Growing up in a foreign land, I sat the British curriculum for O and A Levels, but it looks like my schooling system was completely different to what it is here. Even government run schools ran a ranking system and had prizes for achievement from year 1 to A/Levels and included prizes for sports and extra curricular activities like music.

Is there a reason these things don’t exist here? I went to school in a Commonwealth country, so I was under the impression the school system was modelled on the British one.

We had prizes for achievement in my secondary school and in college. Don’t remember anything in primary though. Probably depends on the school doesn’t it?

There isn’t a “British” system. Do you mean the English system?

How did they assess them? Was it for marks in every subject, or a highest place in the school, or did it depend on alumni/school sponsoring the prize? Is it common practice to not have prizes? Sorry, so many questions. It seems weird to be in a school where students aren’t ranked!

Varies but the current , general model, is to try to let everyon achieve nad get prizes rather than just reward the most able

Essentially reward v effort v achievement rather than just best outcome

Some folk are bright and lazy or good at running without trying some are not that great but put in lots of personal effort to be better at,for example, maths this year

Who you choose to reward is an interesting debate with no universally accepted answer. Merits and weaknesses in both approaches

Do you mean the English system?

I thought the Welsh/NI systems were reasonably similar to the English one, though?

The Scots one is very different, and as an expat living in Lancs I can’t get my head round the English system.

There was an excellent documentary series filmed in Rochdale about a school…

They do exist in some schools.
But we can’t have non equality on the extra curricular success scale in education.

We had prizes in school. I even got a few of them. Cleaned up in the athletics.

My daughter got several prizes for being top in her year on one subject or another (a few Art, latterly Maths) so it’s still happening in some schools.

We now all have access to the Diana Moon Glampers academy

We have achieved our moral utopia 😉

Wasn’t there an objection to even giving gold stars to primary kids if they did well because it was favouring the bright kids over the thick ones?

Did you read that in the Daily Mail?

Do you mean the English system?

Some parts of England don’t do primary and secondary, shocker eh!

OP. It varies so much. I am a primary Supply teacher and have worked in over 60 different schools. Some Heads are very anti competition, some are dead ruthless. Fashion changes as well. Some schools or is it parents don’t like some kids not to win and thus don’t have competitions. Of course in primary schools it tends to happen only at sports days anyway. You often have head boys and girls but rarely are academic prizes given. I have seen it and its very popular with many parents apart from those whose kids never win anything, usually because they are little gits who don’t excel in any aspect and are not nice enough to get the nice but useless award. 😀
Some classes do rank the kids for little things like tables test etc.
At Secondary schools you do get prizes but they tend to be end of year ones.
Our country is too afraid of offending some one to publicly rank them generally.

scotroutes – Member
Did you read that in the Daily Mail?

I think I read it on a STW post that came from someone who had read it from the Daily Mail.

Also they discovered you can’t reward English kids in case it offends immigrants.

Don’t be silly, english kids won’t win any prizes now anyway as all the lessons are given in muslamic.

I know it genuinely has happened that schools have decided against awarding prizes or even the old gold stars, and people always say it’s to “avoid upsetting thick kids”. But grading continues much as it always did so that doesn’t really make any sense.

National exams from 6/7 years old onwards.. Kids are taught to pass exams and keep the school up on the league tables

So it varies from school to school and depends on the head teacher? Or are there general guidelines on rankings?

In the system I was in, you had a competitive exam in year 5 (at 10 years of age) which was ranked nationally. Even private school children did it because it was considered good practice compared to the national curriculum. There were two exams. Language and mathematics.

Later, you had O/Levels in year 11 (16 years of age) and A/Levels 2 years afterwards. These were all nationally ranked.

Are there any public exams that are ranked nationally before O/Levels or GCSEs (is that the term?).

Personally, I enjoyed the competition. Yes, it meant that I put pressure on myself, not to mention pressure from teachers and parents, but I didn’t consider it a bad thing.

How would this affect picking a school for your children? Currently struggling to figure out how on earth you can judge a school because people (teachers) are saying Ofsted rankings are meaningless?

@curious testing in schools has become quite controversial as has publishing results or league tables. Private schools test regularly as they believe itvprepares students for real exams and allows staff, pupils and parents to monitor progress. State schools have much more in the way of outside pressures inc from campaign groups and government whuch imho has “softened” the approach. British schools in comparison to say their Asian or Indian equivalents are like holiday camps.

The sort of academic ranking you want to do is almost discouraged. You need to speak to people as locals will know which is the best school academically.

Diana Moon Glampers

😀

I am glad someone got it Julian!

In the system I was in, you had a competitive exam in year 5 (at 10 years of age) which was ranked nationally.

Ignore Jambys post its not of much use and is just his personal politics masquerading as advice.

We[Englandshire anyway] do SATS at age 10/11 – year 6 of primary

The results are then freely available for each school

http://www.education.gov.uk/schools/performance/?pid=pt2011_&cre=superhomepageflash

I suspect, though I have not bothered to look, there are still league tables so you can see each school ranked. Probably better to look at the local average as well as say – Westminster [ are there any state schools there?] will do better than Tower Hamlets so results alone wont necessarily say if its good or the intake is good.

Specialist dislike the league table as its simplistic.

There are also “added value” league tables which are meant to take this into account

I am not fan of league tables so cannot say exactly what is out there but google should help

I am glad someone got it Julian!

8)

Well you put the lowest amount of money in, blame teachers, overwork them so they leave, give kids lack of choice and then blame the other party when you were not in power.

Be fair Gove also sent them all a copy of the Bible at a mere cost of £370,000 pounds