Indian Summer School.

[Aeroflotgirl]

I was watching this last night. I thought it was very good. The boys from The Doon School behaved very well, they were so polite and had a good work ethic, in relation to the boys from the UK, who seemed to think they can do what they want, and disrespect their elders. They will be in for a shock, when they go into the big wide world.

noble ,I am more than sure Harry could read. I teach five students who will probably get a grade 1 or 2 at GCSE in year 10. The ones who will get 2s can read (in some cases quite fluently) but often have many other issues affecting success. The ones who will get 1s are very very weak, nowhere near as animated as Harry and the girl I teach who will get a U has learning difficulties. Something else went on there with that English exam! Normally, one would suspect head down on desk disengagement but we were not led to suspect this.

chan , I would say that's a bit harsh on Jack's and Harry's parents to be fair, who seemed quite sorted. Alfie's and Jake's mums seemed ineffectual (although it was Alfie's mum who signed him up, not Alfie himself) rather than bad (lack of male role modelling usual stuff) and Ethan's maybe just didn't really care whether he had qualifications or not.

the real problems in society won't actually have been unearthed by a C4 programme : I can't see the NEETs I have taught going to India for 6 months.

Harry and his brother actually looked like well looked after kids : both wore glasses, as did their dad. Harry is just one of those lads who will fall on his feet eventually, I think : good looking, outgoing, focused on a career, occasionally thoughtful. Not really sure why he 'needs a C' for barbering, tbh.

Jack'll be fine; reality TV beckons for Ethan; Alfie's mum will continue to bail him out and keep him going. Jake would be the one I would be most concerned about if they were my students. Already got a drink problem, unresolved childhood trauma and no decent role models. Sad.

I am more than sure Harry could read.

Oh I’m not saying he didn’t have a basic level of literacy, but a grade G is below the level you are supposed to leave primary school with, and below the level required to access the secondary curriculum. Did you not see his face in classes where he was meant to be reading a text? He was looking, but not reading, not engaging. And he looked panicked. English was all about Jack. We saw very little of the academic side for any of the other boys.

Not really sure why he 'needs a C' for barbering, tbh.

He wanted to join the army as an officer. It showed him wistfully looking at an army recruitment poster at the end. (I think!)

Except one of the teachers read out something I think Jake wrote in Ep 1 and it was genuinely good.

It shows how hard it is to get kids to pass at gcse retakes. I work at an fe college and our gcse maths and English retake pass rate is about 50%.

More people should consider doing functional skills if they have failed GCSEs. A level 2 is the same level as gcse.

Yes, definitely what they should have been doing. Not much of a TV programme though I guess!

I think the national resit pass rate is about 24% so 50% is really good, Choude

piggy I think Jake was probably academically quite bright compared to the others. Ethan hadn’t been to school for years and his writing from his English assessment was poor. I wonder how much help he had writing his coming-out essay.

We only put kids in for GCSEs if they got a d/level 3. If they get lower they do functional skills.

I live in India. My Scottish children attend an International school - but it's very indian. The moral code is as strict as the academic. The level is very high. I also have a friend who's friend teaches at Doon school.

I haven't seen the programme but I do know that several teachers refused to be part of the series. The could not understand and didn't agree with filming these children. So there's probably a lot that you haven't seen.

Well now that is interesting blue !

Can anyone work out how much the fees were at the Doon school?

About £13 000 a year.

I think the social / outreach is interesting, the girl whose mum earns about £25 a month. Those boys know they are privileged in getting an education few in the world, let alone India can afford.

@noble Sorry I didn't mean to be rude to you but I suppose it narked me a bit because it was an ongoing issue throughout my years in teaching that teachers of other subjects which were linear, or facts- based, didn't appreciate the slow drip, drip, way that English is learned over many years.

I think the issue is that the series was highly edited. We saw Jack and the others struggling, then trying to make good, but I expect the effort v mucking about was 70:30.

For someone like Jack who is dyslexic, they can forget a huge amount if they stop learning (ie over the summer holidays etc) as dyslexic is an issue with memory. It's feasible that he could go backwards if he wasn't engaging in learning for most of the 6 months.

At the end of the prog, he did say he wished he'd climbed the mountain at the start, to give him confidence, not 3 weeks before the end of his stay there, Which implied he had wasted the majority of his time there.

I think it as actually very brave of the school to do this 'experiment' because it was clear they'd be accused of failing the boys if they failed their exams.

FWIW I taught a dyslexic (17) and got him through his IGSCE with a C grade, after he'd failed GCSE twice, with a D. It is actually slightly easier imo.

It's interesting people commenting on the kids personal needs. Most high level schools in India will not cater to learning difficulties. We actually have our kids at 2 different schools here.

1 child goes to an International school with an Indian approach. She is quiet, conservative, modest. There are no such thing as school discos. They are together in the classroom and for PE, but things like swimming are segregated.

