Gin & Tonic
I must admit that a Gordon’s & Tonic is one of my favourite drinks. So to end up at a G&T evening with not a hint of G or T was slightly disappointing.
I’m still not entirely sure what I think of the whole Gifted and Talented thing anyway. From the DCSF website (missing words and all):
Gifted and talented learners are defined those who have one or more abilities developed to a level significantly ahead of their year group (or with the potential to develop those abilities).
Gifted describes learners who have the ability to excel academically in one or more subjects such as English, drama, technology;
Talented describes learners who have the ability to excel in practical skills such as sport, leadership, artistic performance, or in an applied skill.
Our policy starts from the expectation that there are gifted and talented learners in every year group in every school. It is up to each school to decide on the proportion of their population who are gifted and talented. Since we believe that ability is evenly distributed throughout the population, a school’s gifted and talented pupils should be broadly representative of its whole school population.
As far as I understand it, at Anna’s school, in any year group, the pupils are put on the G&T register when they are achieving in the top 10% for that subject.
So, in actual fact, you don’t need to be gifted or talented at all, just in a year group full of dunces, and you’d be on the register. Or, worse still, you could be completely gifted or talented in a subject, but not performing to the best of your abilities in school for whatever reason, and therefore NOT be on the register, and fall under the radar. So, to some extent, I feel that the whole thing is a farce.
Not entirely sure how the primary school identification process works, and I know there are less subjects involved, but they do still have a register (of course, so that they can claim the money!).
Having said that in skeptic mode, of course then as a parent, I’m fairly pleased that my kids are all on the register for different things, doing well and making the most of their schooling, and therefore occasionally get additional opportunities as a result.
Last night was a special evening (invitation only, to those 25 kids in each year group with the most G&T nominations. Surely they’re not the ones who need inspiring? that’s another essay entirely!) which showcased some of the G&T work at Anna’s secondary school. There were awards in various subject areas, a couple of performances (including this all over again from Anna), and too many speeches. One very long one was by the co-ordinator of the equivalent of G&T at the 6th form college – perhaps very interesting to the current Year 10 & 11s, but fairly irrelevant to all the KS3 kids who were there, really.
Michael Caines, the main speaker, was brilliant, but unfortunately he spoke last, and didn’t begin talking until ten minutes after the whole event was meant to end, so I must confess that by that time we just wanted the evening to finish! Had he cooked for us all at the same time as speaking I might have paid more attention, as we were starving by that point!
We were fairly impressed by the young lad receiving the Design & Technology award who presented Michael Caines with a cake that he’d made – I’d never dare to give a chef anything that I’d cooked!
Anyway, whatever I do or don’t think of the gifted and talented scheme in theory, I was impressed by some of the things we saw and heard, was again pleased generally with the feel of the school and the way the staff were supporting the pupils. Also good to see older pupils return to talk about college/current Y11s speaking about how they’ve valued their time at the school.
On a personal note still slightly torn between seeing the value in keeping my talented kids in the comprehensive system (given that they’ve chosen and are enjoying school), yet also wondering if their talents would be even better developed elsewhere. So many factors play a part in this, don’t they? I guess it will, more than likely, remain a tension – and perhaps a good one. Who knows.
July 17th, 2009 at 8:49
just think what could become of them if you sent them to a posh school. You could always come to uni for a week and see how horrible some of those kids are. I don’t think the local comprehensives are so bad, at least they teach the kids to be independent learners rather than spoon feeding them to get the results needed to keep the special relationships with universities… (I am not cynical at all about this either …)
July 17th, 2009 at 9:08
The irony is that children who are very Gifted (those in the top 1% of the population, for example), schools can’t or don’t offer what they need. A friend has a son who was doing university-level maths when he was eight years old – with the best will in the world, no primary school was ever going to provide what he needed. The only consequence of his ability was that he was bullied – both by his own class-mates, and by those in the year above, because they resented the fact that he spent some time in their class. I know that you don’t rely on the school system to provide, for example, music lessons for your kids – and a couple I’ve recently met, both of whom are professional musicians (orchestral) said to me that they pay for private lessons, rather than allowing their children to learn instruments in school, because “we’re fussy”. So whether it’s maths or music (and I daresay the same holds true of art or sport or cooking), those who are right at the top of the scale have to look outside schools for what they need.
July 17th, 2009 at 18:19
Nice to read a balanced assessment of this ‘interesting’ aspect of UK schooling … and from a parent too! For a one-time home-schooler it must be a cause to pause and reflect on alternative education choices. Ah, the responsibility of parenting
July 19th, 2009 at 23:34
How does Anna feel about it?
July 20th, 2009 at 6:00
Don’t think she cares about the whole thing, other than the music …