Does your child who is gifted and talented get free dinners?

[lijaco]

Just wondered if any children on here who have the gifted and talented label also are in reciept of free dinners? Just trying to work out if this label is actually a privileged children thing?

[lijaco]

fembear you demand!!!!!!!!!!!
There are many schools in this country you know!

Our G&T don't get free meals.

[mabanana]

HOwever, there is some evidence that as part of package of measures bringing in extra funding, G&T programmes may help poorer kids do better. This is from the report I linked to earlier:
".... there is evidence to suggest that when schools with more disadvantaged pupils do get extra funding, this can make a difference to how well students perform. For example, Machin et al recently produced an economic evaluation of the ?Excellence in Cities? policy. [Footnote 12] This involved giving schools in disadvantaged areas extra resources to implement particular programmes. Among the principal components were: the provision of learning mentors to help students overcome educational or behavioural problems; learning support units to provide short-term teaching and support programmes for difficult students; and a programme to provide extra support for 5-10 per cent of pupils in each school who were considered gifted or talented. The evaluation shows that the policy was effective for schools with a high proportion of students eligible for free school meals.

Specifically, for a 4.4 per cent increase in expenditure per pupil it has delivered a 2.9-4.8 per cent increase in the number of pupils achieving the government target or better in maths at key stage 3 for the most able pupils in schools with the highest rate of deprivation. This policy is an example of a successful attempt to raise standards in deprived areas and shows that resources, when properly directed, are a good use of public money."

[lijaco]

It is very depressing and unfair!

[mabanana]

Identifying talent in disadvantaged kids is a well known problem. This is a government report on the G&T programme that explicitly addresses this very issue it says, "It proved far harder for most schools to identify potential high ability among those
recognised at risk of underachievement, including pupils who frequently change
schools, those with poor behaviour and those in public care, and those at an early
stage of mastering English as an additional language. The difficulty of identifying the
underachievers was sometimes exacerbated by pupils? poor levels of literacy and
oral communication. It can, of course, be especially difficult to recognise latent high
ability when pupils are apparently uninterested in demonstrating what they might be
able to do.
38. All the schools had an overt intention to be inclusive in their approach, but in most
schools methods of identifying potential were at an early stage of development,
even in the second year of the initiative. Most of the schools visited had the capacity
to analyse individual pupil achievement, behaviour and attendance, but very few
interrogated the data well enough, for example in terms of ethnicity and sex, to
highlight those groups of pupils currently under-represented in the lists of the gifted
and talented.

So not a question of straighforward prejudice, but something that does need to be taken seriously if the G&T programme is going to narrow the gap in attainment between poor and better off kids, rather than widen it.

[fembear]

lijaco

1. why don't you ask your peers in the staff common room who might have some professional insight instead of asking a random, unrespresentative bunch of anonymous mums?
   
   
2. it took mabanana six minutes to google some research. Why couldn't you manage that if you are so 'interested'?

[lijaco]

We do discuss this often. Some peers think these G & T kids don't apply themselves as much as they could and are lazy. Where as some kids are not gifted but work extremely hard for their grades.
I personally do research and read about this subject a lot and I try to use as much differentiation methods within my lessons to give as much opportunity to all as I can. I am asking for other opinions though to see how many kids it applies to on here. I have a feeling it applies to not many on here then.
I have lots and lots of information on gifted and talented as I am very interested in this and coming to the conclusion that it is class distinctive.
The random mums have the answers.

If this thread is bothering you don't read it.

[pagwatch]

thread isn't bothering me at all......thanks.
I find the most bizarre things fascinating.

I am odd like that

[Tiggiwinkle]

Strange thread.

[BoysAreLikeDogs]

Perhaps schools, who have the task of identifying able pupils, may be selecting pupils on background not ability ?

Parents cannot bestow the label.

[singersgirl]

Step away from the thread. STEP AWAY FROM THE THREAD!

I'm sure if you google you'll be able to find the figures, Lijaco.

Here's another statistic you might like to bang your drum about: the percentage of children nominated by primary schools as Gifted and Talented ranges from 12-ish% of September-borns to 3.9% of August-borns. Not gifted, then, just older than the rest.

