School for the gifted

[NameChangedNoImagination]

If there was a school for the gifted, would you send your child? I would have loved one when I was a child. Where learning is accelerated to your own pace and where you have time and encouragement to study special interests.

When I had this in mind I wasn't thinking of the top 2% really, more like top 0.5% or even 0.1%. These children are profoundly different to the norm and struggle in mainstream school.

Also, why are people of the persuasion that regular school provides normal socialization? It's a very artificial environment. Tell me when was the last time you had to spend most of your waking hours with 30 random people because of nothing but close birth dates?

Actually, DD's school is very good at supporting mixing across ages - she has friends in all year groups, mostly through a particular extra-curricular activity where they tend to get very close. She is year 9 but spends her lunchtimes with a mix of kids from her own year and other year groups. One of her closest friends is in year 11. She also chats quite a lot to some of the teachers throughout the day. I don't find it a particularly artificial environment - no more so than an average office, for example.

If I'm honest, I think dd assumes that socialising is the main point of school. She could teach herself most of the subject content in a fraction of the time, but she probably wouldn't have as much fun that way!

I guess our views largely stem from reaction to our own experiences and whether we view them as positive or negative. If you found it tough, it's easy to think that whatever didn't happen to you must be better. However it's very difficult to unpick cause, effect and confounding factors. OP blames inadequate challenge and lack of like-minded friends for her social difficulties, I blame my ivory tower, labelling and boarding from too young for mine. Maybe neither of our situations was to blame and we both would have had the same difficulties in a different setting entirely. We all just make the best decisions we can, and our own experience quite rightly feeds into that.

My son is autistic and I can imagine him failing to cope in mainstream, but to extract a tiny % of the population based on academic ability alone makes no sense to me. Emotional support, if offered, would be needed because of his autism, not because of his high ability.

Autism's a really interesting one in terms of friendships. I think it was Chris Packham who said he didn't like other autistic people much. We've seen similar with DS - there's huge value in him having a like-minded autistic friend with whom he shares a special interest, but it's also a real challenge for them both to negotiate each other's rigidity. Being surrounded with more emotionally literate friends really helps. But of course if he had no NT friends and was sat there in the corner not engaging with anyone, that would be different.

Bertrand top 2% nationally is a typical definition of giftedness. Its two standard deviations from average (circa 130 IQ). Its been studied repeatedly and proven that at that threshold and above children benefit academically from specialist provision. These kids learn at a much faster pace than average and its very difficult to stretch them in mainstream classes leading to, for some, severe academic boredom and underachievement. Some kids like coasting though so every child is different.

In the US at least, the optimal time for testing is seen to be between 6 and 8 years old though these days multiple forms of identification are preferred to only an IQ test which can have a number of biases. Early testing is less reliable in younger children.

Alexa most grammar schools take the top 20%. Only a handful of super selectives (aka Tiffin et al) take the equivalent of the top 2%. In a heavy grammar area like Kent, hiving off the top 20% into a separate school can be damaging for the children left in secondary moderns. All of that is to say, its not the same thing at all and the general analysis for grammar schools doesn't apply to super selectives.

My local comp here in London has a small gifted and talented stream within it so there are multiple ways one can make the provision. When I was in primary school in the US, the gifted program was within the mainstream state schools as a pull out program. It was a multi-age class of circa 20 kids.

I agree that drive, emotional intelligence (including social skills) and resilience are all key to leading a happy successful life. This is just about the right educational environment for children's different learning needs.

I find it interesting something so basic could be interpreted as people saying the children / parents think everyone else is beneath them! No one ever says that about children going to specialist sports or music schools. I think its a societal hang-up people have about intelligence which is sad...

“Bertrand there is existing provision for the left hand side, this is not either/or.”

I wish there was a emoticon.....

@londongirl - it sounds like the school system is strapped enough as it is teaching kids basics.

I would imagine stretching can happen unobtrusively in class. I think there are probably more cost effective ways of stretching kids than starting a new school.

A 5 set grammar school would have top 4% in top set. A super selective would have top 0.4% by your numbers. But I appreciate this is only at secondary. Though it should be easier for parents to stretch when kids are younger.

