What provision should be made for 'more able' students?

[JammieDodgem]

I know the old G&T scheme is no longer a thing but when it was it seemed all primary schools had a policy available on the website and locally I was aware of more able primary pupils going to workshops at local secondaries etc.

I now have 2 dc at primary and both are doing well but I feel their needs are not being especially well catered for. My yr 2 child is well ahead of where she needs to be for the summer SATS and I feel that for this reason she's not being given much attention at all. I'm not especially into pushing her on or her being treated differently but I am really concerned that she doesn't feel particularly engaged or excited by what's going on. The school doesn't seem to offer much to enrich the curriculum and no lunch or after school clubs so I keep her busy and interested outside of school but am beginning to feel I want more from her school experience. There doesn't seem to be any policy or requirement for them to lay out their strategies for those doing well.

Is that reasonable? How do other schools manage these situations?

Same here, DS's teacher differentiates work across the whole class and is able to consistently give him work that keeps him challenged and interested.

Based on what DS tells me, he has been taught things in Year 3 that to my knowledge are first mentioned in the curriculum for Year 4 or even Year 5. So the teacher seems to have the flexibility to choose what to teach him next based on her own assessment of what he already knows and what his next steps should be.

I did what Giery did, stressed her in music and activities and arts. I set a budget for books each month(and we usually go above--we dont go to library too often as we both work long hours). She doesnt have as much time to read and play now as we are so busy with so much going on. If she is bored, then there is another music exam, do well in tge music exams then mommy will give you sone harder things to do. The sky is the limit, we went to a local music festival recently and the children were so talented, it was an eye opener for her. I hate 11+ process with passion, children sitting down and do hours of repeated non creative maths, english. Losing out on only a small marks due to lack of tutoring either by a tutor or by parents. And your child doesnt have a choice if she wants to go to selective. There isnt a place for natural bright children with proper relaxed parents. The child (parents) achievement is measured by how many school offers.

Yes, of course it is a state school where we plot progress via a computer program! Loads of schools use them! As Governors we see the progress of children and, of course, this shows above, at and below for the topics covered. It also builds a picture based on the achievements and progress of previous years. It is far easier to keep the brighter children making good progress than the lower achievers, by the way. Perhaps everyone who is worried about their schools should ask how their schools assess children and how they use this information to plan lessons . This is the absolute key to getting children to progress at a level that challenges them. You will have to accept though, that the super bright may exceed the teaching capability unless you have teachers with a high capability in maths and language. Lots don't for obvious reasons.

I do not think any school will keep close tabs on children that are way ahead in reading and reading adult books. What are they supposed to teach to a child that is already at that sort of level? They could ask for critiques of the books they read and extend their knowledge of literature by suggesting new books. However, the school libraries will not contain the sort of in-depth book needed. This is an area where I can see no option but parents doing it themselves. And why not? It is a joy, surely?

I also think there is far too much skew on this thread about the super-gifted. Some of the children described here are very much out of the ordinary. They do have special needs by the way, and this should be adressed by the schools. I have talked to very experienced teachers about this in my school. We are in a grammar school county and we are in a medium leafy area. They rarely see the type of child discussed here. They are not 1:100 in most schools. It is also ridiculous to think that children cannot thrive in a good school that meets the majority of their needs. They can learn all sorts of useful social interaction at school and "nose to the grindstone" is not necessarily desirable all the time. Do any of your schools use peer to peer teaching for example?

I think learning a musical instrument is valuable. It does take practice and not very many children succeed at the first attempt. They can also take part in an orchestra. It stretches them to read music. Learning does not always have to driven by school subjects. There are so many other aspects to learning that children can participate in but I think parents do have to provide quite a lot of it. The children I knew who went to Oxbridge from DDs junior school were very bright but not as gifted as many described on this thread. Ultra bright children are rare.

I think learning a musical instrument is valuable. It does take practice and not very many children succeed at the first attempt.

