Strike

[Martin]

In your opinion.

Well, of course - so long as you want to treat official reports over the past 40-odd years as 'my opinion', Martin! 

Which reports would these be Andy?  They aren't the official reports that have been coming from government.

[Martin]

There seems to be a slight contradiction between these two statements of yours Martin...

No contradiction Andrew. Choosing one particular age to decide if a child is clever or not is wrong - children develop at different rates at different ages. Also segregating the entire school population into two halves is a million miles away from providing special tuition for the especially gifted. 

What I was commenting on, in terms of special education for the especially gifted, was essentially the need to develop the potential of each child to the max.   I can see that especially gifted children would benefit from very specialised teaching - for example especially musically gifted children will need teachers with talents not necessarily available in every comprehensive school.  That might be an argument for a special state school a bit like a state version of Chethams.  The reason you might opt for a school for the gifted is logistical, if  you tried to implement it in the ordinary state school, these specialist teachers would be teaching classes of one and spending most of their day travelling.

And no, it is not just Andy's opinion that most comps tend not to encourage the gifted to rise to the best o their potential, but to sink to the median. I will happily grant you that this is not universal, but it is all too common - and there is plenty of documentary evidence to demonstrate this. I think it is improving now that the majority of comps DO stream the kids, rather than insisting on teaching mixed ability classes with the total thicko's in with the brainboxes (to be truly un-PC!), but it is still the case in far too many schools.

Indeed, streaming is the norm in core subjects in most comprehensive schools.  I think it's a reasonable approach. 

But what are these documents that you and Andy are referring to and why are they at such odds with the other documented evidence?  Children get better exam grades now than they ever did, more children end up getting degrees than ever before, the young population is better educated now than it has ever been.  Sure, the system has its failures, but as a proportion more children achieve better results than when we had grammar schools and secondary modern schools.

[AndyHB]

Which reports would these be Andy?  They aren't the official reports that have been coming from government.

Well, they were the ones that I was being asked to read as part of our in-service training programmes during the 1980s, 90s and noughties and which my various heads of departments informed us were governmental reports.  Perhaps they were part of some long-lasting and wide-ranging conspiracy?

[Martin]

Oh I see! These documents are ones that you can't produce. 

Certainly you will read reports in the Daily Mail and other such lie-sheets, that education is far less effective now than it was in the 'good old days', alongside calls to bring back the cane and reintroduce the death penalty.  But it doesn't seem to be the case if you look at, say, the GCSE examination statistics.  My own experience confirms that education has improved.  I have been favourably impressed with my children's comprehensive education - much better than my grammar school education.

[AndyHB]

Certainly you will read reports in the Daily Mail and other such lie-sheets, ...

Well, if you will read those rags, Martin, what do you expect.  I prefer things like the Times Ed. Supplement, the Economist, the Guardian/Independent/Times. 

... that education is far less effective now than it was in the 'good old days', ...

if this is what you think, why not say so rather than hiding your views behind pretentious posts like you've produced here?

But it doesn't seem to be the case if you look at, say, the GCSE examination statistics.  My own experience confirms that education has improved.  I have been favourably impressed with my children's comprehensive education - much better than my grammar school education.

Now, did you do GCSEs, Martin?  Or 'O'-levels?  Did you do modular courses with module-related exams?

You seem to equate 'better education' with 'uplifting the less academic', but they are two completely different issues.  Children at school today will do topics at age 11 that you and I were doing at 14 or 15, and topics we were doing at 11 when they are 14 or 15.  A science (physics) teacher of my acquaintance showed me an 'AS'-level syllabus where the students were dealing with material that he had done in his first year at university, alongside material that he and I had studied pre-'O'-level.

Anyone who tries to compare GCSEs with what came before them is comparing different things, and I think that this is where you seem to have a problem.  You like things to be black and white in terms of comparison, whereas the 'real' world isn't that simplistic.

Oh, re. materials I can't produce.  I have no idea whether any of the 80s and 90s material is online - and if it is, I'm not really sure where to look since I can't remember the report titles or authors (we usually read exec. summaries passed down the 'chain of command'.)  What you have to remember is that true comprehensive education is all about mixed-ability teaching across the board, and no British school has followed this since the latter part of the 20th century.  Selection (aka streaming) is now the norm (as I'm sure your children discovered), and pupils can move up and down the streams until about age 14, when exam requirements lay down externally-established limitations to such movement. 

