How Would You Think Different ? Council To Plug £30mil Hole
-
Posts
-
@thewayneinspain 7073 wrote:
should be sacked for misuse of public money.
If the full council were given the right to scrutinise every quote & invoice over 1k..
Both of you are quite right in identifying these type of endemic types of waste. It wouldn’t happen in the private sector
Alunh;7081 wrote:I’m not sure why you’ve brought the ‘principle of a comprehensive system’ into this discussion because I haven’t challenged this ‘principle’ (whatever that might be). Across the UK there are Comprehensives that are non-selective but choose to set by ability in the different subjects. There are others who employ the Mixed ability approach. Ofsted are not criticising Comprehensives in this report merely the non setting approach. They criticise the habit of teaching to a notional middle in a large Mixed ability group and the failure to actually advantage either the weaker or stronger students. You appear to have a mindset on this question but read the report. It’s fascinatingI’m always open to reading something where is some form of evidence. Have you a link.
I think there is a big difference between setting in comprehensive and grammar schools. At least in setting kids are not consigned to an almost certain path in life.
The problem with setting is that in my opinion it cuts feedback, evaluation and teaching instruction to a minimum, but i would agree that the current system in place in some wrexham schools is even less adequate on those fronts.
@thewayneinspain 7088 wrote:
I’m always open to reading something where is some form of evidence. Have you a link.
I think there is a big difference between setting in comprehensive and grammar schools. At least in setting kids are not consigned to an almost certain path in life.
The problem with setting is that in my opinion it cuts feedback, evaluation and teaching instruction to a minimum, but i would agree that the current system in place in some wrexham schools is even less adequate on those fronts.
Read the Ofsted Report. Have a look at the Gove findings. Read any number of Estyn Reports. Use your intelligence.
Also what has setting got to do with feedback?
What has setting got to do with evaluation and teaching instruction? Indeed what do you mean by these?You seem to have drawn a conclusion about the Grammar schools in that they selected children at 11 to go into them, stigmatised those who did not and cast people’s destiny in stone. You have concluded that this is wrong, unfair, immoral. I applaud your instincts though, whilst agreeing with the sentiment, I do think that you need to look at this more in the round than you do.
Placing children into a Comprehensive isn’t the problem. Children from all social backgrounds can mix in the corridors, the playground and there is no stigmatisation.
Organising the classes into Mixed ability IS the problem. Imagine 30-40 Year 7 children being taught my subject, History, in a classroom all together. In that class there are children whose reading ages will run from 7 or 8 to 15 or 16. How do you propose that the teacher teaches a lesson.
Option 1……..the teacher decides to forget teaching from the front and prepares tailored worksheets for each student. Teacher moves around checking the different students are completing tasks.
Option 2……..the teacher attempts to talk to the class and decides to try and use a language that all can follow….the so called notional middle. The students then do some work based on the lesson presented.
Option 3…….the teacher decides to teach to parts of the class on a rota basis giving different work presentations to different abilities in different lessons.
Option 4…. a mixture of the above
This is chaos. Read Ofsted. Teachers are completely bemused by this situation. Many pursue Option 2 because they think that they ought to be ‘teaching’ (talking with knowledge to the class). This has been identified as the problem of teaching to the notional middle. The weaker students are lost, the top 5-10% are insulted by the level of presentation. The Ofsted report actually argued that bright students are as betrayed as not so bright and that there was evidence that teachers did not even know who was bright.
Mixed ability classes don’t work and the Ofsted report explains why.
SADLY…..it is this crap that is being served up in Wrexham Schools and when Estyn comes back with Report after Report, most of the points made relate to problems that are explained by the Ofsted Report. What our dogmatic council then do is throw out another Senior management team (or they move on) and try to make the same failed approach work yet again. It doesn’t, can’t and is holding this town back.
Oh and I neglected to say……Option 1 in my last post is the recommended route for Mixed ability. Mixed ability is premised on a child centred approach with the student working at his/her own pace.
If you ever want to see the actual consequence of this over a year, don’t. Students working in a classroom at their own pace on different bits of work……it doesn’t happen. Except for the very very most gifted teachers or where there are small classes, the whole thing descends into……lack of tempo, lack of learning, lack of dynamic…….
Oh and when you see these reports about social mobility and how it’s never been worse….blame yourself. The facts have been clear on Mixed ability for years. The lessons are hopeless, the working class kid (with a brain) who needed tempo, teacher, etc sits devoid of the skill set to advance at pace. The middle class kid goes home and mummy and daddy compensate for school. By 18 bright working class kids that would have shone……don’t
I distinctly remember choosing Physics as one of my ‘options’, back in the day. Unfortunately, there were not too many who chose Physics in that particular option, so we ended up in one large class with mixed abilities.
Now I used to enjoy Physics and I was quite good at it but I ended up failing my GCSE with a D. There were questions on the exam that I don’t recall covering during our lessons. I admit that I could have spent more time revising for the exam but you can’t really revise what you have not been taught.
You simply can’t lump 30+ kids together with such a range of ability (and willingness to learn) and expect the results to be as good as they would be if they were broken down.
We were in 3 or 4 sets, according to ability (in a Wrexham comprehensive). Can’t imagine it being done any other way. For example, if you put those in set 1 & 3 doing maths together, there would have been chaos, a lot of straining of patience with both pupils and teacher!
@Alunh 7107 wrote:
Imagine it, because that’s what our local schools still do and have done for years
Anyone know who’s bright idea it was to change from sets to mixed ? If they still work in education they should be fired.
Must have happened in the last 20 years, since I left.
Alunh
Think you have misinterpreted what i’m trying to say.
I mean the kids aren’t getting enough feedback on day to day terms. They are told they are doing something wrong, but not enough of them are getting enough time to be told how to how to do something correctly.
i think my ilk are not to blame, because the first thing they would be saying is you need more teachers and more classroom assistants not ‘pupil centred learning’ i.e. here’s your textbook go and study at home.
You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
