ALL KIDS ARE NOT EQUAL: HOW DISTRESSING!

Reality has got too much to ignore in England

A secondary school in Hampshire is to become the first state school in England to allocate all children to lessons by ability rather than age. From September, pupils at Bridgemary School, in Gosport, will be taught in mixed-age classes in a radical initiative aimed at stretching the most able and helping pupils who have fallen behind. The experiment abandons the decades-old convention of teaching in age groups and is being closely watched by the local authority, the Office for Standards in Education and other schools.

Under the plan, which signals that streaming by ability is back in favour with head teachers, bright 12-year-olds will be encouraged to begin GCSE or even A-level courses with older pupils. Conversely, 14- or 15-year-olds with literacy or numeracy problems will share classes with pupils who have just transferred from primary school.

Cheryl Heron, the head teacher, said the radical departure was necessary to raise standards because most pupils at the school fail to gain five good GCSEs. "This is a challenging school in a deprived area," she said. "We need to do something about raising standards and to do that, we need to try something different. About a quarter of children are getting five A* to C GCSEs but that is not good enough. We need to offer these children individual curriculums in smaller groups. We have children here who are capable of doing A-level work but we also have pupils who still struggle with the basics. Their ability is not necessarily age-related. Some are bored because they are not being challenged in classes with their own age group, while others are turning off school because their lessons are too difficult for them. The normal way of doing things is not getting the most out of children."

Pupils who are currently in year groups will be allocated to one of five levels, depending on their ability in each subject. All pupils will take accredited academic or vocational qualifications, whatever their level. Ability is assessed by results in national tests taken at age 11, teacher judgments and children's performance in tests which the school carries out when they join. Termly assessments of the classes, which will have 20 pupils each rather than the current average of 28, will be carried out to gauge whether children should be moved up or down in various subjects.

Mrs Heron said the school, which has 1,100 pupils, had tested the plan when it transformed traditional tutor groups into mixed age "learning groups". "We found there were no problems with having older and younger children together. In fact, we were surprised about how well they bonded and learnt together," said the head, who was described by Ofsted as an "excellent leader who was driving the school forward".

The school's plan takes streaming to a new level and is part of the resurgence in support for differentiating by ability, once condemned as anti-comprehensive. Many schools had moved to mixed-ability classes because it was claimed they would help less able pupils by removing the stigma of being in the lowest set and encourage them to aim for the standards achieved by more able classmates. As schools at the bottom of the league tables have struggled to raise standards, however, a number have returned to streaming in some or all classes. It is estimated that 60 per cent of secondaries now employ some form of streaming.

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WHO CARES WHAT SORT OF BUILDINGS A GOVERNMENT SCHOOL USES?

The Leftist government of the Australian State of New South Wales certainly doesn't care at all. No wonder 40% of Australian teenaged students go to private schools

Almost 16 months after their school was ravaged by fire, students from a Sydney primary school are still having lessons in makeshift classrooms while they wait for repair work to start. Parents are outraged at what they say is an unacceptable delay in rebuilding Carlingford Public School, gutted after an arson attack in December 2003. The fire was one of 77 blazes in NSW schools in 2003-04, causing more than $26 million in damage. The cost of repairing Carlingford Public has been estimated at $2.5 million, a small fraction of the capital works backlog in NSW schools.

While the NSW auditor-general revealed in November a maintenance backlog of more than $115 million in the state's public schools, the Department of Education does not keep figures for capital works projects that have not been approved or submitted.

Opposition education spokesman Jillian Skinner said anecdotal evidence suggested the backlog of capital works projects was "hideously severe", adding that buildings were "falling down and need to be replaced".

The 310 students at Carlingford are housed in demountable classrooms, and temporary rooms have been set up for the library, hall, canteen, staff room and administration. Adding insult to injury, 17 of the school's new computers, bought to replace those damaged in the fire, were stolen two weeks ago from one of the demountable classrooms which was inadequately secured.

Carlingford Public's Parents and Citizens Association president James Vianellos said the temporary classrooms had created a security issue at the school, and the appearance of the blackened building had damaged enrolment numbers. "The building is quite an eyesore," he said. "We had people last year who pulled their kids out of the school because they believed it couldn't function and wasn't going to be an adequate educational institution for their children."

A spokesman for Education Minister Carmel Tebbutt said tenders for the rebuilding of Carlingford Public would be put out next month, and he expected work to begin in early July.

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

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