grrr... comprehensive maths

[vrijeme]

Just a rant.. I'm expecting the comprehensive enthusiasts to violently disagree with me.

DS1 is in year 10, Ds2 in year 8. Both excel at maths. For the second year running, DS1 got a merit on the UKMT Kangaroo. DS2 got his first merit on the junior kangaroo. Both achieved the best scores in the school, not just for their year.

Additionally, DS1 has the head of the maths dept teaching him and got a near perfect score on some recent big exams. DS2 also tends to come top, or second top (there's another boy just as good as him). Ds1 has no one who comes close with results etc.
DS1 is very bored in maths lessons. The teacher/ HoD knows and says he will do something about it, but never does. I've spoken to him 4 times over three years, so there's no way that he's unaware.
DS1 feels that the lessons aren't for him and that its a punishment being made to sit there listening to the same stuff over and over.
However, i understand the teacher's position about the number of times he needs to go over things again.
DS1 has a talent for maths but its going to waste because he is so unhappy in maths lessons that he's beginning to really dislike the subject. the teacher knows this too.
Now to the point of my rant. Both boys were due certificates for the UKMT merits. The HoD held onto them for ages (months). I wondered if maybe he was saving the for the awards evening.
But no. Neither boy got any recognition at the awards evening. Someone who achieves approx 25% lower scores in maths than DS1 got the maths award - he posted his photo with it online.
As to the UKMT certificate, the HOD stopped DS1 in the corridor a couple of days ago and gave it to him. Ds2 was given his yesterday, tucked into his maths homework.

The school is proudly comprehensive. I'd argue that they don't understand the meaning of comprehensive, because it seems that outliers are excluded.

Thank you for posting. It's really generous of you considering the circumstances. I'm really sorry for what you and your son are going through. I hope he makes a full recovery as quickly as possible. It puts it into perspective.

School is school as far as I'm concerned. I want my son to go to a place that meets his needs. Will stay looking into scholarships.

A lot of selective independent schools operate means-tested bursary schemes – up to 100% of fees sometimes. For 6th form, you could investigate whether there’s one within commuting distance that has a particular interest in the UKMT challenges, perhaps offering year round practice in a school club. Your DS would probably flourish if surrounded by others of similar ability. (In my DS's class, for example, around half did the Kangaroo and, as mentioned earlier, there were a couple doing the Olympiad. The maths lessons can be pitched at a level that keeps everyone engaged.)

ohdostopfiddling my best wishes to you and your son.

My heart always sinks when I hear tales like this. My worst couple of years in highschool were when I had a maths teacher who refused to let me work ahead of the class - I had to do what the class were doing when they were doing it, and only then could I do extension work (which, to be fair, she was prepared to give me). It didn't suit my way of working at all.

The following year with a new teacher I worked quickly through a couple of chapters of the text book and made it very clear that I wasn't going to stick to what the class were doing. It helped that I'd just been put on a training programme towards the olympiads so had extra problems with me to work on some of the time anyway. I don't think any maths teacher taught me anything at school because I could look at an example in a textbook and get it straight away.

Your son being penalised for not showing his working reminds me even worse of a teacher my sister got stuck with for most of 5 years at school. She repeatedly marked her wrong not for wrong answers but "wrong working". And unfortunately was the teacher for the equivalent of Further Maths. She couldn't teach at that level from what I gathered (by that point I was studying maths at uni and tutoring school maths). She tried to make out my sister was bottom of that class, and had no answer when my sister did out and out best of them in the final exam.

I think you are right to look at other schools for A level for your son. For the coming year, tell him his mission is to learn how to avoid silly errors - which is about working carefully and neatly, but also about learning how to check your work. That was my major task in both maths and science at that level, not actually mastering the work. Good luck.

Such a shame about them not valuing achievement and being prepared to recognise it. You will just have to value it at home!