The World of Education; #12 Parent Teachers Associations and #13 The Problem of How to Group Children in Teaching Groups

The world of education and this is Andrew sat in the studios of the BBC in London. This week we're going to look at parent teachers associations and we are reminded of their function just about now because well before the new school term starts PTSA become very active indeed. Now with me are James rotten headmaster of a London comprehensive school or a daily title secretary of the Council of parent teachers associations in Lagos Nigeria and who is spending two years at Stirling University in Scotland and he says even fatten mother of one daughter and who is a very active person indeed in her local London PTA. Now if I may begin with you James Stratton you have a very active PGA not just how does it work when the first children come into the school year by year this coming September will start again. We think that parents are the best teachers of all parents of the first teachers and home is the first school. Now in this important matter of sex education

we help the patterns of parents. Children described previously held other plans in this matter. But we felt this past two or three years that we were becoming more of a social arranging organization. And so as an experiment at the beginning of the school year we changed the name and we now have a parent teacher student council. Each of the six year groups in the school formed a committee three pens elected three members of staff and the head of the chair. This means in the 58 that this is an important examination yet they have been arranging this year meetings about examinations have gigs to careers and so on. So this is the parent teacher student council. I should explain student in the case of the fifth and the sixth year on the committees that are to 50 pupils to 60

pupils. Mr. Tiber my turn to you now and ask you just how does the Lagos PTA work before night in 60. There are only a few. Beauty is in Lagos and we discovered there was very little communication between these two years. So if you got together fuddled fall in a council where there is fear as BTs might meet. So we started our now reckon that at least some 5 percent of the school simply goes not how beauteous this is fattened from from parents point of view. How do you see the peak year of what use is it to you. Very important and I'm very delighted that my daughter Anne who is now 15 has passed some very satisfactory years at her school with a very active PTA. We've been encouraged from the very first moment she went to the school to come along to every function

and every activity and to consult the head of the U.N. and it will always be made welcome I've been made very welcome. On the occasions I have been after school I don't make it my business to go very often. But I feel that our things to some cells with the science my child but I have gone along with insight and we've had some most successful meetings of when the first year children arrived at the school they were greeted and welcomed by the tutor and she also welcomed us just as much as we went along to our first meeting. We were then asked to go to several meetings for the first few months they were at school to really get to know each other parent wise and discuss their particular children problems and exchange views. So I can only speak from experience that I think the parent teacher association is very important and it's imbued by quite a few other parents from other schools who don't have success tell me I don't talk about the problems that PTA saw the good that it does and how it

does this code. Most problems I think arise through faulty communications we had in this school since the beginning. A booklet called The pupil Journal the journal last term in the journal apart from personal particulars including emergency inform. The father his name and his place of work and his telephone number. So with the matter so that in a case of emergency they can be contacted immediately. Though it's rather like a diary every pupil in the school must have a journal and in their pupils must recall their homework if they are late for school. He stopped at the entrance to the school late and so parents communicated with every day. Now this works very well indeed and I'm sure solves problems or prevents problems arising in many cases.

Now in fact the parents are urged to inspect the journal frequently to sign it weekly to sign or written homework to see the pupils the bay the schools and so on. So this is what you mean by the communication. Yes yes. Now is the time is there anything at all like this in your latest Nigerian situation. No I have not thought of the Journal of this one. We have divided some around with off going employer and soon contact with the school. The problem lies mostly in the first few years of schooling when you are in fact detaching the talent from the home for the first time and in the past before we had set up it is the tendency was for her teachers to ask the parents to leave the Jazz Fest young go home for the first week at least restless in school. This was in US plans for them and they felt it was possible for their parents to be near. So through the activities of the Council of beauty is it's now possible for a parent who wish to be a mother