I'm always a bit perplexed by the suggestion of musical instruments as the one non academic driver, obviously my own amusia impacts this, where I was encouraged with musical instruments which held no interest when I could not tell if I was playing out of tune.

But, all the things that musical instruments provide, also, and potentially even more apply to other things. For me an exercise based thing would be a more natural complement for example - the likelyhood of a less physical job would make physical recreation more important as an adult, there's no chance to be the best in everything even in a small community, more social opportunities than music practice. As well as sport though, other arts or drama or just about anything can serve the same role as musical instruments - so why is it musical instruments that are always recommended?

Among other excellent comments, Bojorojo said "It is far easier to keep the brighter children making good progress than the lower achievers"

This I am interested in exploring further. Presumably a 'bright' child will enter Reception a little bit ahead. Say 1 year ahead. (clearly the child could be much more than 1 year ahead, but bear with me) By start of Y1 they will presumably be something like 1½ years ahead, because they are brighter, so pick everything up more quickly, so can potentially learn more in a year, both at school and at home. By Y2 maybe they are (or could be if given the opportunity) 2 years ahead, etc.

Conversely, a child that enters Reception a year 'behind' might be behind because it takes that child longer to learn each thing (obviously there are lots of other potential factors, but bear with me again!). Therefore at Y1 that child will be further behind (say 1½ years), because they are unable to progress at the 'expected' rate as this is faster than they are capable of going.

Teachers are expected to help each child make 'expected' progress in a year. So the children that are 1 year ahead are supposed to stay 1 year ahead. As Bojorojo says, this is relatively easy as these children could potentially accelerate further. The children 'on track' stay on track. This is relatively straightforward in theory (there are always exceptions). The children that start behind get further behind, despite a lot of extra effort from the teacher and other support services.

Am I misinterpreting the term 'expected progress'? Or does this explain why teachers have such a hard job bringing the 'bottom' up, thus having little time to spend on those that would easily race off into the distance given half a chance?

The "bottom" children are likely to be the ones that make the slowest progress. You are absolutely correct in thinking that they take a lot of effort. We do not want them to fall further behind, but it is very, very difficult to maintain good progress because they are starting from a lower point and progress is hard won. Any child with the old 2C or even 2B at KS1 (in old money) is at risk of not making sufficient progress in KS2. Some children enter YR "behind" because they have not been taught much by parents and come from very challenged backgrounds. They have much more to overcome and this rarely leaves them.

Do not forget that some of these children will have moderate learning difficulties (and SEND Statements), possibly be PP children and sometimes parents who do not read well either. Their learning just does not accellerate at the same pace. For example, I visit maths lessons. Our lower group in Y6 were doing factors. Despite years of trying to teach children tables, clearly some children did not know them so could not complete the work in the class without significant help. It is highly unlikely this group will make the expected progress. Other children, the brightest ones, absolutely race ahead. That does not mean that they do not have needs too and these must also be adressed. (If anyone wants to get a handle on this - become a Governor!)

We never look at progress as being "one year ahead", "two years ahead", etc. We look at the curriulum and judge on that. It has differentiation built in and the very brightest are extended because we have well educated, very competent teachers. They are taught in a larger class sizes but I am confident their needs are met. I do see teachers setting more and more challenging work for them, and asking them challenging questions.

It is well known that children entering YR "behind" have the odds stacked against them to catch up. (Hence the ill fated Sure Start which should have adressed the needs of the children most at risk of this but actually was overrrun by the children who did not need it.) The problem for many of these children is that they do not have parents who can bridge the gaps the school cannot provide. Many of our brightest (indeed most) children have parents who are well educated, have great jobs, value education and have a lovely house and they have a car and holidays. They are taken to places and enjoy a varied conversation to build vocabulary. Some of our children have none of this.

I think very many state schools would be similar and we are only 30 miles from central London.

