On Sun, 24 Nov 2013, Jason White <jason@jasonjgw.net> wrote:
Russell Coker <russell@coker.com.au> wrote:
I think that the current system of giving all secondary schools the same goals is a bad one. The needs of kids who are destined to drop out at 16, the kids who will finish school but not do university, and the kids who are going to university are very different and would be best met by different schools.
Some systems separate children into these categories quite early. for example, apparently the German school system has separate curricula.
10 years ago some Dutch friends described the system in the Netherlands which apparently had 3 streams of schools for different levels of educational ability.
I understand and appreciate the benefits of such a model; the question is whether people who are misclassified have the opportunity to overcome their educational disadvantage and move up into the more intellectually rigorous stream destined for higher education. There will always be people who are pushed into the wrong stream, and the real problem is for those who are "downgraded" inappropriately.
I agree that this is a problem, particularly when students are assessed based on race (as happens in American schools that implement multiple streams). However I don't think it's necessarily any worse than the situation in Australia where there is a wide range of skill levels in each class and the kids who fall behind can't be helped. It seems to me that someone who's in the top of the class at a school for low achievers has a better opportunity to move to a different school and fit in than someone who's at the bottom of the class at a school for mixed abilities. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/