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.

I think I'm on a different page to most of you as my idea of a gidted child is someone who will get 9s without relying on their teacher. Sure they might teach to 6/7 (? really?) but if you are truly bright you read around the subject yourself and know how to write a good essay, or find maths simple or have a photographic memory for science.

I do agree that it is a type of neurodiversity and i do agree very bright children can suffer mentally. But for that they need pastoral support rather than more academic tutoring.

Learning to fail is very important for example

Also no pressure. Learning to rub along with all sorts and learning to understand sometimes it takes others a while to catch up but that doesn't make their views less valid

Im not sure that schools should be spending their tiny budgets on this though.

If you have access to amazon, there are good second hand books for like £5 or less including postage. Haven’t tried these as my kids are young but:

www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1520166435/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_?tag=mumsnetforu03-21

Mathematical Snacks: A Collection of Interesting Ideas to Fill Those Spare Moments (Collection of Interesting Topics and Ideas to Fill Spare Mom) www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1899618511/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_fsw1Cb7E31B6P?tag=mumsnetforu03-21

Some of the VERY brightesdt genius level children don;t actually get 9's becasue they write beyond the syllabus specifications and don't adhere to the rather formulaic marking criteria.

My ds is not super bright, but he went to a school where he was, academically, easily in the top two or thee- top in a couple of subjects. Sometimes he found lessons a bit tedious. But there was football, friendships, gaming- and, crucially, the vast majority of time he wasn’t at school. If you can’t cope with a bit of boredom in your day, god help you when you go to work!

Ps - engagement with work is not only related to giftedness. Some average ability children also disengage for whatever reason...

Ideally it would be great for every kid to have enough attention to develop to their full potential in all areas. But funding means that this is not very likely, so low cost solutions and ways of stretching kids should be tried first.

There is an argument for the govt putting more funding to stretch the top end to increase the likelihood of creative/scientific future talent generating money for the country...

“Some of the VERY brightesdt genius level children don;t actually get 9's becasue they write beyond the syllabus specifications and don't adhere to the rather formulaic marking criteria.”

Oh purhlease!

Yeah come on! If you don't actually answer the question and go off on a random tangent then that's not that bright my dd1 used to do this and it was because she didn't understand what was being asked

Namenic I have a close friend who is a governor of a school (one rated Ofsted Outstanding and with fabulous results for all children including those from disadvantaged backgrounds). She is in charge of Most Able and Senco provision. The Senco provision is very strong as is the class room differentiation based on ability.

However, the provision for the most able only can really stretch the top 10% and she acknowledges this. Differentiation for the top 1-2% and above in a mixed ability primary is very difficult. She prioritises provision for the bottom as school funding is limited and I understand this but the OP was asking would you send your kid to gifted school not which groups should get priority funding.

I agree at secondary its easier either within a comp (as is the case where I live as I mentioned if there is a critical mass) or within a super selective grammar school. In our comp the gifted stream is not equivalent to standard top set which is circa top 20% of cohort rather than top 2%

Appropriate provision for the gifted is important even for those that like coasting. Coasting doesn't prepare for real life. Being challenged in school develops your work ethic, your resilience, you ability to take risk and challenges.

I'm only saying what one of dd's teachers told me about her particular subject.

I suspect what she was saying is that some very clever children don’t listen to what they’re told about how to answer the questions and insist on doing their own thing, and then come a cropper. I know adults like that. They are usually a proper pain in the neck......

That's great that your ds has football, friendships and gaming. Ths children I know of, well one has online gaming but they have none of the other stuff. They just don't fit in.

One of them was on a TV programme about their giftedness and grown adults including on this forum critisised them and said how wierd they were and how oddly they talked etc.

I guess to be fair this teacher has suggested dd apply to Cambridge University which considering dd is only taking 2 A levels (one a self study one) I guess she doesn't have that much experience in higher ed at that level.

One of the jobs of a parent is to teach a child how to make friends and deal with social situations. Obviously this is different for children who aren’t NT- but they don’t need academic stretching, they need social stretching.

How the hell do you teach your child to make friends when people don't want to be friends with them?

I do think automatically blaming any social issues a child has on them being bright is.

I don’t think that splitting children up into those who are ‘gifted’ in the academic sense - presumably a coveted attribute - and those who are ‘non-gifted’ - presumably a less coveted attribute - is ever going to appeal to anyone other than those who see their children as belonging to the former category!

It seems to me to be an artificial way of distinguishing amongst children anyway. What does this sort of giftedness mean? What does being in the top X% mean?

I suppose it might mean that, in an IQ test, a child is able to achieve a score above a certain level. But intelligence is a multi-faceted, nebulous quality and who is to say that someone who scores well overall is more gifted than someone who scores very well in particular areas but struggles in others? And what about those whose thoughts are slow but they run deep?

In this respect, I rather like the Einstein quote: Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.

It’s also true that, in many cases, the desire to identify giftedness, consciously making it a thing in the child's life and acting on it, is reflective of the socioeconomic standing and aspirations of the parents, and therefore any separating out of children of this sort would be de facto a separation on the grounds of class.

If you are going to split children up, and it’s a big if, I wonder if there might be alternative, more helpful ways of doing so...

Speculative

I’ve been thinking about this a bit because my DS has been struggling in his maths class recently. It’s more psychological than anything else. He is surrounded by articulate, confident, competitive boys who tease him for being quieter. Their loudness and extroversion make him feel less secure in his abilities. In contrast, he feels confident in the lower key environment of his physics class.