especially to go to school with a child for the first week. The whole of last week and I've harped on that and some of the possible Nigeria this is nest in there too. I turn to you know this is a fact that I ask about problems that you may not yourself as a parent have had with your daughter but problems that you may have heard being discussed around you where other mothers are concerned and PTA just how effective can a PTA be for example with a child who has nutritional worry or delinquency problems or homework problems. I think quite important I am fortunate and it does tell me everything that happens at school in detail. The T just says what they do in school the lessons and so forth and help with what they have for dinner each day and things like that but I have heard from a lot of parents on the committees that the children do not go home and communicate unless they drag it out of them you know and then they would rather love to talk about anything to do with school when they get home which half is full every 30 forget all about it. Those parents

find that they can gain more information from the other parents I have a particular case. A friend of my daughter's her mother always says whenever I meet you at the PTA I learn more from you about the school than I do for my own daughter so that she enjoys coming to the PTA meeting to get the angle of the school and hear all about it from my child more than from her child. If I may chip in their wishes Fadden I think it dangerous for for the parent teacher association to attempt to do too much. For instance now I'm thinking of one particular example of boy called Michael. I know he has terrible troubles at home. His mother took the older members of the family and left the father was a drunkard with four or five. And Michael is this the second oldest of those left at home. Now all this is known to me and members of staff. If a parent who lived nearby came and told me this I would feel in some way that we had

failed to notice this early on and so any help that a parent teacher association could give like this would be incidental. The teacher I'm sure would notice that this child who has something going on there was some problem here that needed investigation and what I would do would dare we have a school counselor who was a teacher who would visit the home and talk to the pupil possibly. But is it not true that children seem to have a well some children seem to have them. Better speaking relationship with their teachers than with their tired mothers and fathers all their remove mothers and fathers I mean is this is this is this something that's possible I think this is possible I think where people have several other children coming in to tell the true stories about school as well. One child if she's not very forthcoming she will get forgotten you know in the post and I begin to sort of draw away from the family altogether I think all mothers are interested in me. So as always it's all the stories I listen to and I'm left out of it I guess you grow a little bit for me.

Especially only two years in school here so now and again we have parents coming up to talk to us they're worried about her relationship with another child. And this poses a problem for us. While nude which we've investigated but this would be I would hope I would have and any other school would have developed such a relationship with the individual parents that whether there was a formal association or not they would come and talk to the person who is best able to help another person is the one that he's appealing to. Whether the lady in the kitchen was having a lunch or a teacher or the head teacher or another parent and so we would hope to keep all channels open. You know I think last two speakers have been speaking of a situation where the parents are illiterate. I think we have to consider stationery aswell most of the parents treat. Think the school fees and is the business of the teacher to take care of the child. I mean the impression one gets is that once various send their children to school I think

that's all I mean is left and talented teacher to take care of the child and then we have to consider a situation where there are no school counselors I mean schools we can afford this should be part of the business of the PTA to get appearance to be interested in what their children do after school because they do research in 1966 too and I discover that of all the farm to us which influence the progress of the child in school. Home school relationship. She's a list second to this social economic background of the child. This why I place so much importance on the convocation. You should give big lines of communication open between their parents and their teacher. And since you asked if she wanted to just let it would be far more literate in many cases than the parent. I think individuals should or through the PTA generate as part of his business to know or something of the home employment of the child.

I think we have a the only difficulty we have at our school is communicating through the children to the parents who really should be communicated to most. I mean getting like a message is to the parents or getting notes to the ferrets. Often the child if it's not going to be interested will not bother to give enough to the parent the parent isn't very interested either and therefore the note is never received. We've now started quite often a dental school to send the notes for the post we did with their school records our school reports now come through the post and I think it's much more like you look at those they don't know what it is the pedophile the letter up and open it and that's more like you going to home to the great difficulties in any situation is that the parents who are not very interested we are intending in the new year the new school year to issue a weekly newsletter at the member to send one a term. If the parent know that such a communication is coming once a week. Instead of button the t the class teacher may send a note to the form teacher may send a note they

head it may send a note that a new metal pieces of paper are arriving home so that we think if they would involve it in a weekly newsletter that the pedants will know or should know that this newsletter comes and soon or late they come to school and we can say look you haven't been signing the journal you haven't been signing the homework we have told you in the newsletter about this and so on. Well it might be one way of helping to improve Lisa Cole head teacher communications. JAMES ROSEN This is even Fadden and ideally Cairo thank you very much indeed. And this is Andrew Sankey in the studios of the BBC in London. This was the world of education. This program was distributed by National Public Radio. The world of education and in the studios of the BBC in London this is Genevieve

