There's a "culture of low expectation" in secondary schools. Do you agree?

[HelenMumsnet]

Hello. You may have seen/heard on the news today that Ofsted is warning that thousands of bright secondary-school-age children are being "systematically failed" at school.

And we'd like to know what you think about this.

Ofsted says there is a culture of low expectations in England's non-selective secondaries - meaning that, according to a new Ofsted report, more than a quarter (27%) of pupils who achieved the highest results in primary school fail to achieve at least a B grade in both their English and their Maths GCSE.

The most academically able, says Ofsted chief inspector Sir Michael Wilshaw, arrive "bright-eyed and bushy-tailed" from primary school, but things start "to go wrong very early. They tread water. They mark time. They do stuff they've already done in primary school. They find work too easy and they are not being sufficiently challenged."

Do you think this is a fair reflection of life at secondary school? Do you think your child's secondary school has a low expectation of its pupils/your child? Does/did your child "tread water" in Year 7? Do you wish secondary schools did more to challenge their more academically able pupils?

Please do tell!

The new ones are Cardiff & Oxford Brookes. It doesn't go into the specifics if graduate employment and salary, but yes, I imagine you are right, and this possibly ties back in with the OP- did the previous report site anything as reasons for the later success of independently educated students?

The report cited soft skills, networking etc...but what also sprung to my mind was the rise of the unpaid internship!

I wondered if it might be that sort of thing- more likely that an independently educated graduate would have the contacts or the financial cushion to be able to explore those avenues.

I'd be interested to know how they define private school and state school kids.
Round here, because the 6th form colleges are rather good, lots and lots of kids go to private till 16 and then to state for A's - a few go the other way

but all of those reports miss the big point that because private schools are by definition selective, higher proportions of their kids will make it to A levels and beyond than state school kids

I suppose it proves you are right to pay school fees if you can afford it as the university results are about the same (and 50% of those at the best universities come from the 8% of children at fee paying schools) and even later the privately educated earn more for a huge range of reasons.

Though xenia it may be that the best thing one can do for one's DC is to be rich!

I think that if you are privately educated your family is almost certain to have a higher than average income. Your children will probably have a very high standard of living and will want to maintain that lifestyle into their own adulthood. Therefore they are likely to choose a high paying career .

My own children are state educated and although I am a teacher they are unlikely to choose teaching as a career because they have been raised with a lifestyle that a teaching career alone could never afford . They will choose high paid careers, not because of the education sector they come from but because of the lifestyle they want and already have.

However if your children are state educated, it is more likely that you have a lower income and therefore your children may be satisfied with less financially . This reflects on their home life , not their education.

Many teachers are also not particularly money motivated, they probably could earn more doing something different . I know I am a controversial figure in school for reminding students of the importance of looking at how much a job pays when choosing a career. Many of my colleagues stress vocations, making a difference , job satisfaction etc. Therefore if money is not a big thing in school or at home , again certain students are less likely to pick high paying careers, I suspect this is more of an issue in state schools again .

So Aris, do you think that state school students are less likely to be motivated by money and therefore less likely to consider university? Or that they are less likely to have an understanding of money?

I grew up in a house with two teachers, both of whom had grown up in houses without much spare cash. As a consequence, both my parents were careful with money, and I didn't really get a sense of ever being "short" of cash. I now teach and earn about 3 times less than DH, who grew up in a house with a father who was very motivated by money (off the point, but I remember being mortified when my parents met the in-laws and FIL asked my DF about how much he earned).

My students are put off university by the thought of debt, but can't see the long-term financial gains, despite the programmes put in place in school and the information given to them at student finance talks. Do you think that independently educated students are less worried about such things? Or that money has never been an issue at home so they are not used to taking it into consideration?

Evil - if you was a PhD in Education or a member of an education policy think tank or the author of some definitive book on the subject then I can understand your shut the feck up about something I clearly know more about than you put downs. But correct me if I am wrong but you teach drama at a comp/SM. That hardly raises you to the the level of She Who Cannot be Challenged. And why do you get to slag off people several levels above your pay grade and me a mere parent can't challenge your comments?

As for my so-called trouble stirring remarks, if you was some lazy apathetic teacher then you most likely wouldn't be hanging out on a forum about education. So of course all the teachers that post here will be the committed types and of course their views may not representative of all teachers.

So all that you can say is that of the teachers that you know, all are committed professionals.

I mentioned the negative threads about teachers only to make the point that it is naive of you to adopt the attitude that bad teachers are few and far inbetween.

And since when did teachers become a revered profession. We ate allowed to discus and criticize priests, cops, soldiers, doctors but OMG did Habba just criticize teachers? Shock! Horror!.

wordfactory you are so right about teachers being asked to do too many things.

arisbottle I totally agree with you re private schools - and let's not forget that apart from having a pool of parents who are clearly committed to their child's education (and so will push/support them in the home), offering small classes, extra activities and so on, these schools are also able to 'manage out' children who will drag down their scores. They can set their own rules about who they accept for A-levels and don't have the same restrictions placed on them in terms of dealing with disruptive pupils that the state sector has.