Why not take up the cause of August-born children as well as ones on free school meals?

Really, really, really, though, do most primary age children know they are 'labelled', even if they are on a register?

[choccyp1g]

Lijaco, Sorry for such a long wait, I've been to school and back in the meantime, but.. to xpand on my "yes"
They don't tell us officially about G&T register, but DS is "most able in class" at maths, (teacher's wording),therefore would obviously be in the top 10%.

He gets free school meals because I am poor(Long story). I also lived in extreme poverty as a child, (even longer story) and also found all subjects extremely easy.

So, being poor does not stop you being "clever", but I do wonder if I were more pushy, middle-class, etc., they might actually DO something with his super maths ability, rather than getting him to help the slower groups, reading a book, and doing extra pages of the "easy" sums while the others catch up.


But,

[choccyp1g]

Oops, extraneous "but" there.

[witchandchips]

the poor op why are you all leaping down her throat? If the gifted and talented programme is doing its job then we should expect equal proportions of those on free school meals to be in the programme. The possibility that it does not suggests that it might be yet another way that richer children get more out of state schools. - really important question

[pagwatch]

Witch
there is some history here.

[BoysAreLikeDogs]

[understatement] by pag

[pagwatch]

damn

[sparklylucy]

Hi lijaco agin. I think quite a lot of posters here have misread your (obvious) initial sarcasm!!! What I think you are asking is -are children on G+T lists there because they 're genuinely talented or because well off parents are coaching them ? Obviously there are exceptions to every rule but I can understand your frustration. My aforementioned friends DS is on their G+T list because she asked for him to be. He struggles with an awful lot of schoolwork though!!! So obviously in their school being a pushy parent gets you a G+T child which i think is ver very wrong - children should obviously be assessed on their merits regardless of class gender race etc etc

[seeker]

I have wondered the same, lijaco.

I wonder it even more now I have discovered that less than 3% of the children at my dd's state grammar school (11+ pass needed for entry) are on free school meals, as opposed to approaching 20% at the high school the 11+ "failures" go to.

[piratecat]

i don't really understand your questions, but my dd is on the the g=T list and also gets free school dinners. She is not disadvantaged, but she has a mother on bens, cos her dad buggered off. Her intelligence has not been affected by this.

[bronze]

I assume this is a continuation from the other thread questioning whether g&t should exist.

[SixSpotBonfire]

I am taking the OP at face value.

None of my children get free school meals. Two of them have previously been identified by school as G&T although their school no longer uses the term afaik.

We didn't "coach" them at home to get the label, although we have always read to them, talked to them, played with them etc.

We did all these things with our third child too and he is autistic and non-verbal.

There are limits to what you can achieve even if you have an income that puts you in the middle-class bracket.

[lijaco]

choccyp1g that is very interesting, as I believe that there are a lot of G & T kids like your son that can be over looked. I am not thinking that if you are poor you are not clever. I am from a poor background myself, and when I was at school I found the opportunities were not the same.

Bronze I feel it shouldn't exist as a label.

[Litchick]

I think this is a very fair question and one to which I would love to know the answer.
At my DCs school lots of the kids are working a year or three above their actual academic year. Even the bottom sets are working at what would be considered extension work for their year.
Are they a bunch of gifted kids? Of course not. It is an expensive independent school and the kids are very advantaged.
If the G&T label is to identify talent and ensure it is not squandered then it must be able to identify true talent as opposed to middle class advantage.
A hard look at whether children on free school meals are represented proportionately would tell us that, no?

[roisin]

We have children on FSM who are also on G&T register. Children on FSM are not proportionally represented on the G&T register, but given the backgrounds many of them come from (EAZ) and the fact that intelligence is closely linked to genes, this is not surprising.

But yes, we certainly do have a significant number of children who have both.

[choccyp1g]

I believe partly why my son's ability tends to be ignored by teachers is because he is not at all "geeky" iykwim. He is a pretty good at sports, generally friendly and happy. Also he found ways of occupying himself during the obligatory hours of whole class work, like working out how many carpet tiles were on the floor, or reading the titles of the books in the teachers bookshelf.
I don't see the need for the G&T labelling, just wish the teachers had time to give all the children a bit of a challenge once in a while.