So you want to know how to teach kids much smarter than you?

I have just finished reading a book. Hoorah!  My parents would be so proud! All that university education has finally paid off. The book is called 'Educating the More Able Student: What Works and Why' by Martin Stephen & Ian Warwick.  What is it about? Well, that is best summed up in the Authors' Foreword

"This book attempts, in W.B. Yeats's phrase, to 'cast a cold eye' across some of the wishful thinking and comfortable assumptions, perhaps even gullible acceptances, casual myths and misleading stereotyping that have led educators away from the process of teaching and  learning in all its real world complexity."

Now, before I go on I need to fess up to something. Ian Warwick is a mate. We spent nearly three years working together in the early noughties, got on like a house on fire and have stayed - intermittently - in touch over the years. Many afternoons in pubs drinking too much red wine, arguing about films and giggling a fair bit would sum up our friendship. We also discovered - somewhat randomly - that my sister went to university with his wife. So you need to read what follows in that context. I'm talking about a book co-written by a friend of mine.

So a book on teaching smart kids? Sounds as dull as, right? Wrong. If you are concerned that this book is nothing more than a tsunami of #edubabble awash with acronyms and buzzwords then don't be. It is a cogent, coherent analysis written in plain English so you don't need to be a teacher or work in education to understand the examples that illustrate some of the well-observed conclusions. If you have more than passing interest in our education system and how it can be improved then pick up copy. At the very least, it will give you enough ammunition to scare your kids' teacher witless at the next parents evening.

Warwick & Stephen raise some live issues in this book.  They tackle the ongoing culture war between the state and independent sector with a refreshing pragmatism and frankness.  They analyse the need for conformity in schools and how that is detrimental to a more able child.  They explore global examples of excellence in teaching for the gifted and lament on why they are only 'fires in the darkness'.  Finally, they outline a clear way forward for education in the UK. I just hope someone more powerful and influential than me reads it and listens.

Stephen is steeped in the independent sector - a former Master of St Paul's - whilst Warwick has spent his life teaching in the state sector. So on that basis, the fact that they agree that the constant bellyaching about independent schools is completely missing the point is worth noting:

  "For far too long, the response to such inequalities has been to blame the independent and grammar schools sectors for creaming off the best students. It is important to point out the obvious. They don't. They may well have their unfair share of the most able but they don't have a monopoly … The selective school may collect the precious metal. Every school in the world owns the land that has such metal in it."

Bingo! Instead of fretting over whether or not these type of institutions should or should not take the most able kids why aren't we doing more for the huge number of able kids who are in non-selective state schools but are being let down? Why aren't they being pushed? Why are they failing to achieve their potential? They make a hugely valid point the 5 A* - C benchmark of educational success in the UK " … is not going to demand a great deal of the most able." If we don't push them why would they push themselves?

Later in the book, they make the interesting comparison between and army and a school:

"Though they would be the last to admit it, there is a link between schools and armies.  Armies need their soldiers to do everything at the same time and in the same way, and dress them up in uniform to emphasize the need for conformity and loyalty to the group as a more important asset to simple individuality. With the best will in the world, schools need children to behave en masse, hence assemblies and the encouragement of competitive loyalty to one's schools be it in football or in debating."

This resonates with me.  It is the same reason why technology has failed to take hold in education the way it has in other professions. Schools - like the military - are hierarchies with the head teachers at the apex. Beneath that is the senior leadership, then middle management, then subject teachers followed by the parents and more often than not the pupils at the bottom of the heap. If you introduce technology and the ability to access information into any given situation it has a number of effects but one of them is the democratisation of information i.e. everybody has access to the same information and then can evaluate the choices and decisions of all the people above and below them in the hierarchy. This has the same effect on hierarchies that water has on the Witch in the Wizard of Oz. And as any military man will tell you, when the chain of command breaks down the whole thing goes to pot.

In a school it means that teachers are no longer gatekeepers of knowledge but managers of learning. They need to answer different questions. Pupils won't ask what an oxbow lake is or how to solve a trigonometry problem. They will ask how to evaluate the veracity of a source on the Internet. They want to know how do I stay safe online? How much faith should they place in the wisdom of crowds? Outside, parents will want to know why the budgets for the English and Maths departments are broadly the same and they are teaching the same kids but the Maths results outstrip the English results. All these are questions schools are not equipped to answer at the moment.

The chapter 18 of the book is entitled "A Proposal for the UK". Now, if pretty much any UK party put this forward as their education policy in #Battle4Number10 I would vote for them. Maybe not #UKIP but any of the others. It is a cogent, well researched proposal that cannot be ignored. It drives home the point that "Teachers are the beginning , middle and end of any successful programme." It talks about the need for teaching gifted kids to be included in the teaching training offering in the UK as well as clearly spelling out a role for parents no matter what their socio-economic circumstances. It also makes a powerful case for changing the age of transition to secondary school. The cause in the slump in attainment has been laid at many doors - grade inflation at primary school; the onset of puberty; big, scary secondary schools with big, scary kids but the bottom line is that most kids just aren't emotionally equipped at 11 to deal with that kind of radical change and can't really participate. Going to secondary school is something that is done to them rather than something they do. Warwick and Stephen put it much better:

" … the major age of choice and transfer for a child would be 14. This is a far more sensible age than 11, which in any event we know produces a serious dip in school performance among many children. At age 14, the child is also much more in a position to exercise some personal choice as to the path they follow."

In their world, there would be two pathways in secondary state education " … the 'grammar' school and the university technical school". They also discuss the need for failure. Progression from year to year only happens when the child is ready. It is not automatically assumed.

"In this system the child who fails - and yes, we do need to reinvent the 'f' word - does so because it becomes clear they have chosen the wrong pathway for them, not because they were born into the wrong family or postcode."

Finally someone has said it! No doubt it will be criticised as elitist, as divisive but I just don't see it that way. You can only see Warwick & Stephen's proposal as elitist if you think less of vocational qualifications. They are not something you teach thick kids to stop them stealing cars - which is how they are presented to learners and the world at large at the moment.  If you are in that camp then maybe you should re-examine your outlook rather try and kill off any kind of provision for gifted kids.

I think if you work in education, have children in school at the moment or went to school yourself then you should read this book. Read it, digest it and understand it. At its core it is about reaching your potential, about not being limited by your post code or by how much your parents earn. It is about smart kids being given the opportunity to excel. And that is good for all of us because if we do this on a global scale one of these kids might write something truly beautiful or develop a cure for cancer or figure out how we achieve peace in the Middle East. I know, I know. Pie in the sky stuff but it is the logical end point for Warwick & Stephen's argument. Anyway, I live in hope. I think I might even try and read another book.