Eccleston. Streaming setting banding mixed ability word associated with second vegetation in Britain. And they're all to do with the problem of how to group children in teaching groups. Traditionally the method is to choose 30 to 40 children of more or less the same general ability and put them with one teacher a streambed class in which they all do all subjects together. But now research and a better understanding of children and the way they learn suggests that rigid streaming can be a frightening discouragement to both bright and less able children. In some comprehensive schools in Britain and in some grammar in secondary schools there are moves towards breaking away from the traditional streaming approach to organizing schools and these moves so much to the pressure of research findings to changes in the curriculum and to the ideas of teachers themselves on what and how they should teach children. It's a situation of development towards more individual patterns of learning. Michael Marland is headmaster of Woodbridge done one of London's most advanced comprehensive

schools and is responsible for thirteen hundred boys and girls at his school. He gave his views to the BBC education correspondent David Smeaton a headmaster has many decisions to take in running a school. Where do you rate the importance of questions of streaming on streaming. Mixed ability grouping. All the schools undoubtedly the way in which pupils are brought together to do their work is the fundamental decision which a school has to make. I say a school has to make rather that headmaster has to make because this is so fundamental a decision that one person cannot possibly make it on his own. Why so fundamental for a school because learning is in a way very individual. But also it's highly affected by the environment by the people with whom the pupil is working and by

the working method that the leader of the group the teacher chooses to employ. Now he will employ different methods and he will get different results according to how the pupils are grouped. And I think you can show pretty clearly both by personal observation in schools and by wider more scientific statistical surveys that the method by which pupils are grouped produces very different end results. We hear a lot about the streaming one fact do we mean by NEWS STREAM. I hate the phrase d streaming. It sounds as if some magician wanders into the school with one great stroke of his pen. A shift is made overnight from one patent to another patent. I'd rather look at it like this coming into a secondary school we have in my own school 8 groups of 30 pupils 240 rising 12 year olds coming in September. Now you can't teach all of them in

one big space. You have got to divide them up in a variety of ways. Therefore the question is not Do we deep stream but the question is how do we group this mass of pupils. Everyone is slightly different from the next one. But they're not different in only one way they're different and overlapping complexity of ways. And you begin to realize there is no possibility of putting them into groups which are homogeneous. Now there are four ways in which you can organize these pupils. First of all you can try to stream them. I say to try to stream because in fact no streaming ever works streaming is an attempt to group them so that every group of about 30 are the same according to their general ability. Secondly you can arrange them in what we call sets. A set is a group of pupils who

are all roughly the same in their ability to learn that particular kind of skill. Thus you have a mass set of which all the pupils work at roughly the same speed. In that subject. Thirdly you could band pupils. This is a way of grouping pupils in large numbers that are supposed to be broadly the same and then divide them up into teaching units within that band or Fourthly you can say Let us take these pupils as they come to us in real life with a range of abilities reactions memories and skills and bring them together in a teaching group that represents the whole range of those skills. So there we have streaming setting banding and mixed ability really the argument has been posed as to whether it's streaming on the one hand against the idea of let's have mixed ability classes on the other. The way you tell it it's not as

simple as that. No and indeed I doubt if many secondary schools would choose to put their pupils in only one of those four groupings. For instance some schools would use setting for certain subjects and they would used complete mixed abilities for other subjects. Other schools would have a combination of streaming and mixed ability. It is possible to use these for grouping methods and really you know this is what life is like. We spend our working life in a variety of different kinds of groups and these groups are arranged according to what is practicable and sensible for the activity we have in hand. But we are presumably trying to get away from the concept that you can determine at certain age the abilities of a youngster across the board is something that is summed up in some selection and for a long time that child is labeled at that level. But you tell me a bit about this because obviously we are trying to get away from something that you know we suspect has