[Martin]

You seem to equate 'better education' with 'uplifting the less academic', but they are two completely different issues.

I don't know where you get that from Andy, probably from another one of those documents you've read  , it certainly is not in any of my posts.

[AndyHB]

I don't know where you get that from Andy, probably from another one of those documents you've read  , it certainly is not in any of my posts.

But haven't all your posts been about the fact that if we got rid of private schools, rich parents would be forced to send their children to local state schools, and would therefore plough their monies into improving the teaching/facilities/extracurricula activities/ ... - thus providing a better education for all, and uplifting the less academic as a result?  Or have you begun to change your mind on that?

[AndrewF]

If you are going to have schools for specially gifted kids (which you agree is a logistical necessity) you have to select at some point which kids go to those schools and which do not. How is this compatible with your bald statement that selection at a given age is wrong? If it is wrong at one age (the age presumably that the school starts from) then surely it is wrong at any other age as well?
You also said: segregating the entire school population into two halves is a million miles away from providing special tuition for the especially gifted, (at the very least implying that the latter was OK but not the former) but then went on to say that this tuition could not logistically be provided other than in specialist schools - i e the option you said was not acceptable! You really can't have it both ways...
WRT the 'rising educational standard' - I do not believe that it is that much higher - yes, the number of GCSE's etc is rising, but that is for a combination of reasons, not least the fact that the exams are a small part of the final marks, that the kids are being given several chances at submitting the modular assessment papers, and that they are being better taught how to pass the exams (as opposed to being taught the knowledge). I also believe that actually the syllabus is easier in many subjects than when I was at school.
Yes, more people are getting degrees, but is that because they are better taught, or simply because they are not being told they are incapable of doing a degree? (i e if the same number of people had applied for uni (and there had been places for them) when I was at uni as there are now, would there have been the same number of graduates? (As another possible solution, what proportion of graduates now have degrees in 'soft' subjects compared to, say, 20 years ago?)
On that topic, is is actually sensible for some of these subjects to be 'degree' subjects? - would it be better for a plumber (say) to have City & Guilds qualification or a degree? I know which I would be more likely to employ!
I am not saying that the old system was better - simply that the comparison is much harder than you are suggesting, because so many of the parameters are completely different.

[Martin]

If you are going to have schools for specially gifted kids (which you agree is a logistical necessity) you have to select at some point which kids go to those schools and which do not. How is this compatible with your bald statement that selection at a given age is wrong?

Well firstly, just because you have schools for the exceptionally gifted it doesn't mean that selection for those schools must be done at any one age. But, secondly, to state the obvious, if one or two exceptionally gifted musicians are selected from a comprehensive school it doesn't mean that they are better than the pupils who are left, it simply means that they have a special gift in one particular area that, for obvious reasons, can be developed better with specialist tuition.  There will be other gifted children whose gift doesn't require such specialist teaching or equipment to properly develop, who will continue to be educated at the comprehensive, and there will be good all-rounders who will continue to be educated at the comprehensive school.  So it isn't a creaming off of the best, and it isn't based upon selection at any particular age.

Compare that with dividing the population into two, the top half and the bottom half, on the basis of an exam at the age of eleven and it is stating the bleedin' obvious that this is not, in any way, a similar thing.

This must be the place, second place in the human race,
down in the basement, now I know what she meant,
this is the hand that you never shook,
you never gave me the chance that I took.  Elvis Costello - Secondary Modern.

As regard to the rising pass marks in exams, yes there are other factors which affect the figures, but you cant have 24 years of rising pass marks without the education system having got better at its job.

I am not saying that the old system was better - simply that the comparison is much harder than you are suggesting, because so many of the parameters are completely different.

I'm glad you're not saying the old system was better, and I agree that there are factors which don't make comparison over time easy, but I think it would be very hard to argue that the system is worse than it was, and that you would find much more evidence to support the idea that it has improved over the years.

[Martin]

But haven't all your posts been about the fact that if we got rid of private schools, rich parents would be forced to send their children to local state schools, and would therefore plough their monies into improving the teaching/facilities/extracurricula activities/ ... - thus providing a better education for all, and uplifting the less academic as a result?  Or have you begun to change your mind on that?

No, all my posts haven't been about this. Did they teach you to read at your school Andy?

[AndyHB]

No, all my posts haven't been about this. Did they teach you to read at your school Andy?