The school will not take someone who applies and admit they have something like dyslexia. They will keep a child who is diagnosed but there is little to no pastural care. That said the teachers are very kind and look out for the children. After igcse if they do not achieve Grade B and up they are encouraged to seek another school. My child 12 has assessments every 2 weeks and formal
Assessments at the end of each term. They are lectured and have to take notes. It's very intense. That said he is very happy there and does not wish to be moved and so we persevere with it. Most parents - Indian and foreign - say they get THEIR lives back when the children leave the school! We spend a lot of time on homework and revising.

The problem is that there are so many people in India and so much competition that they really have to be high achieving in order to get the best places in further education or the best jobs. Most people above a certain level try to educate their children privately. Even the maids and gardener's and drivers will put their kids through private schools all of which exist at many different levels. It's really only the poorest of the poor that go to government schools here.

As far as social outreach is concerned, it is actually a legal requirement that they do this. Most private schools will sponsor or run a government school in the area that they are in and quite often the high achiever's at that school will be able to attend classes at the school that is sponsoring them.

My other child is at a proper westernised international school - she couldn't adapt to the strict moral code of the 'Indian' school. There they follow the IB system and have counsellor and OTs.

If you are interested there is another great documentary on Netflix called Daughters of Destiny which I would highly recommend

The British young people I know, of all ethnicities, are mostly great people.

This manipulated narrative that British youth are shit, everyone else is better/kinder/cleverer is so old now.

I agree battleax and I like your expression of manipulated narrative. Bit of an obsession on telly this year!

I imagine there has always been an issue with the achievement of the white working classes, to be honest, but society has moved on and now we care (and to be provocative e only seem to care so much when it's boys!). 60 years ago, Ethan would have left at 14 and gone down the pits (not saying that's a good thing!). The pressure on young people that everyone must have a C (4/5) is destroying those young people who can't achieve it. The BBC2 programme that followed 'gifted' disadvantaged students was at least a little more thought through, in that it observed, rather than tried to 'cure'

Today in the paper , they were worrying about black youngsters and London gangs again. there are always those in society who don't benefit from education for a whole host of reasons. Some succeed despite this; many don't.

The pressure on young people that everyone must have a C (4/5) is destroying those young people who can't achieve it.

What is never admitted is that because of comparable outcomes, 30-odd percent of youngsters will not be allowed to achieve it.

Worrying about black youngsters and gangs is what has lead to schools like Michaela. Trying to give them some other identity.

Lots of the young people who have been stabbed are from the same (private but funded) London AP school , it seems.

There was absolutely no point in putting boys who could hardly read in the same class as boys their age who were very clever and able. All it did was make the boys feel stupid.

Someone mentioned Jake's dad died - I know it'll be different for everyone but I taught quite a few boys whose dad had died and they worked so hard as a result - they all wanted to make their dad proud of them. It was incredibly moving to watch them work, driven by the memory of someone they'd loved so much.

I would say that's quite unusual. Lots of studies show boys suffer more than girls or adults of either gender from a bereavement, particularly boys of their father, as they do seem to suffer more form divorce/ having no male parent on the scene. Some may have family networks to support them and keel them resilient and some may be more able than Jake so cope with education. But I have taught many boys who have gone completely off the rails following deaths in the family or who have slid into depression, drinking , or 'just' suffered academically.

Thought you might find this interesting, Piggy, the story of someone who was a teacher for 17 years but couldn’t read. Amazing how he managed to hide it: www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-43700153

FWIW I taught a dyslexic My GS has dyslexia, he isn't a dyslexic, he is a little boy with a specific problem and lots of talents.

yes, saw that noble : amazing but also quite scary!

I just finished watching it. My children have been in schools perhaps not quite up to Doon standards but similar in the UK and to a very large extent have had the benefit of learning with Indian children in their private schools. They have been very lucky to learn with such children.

I regarded the series more about class and IQ differences as about country actually. I thought it very sad indeed that their final results were all so poor at the end. Had the school seen when they started that they would never pass it might have been kinder to get them a year's apprenticeship with a top Indian chef or hair dresser and realise exams are not the be all and end all.

I do feel some of the homes in the UK just don't make the children work hard enough. My English children work very hard indeed a bit like Doon children and then do well and that starts at age 4 or 5. It is a bit late for the programme to try to make it up so late in the day. Anyway I hope they all felt they got something out of it.

I certainly have ancestors I have seen them on censuses from the 1800s - one down the pit at 12, another at 14 - not a not life of course and our family got out of it basically by passing a lot of very hard exams and many thousands of hours of hard work when we'd rather be doing something else. My mothe had 52 first cousins in her pit village. She got out because she had a high IQ, passed for grammar school and became a teacher and married a student who became a doctor (whose own father left school at 12 due to illness).

we need to try to find out why Hull school boys get 2 grades lower than inner London comp immigrant children. The schools in London get more funding. Young good teachers often prefer to live in London to Hull and teh homes of the immigrant London children are all about hard work and the hours of study children put in at private schools I suppose.

Anyway well done to those boys and I think we are very lucky they were prepared to put themselves forward and give us a glimpse into their lives. i think you need to start working very hard indeed from about age 5 or 6 and even by age 3 if you don't hear many words at home you are already behind.