Do we do enough for our clever children? It’s a question that often puzzles us.
Schools are focused on ‘making you the best possible version of yourself’ and ‘achieving your potential’. Both these clichés actually mean getting the best possible results for the pupil and the school.
With the focus on SPI (subject progress index) per class, teachers know it is harder to succeed with top sets than with middling ones. The SPI is one of the many pieces of data that rule us. It means the level of progression a pupil has made in a subject since primary school compared with all the other children nationally who achieved the same primary- school result.
The reasons your class as a whole is likely to get a better SPI if they are a low set are various. Some pupils develop later than others, while recently arrived children with English as a second language will have gained more fluency in the language. These are the good reasons. The others are more problematic. You will have children who never come to school and are totally disengaged, whose SPI will be terrible.
Then you’ll have other children in the class who have plodded away for years and who, with a good teacher and patience, will significantly exceed their SPI.
The boy with the sweet smile I taught recently will be one of those. So will another girl in the set, whose level of resilience and determination has just seen her write an amazing criticism of an unseen poem.
When I get their results this summer, they will be balanced against the three persistent truants, the two who spend most of their time in the Enrichment Centre (for emotional support) and the one who genuinely just can’t hold any idea in his memory for more than half an hour.
The class will probably be in the red, not the green. But, as long as those who have worked hard come out dark green, I can live with the scarlet failure of the others.
So why is it hard for the clever ones to improve? And do we care as much? In the same way as every school is chasing after the 4s and 5s, we also want as many of the 8s and 9s as we can muster.
The 9s are impossible to teach, but I’d like to boast that I have in the past had more than my fair share of them. It is mathematically obvious that someone predicted a 7 has a smaller chance of going up three grades than someone predicted a 3 (there is no grade 10). But it is down to more than that.
Mahnoor Cheema has 34 GCSEs, 33 9s and one 8. In May, she took four A-levels and was awarded four A*s. She is taking 24 more A-levels over the next year, and will presumably continue to shine. In her spare time, she criticises state schools for not doing enough for children like her. She may have a point (she is studying for most of her A-levels at home and entering as a private candidate).
But, to be fair, there just aren’t many children like her and there is no chance that a state school with its large classes and its financial, recruitment and retention problems could really facilitate such ambition – nor should it be asked to do so.
Teachers have different attitudes to their top sets. They are often based on how much the teachers know and love their subject. Teach a top set Frankenstein and there is every reason to swerve off into The Ancient Mariner for a couple of lessons – but how many see the link or can be bothered? As E M Forster insists in Howards End, ‘Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted.’
And that is exactly what we should be doing with our clever pupils.