been going wrong for the child in the past. It has indeed been going wrong and it's been going wrong because we find that pupils react to the expectations fixed for them and teachers teach according to the expectations of a class. There is absolutely no doubt about it that if you arrange your pupils in a way in which you are announcing to parents pupils and teachers that these 30 pupils are all of top general ability and these all need Midol and these are all about general ability that by and large they work towards the announcement you have made and the announcement is in the form of a streamed label. Because those are some people who say that we ought to have all mixed ability to use this phrase and presumably there are some subjects in which you can quite conceivably given a good teacher have a mixed ability class. Assuming the age ranges into why but the most. The other

subjects in which it is almost impossible only it is very difficult to do the teaching job in the second verse faire. Where. We have a high degree of subject specialism. There is no doubt about it that a school is really thinking this out would come to different answers for different subjects. Now so far we've talked about the grouping of pupils from thinking about pupils in general but a very important point to realise is that one of the big pressures towards other methods of grouping pupils. One of the big pressures has come from subject teaching approaches. Teachers are shall we say history have begun to think very hard about why that teaching the subject and how they ought to teach it. They've begun to realize that they aren't merely doling out a series of facts to be mocked up in doses they are teaching pupils to consider evidence

they are teaching pupils are helping pupils to learn how to judge. Now these changes in subject approach have led teachers to want to have different kinds of groupings because the old attempted streaming didn't suit the new method in teaching that subject. Therefore you have to within a school devise a pattern of structure and it's incredibly complicated to do so which gives each subject area the best kind of grouping so that in one school you will find that mathematics and languages are taught two homogeneous sets of pupils at the same skill. First the mathematics and second language is but a subject like English. The most individual of all subjects is taught in mixed ability groups because this is where the different ability levels the different personalities of the man looks after years of pupils will each react on the other to improve learning for each of them and indeed they will work together. In all this question of whether you do you stream or you have setting in banding and mixed ability that

only implies a new role from the teacher. You compared with what teachers were required to do say 10 15 20 years ago in schools what is this new role that is emerging for the teacher and ones. The teacher's role has always been changing and I'm not talking on a new role or the new role as if overnight things change in one fell swoop. What has been happening is that the teacher has been widening the range of kinds of relationships that he's wanted to have with young people with their families and with the community. He's no longer a single figure. He is a man who has different roles on different occasions. He for instance sometimes must retain the role of pure instructor. But very often he is playing the role of learner himself a learner who has greater maturity greater experience of his younger colleagues. But he's still a learner. And one of the ways in which he's teaching is by working on

various kinds of projects alongside his pupils so that in that sense he becomes an organizer of learning processes a supply. Of resources that is to say he'll say to John look I think I've read that you might like to look over there and choose one of those two or three books or why don't you now listen to this tape. The problem of where to go next and all this is something that is breaking down the old concepts of grouping children rigidly. Well indeed because he's beginning to exploit the differences between children rather than regretting the differences between children and wanting children to be all the same. Can one look ahead to a time when one could be even even more individual in the learning one prescribes for secondary school children. But each child can be given learning appropriate its own ability. We have got to become a great deal more individual than we have done so far. You cannot explain something to 30 pupils and presume that

those 30 will have got the same thing from what you said. Therefore we have got to encourage the individualization of learning by the kind of results material we provide a simple example is that in many schools still come September. 14 year old pupil is given a one textbook for his job a fee that here we have a variety of different kinds of material. Pupils are prompted to bring together to compare. To explore this range of material according to their individual attitudes and skills because they learn by cooperation. They learn by discussion. They learn by comparison. I think given the right kind of teaching situation a pupil of 13 can in fact teach the teacher something. If you put a poem or story in front of a group of pupils they lived Lisi

valleys they've seen life. Therefore their reactions are significant and I think what we're trying to do is to make sure that their own genuine reactions are shared with a mature experience of the teacher and brought together to produce a composition learning situation that is both truly individual and is at the same time truly a group Michael Moland headmaster would break down comprehensive school talking to David Smeaton and this is Genevieve Eccleston in the studios of the BBC in London. This was the world of education. This programme was distributed by National Public Radio.