Music is academic though. That is why it is more of a stretch than sport, intellectually. Playing in an orchestra is more "academic" than playing sport and it is social. It was this aspect I was looking at. To challenge the very brightest children. Although I do accept that music does not float everyone's boat. I do agree that sport is important but both are life-long skills. There is no reason why children cannot do sport and music. Mine did. Also Brownies, dance, drama, art..... whatever you choose really.

bojorojo I can't see how music is any more academic than sport, or art, or drama? Or why playing in an orchestra is more academic than rowing?

I think music is good because you can set a goal easily, but needs so much determination and commitment to achieve.
Sports or art, it's quite vague to set a goal, (well maybe not something like swimming, you can set a goal to be able to swim ** meters or something.), and natural ability matters a lot.

Sport does not involve reading music which is deciphering a code. Wayne Rooney is possibly not academic but is outstanding at football. (My apologies if he is very very bright). However it is very unlikely that there are many talented musicians amongst the less bright in schools, e.g. Bottom sets. I have yet to see this. The same problems apply. SEN, attention deficit, non musical parents, parents not valuing music etc. They used to say music and maths went together! There was a reason for that and the fact that Music can be studied at degree level at Oxford, unlike Sport.

Although sport is not academic, that is not to say it is not worthwhile. It is. Even though it can bring out the worst in participants and their parents!

Music and maths go together certainly apply to my ds, I think. I think he doesn't find reading music too difficult(although he is still a beginner), but actually playing it needs lots of practice. So it seems to work well with child like my ds, to learn to be resilient. And it is a real challenge.

Challenges in the classroom in reception are few and far between for DS tbh except for pe (poor child has my coordination). We are definitely looking at him learning an instrument to get this challenge.

Hiddeninplainsight, no child with "mild learning disability" would have a statement, let alone their own learning support assistant (at least, not one with bespoke funding) although obviously the school/teacher may use their discretion to allocate support/intervention time to them to close the gap. Similarly, many schools will flag more able children and will differentiate for them -- it just may not be as obvious.

I have a lot of sympathy with your frustration with insufficient stretch and challenge at the very high end but I would say that moving high-achievers on faster through the curriculum is a bad solution.

Children are usually keen to proceed because it brings prestige, teachers often quite like it because it's how children in the past have been "stretched" and parents think it represents progress. But it doesn't generally bring challenge because most content is procedural quite literally, a list of things to know how to do and high achieving kids take to procedures quickly. And sure, they could be working two or three years ahead but it's the illusion of challenge and, by widening the gap, you're making it impossible to keep the class together and fostering exactly the kind of untenable situation you describe with children working on objectives years apart within a single class.

Take an objective of using the digital root (the sum of the digits of a number) to identify multiples of 3. For children who get this quickly, later objectives which follow could include simplifying fractions using this skill, perhaps even adding and subtracting fractions.

Or you could ask them to explain to the class why the digital root identifies powers of 3 but not powers of 4 and to use this to predict and explain which other multiples between 1 and 10 can also be identified by finding the digital root. And if they have that, can they use the operator blocks and If/Then/Else to create a program in Scratch which identifies the digital root of any given number?

The former pushes them through the curriculum faster but only utilises the same kinds of skill. The latter doesn't involve any new curriculum content but does involve broader and more challenging application of the same content through reasoning, hypothesising, explaining, proving and applying -- skills which will be infinitely more useful later on and will ultimately make them much stronger mathematicians.

Moderate Learning Difficulty children most certainly can have statements. This term generally denotes children who have a low IQ and have learning difficulties for all core subjects. It is not dyslexia (spld) or a severe learning difficulty that would require the child to be at a special school. Many primary schools have MLD children and they can access extra help. Down's syndrome children are often MLD.

I know the term mild was used but defining mild and moderate is a minefield!

MrR2200, your differentiation sounds fantastic. I wish you were my ds' maths teacher!
your students.

