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.

@vdbfamily

I'm very sorry to hear that about your daughter. Sounds like me honestly, she really does. She sounds like she'd have been served so well by a school for the gifted. And fwiw you sound lovely and switched on and aware, which will help her immeasurably.

I think that works in some subjects such as English but not others such as maths where certain concepts need to be mastered before you can move onto other concepts so more differentiation is needed.

And in music children like ds who are currently reading advanced harmony books and listening to Adam Neely analysis on youtube are in classes with children who are trying to get to grips with crotchets and quavers and simple time signatures. So ds spends most music lessons in a practice room improvising whilst basic music theory is taught to the rest of the class.

Does anyone else think of this greetings card when they read the thread title?

YES floribunda

I’ve guiltily had that cartoon in my mind since this thread started

We had a favourite mug with that Larson cartoon on and it got broken recently. It was then used as a slide on a training day I went on yesterday. Funny it reappeared today.

@comefromaway - does ds enjoy having the time to improvise or is he bored by it? I think it’s great that there is YouTube (not always for educational reasons... baby shark is magic for my toddler...)

Coasting can be mitigated by expectations at home (my culture is anti-coasting - which causes other problems). I find it odd that some parents believe that it is the school’s job to ensure their children do well. I would see it as parents making sure their children make most use of the resources the state provides. So doing extra at home was v normal for me.

@londongirl - would a superselective/top set grammar (if there are 5 sets and grammar takes top 25% then top set would be top 5%) satisfy the criteria for gifted (in conventional subjects)? Primary should be easier for parents to help explain things at home - though some parents may be v busy with shift work or not confident in subject (I do remember getting frustrated as my parents way of doing things was not the same as school’s - but the beauty of maths is that there are multiple ways of getting to the answer).

I’d encourage geeky types to do a sport because I think it mitigates bullying. It is also healthy and something that improves with practice.

He does love it. But he’s not being taught the more advanced techniques in areas that aren’t his “special interest” such as the workings of the classical symphony and recognising orchestral stuff for Paper 1 which he would be doing in a higher ability class.

“such as the workings of the classical symphony and recognising orchestral stuff for Paper 1 which he would be doing in a higher ability class.”
Are you in the U.K., OP?

Nameic the top set of a grammar is better than a top set of a comprehensive but only the super-selective grammars (which take only the top 2%) would be equivalent to a gifted school. Someone moderately gifted would be fine in the top set of 5% but someone top 0.1% wouldn't be. Similarly, the most academic private schools like Westminster who also only take to 2% in ability are equivalent to gifted schools.

The issue at primary isn't parents' ability to teach their kids (I know many who stretch them at home in different ways) its the boredom for the kids that can cause behaviour problems at school / disengagement from education.

Again, imagine listening to someone repeat something you understand (because you got it immediately the first time it was explained) over and over again for 7 hours a day, 5 days a week and think if that sounds like an enjoyable experience for anyone young or old. Eventually you'd shut-off, stop listening, stop caring, and find other ways to entertain yourself throughout the day (friends, chatting in class, etc).

The difference between gifted children and others is that they learn things much much faster so the pace of school often isn't appropriate.

“Nameic the top set of a grammar is better than a top set of a comprehensive“

Why?

Bertrand because the grammar is already selective.

At the selective school ds’s friend goes to top set maths would be expected to get Grades 8/9 and be doing Further maths as well.

Top set at ds’s school would be expected to get grades 6-8 with the odd Grade 9.

“Bertrand because the grammar is already selective.”

But the kids who would be at a grammar school in a grammar area will be in the top set in a comprehensive area.

A middling comp in a comp area will be having multiple pupils getting 10 top grades, not just the odd child getting the odd A*/ level 9.

There were 28 Grade 9’s across all subjects last year at ds’s school. The website doesn’t say how many pupils eg some will have got one and others multiple.

The top set of a comp is probably top 20%, while the top set of a grammar is potentially top 5% so will teach at a faster pace and better suit a gifted child's learning needs.

Grammars (excluding the super-selective) have a host of other problems they create so I'm not necessarily advocating for grammars, just responding to a specific question raised.

@londongirl - thanks for answering. I believe someone mentioned gifted school being top 2% - which in top set of grammar (5%) is not too far off (ie slightly less than half the class would be gifted).

Wouldn’t the boredom issue apply to lots of non-gifted kids who get bored in lessons? If the gifted kids got extra material they could do during lessons then they have the choice to do it or coast. If I had the choice my mum would probably have asked to see the ‘optional’ work i’d Done when I got home.

But I do take your point as I am home schooling ds 5 who has short attention span but doing work a couple of years ahead. I think private wouldn’t be worth the money so if he wanted school then it would be local comp with additional work if required. At some point I would like him to develop a high tolerance of boredom but it does seem a shame so early.

I do also work in a cash strapped public sector so I can understand why it is not really at the top of their list.

I honestly don’t get this idea that you can only learn or socialise with a very narrow group of people like you. What sort of a lesson for life is that?

@Namenic I agree regarding private school at primary level unless it has a specific gifted program (which a few do but most don't). At secondary there are a few super-selective privates that would be equivalent. Regarding boredom no child should be bored in school and with good teaching most children shouldn't be.

@Bertrand I don't think its a socialisation problem (personally) for all gifted kids. Many are fine socially and adjust to fit in with whoever they are speaking to.

Different learning paces though is just what it is. Its difficult to do in class differentiation at the very extremes of ability. Just like it would be difficult for a child with an IQ below 70 to keep up in a mainstream class even with differentiated work, its also a challenge to move fast enough for students with IQs above 130.

Mainstream mixed ability classes are best suited to 96% of the population (which is great) but the extremes on both ends would benefit from specialist education or support suited to their learning speeds.

