As a child who started slow and only came into my own after school, I have always been determined to help slow starting students find their feet as quickly as possible. It is my belief that the classroom teachers can turn the fortunes of a slow starting student around.
This belief however, is not supported by the data:
Three-quarters of children in England who make a slow start in the “Three Rs” at primary school fail to catch up by the time they leave, data shows.
And more than a third (39%) of pupils who make a bright start are no longer reaching advanced levels when they leave.
The government’s school league tables data also shows 9% of primary schools do not meet its floor standards.
Overall 74% of pupils met the required levels in English and maths.
Some of those kids that are allowed to fall through the cracks are victims of poor teaching. Often the slow start comes about because the learning style of the student differs to the way the information is conveyed by the teacher.
I think it’s a major cop-out to let the slow starters continue on their merry way without giving them the intervention they so desperately need.
Tags: Child Development, Education, England, life, maths, Nick Gibb, Parenting, Students, Three R's
Topical Teaching 
December 16, 2011 at 6:24 am |
My belief is that the bell curve is the greatest load of codswallop ever foisted on the educational community. The trouble is that so many people in that community accept it as though it were holy writ. I spent most of my formal education years with the feeling that I hadn’t all the pieces in the jigsaw and that others seemed to know more than me. The other sensation I experienced was akin to still playing Ludo when everyone else was playing Monopoly. Before I finished playing Monopoly everyone else was playing chess. What I now understand is that the whole thing is governed by totalitarian curricula that take no account of the needs of individual students. This being the case teachers are forced to cater to the average child, which only exists as a figment of the imagination of the statistician. Furthermore I was not the only child growing up with those same feelings. What I realise now is that while I was trying to digest the educational diet I was fed and to make sense of the data I was gaining, the totalitarian machine had moved on. I see this happening in schools today with not just a few “slow” students missing out, but whole cohorts, because sufficient time is allowed for neither consolidation of new concepts nor for “smelling the roses” along the way. Much of my teaching career has been spent working with children who had been labelled as “mildly intellectually disabled”. I too have always experienced an empathy with children that appear to be slow. In one grade 6 class there was a girl who seemed to me to be a bright child. Yet when the school formed a new grade 6 class, by removing the “slow” students from grades 5 and 6 to form an additional class, this child was included in the “slow” group. After a while it became apparent to me that she was, indeed quite bright but that she suffered from a visual impairment which nobody had recognised. After I referred her to the Royal Blind Society she was provided with visual aids to read books and see the chalkboard. More than 20 years later this student tracked me down on Facebook to thank me. She has children of her own now who thankfully have normal vision and she has completed training as an accountant and has found employment in that field. For these reasons, and more, I have developed a detestation of totalitarianism in any shape or form, especially in the field of education.
December 18, 2011 at 1:46 am |
This topic will have me frothing at the mouth in no time. I think it’s bizarre that many of the kids I know are getting some kind of special education service. When that many children need remedial help, maybe there’s something wrong with how they’re being taught. How about catering to different learning styles (visual, auditory, kinesthetic, etc.) and grouping kids by that designation?
I totally agree with John’s comment above about how not enough time is permitted to fully absorb a topic before they move on to the next, all in anticipation of the big state-wide test. A resource room teacher I know had complained about the very same thing.