BBC Report

[Guest55]

The most divisive thing in this country is the private school system; abolish them and all schools will improve. Why wil they improve, you say?

Well when the politicians and the wealthy will be forced to use the state system then more money will 'suddenly' become available.

[JSN]

In countries where there is no selection, there don't tend to be many private schools either - our system is a hangover from the very rigid class system we have had over time and which we seem keen to perpetuate.

I guess that you may be referring to the Finnish model (which I think does have some degree of selection at age 14, but I could be wrong) and have very different demographics to the UK. Such a system would never work in this country. How many Finnish schools do you know that have inner city schools that speak up to 100 different languages?

The dichotomy between our class ridden society has evolved since 1066 and I doubt we would ever be able to change that. We are where we are. The problem I have, with so called educationalists, is that they have wonderful, Eutopian theories about education with little or no regard to the real world.


Finland has always had a more equalitarian society than us and education is highly valued amongst all subsets, which is exactly my point, that maybe we need to concentrate on parents of low attaining children, particularly white British, who are now doing the least well in terms of social mobility and educational attainment.

The Chinese and, to some extent, the Indian communities, seem to do quite well despite their social economic backgrounds and there must be a very good reason for this and my contention is that this is due to the fact that education is highly valued amongst this subset.

[southbucks3]

I would never for one moment suggest that social mobility and educational attainment are not important, and should be accessible. However (and I know that this is an educational site of parents of high achievers) I do feel that skill trades, hard honest graft, and service trades are all important, should never be disparaged and never considered to be chosen by the educationally failed in desperation, but have a whole selection process of their own. Eg. Could you be a tree surgeon? Could you be affable and polite 7 hours a day serving customers, or still have a smile on your face, and a fit healthy body after hurling 200 bins around?
Perhaps we should also learn to accept that some of our children will simply never be suited to white collar employment and would be miserable in life if they end up trying, or worse always seeking the unobtainable.
What I am trying to say is, ALL skills should be considered and developed wherever possible. There was a big hoo ha about this in the spring, with the rha and Alan tichmarsh referring to gardening careers being disregarded by teenagers, due to the public perceiving them as being too lowly. Therefore the trainee vacancies are becoming more and more unskilled, badly trained, and low paid, rather than the respected career it used to be.

[JSN]

no one here would disagree with you
but every time a really bright child comes to my clinic and I consider the life chances of that child (from what ever background ) if their parents have no realistic aspirations for their very bright child I weep, seriously I'm not joking.
and the idea of banning all private schools may sound good but is "pie in the sky" thinking, I am not even a native to this country but I think I understand this country better than that, lets change what we can and be pragmatic about things , we have to start somewhere!

[Tinkers]

The most divisive thing in this country is the private school system; abolish them and all schools will improve. Why wil they improve, you say?

Well when the politicians and the wealthy will be forced to use the state system then more money will 'suddenly' become available.

Very true I feel, just not going to happen though.

[southbucks3]

no one here would disagree with you
but every time a really bright child comes to my clinic and I consider the life chances of that child (from what ever background ) if their parents have no realistic aspirations for their very bright child I weep, seriously I'm not joking.!

Well in those cases, and I am aware of some children who thankfully did not miss their opportunity, then great teachers recognising where bright children need help and appropriate school to home communication measures should be firmly in place. So we are back to teacher training, or even creating positions specifically to deal with the problem. Parenting classes assume the parent will/can/wants to/cares enough to attended.

[Amber]

In countries where there is no selection, there don't tend to be many private schools either - our system is a hangover from the very rigid class system we have had over time and which we seem keen to perpetuate.

I guess that you may be referring to the Finnish model (which I think does have some degree of selection at age 14, but I could be wrong) and have very different demographics to the UK. Such a system would never work in this country. How many Finnish schools do you know that have inner city schools that speak up to 100 different languages? .

I know the Finnish system very well indeed; but I was not especially referring to it. Almost no other country goes in for selective education, especially at a young age. No one else shares the English obsession with differentiated learning. Including, as it happens, the Asian ones which you mention. They teach all their children together in mixed ability classes and expect all children to achieve highly. Many other factors are at play in both Finland and China, and no one (except a politician) would be naive enough to attempt to transfer the successful features of one system to a country with an entirely different culture. I was only attempting to counter your assertion that the removal of selection would lead to a rise in private schooling. It does not follow at all.

