Child genius -which bright spark decided to put it on on a Tuesday???

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Anyone watching?

Well done Thomas. I hope he uses his intelligence well and gets proper guidance through life ( thinking back to Ruth Lawrence as I write this).

Thomas was one mark away from an A* in A level maths in year 5! HERE

Just reading up on Ruth Lawrence. OMG!

I'm rather looking forward to a new tv programme possibly already on the drawing board...

The Apprentice - Child Geniuses 10 Years On.

It would be good to see a champion of champions- thomas against the previous two winners.

Yes, genius at a young age does not always get carried through but sometimes it does. It seems to help to stay in your year group. I amn ot saying I am a genius (although supposedly 152 IQ and fairly good exam results, university prizes) and I was a year young through senior school, went to university at 17. that was fine. I was the smallest in the class at school but that didn't really matter. Had I been 2 years ahead it would have been a bad thing. You need as much as ability to pass exams that internal happiness and contentment and interest in your subjects too and a loving family and I think both of those who were in the final had that.

It was also lovely to see a 12 year old girl happy to say she is a feminist. Good for her. It was a shame there were more boys than girls that got through to the end particularly as when we had the 11+ they had to make it harder for girls as so many more did better than boys at 11+ because girls mature younger than boys. May be the little girl who did well earlier on can come back another year for a try when she's 12.

What are you talking about, Red? I'm pretty sure it would be illegal to make the exam harder for girls than boys

It used to be a long time back when every part of the UK had the 11+. It sounds amazing now.

"Critics were similarly right to point out that 11+
selection disadvantaged ‘late developers’, that it was deliberately loaded
against girls (because girls outperformed boys on average but were
subjected to equal gender quotas), and that it generated unfair regional
biases (because local education authorities differed markedly in the
proportions of grammar school places they made available). "
www.civitas.org.uk/pdf/cw28.pdf

This is an extract from an article by Michael Rosen. No references, though. Anecdotally, my mil had the same experience- she was told that had she been a boy she would have passed."So the failures at 11-plus went to the sec mods. Instantly there were problems with this. Education was controlled at the local level through local education authorities. Different local authorities provided different percentages of places. One area might only allow for a 10 per cent pass rate. Another over 30 per cent. All local authorities aimed to provide equal numbers of places for boys and girls. However, more girls than boys usually passed. What followed was in essence a fiddle. A percentage of the girls who passed the 11-plus were retrospectively deemed to have failed, and sent to the sec mod. A percentage of boys who failed were nevertheless sent to the grammar school.

Woman: ‘When I “failed” the 11th plus I felt sad. When the head showed me my result on a print out and told me that had I been a boy, I would have gone, I felt sadder. He said he could intervene but felt I would do better being at the top of a set rather than the bottom. In a way he was right but to this day I still feel inferior.’

Just interested as to what counts as pushing and what does not. The only way a child gets to A level standard is because someone has taught them. If they reach A level maths by year 5 the teaching has been pretty intense.

It doesn't have to have been, if the child is really good at maths. At an appropriate pace for them, yes, but not necessarily intense.

It must have involved extra teaching outside school to a much higher level than those in school were doing. I am not saying it is wrong, just that from the small, edited glimpses we got into all these children's lives, it is impossible to say that what some were doing was pushing and what other were doing was giving them appropriate extra tuition.

Why outside of school? It could have been done in school at the same time that the other students were receiving their ability appropriate teaching.

I am envious if one teacher was given over to teaching one primary school child maths. Or does a teacher not do a lot once they have given the rest work and just turn their attention then to an individual child?
I wish I had insisted more now on my dd getting teaching to her level and not worried so much about the logistics of it for them, the quality of education the other 29 children were receiving nor the cost to the school of providing funding when there is no SEN budget for a child who is ahead.

I would be interested if there are many maths prodigies who do not have a parent who is very good at maths. I doubt it! Partly for the teaching- but mostly because genetics.

"Of course there is a Sen budget for children who are advanced shock the school (and parents) have a legal duty to provide an appropriate wedding"

Yeah, because there is soooo much money sloshing around for SEN that providing an ALevel maths teacher for a year 5 is a really appropriate use of it.......

I have a theory that ALL the children on child genius received teaching from their parents at home. And that what is one persons idea of a child being pushed is another persons idea of a child being enabled to attain their natural level of ability.

I think the parents on that programme were all doing a lot with their kids at home. Although Thomas was presented as one of the kids who wasn't being pushed, they still said that his mum was working with him for four hours a day!! That's a lot of work, even if he was instigating it.

I have a very bright child - probably not as exceptional as Thomas but certainly not dissimilar to many of the other kids on this programme. Who knows what she would be capable of if I spent four hours a day teaching her?! However, she has other stuff to do and so do I!

Personally, I think it is a ghastly programme though compulsive viewing and I really can't understand why the parents allow their children to appear on it. However, think it's equally ghastly that grown adults on an internet forum can sit around and pick holes in the personalities of children who appear. They're children ffs!

And yes, I am absolutely of the view that there is nothing mutually exclusive about high intelligence and good social skills. Of course children need to learn to tone it down and behave with a little humility. But we all know that these programmes are edited in a particular way, to show us what the producers want us to see. I would hate for the children in question to read what is written about them on some of these threads. They don't deserve it.

I just disliked how some were implied by the editing as being pushed and others as natural geniuses. I do not think there is anything wrong with parents working with their child at home, but I do think it is disingenuous of the programme to imply some are there because of pushy parents and others because of natural genius alone. I repeat, they have all been taught, and without knowing more about their lives it is impossible to say from this brief glimpse, how much is too much. I do, however, dislike the misinformation that there are those who are natural geniuses who do not need their parents to do anything other than sit back and watch as their child speeds through GCSE maths aged 7 all by themselves.
It is nice for those who have been presented by the programme as being natural geniuses, but I feel sorry for the other children, who are CHILDREN, who have been implied to been pushed and not the natural geniuses of the other competitors.

There is an easy way schools can get around the differentiation problem, which runs along the lines of:

We have done no teaching with your child at that level, therefore we have no evidence your child is working at that level, therefore we have not assessed them as being at that level, so we do not have to teach your child at that level

"Providing a differentiated education is a requirement bert and utterly appropriate"

A primary school spending SEN budget on an A level maths teacher for a year 5 is not appropriate.

"We have done no teaching with your child at that level, therefore we have no evidence your child is working at that level, therefore we have not assessed them as being at that level, so we do not have to teach your child at that level"

Yep, why not get a bit of school/teacher bashing in as well?

Parental input definitely makes an impact. 3 of our children have/had music scholarships and that involved me sitting down with the younger two every day from age of about 6 or 7 doing 2 or 3 instruments or music theory. Now, the family is all pretty musical on all sides so there is probably a genetic element - everyone sings well for example which is probably innate not taught but without that supervision it would not have happened.

(I have read about the very old 11+ where numbers of girls and boys were evened out many many times over the years. It certainly applied when my parents passed in the 1940s. It was the only way to be fair to boys because girls of 11 are often about 2 years ahead of them. It has not been done for years now though)