He is an introvert and does so much better in circumstances that suit this personality type. He’s actually in a selective school, a school that I suppose some might call a school for gifted boys, but if I had to make a choice between a school for the introverted and a school for the ‘gifted’, I’d choose the former for him!

(I wouldn’t be averse to streaming at this School for Introverts though, if required.)

Actually I have no idea if a School for Introverts would work at all, given that confidence and extroversion seem to be valued more than modesty and an unassuming manner in today's society, and there could be a danger of such a school being seen as a second class establishment. But I've been musing about it anyway as an alternative form of selection.

OP I am really interested in how you describe yourself. My oldest is just doing GCSEs now . At primary she was in the G&T cohort and in lower key stages considered so bright they were asking advice from and sometimes teaching her by year 6 teachers. Come secondary school she became completely lost and we were told she is disruptive, not listening, not fulfilling her potential( based on Sats) etc. It is likely that if she passes history,science and English, it will be by the skin of her teeth. She describes herself very like you do. Her mind is very advanced in some ways and she talks endlessly about the world and inequalities and poverty and all sorts. She describes feeling different to everyone, not fitting in, feeling she wants to get away from the systems/ timetables / expectations imposed on her. I have wondered if she has ADHD but she does not want a label and just wants to find what she loves and run with in. I did a bit of googling into G&T kids then struggling at secondary and it is a documented thing...possibly due to missing out on learning how to learn that most kids have to do. It is all very interesting and I often wonder if the right private school would have not spent 5 years trying to force her into a mould she didn't fit, and assist her to find her passion, but will never know and could not have afforded it anyway. I know she will be brilliant at whatever she decides she wants to do but it has been and still is a painful process for all of us.

Leapfrog is entirely right.

Coasting has its own negative consequences (lack of resilience / no developed work ethic) and not all gifted children can even coast.

There is a well understood subset who due to boredom massively underperform and disengage entirely from school. Some are only identified when they are being tested for behavioural problems which includes IQ testing as standard.

Children being bored out of their mind in school quite obviously can lead to negative outcomes. Can you imagine spending the majority of your waking hours hearing things repeated over and over again that you understood the first time it was explained? For a really sharp mind the dullness of it is can be painful.

The closer the pace of teaching is to a child's pace of learning, the more they'll enjoy education irrespective of how smart they are. That's all a gifted school aims to do along with providing enough challenge in school to build necessary life skills.

There are a number of well researched books and longitudinal studies on this but I suspect most people writing on here aren't actually that interested and are just posting because they like debating on the internet.

Namegenic that is a really good point about engagement.

There is a lot of talk around autism, rejecting the idea of the autistic spectrum going from NT to a bit autistic to very autistic, and thinking of it more as a variety of different attributes. Different individuals having different spikes in their profiles within that, and if there are enough spikes that impair day to day functioning severely enough, it's called autism. We have moved from essentially using someone's communication skills to judge their level of "autisticness" from the outside, to a much more nuanced understanding. I wonder if we might need a similar approach here. Perhaps we should stop thinking primarily about a child's IQ or other measures of "cleverness" as the defining characteristic, and think instead of it being one spike in a much broader profile. As PPs have said, factors like resilience, drive, processing, social skills all factor in.

Grammar schools have been socially divisive and are now few and far between. I would much rather my child go to a truly comprehensive school, and our experience is that those children going in with 118s and 120s in their SATS are absolutely expected to get 9s, not 6s at GCSE. If my children follow Fazackerly, Alexa's children and their dad, I will be more than happy. If they need something more specialist, it will be because of their other needs, not simply because they find school too easy.

I don’t think that splitting children up into those who are ‘gifted’ in the academic sense - presumably a coveted attribute - and those who are ‘non-gifted’ - presumably a less coveted attribute - is ever going to appeal to anyone other than those who see their children as belonging to the former category!

Would it surprise you that my ds is decidedly in the non gifted category academically then? (apart from one vocational related subject and maths where he is above average but definately not gifted)

Just to add out of interest, having read the last few comments, that my youngest daughter was described by the head of her primary school as the brightest kid she has ever taught but we have huge issues with her in non academic areas. She is year 8. She does not like school and she would say she has social anxiety. She has severe misophonia and has not eaten with us as a family for 2 years ( unless I beg her for special occasions). She is quite emotionally fragile and I suspect may be on the spectrum but again, she is not interested in a diagnosis. I definitely think there is a connection with extreme brightness and other issues. It is certainly my lived experience.

Outwith IQ tests only capture a very specific type of intelligence not all the multifaceted ways that children are unique and can contribute substantially to society through their insights and learning. Gifted doesn't mean special or destined for greatness, it just means processes information very fast with a large working memory.

If you are gifted (two standard deviations from the norm) then the pace of mainstream school is just unlikely to be appropriate to how quickly you learn. Its nothing more controversial than that.

Similarly someone with an IQ of 70 (two standard deviations in the there direction from average) would need a different pace of learning. 70 is the clinical borderline for mild mental retardation.

OutwiththeOutCrowd interesting post, I crossposted with you.

I don't have a reference but I've read something about mixed ability grouping having positive benefits for not just middle and low ability children, but also less confident high ability children, who can wilt a bit in competitive top sets. Mixed sex classes can be better for less confident boys too, as the testosterone is a bit more diluted!