I suppose, however, that as a 'so-called educationalist', which perhaps I am, my 'theories' will be discounted as Utopian and having no regard for the real world.

[mystery]

Yes, and if differentiation, which schools of all types in England do currently seem to be obsessed with, is not a good thing abolishing private schools or piling in more money to state schools would result in little or no improvement.

Where did the notion of "differentiation" appear from and how did it catch hold so firmly and rigidly in some classrooms in more recent years? These trite notions of lessons with three way differentiation for below average, average and above average seem to have sprung up in relatively recent years with a view that they have to be done this way to get ofsted good and outstanding. I have never seen an ofsted document that insists on this. I rather feel that much of gove's thinking is not well thought out either but that this is something he is trying to stamp out in its more ludicrous forms.

I witness some of the problems it can cause, if applied foolishly, with "lower ability" children I work with and my own children on a regular basis. False ceilings on learning are needlessly placed on what children can be taught/learn.

[southbucks3]

The differentiation is a problem, unquestionably, having a child who is not as academically consistent, has allowed me to see this first hand. He was dropped into "the easier set" for maths and spelling after a supply teacher took over maternity leave during year 3, he is quiet and shy, she was loud and shouting, and bad at her job, and I was not alone in thinking so.
He went up to year 4 armed with some dodgy teacher assessments, on his first parents evening in October his new teacher told us he had spent ages reviewing ds2' s grades, as he could not work out how he had gone up 2 sub levels in two months, in everything! Simply, he had been put back where he belonged, bottom of the harder set, and it made him focus. He is now year 5 and happily excelling at some work, coping with some and bombing at some, which is ok, because he can ask me, or his friends for help, or as he gets braver ask his teacher, which is slowly happening but never having the opportunity to be vexed, really, clearly, did not work for him.
I also regularly helped with the low learning ability kids a few years ago in maths, 3 times a week, taking them off for a bit of sb 3. Two of those kids were as sharp as blades, but needed super gluing down and taught that privilege did not mean you could be disruptive and rude, given the same work as the others they would have coped easily if there has been no behavioural issues, as it was they (attempted )to behave intolerably and disturb the other 3, who genuinely needed clarification. As I am not a teacher I could only impress my opinion, and also spent a lot of time telling them they were very bright and needed to prove it. One of the two was tutored mercilessly and got into the same gs as my ds1 (even though he remained low ability at primary school and left sporting level 3 sats ) the other now attends private school. I did feel the lower ability end was being used as a dumping ground in this case, and that was a shame, as I managed to help two of the others get up a few levels, and the fifth changed to a private school for year 5 which had specialist provisions for his needs.

So that is my somewhat limited experience of why I too consider "setting" young children to be a nonsense.

[mystery]

Yes you give some similar examples to situations I have seen. Another variation on this is administering some kind of class-wide test and then using this in a scientific-looking fashion to put children in different groups. The different children are then given different material (e.g. Maths, spellings, home reading books, guided reading books, phonics teaching etc) depending on which group they are in.

It looks "great" on paper but in many of the situations I have witnessed there has been no fit between the test and the work subsequently assigned, even for a child whose performance in the test was representative of their everyday performance. This can mean a disservice to all the groups, not just the bottom one. In more than one of these situations i have seen, when asked by a parent why the child is not getting work which moves them on the response is the child is in the right group - here are the test results to prove it.

This of course is not entirely a problem of differentiation alone, as without differentiation a minority of teachers struggle at times to pitch the level of work at the "moving on" level. However, with the pressure to produce 3 or 5 different sets of work, or whatever the headteacher wants, this difficulty ( one of the hardest bits of teaching a large class) is compounded.

I do think however that some of the requirements to have three or more groups doing different work in primary classrooms in maths, science, reading, writing, spag, phonics etc has become the stuff of myth and legend in primary classrooms. The theory is, as long as children are moving forward at a good rate, ofsted should not be dictating exactly how this is done. Maybe there are some inspection teams that can't see beyond their own pet ways of doing things. It is a brave teacher these days though that does not do exactly what the head asks. Even before the existence of performance related pay.