Frankly- I would expect a child in secondary school with an IQ of 130 to be able to take a bit of initiative about their own learning.......

I have quite complicated feelings on this.
I was a mildly gifted working class kid at a school that really didn't encourage academic effort.
I remember reading "Love on the Dole" at around 14 and being very confused by the character of Larry Meath who is admired in his community for being intelligent, literate and helping neighbours fill out forms.
I spent a lot of time trying to work out whether this was an idealised depiction or if social acceptance might be a possibility for me.
I actually was put in for the super selective at 11 and missed out by a couple of points. I sometimes think about how that might have turned out differently if I'd had tutoring or if my parents had known to put in an appeal.
However; from what I understand of how schools for the gifted work in the US, they seem to be a way to segregate by the back door.
Stories of white, middle class parents touring inner city schools and the teachers will start talking about the "gifted programme" without knowing anything about the child's abilities. It's a coded way of saying "don't worry, your child doesn't have to mix with the black kids". Then the parents get trapped in a cycle of pressure and tutoring to keep the kid in the programme.
I also worry that labeling a child as gifted in so stark a way as sending them to a separate school might not be the best for their self esteem. Don't we believe in the growth mindset these days?
I feel that people with the "intelligent" label can ironicly have quite poor self esteem and are worried to take intellectual risks in case it exposes them as not so clever after all.
So, on balance, I probably wouldn't.
On the other hand I worked out what was going on with Larry Meath. It wasn't the intelligence people liked-it was the form filling.
Turns out if you make yourself useful, you will find your place in the world. I try to teach my children that.

"I would expect a child in secondary school with an IQ of 130 to be able to take a bit of initiative about their own learning"

A child in secondary school with an IQ of 130 may already have spent 7 years in primary having their ability and needs completely ignored. Do you think their initiative will have survived that 7 years? They are children, not robots, and even a resilient child has limits.

What about a kid with an IQ of 130 who also has ADHD, or aspergers, or dyslexia, or dsygraphia, or sensory processing disorder, or any number of other issues? Don't you think that perhaps they need support for both their ability and their area of difficulty, since otherwise the strengths and weaknesses will compensate and mask each other, making the child appear average.

What about a kid with an IQ of 130 who is in Kent or another 11+ area, who may have missed the 11+ cutoff by one mark for any number of reasons (twice exceptionality, slow processing speed, inability of parents to afford a tutor, recent bereavement, being sick the day of the exam etc. etc.) and therefore ends up in a secondary modern, in a class where there are no other kids of comparable ability, and teachers who are completely unused to dealing with that level of ability and have such low expectations that they may not recognise it.

"I would expect" fails to take account of any of these cases, and each such case is a situation where society and the school system has failed a child and caused suffering and long term harm.

Regarding the economics/resourcing of gifted education:

a) Good gifted provision needn't be expensive. Acceleration is a cost-free intervention. In fact it saves the government and society money since the child is typically in the school system for a shorter time. The cost of one year's state school provision is about £5.5k per pupil. If every kid who was grade-skipped had the £5.5k that would otherwise have been spent on them in that year set aside for them to fund online courses, textbooks, extracurriculur provision or private tuition, the net cost to the state would be zero but their provision would be hugely improved.

b) Spending on gifted education is not an expense but an investment. It should be looked on as a zero-coupon 20-year bond with a huge rate of interest since anything that is spent on these kids will be paid back many times over when they enter the workforce. As Benjamin Franklin put it "an investment in knowledge pays the best interest". In deciding, as a knowledge-based economy in a country with limited natural resources, to fund an exemplary national gifted programme the government of Singapore made exactly this decision, i.e. that gifted education was a national imperative and that in an era of globalisation they could not afford to squander the competitive advantage that proper investment in the human capital of their country gives.

c) In her book "Re-forming gifted education", Prof Karen Rogers states that a fully-funded gifted programme can be provided with an additional 27% funding relative to standard education. With 150,000 kids in the top 2% nationally, each needing around £1500 additional funding, a national gifted programme meeting the needs of the top 2% would cost around £250 million (0.25% of total spending on education or 0.6% of schools funding). To put that in perspective, Brexit is currently estimated to be costing the UK £600 million per week. So a fully funded national gifted programme would cost annually what Brexit is costing us every three days.

d) The right to a free and appropriate education for every student is enshrined in law in many countries. In the UK it is specified by the 1996 education act which specifies that each child should receive an education suitable not just to their age but to their aptitude and ability. The basic principle of state education is that it is funded from general taxation, free at the point of use, and based on need. Just like the NHS. If someone needs a drug or medical intervention that is more expensive than average because they have an uncommon medical condition then the NHS provides it, no questions asked, providing the condition has been confirmed as real and the intervention as necessary by a qualified professional. As an example, some people with macular degeneration receive regular injections costing £800 per injection. No one tells them they should suck it up and buy a white stick because the people with cancer need the scarce resources more. Arguing that it is acceptable to ignore the needs of gifted kids and let them receive an inappropriate education because other kids "need the scarce resources more" and "if they're really gifted they should be able to take initiative for their own learning" is a form of discrimination. It is cruelty masquerading as egalitarianism. And the ones who will suffer most are the gifted kids in low income households whose parents don't have the resources to offer outside school what should be provided in school.

@bertrandrussel what do you even mean by that? It is very hard to imagine what you think an 11 year old who is being taught at too slow a pace should be doing to take charge of their own learning. That an 11 year old should set their own pace of learning in school and develop their own independent course of study and negotiate this with their teachers? Just because a child has a high IQ doesn't mean they have the wherewithal for that-- it just means they learn and process information very quickly compared to average.

unlimitted middle class people game over system that is seen as producing and advantage. There are a number of systematic changes in both identification methods and recruitment that are being implemented to address the bias that often can exist.