MrR as you will have gathered, I'm not a teacher, but I was talking about Mild Learning Difficulty, as defined by having an IQ for less than 70. These children will have a lifelong difficulty in learning, and based on my quick sift of the internet (so clearly I may be wrong), I think they would indeed have an SEN statement. However perhaps where the confusion lies is that things like dyslexic, which do not represent a general intellectual deficit are now often referred to as learning disability. However clearly the impact, although significant, is not the same as a general learning disability. As a result, what used to be referred to as Mild Learning Disability is now sometimes referred to as moderate learning disability.

My point was that children at that end of the scale, which represents 2% of the population, rightly get extra provision. They learn at a slower rate than average and need additional support. However, there is very limited support for children at the other end of the scale who learn considerably faster than average. Honestly, it seems to me that largely whilst people can accept and understand that children can have a mental age below average, and sometimes can have limited intellectual capacity, they won't accept that kids can have a mental age much higher than average.

MrR I am not saying that is you, I hasten to add. I do think that not just throwing advanced text books at a child is a good thing. But I do also think that we are putting an artificial ceiling on the learning of very able children. And, looking at the other end of that bell curve, at 2% (and within that 2% there is a HUGE variability - from Einstein, Steven Hawkins and beyond to someone working 2 years above average) there are more advanced learners than schools seem to think.

X-posting too slow on my phone!

MrR,
Very good examples. Only one flaw: in the first place you need to find a teacher who would understand those topics.
To give you an example, last year's teacher did not know the difference between digits and numbers. Modular arithmetic in that case might have proven a bit of a stretch (for the teacher) :D
Don't get me wrong, I understand that teachers cannot possibly know everything under the sun; I am just saying that it is not THAT easy to stretch within the curriculum.

MrR That was a very useful post, thank you.

IQ of less than 70 is Moderate Learning Dufficulty and these children will have great difficulty in accessing the curriculum. There is nothing 'mild' about less than 70.

Bojorojo 50-70 used to be classified as Mild Learning difficulty. In psychological terms I believe they still are. Here I speak not as a teacher (which I am not) but as a Psychologist (which I am). And you are right, they will have great difficulty accessing the curriculum. That was my point. But similarly, the curriculum has difficulty dealing with children at the other end of the distribution. A child with an IQ of 130+ is the other end. There are 2% of the population. So not even my 1/100, but 1/50. These children learn faster and need much more than the NC provides. My point was that where as MLD would get additional support, and the teachers would get additional support, the other end of the scale are left to bumble along in the vast majority of cases. And that isn't even considering the profoundly gifted kids, many of whom are home schooled because it is like throwing a child into school with an IQ say 30 or 40 into a mainstream school and offering no support.

I should add that although I do know something about classification of IQ, my position is very much one of frustrated parent, and Bojo and MrR, I'm kind of having this discussion with you both because my kids school isn't understanding . Your perspectives are really interesting.

I would say, going back a little, that music is not the 'only' option for extending very bright children outside school, although it is perhaps one that brings lots of things together in a single package. It involves code-reading, a progressive system of grades (and in many areas a progressive series of groups to join), a strong link between practice and outcome, opportunities both to work alone and in a group, adult role models (and lifelong opportunities, both amateur and professional), and even specialist schools for the most able. It does also have a strong 'academic culture'.

That isn't to say that other extra-curricular activities aren't valuable - from science clubs, through sport, to drama and dance - but just that they don't have everything in a single package. DD spends many hours a week in a very disciplined form of dance, at an excellent but non-vocational dance school, and it has almost all of the same features as music (DS is my musician), although it does not have quite the same 'academic culture', in that at the highest levels, some compromise between academic studies and hours of dance is usually involved.

Wth sport, it depends on the sport. The lower levels of professional football, IME, have quite a strong 'anti-academic' culture - DS used to be in the academy of a football club, but his boffin-like ways were one reason for him being dropped. Cricket is very different in that way. However, almost all sports lack the structured 'grading / exam' system that can make music so interestingly progressive for able students.