That glass ceiling! Part 2

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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?

Money does indeed provide the possibility of purchasing the education that will allow DC to move head at their own pace. But IME there are only so many languages/instruments/sports that a DC has time for. We all come up against the limitations of a 24 hour day at some point!

Are you saying you helped set up the superselective Mominatrix?

We have no superselective primaries around here at all, no grammar schools within a reasonably sensible travelling distance. The independents are barely selective and certainly not at primary. We do have good state schools, but they do not, at a primary level, cope with the gifted, though they do cope very well with the highly ables.

Simple question!
How do they select children at such a young age for super selective? Do they do IQ test or something?
Do all the children turn out to be highly able? Or the school makes them highly able?

bert I think my motivation and locus on this thread (and others like it) are pretty clear.

irvine I don't know which school mom DC attend but when we looked at selective primaries they essentially wanted DC who could already read and write ( a bit).

They also wanted highly teachable DC and tested this in a number if ways eg asking them to sit for an extended period while the teacher read. Then questioned the kids to see what they had taken in etc.

I don't know how effective it was or if they still do it that way ( my DC are now 16).

But it wasn't for us.

I'm not aware of any schools in London that Wechsler test 4 year olds. But in Paris EJM asks for IQ testing an speech therapist reports and does in-house testing according to established psychological practice. I believe some NY schools do similar.

I'm not sure it's very reliable but it creates the illusion for parents that they and their DC are terribly special ("chosen few") when they pass, which gives the school a lot of control over DC and parents...

The HT at my DC's prep school stated regularly that he felt selection tests at 3/4 were pretty pointless.

DC went in for a few hours for an 'assessment' but I don't know what they were assessing since neither of mine spoke!

Interestingly, it transpired that DC's year was essentially self selecting with an unusual number of highly able DC and only 2 out of 60 below the national average.

I think that heads like to check out that DC aren't going to run riot just as much as whether they can follow simple instructions.

Probably right bobo.
And for oversubscribed schools they're no doubt checking out the parents.

Will you support the school? Will you cheerfully do all the shizzle asked of you?

Yes, whether or not the parents are going to toe the line and do what the school wants them to do (whatever that might be) is clearly part of prep and private primary recruitment in many cases. Nothing about future Harvard prospects of the toddler!

To be really honest, I'm happy to see that Mominatrix has found a school that works for her child.
Whether its a superselective or not doesn't matter in my eyes. It's clear that a superselective will be the right sort of school for some children and that it might well not be for others.
There is also the question of what is your aim when you are educating/parenting your child. Is the aim to get them to the best Uni ever or is it about ensuring they are growing as rounded individuals or moral individuals or whatever.

Even though I am really pro selective school and I did very well in a (primary and secondary) school system that was build 'for the brightest ones', I'm not actually sure I would like a superselective like this anyway assuming there was something like this where I am anyway. I think it would just reinforce the idea that dc1 is somehow special and one fo the few. And I don't want that because he isn't.

At the moment, having done all I can for the dcs to be in best school there is in my area, I just hope that dc1 isn't going to go off the rails (His behaviour and attitude at school is going down hill, yuppee :(:().

If anyone has any idea of how to hange that, just tell me....

Oh I don't begrudge anyone who finds the right school for their DC.

I know how fortuitous that is.

Interesting thread again.

I have DC at selective primary schools - though nothing like Mominatrix's one, since I have never heard of a child who was Grade 8 in an instrument by year 5...as Bobo says, criteria for music scholarships are usually that they are at Grade 5 level in at least one instrument by the scholarship auditions in Year 6.

To help those who wonder what is done at the 4+ selection, the schools do a series of "games" with the children designed to assess a range of cognitive abilities in an age appropriate way. As noted, they are also looking for teachability to some extent, and will observe their interactions in a group setting. A HT once admitted to me that the tests are only reliable from around age 3.5, so difficult to assess the summer borns, but overall based on my own experience they do a reasonable job of identifying the "above average" (say IQ 115 plus).

They do sometimes throw up "false positives" - but of the order of maybe 10% in each year group who end up not progressing to the senior school. I also suspect they result in plenty "false negatives" mostly kids who just develop a bit later or just aren't in the mood to perform on the day.

Thanks!
Very interesting. My ds has never passed selection, even if we had the money, and there was school near us.
He wouldn't have sit nicely, or follow the instruction, or play nicely with other children.

I remember talking to someone at work before I had children. I think he probably worked for an investment bank or one of the big 4 accounting firms. He'd come in for a meeting with me with his colleague and we were doing the friendly chat bit as I walked him back to the lift.

He told me that his first child was 18 months old and due to sit an exam that day to get a place at a selective nursery. He said it was incredibly stressful as the benchmark was set so high and he and his wife had been hot-housing their DD for months in preparation. The colleague just looked on pretending to be interested, like it was normal and mundane.

I remember just being speechless!

They do sometimes throw up "false positives"

Actually, based on the best predictive tests for ages 11, if the top 25% were creamed off for a selective school, by outcome at age 16, 22% would be in the wrong school.

God knows how inaccurate it would be on 3 year olds!

To add, I have chosen the selective schools because, taken in the round, the specific schools seemed the best option for my children. Overall my very able, but not "gifted", children are very happy there. I do not think they are "special" because they attend those schools, and certainly would actively discourage any such attitude in them if I detected it.

If anything, they don't think they are "special" at all, because they have plenty children around them who are also very able.

Is that 22% of the 25% or 22% of the total cohort?

Noble, does your 22% include both false negatives and false positives, or just false positives?

I'm not sure outcome at 16 ( by which I assume we mean GCSE results) is necessarily the best way to judge ability.

Having just had my two go through the process it seemed to me that good grades across 10 subjects required good teaching, good organisation and true grit rather than high IQ.

But even if it was correct that 22% were in the 'wrong' school, I think the schools would still roll the dice.

Provided that the majority of DC are at the right level of ability, the school can still adequately pursue it's policies and utilise it's resources.

22% of the cohort, so one fifth of kids misplaced. 11% in wrongly in grammar, 11% wrongly in secondary modern.

See page 20 and 21 for details:
www.education.gg/CHttpHandler.ashx?id=97485&p=0

BTW I teach in a highly selective university where much is made of us selecting the 'right' students.

But actually I'm pretty pragmatic.

We have a large pool of excellent applicants with often little to choose between them. Some right applicants won't get an offer, done wrong applicants will.

Provided that the majority are right for us, it works.

Provided that the majority are right for us, it works.

For the university? Great. But selection is supposed to be for the benefit of the kids. All of them.

I jumped to the conclusion of that report p.238
Having said that, our main finding may be summarized simply: pupils who attend grammar schools appear to achieve between zero and three-quarters of a GCSE grade per subject more than ‘similar’ pupils in other schools. This finding is broadly consistent with the results of the best previous studies.
Whether or not the pupils who are unsuccessful in applying to grammar schools achieve any less than they would if there were no grammar schools is much harder to say, given the complex patterns of ‘creaming’ we have reported. However, we have not been able to find any evidence that this is so.
Our evidence will no doubt be welcomed by supporters of grammar schools.

Well we do our level best noble.

We expend a lot of time and resources on finding the right applicants.

But we're human.

The notion that any system can be flawless is just daft.

So 44% (11/25) of the grammar school pupils "misplaced"? Thanks for the link, will read with interest when I have more time.