Sorry Martin, you were clearly never taught about rhetorical questions at school, and that might explain, at least in part, why your children appear to have been taught better than you, giving you the impression that education as a whole is better now.   

[AndyHB]

So it isn't a creaming off of the best, and it isn't based upon selection at any particular age.

Except that it is just that.  A school has to take children from more or less a given age, in order to prepare them for the all-important exams (the results of which, after all, are the means by which the pupils are able to show how talented or gifted they are to future employers/financial backers).  Otherwise, we just let the cream rise of their own accord, as per folk like Richard Branson and Alan Sugar.

As regard to the rising pass marks in exams, yes there are other factors which affect the figures, but you cant have 24 years of rising pass marks without the education system having got better at its job.

If the system was the same now as it was 30 or 40 years ago, this would be a valid comment, Martin: but it isn't.  Not only is the exam system completely different, but the social and technological context in which the education takes place is completely different.  Remember that technology has developed further in the last 50 or 60 years than it during the previous 5 to 600 years.  it is now the norm for pupils to take calculators into exams, and to have a selection of formulae printed on the question papers for them to choose from - both things that didn't happen when I did Maths or Science exams at school.

Late-20th and early-21st century education is a completely different animal to mid-20th century education - even if it is organised by largely the same legislation as the earlier animal.

...and that you would find much more evidence to support the idea that it has improved over the years.

Even the teaching unions and the Labour Party have ditched this argument, Martin.  Even they have acknowledged that 'improvement' is a meaningless word in this context.  Educationalists now talk about 'different' when discussing the issue.

[Martin]

No, all my posts haven't been about this. Did they teach you to read at your school Andy?

Sorry Martin, you were clearly never taught about rhetorical questions at school, and that might explain, at least in part, why your children appear to have been taught better than you, giving you the impression that education as a whole is better now.   

You started by saying:

You seem to equate 'better education' with 'uplifting the less academic', but they are two completely different issues.

I responded that you had not got this from my posts. (for example it can't have escaped you that a significant number of my posts on this thread have been about schooling to maximise the potential of the exceptionally gifted, who are certainly not 'the less academically gifted').  Personally I think you had written your post above, with very little thought to its accuracy, in order to write a jibe rather than it being anything you truly believe.

That's probably why you want to insist that the following question was rhetorical  - you didn't want an answer because you wanted to be able to get away with mis-characterising someone else's argument without  comeback. Well sorry to burst your bubble Andy, you've been found out again.

[Martin]

So it isn't a creaming off of the best, and it isn't based upon selection at any particular age.

Except that it is just that.  A school has to take children from more or less a given age, in order to prepare them for the all-important exams (the results of which, after all, are the means by which the pupils are able to show how talented or gifted they are to future employers/financial backers).  Otherwise, we just let the cream rise of their own accord, as per folk like Richard Branson and Alan Sugar.

I'm not saying that music wouldn't be taught in ordinary schools Andy! I would expect comprehensives to provide great education to GCSE level in music. So ALL schools would prepare children for their exams and ALL schools would teach the core syllabus.  But if you had a child prodigy cellist or violinist, the music teacher at the comprehensive would probably not suffice, a child who showed fantastic aptitude in such an instrument might move to a specialist school at the stage they were identified as such.  They would still be able to study for the same exams that they were studing for at the comprehensive, though, of course,  they might have to drop non-core subjects.  They'd probably fly through their GCSE music exam, and also take some high graded examinations in the Cello or Violin (which they can take at any time they're ready for it).   

If the system was the same now as it was 30 or 40 years ago, this would be a valid comment, Martin: but it isn't.  Not only is the exam system completely different, but the social and technological context in which the education takes place is completely different.

You're right that much has changed. Remember I was making my argument against the lament that Grammar Schooling had been abolished and that the current system was poorer than the old Grammar Schools and Secondary moderns.  If it's impossible to make comparisons, then it is equally impossible for the authors of the supposed articles you were referring to.   So you shoot your own argument down as usual. 

[AndrewF]

It just doesn't work that way Martin. If they are not at the specialist school from the word go they loose critical time in that speciality, as you well know. Furthermore it is far harder to change schools half way through, as the different schools will use different examining boards with different syllabi - the exception to this clearly being at the start of 2-year exam courses.
Frankly though, we are not going to agree about the best way forward so I do not propose to continue with this argument!