I have been thinking about this Gifted and Talented thing.....

[seeker]

...and I was wondering if anyone else worries about the "politics" of it. I am with the people who think that saying that 10% or 5% or whatever of children are G&T is meaningless, and that labelling them is more likely to be damaging than not. I think there are G&T children in the world, but certainly not 5%! But I also wonder whether there is any correlation between that 5% of children and the most articulate, middle class parents? ANd if so, does calling their children G&T (as opposed to just very clever and motivated) cause the parents to shut up and stop pushing the school and the government to improve things for the 90%? Of am I too cynical for a Sunday morning? Is there any way of finding out, for example, how many children on the G&T register also get free school meals?

I'd suppose you're not wrong, seeker (even if the G+T label is not overtly designed with parent-pacifying in mind).

ah- well that's one thing where it does make some sense. Because its the top 10% in every school so it doesn;t become a class issue iyswim. And it has allowed for some specal programmes to be directed at some of the very disadvantaged areas locally. IN those schools G&T may mean on track to get C's at GCSE. I do support work in those areas (think its meaningless for the children you identify in your post).

I just don't get the point of g+t full stop, tbh.

ALL kids should be offered enrichment programs, IMO. They participate or not, up to them.

Oh, I didn't really realise that - top 10 in every school - that does make sense.

I live in a country with a three-tier selective secondary school system - the primary teachers make the recommendations (at age 9/10 ) on a child-by-child basis and it has been proved time and time again that recommendation for the most academic type of school correlates strongly with 'higher' social class. I worry about this - even though dh and I are 'articulate, middle-class parents' so theoretically we could just sit back and think 'I'm all right, Jack'. I just hate the divisiveness of it. Of course being labelled G+T is different from being put in whole different schools, but I do think it's good that there are instances where the G+T thing can be used to give to the have-nots rather than still more to the haves.

(sorry, bit of a ramble )

I always thought the 10% was to tie in with the 10% a 'specialist' school was allowed to select on ability. But maybe that's just a coincidence.

I don't think that there is a way for antone to find out how many G and T children are on the free school meals list.

I do know that many of the tests used to identify children who are G and T look at language use, and this is biased to middle/upper class families (working class myself, so I'm not casting aspertions on the vocab of the working class, honest! )

So that within a comprehensive school middle class children are probably more likely to get on he regester than working class ones.

There is some work being done on taking out this 'class' bias and designing tests which use language which is common to all children of a give age group (as long as English is their first language). This test would be more accurate and less biased, but even it will not take out the bias against children who have english as an additional language

I don't like the term "G&T" because "gifted" means something entirely different in this country to what is meant by the G&T policy.

At our school they have introduced new terminology as a result: ASPs - Advanced Skills Pupils.

However, I don't disagree with 5-10%. In many schools much teaching is completely mixed ability, and in that scenario adequately targetting/challenging the bottom 10% and top 10% (by ability) is extremely difficult. These 6 pupils (in a class of 30) are unlikely to make adequate progress unless there are additional strategies in place.

But the trouble is that the top 5% or 10% in any primary class are likely to be the children of articulate middle class parents! I don't like that or think it's right but that's just how it is. Look at the high ability table in your child's school and tell me I'm wrong! True giftedness or talent would be classless - this labelling of clever children isn't.

If the school is really a true mix, then I think that you are right. In some schools there is no effective mix of abilities....think of sink schools who have good schools in the same area.

Middle clss parents will be unlikly to send their children to a sink school. So that schools to 10% is unlikely to be stuffed with middle class kids

I would have thought that verbal and non-verbal reasoning tests (cognitive tests) would be used to discern potential. In theory these would not be biased as a class thing.

I live in an 11+ area and that's the theory about that test too, Cammelia. But it's still the middle class kids who pass! There are less that 1% children on free school meals at my dd's grammar school!

many of the verbal resoning tests depend on an extensive vocabulary to identify 'ability'. THis tends to be biased to wards middle class children. Research is being done in Oxford to develop non biased verbal resoning tests, and I've been peripheraly involved in testing them

That's interesting , MB. I was amazed that the vocabulary necessary to do the verbal reasoning on the Kent test. There was one question where they needed to know that there were three different meanings for 'sage"

5 didn't realize that primary schools do tests to establish their G&T cohort. Do they all?

FWIW, the ks3 science examimnation, which they do when they are around 13 had been shown to have a reading age of above 13......so children who do not read well are being penalised in their sceince score.

Science exams should really be a tset of their understanding of science, not how above average they are at reading.

the more you look into testing the murkier it gets.

Did you hear that programme on radio 4 in the summer - I think it was called Thinking Allowed - you might get it on Listen again. It was about the cognitive difference between children from different socio-economic groups. Apparently there is a measureable difference at 22 months. And the gap just widens as they get loder. Very depressing.

What's the third meaning for sage? I get wise, and the herb - what's the other one? I worry for ds on these sorts of grounds. He's very bright, but dyslexic, so once words come into the equation he is very disadvantaged (although now we are having him tutored for synthetic phonics maybe he will catch up). I agree on the "clever and motivated" being a better description, although perhaps it's skilled rather than clever, because clever is seen as a "whole person" thing, whereas skills are more specific. I think it's a strange idea to label someone as being all round clever, the assumption is that they are then equally good at everything, all the time, and I think that is rarely the case. My dh went to a school which setted across the board - "A" stream, "B" stream etc, and I think it's very divisive. My school setted for languages and maths only - I was top at maths and bottom at French - isn't the pattern of skills for most people quite spread?

I wondered that- is it wise and "wise person" do you think?

that is it, I think. Gandalf was a sage, wasn't he?

I believe so, yes, and J.D.Bernal was nicknamed "sage" because he was such a wise man

Pull your finger out then girl!

Can we think of other uses for herbal words????

I can think of Rue, any others??

Its all fenugeek to me???

I am failing miserably because every time I try I just start thinking of the equivalent character in The Herbs (Dill the Dog, Sir Basil et al- remember them?)

'I'm a dog called dill'

Cumin to the garden Maud??

Well DS is certainly not from a middle class family. Neither of his parents are graduates. I come from a farming background (not a rich one either) and DP from a very average income family (his dad was a graduate though). DS was recommended for the G&T programme at school (not launched yet) as he is recognised as being very bright but resists recording (writing or typing) any work.

His teacher sees this problem as something the programme can help with. Apparently bright children can be like this - rather talk than knuckle down and write. I hope the school does launch the programme as I think in the past DS would have been labeled something entirely different. Perhaps I have been really lucky to have a teacher who saw beyond the incredibly childish writing.