Exploring alternative strategies for maximizing the proportion of high performing pupils in the English education system, this paper will be useful to policy makers and teachers.
Room at the top: inclusive education for high performance
Synopsis
In this paper Professor Eyre explores how the English education system can produce high performing pupils. Drawing on herexperience running The National Academy for Gifted and Talented Youth, Eyre argues that the current education system is structured for mediocrity, the prevailing assumption being that only a minority of advantaged pupils can really reach high levels of educational performance.
She suggested that other countries are more ambitious in their expectations of pupils, focusing not on singling out pupils who might achieve, but rather framing educational achievement in a wider, national context; asking what a country needs and how it can be secured through education? Such systems achieve high performances from many pupils, all of whom are empowered to achieve regardless of background.
She advocates revising the Ofsted frameworks so that it judges schools’ ability to nurture high performance as the main criteria of school quality.