, they'd do whatever they thought best for every individual

This. This is what DD's primary has done and is doing. Her teacher said to me earlier this year 'I know they keep banging on about mastery but she's clearly gone beyond the Y4 curriculum. Don't worry, I'll sort something out'. And she did.

Our choice of primary was down to pure luck.

We were applying from a different city and only had a chance to visit three schools on the day we came to look at schools. Out of those three, the last one was the one that grabbed us, kind of like what people say when you enter a school and suddenly you feel that's the "one".

Then, the fact that it was the only one that was usually undersubscribed, as opposed to the other "outstanding" ones who were usually oversubscribed, made us think that the small school we liked was probably the one where we had our best chance to get a place as by distance we would have never got a place on a oversubscribed school applying from a different city.

Only by reading these threads on mumsnet I have come to realise that not all the schools are like DS's school. Things I have assumed that were the norm for most schools, appear to be more an exception rather than the rule.

I chose mainly on the basis that the school seemed like a happy and friendly place. DD was v shy in those days so I wanted a friendly school more than an academic powerhouse. The stats are something I have looked at more recently.

My DS was at a small pre-prep which was able to differentiate and push him appropriately. However, because his interests were so different from all the other children, he had no friends - acquaintances, but definitely nobody he felt any similarities to. As a result, he had very few playdates (would prefer playing with the other children's toys or talking to the parent rather than playing with the child) and would spend many playtimes alone creating games.

It was principally for social reasons that I chose to have him apply to the superselective prep schools.

In terms of the questions asked, my DS has a year and a half left at the prep level, but it transitions seamlessly into the senior school so I can answer based on my experience and my friends with children further up:

High ability is the expectation, and any child without high ability would be miserable due to the pace and scope of the education given.

Very little busy work - DS has had very little homework, and still continues to have little compared to other prep schools.

No expectation for children to tutor their peers - I never heard of this before.

I have never experience NC levels and have no idea what they are. In terms of % of work outside NC, I assume loads as it is a private school which prides itself in not being tied to the NC.

Every child, even the jocks, have to be "nerds" as they are all academically able. There are, however, some children who are particularly focused on academic subjects, but they are not pointed to as being nerds.

Well, it is superselective, but even then it sets. Maths starting Year 5. French and Maths in Year 6. French, Maths, Latin, and English starting Year 7. By the time there are in senior school, there are at least 8 maths sets. To put this into context, the bottom maths sets has everyone getting an A* or A in the GCSEs except maybe 2 people.

Academic achievement is expected. Even the average student in the year group will get all A*s with one A on GCSEs.

All forms of achievement are respected and recognised (music, drama, sports, academic extracurriculars).

That's something I really don't understand. If I had a child who was a academically very able but struggled socially, I would think "OK, the academic side's sorted, but I must think of ways to help him develop social skills and make friends"

Because in later life that's what's going to bring lasting happiness........

You know what BertrandRussell, you are absolutely right. And by coincidence, I was thinking about DS1 only 5 mins ago. Does he have friends, I was asking myself? Is he happy?

Let's assume though that he would benefit from more social contact. Tell me how to do it? Over the last 7 years, I've tried external clubs, playdates, gently suggesting strategies to make new friends, after school clubs and just giving him space to find his own way.

So, what you wrote is very easy to say, but tell me how to do it. (please!)

I don't know. I wish I did.

But what I do know is that encouraging children to think that they can only be friends with with their academic peers is a hugely bad idea. Or thinking that putting them in a school where they only interact with their academic peers will help them make friends is also a bad idea.......

bert developing social skills is much easier when you have things in common.

Forcing your DC to make friends with those with who there is no common ground is actually quite cruel.

Sure, you can teach them to fake it. To join in the conversations and laugh appropriately ( and those are skills worth learning). But that's not the same as finding people with who you have true common ground.

I've always been an outlier. But the greatest gift my parents gave me was acceptance. They liked my out-there tendencies and encouraged me to find like minded souls.

I agree very strongly with Eric.

They aren't friendships if you've nothing in common. Sure, we all need superficial social skills in life but that isn't what childhood friendships should be teaching. It's really important to learn skills such as loyalty in childhood. That's a very difficult skill to learn and one that you cannot practice with people you don't care about deeply, despite their imperfections.

bertrand, I tried many things, and the problem was not initially making friends - it was creating the glue to cement these friendships. Boys between the ages of 4-8 usually have football, Lego, and Star Wars. DS hated football and all ball sports - he was/is a swimmer. He loved Lego and Star Wars, but once started, he would get very absorbed in his models and his playmates just were not so into building for so long and lose interest. One example, he was fascinated by trains and would read book after book on trains. Not unusual for boys of 4 years old. However, he took that interest and had me purchase a magnet set and created a working model of a maglev using lego, clue and wooden modelling toys. Playing Thomas just didn't interest him when he felt there were more interesting things to do with trains.

He did not struggle in the sense that he was awkward, could not get along, could not read social cues (trust me, I was keenly observing him to see if his obsessive interests could me possible spectrum issues). He was well liked and could get along superficially - just really had not much in common with the boys he was in school with and thus never had someone he could feel a bond with.

But why can you only have common ground with your academic peers? What about sport, music, TV, UTube, photography, dogs, comic books........

Well, when DS1 did have friends, they were not his academic peers.

His best friend for the last five years, in particular, was absolutely not his academic peer and that's what happened to the friendship. The friend wanted to play a tag type game every day at school, Ds1 was willing to play it only sometimes. So, the boy found other children to play with. and then they started getting invited over to his house to hang out, not DS1.

var I would bet my bottom dollar that your DS would find it much easier in a SS environment.

My DS is pretty main stream ( football, girls, PS4, crisps) but his social circle includes some pretty unusual types because there is other more outlying common ground.

Those outliers don't get left out!

"...could get along superficially - just really had not much in common with the boys he was in school with and thus never had someone he could feel a bond with." That's Ds1 in a nutshell. He isn't unpleasant, but he is in a minority of one when it comes to the things he is interested in.