Bright children from low-income homes lose cognitive edge in early secondary school

11 comments

1. Yeah we get depressed when we transition from a centre of learning where putting your hand up and answering questions is a good thing, where learning is the point.

   To a place where only social standing matters, where Intelegence and eagerness is a negative quality.

   Trapped in a world we don’t understand, that we can’t figure out, bullied and haranged, we lose the will to stay intelligent. Showing it brings mockery.

   It gets beaten out of you.

2. The article says secondary school but doesn’t say whether any children went to a grammar school or had a scholarship for a private school.

3. Absolutely, the comprhensive schooling system has been a disaster.

   I’ve seen far too many bright working class kids essentially ‘scythed down’ by the British class system. Classism is the worst form of discrimination in the UK and completely ignored.

4. That’s why we need to bring grammars back ( and have fair testing that cant be easily taught by tutors). I went to grammar a year late and it was a breath of fresh air after an uninspiring middle school. All the other children wanted to learn.

5. Anyone who thinks bringing grammar schools back will solve this issue without introducing a ton of other issues that are equally undesirable is living in a dream world.

6. Well I’m sure the extra influx of students that can no longer afford private education flooding into the system with help even more.

7. It’s not only the bright kids. Any kid that goes to a private school has a substantial statistical advantage across the many things. Better chances to get a good teacher, smaller classrooms, better materials. Better chance at socialising with sensible kids and less chance to get bullied. Better access to healthy food and hobbies.

   People pretending it’s more or less all equal across education are delusional. The difference is not exactly a slum vs paradise but advantage is substantial and it will stagger over the years.

8. This somewhat tracks with me.
   I was 1 of those kids that was really bright, I was ahead of my peers by a few years. And then by early secondary school that went down hill fast. When I started secondary school I was getting bullied because I tried at school and was seen as the “weird” kid. The bullying was so bad that I couldnt learn at all and the school didnt care, they only cared when I snapped and hit the bullies. So by the time I finished secondary school my GCSE grades were absolutely awful. And that had a huge knock on effect, I stopped seeing the point in anything I actually became a shut-in(hermit/hikikomori) until I was 26.

   But part of it was my neurodiversity which I didnt find out about until 5 years ago. So while I had some natural learning “talent” it was never nurtured and I was essentially forgotten about.

   For some reason our secondary schools have a huge problem with anti-intellectualism where if you were intelligent or tried to do well at school like doing your homework etc then you are going to be picked on and bullied for it. And the teachers are not going to care because they’re too busy trying to stop the bullies from disrupting the entire class and teach at the same time, so the victims of it all get forgotten.

   I dont think grammar schools would help, because you’ll be consigning everyone else who didnt get into a grammar school to the anti-intellectualism that runs rife. What would be better is to address the anti-intellectualism in schools directly but that would also require working out why some people are like that and to address that.

9. Do we really want the poors getting educated and running things tho?

   /s

10. That’s why we need grammar schools. It’s a more academic environment for bright children from low income homes.

11. As a primary educator who teaches Year 6, I have taught some fairly bright boys (interestingly, it’s mainly boys) from very disadvantaged backgrounds — they are FSM and PP children. I worked very hard, and they worked very hard for me — I built a strong rapport with them. They ended up achieving very good SATs scores, and I’m now told (because I live locally and run into the parents) that they are in the top sets at their secondary school.

    I went to the same secondary school as them (a rough state one), and I prepared them in advance for the fact that being intelligent might not be seen as a good thing among other kids there — but that they needed to IGNORE it. I’m so pleased they’re still flourishing. A lot of these boys had older siblings who were permanently excluded or didn’t pass their GCSEs at the same school, and were initially also indoctrinated with this mentality -before I managed to turn things around. I do think this is more the exception than the rule, though.

    It helps that I’m fairly young and went to the same secondary school, so I could empathise with them about what it was going to be like there.

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