Lastly, I think there are more important things than money. just as arisbottle has said. I'd like my DDs to have jobs they enjoy, which pay them a wage that leave them materially comfortable, but I also want them to have a life. There's a balance to be struck, and each of us has to find what that balance is for us.

How do you know I don't have a PhD?

Slagging me off because I teach drama in a comp isn't very kind, is it?

Especially given your poor grasp of grammar.

And Habba, really? I can't slag off Michael Gove because he earns more than me?

evil I think DC who have wealthy parents (which will include most who pay for private school) don't think long and hard about the cost.

Either their parents will pay, or they will take a loan feeling fairly confident of paying it off.

Or, more usually, a mixture of the two.

Why do they choose the courses they do and then the careers they do? I suspect there willbe all manner of reasons, but I'm certain one of them is simply that it seems emminently doable. Their parents do them. Their friends' parents do them. They know these people aren't super human...ergo why shouldn't they be able to do them?

Their schools also support them in considering these sorts of careers. The teachers know what they're about, what will be needed etc pupils receive the right advice.

I think that if you come from a lower to middle income family your idea of a comfortable life tends to be different than if you come from a family that earns in excess of, say 150k a year . That number was picked randomly but I was thinking that two senior leaders in a school could earn 100k between them and I am thinking of families who earn far in excess of what most education professionals could .

I suspect most of us pick a career wanting to be financially comfortable . That idea of comfort is usually similar to what we have at home or a bit better, unless we grew up in dire poverty.

So if you come from a family that spent 50k a year on school fees you will factor that into your job search and will look for a job that gives you 50k spare income to spend in fees.

If course it does not always work that way, sometimes being very poor makes you want to be very rich . DH and I are very much driven by a fear of poverty and so we both chose high earning careers first time round.

Evil I am thinking more of final career options rather than university .

Aris I can't speak for other families but I know that I am very open with my DC about what things cost and what jobs pay.

So my DC know that if they want to replicate their current lifestyle, or something akin to it, they will need a well paying job!

I am much more open with my DCs about money than my parents were with me. I think confidence with dealing with personal finances is very important.

I think most parents are quite open about salaries , as far as our knowledge will allow. However I don't think teachers are as open about salaries and I don't think they always acknowledge the importance of a salary, perhaps because that is not the prime motivator for them.

I once said that I would like to get paid as much as possible for doing as little as possible and some members of staff didn't speak to me for a long time.

In a similar manner I get shouted down if I say I went into teaching for the holidays and pension . Vocations are all well and good but they don't pay the bills.

I object strongly to the term 'bright' being used to describe some academically advantaged children. It implies that some children are born genetically more intelligent and recent research has shown that this is extremely rare, that it is a child's upbringing and schooling that determines their academic outcome.

Parents need to understand that at some stage in their lives, their children will coast and have to accept it. If their child is ahead of the others that's great, but it doesn't mean anything terrible will happen if they have a break.

It's about time those children without academic help from home (what term do we use to describe them, the Stupid children?) get decent help in the form of homework clubs and smaller class sizes.

Inequality and segregation are rife in our system, let's deal with that first.

Using the term bright is divisive and

It is evil.

I think I'm also honest about the downsides of careers that pay a lot too. That may might require long hours etc (although to be fair lots of badly paid jobs require that these days)...

Same with the creative industries. I try to point out that the rewards can be high both in terms of hard cash and dream fulfillment...but there is little stability and not everyone can thrive on that.

You can only state the facts and then leave it up to them.

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wonderingagain - there are huge genetic differences in intelligence among the privileged population at my DD's school. Why would that not be true across the population as a whole?

Evil - me pointing out that you are a drama teacher is me slagging you off???

I was simply making the point that you are quite an arrogant person in the way you dismiss other people's opinions, not just mine, and in the way you decide who should be allowed to contribute to this thread. I just expected the person at the other end of all this arrogance to someone other than a secondary school drama teacher.

As for the grammar flame, that is so feeble. If you can't refute the other person's argument then flame her grammar instead eh?

No need to jump in MNHQ.I'm done :)

"Evil - if you was a PhD in Education or a member of an education policy think tank or the author of some definitive book on the subject then I can understand your shut the feck up about something I clearly know more about than you put downs. But correct me if I am wrong but you teach drama at a comp/SM."

" I just expected the person at the other end of all this arrogance to someone other than a secondary school drama teacher."

It's quite clear, Habba, that you have low opinions of secondary school drama teachers. Given that you know very little about me, including my level of education and publishing history, I don't think you're in a position to criticise me. For all you know, I may well have a PhD, and may have published a number of books on the lowly subject of secondary school drama.

I am quite able to come up with counter-arguments to yours, by the way - for a start, I don't believe that Gove and Wilshaw deserve automatic respect simply because they are higher up the financial pecking order than me. You, apparently do:
"And why do you get to slag off people several levels above your pay grade"
I prefer to look at their constant ill-considered announcements, which, in a number of cases, are contradictory, then use my own knowledge, understanding and experience of the education system as both a teacher and a parent to formulate and justify my opinions. If that's "arrogant" then so be it.