change in achievement between primary and secondary

[brizzledrizzle]

I was reading an article today which said that the Sutton Trust had found that bright children who achieve highly at primary school then don't do as well at secondary school if they are poor.

What makes the difference? I'd have thought their parents would carry on being as invested in their education and that they valued education so why the drop?

As work relies more on the student's input, it's harder for teaching to make up for gaps in support at home. It's all too common

It’s not necessarily parents. You are assuming the parents were the only driving factor in performance in the first place. This isn’t the case.

Having read a bit about this: these children often end up at the worst secondary schools. They may not be as well taught as they were at primary. Quality first teaching in every subject is seen less frequently in secondary schools. The wealthier parents have moved heaven and earth to get their children into the best schools. Literally moving in some cases. If is well known that poor children don’t have this advantage and do end up in the worst schools.

Also, when you are in the less good school, you come across more low level disruption, more children who don’t want to work and a “good enough” culture that doesn’t aim high. Often parents of poorer children are happy with any university if they do not know about universities. They are also more likely to be happy with their child staying local at a low grade university where high grades are not needed. That’s fine in some ways, but expectations are reduced and the child coasts. No one strives for better.

Some secondary schools are totally crap at spending their pp money on the poorest children who qualify. They do not track the progress of the children efficiently or accurately and do not have effective policies in place to keep progress up to the best levels possible. Often the poorest higher achievers are let down.

So lots of issues that are nothing to do with parents!

I think the small nature of primary schools might help overcome some of the disadvantages that poverty brings these children. So headteachers might be better able to focus what interventions might improve performance e.g. breakfast clubs for each individual child.

I also think that at secondary school work becomes far more independent. High achievement might be linked to personal study that poor children might struggle with more. Due to caring responsibilities or lack of quiet space.

Of my Year 6 class of 29 who finished last Friday, 10 were PP. Of those 10, 5 got greater depth in all subjects.

If I look at those 5, they received support from our primary school in lots of ways. All 5 had quite chaotic home lives, so I provided spare PE kit for them, supplied breakfast now and then and let them do missing homework at lunchtime. Our head teacher acted as a counsellor for families in crisis or signposted them to other support.

But the most important thing was that we knew the children so well. I taught them all day, so if I noticed that they’d arrived in a bit of a state, then I could make allowances for them in the next lesson. If they’d had an altercation at lunchtime, I could invent a job that took them to the Nursery building for 10 minutes to give them time to cool off.

I was also very ambitious for them - just as much as for my own children - and recommended books + prioritised them on enrichment courses.

Now of course I have identified these children to their new schools, but I worry that no one will have their backs or will fight their corners. 2 in particular will struggle massively with organisation and I worry that teachers will take that as meaning that they are not passionate about their learning.

Secondary schools often just don't have the time or the money to support disadvantaged kids in the way that primaries can. And secondary kids are much less biddable than primary ones so harder to help.

What Kingscote says is so true. I think as Primary teachers have the child with them all day, all week, they can pick up on 'changes' or 'moods' or other concerns a lot more quickly than any secondary teacher would be able to do as they just don't have that consistency of contact with any of the pupils. I don't think Primary teachers (in some schools more than others) realise how much of this they do - almost instinctively. Also, how much the schools (sometimes it is the HT, sometimes the DHT or often the SENCo / Inclusion Officer, and sometimes the Parents link worker or Learning Mentor - it works differently in different schools) do, to support families, which then means children are more settled, secure and able to learn better.

You also must factor in that when children go to secondary they are taught by around 14 teachers. Not one who knows them very well. Some of these might be never ending supply teachers and some might be very average. Occasionally one might be outstanding. In some schools the teachers don’t even know who the pp children are!

Pp money is typically spent well in primary education but is less tailored to individual needs and well spent at secondary. The Sutton trust looks into that too.

The pp allowance is fairly generous and secondary schools absolutely cannot argue they don’t have the money - they do. It is supposed to be ring fenced for these children to enable them to make good progress. It is simply not good enough to say there is no money. If they do not track progress and spend the money to ensure all the pp children make good progress, then it’s no wonder these children do not do as well as they should. It’s wasted talent and the school’s must be held to account.

Really useful, and sad, thread.

It doesn’t have to be sad if schools really engage with the children and champion them with the money they are given. Some of these children do achieve well, just not enough of them.

Don't be sad. As a parent of a "disadvantaged" child I feel it is a mixture of parental involvement, school support and good teaching. Both DP and myself have had a good education but shit happens, when our DS was 5 I found myself being a carer to DP, through him becoming blind because of a progressive faulty gene.

We home tutored him through 11+ and managed to get him into a good local part selective school. There was no real recognition of PP until the past year (year 9). We have scraped through getting uniform, school buses, extra curricular things etc. The past year they have really offered a lot to us I think because they have seen the effort and esteem we (our family) have put on his education. They have offered bus fares for the year, money towards enrichment trips both UK abroad etc.

Like I said it really needs to be everyone involved working towards a common goal. It usually breaks down at the home level IMO

I agree with many of the above comments. As a parent of a dc that has just finished year 7, I can see how a bright child in primary school could do well with little support at home as long as the teaching and support at school was good. Things change completely in secondary - you can't just rely on a good memory and intelligence. You need to revise at home, complete homework, etc.