I think efforts should be concentrated on those needing more support to bring them up from below average academically.
Those children who are gifted have an advantage already. We should focus on the lower attainers in order to improve their below average career prospects.

In theory a good comprehensive will be able to deal: in practice funding cuts mean they can't. When we were looking for a secondary for Yr7 for DD who is highly gifted, we were told straight out by one local school that they would not be able to cater for her in lessons.

She is now in a highly selective private school. It works academically, but it also works socially. She felt very odd and different in her small primary, and that wasn't her feeling everyone else was beneath her, she was seen to be odd by other children for liking Dr Who and not wanting to talk about 1D. Now she is with her peers and feels she can be herself with ease.

I felt weird until I went to Cambridge, then finally felt in a place where I was understood. I'm glad she's getting that experience earlier.

I think efforts should be concentrated on those needing more support to bring them up from below average academically.
Those children who are gifted have an advantage already. We should focus on the lower attainers in order to improve their below average career prospects.

They very often are. Certainly at my son's school the bottom sets have access to all kinds of help. My son is in bottom set English and it is a group of 6-8 children as opposed to the top sets which are 20-25 children. He is in top set maths and spent the whole of year 9 bored, learning nothing in a large class. My daughter on the other hand at her school has access to all kinds of extension activities and she has flown both academically and vocationally.

The local school closest to us the GCSE results and Progress 8 figures for the lowest prior attainers (as determined on entry by KS2 SATS are wonderful but the high ability children have a significant minus progress 8 score.

Hmm. I find it very frustrating when clever children with supportive parents are presented as a group that should be given priority for scarce resources. No they shouldn’t. They are clever children with supportive parents. They are already ahead of the game.

If we are talking about the outliers then I disagree. The type of children we are talking about often go through life not fitting in and suffering serious mental health issues.

In my area there aren't actually that many supportive parents though to be honest of clever or other wise children. Education is not valued and those who are academic are made to feel outcasts so often they hide thier abilities.

To quote a relative of dh's.

I send them to school don't I? Ive done my job.

“If we are talking about the outliers then I disagree. The type of children we are talking about often go through life not fitting in and suffering serious mental health issues”
More so than the “outliers” at the other side? I suspect not.

Why should it need to be a competition? They encounter the same kind of difficulties. They should all be provided for.

“In my area there aren't actually that many supportive parents though to be honest of clever or other wise children”
Those kids aren’t going to go to your school for gifted children are they?

“Why should it need to be a competition? They encounter the same kind of difficulties. They should all be provided for.”

Because we live in a world of limited resources. The greatest help should go to the greatest need.

And I would argue equal need or we are failing our children.

But it’s patently not equal need.

And quite frankly - why should it only be those whose parents can afford to pay or who have the skills and knowledge themselves who are stretched to their full potential.

The feeling of not fitting in, of being a freak is an awful thing for a child. Of havong to hide your intelligence and who you are. There is lots of support for those children at the bottom end of the scale. At ds's school they get extra TA help, 1:1 support sessions, regular monitoring sessions and a personalised life skills based curriculum for those for whom it is deemed the most appropriate. I'm not complaining. Having a ds with SEN who has benefitted from that support, its great. But there is no provision for children who are truly academically "gifted"

That's your opinion, I disagree.

Those kids aren’t going to go to your school for gifted children are they?

Why not? The child of immigrants in minimum wage jobs with very ittle English has gone to dd's school.

“But there is no provision for children who are truly academically "gifted"”
Course there is. Top sets. Huge amounts of resources available at the touch of a button. An active brain that does what you want it to. The certainty of independence and a future.

“The child of immigrants in minimum wage jobs with very ittle English has gone to dd's school.”

Are you suggesting that they weren’t supportive parents?

I don't know them personally. But support is often tied up with level of knowledge yourself. They were toldthey should send their child to a certain school so they did. I guess they could have refused but to them it was a school.

Top sets, resources? Where? You've obviously not been in any schools round here recently

Top sets are overcrowded with not enough resources for all the children so if you can't afford to buy books (including Englsh Lit set texts) you're screwed. The children are taught to the GCSE curriculum and not beyond.