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Accelerated learning

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Is accelerated learning possible in state schools where one is moved up a year or moved into lessons attended by a higher year?

 

Back in the mid 1980s my parents wanted me moved up a year, but the headmaster told them it was impossible as academic year is determined by age and not ability. At secondary school, my parents enquired about me attending classes in Y9/10/11 for certain subjects including maths and science instead of those for my Y7 tutor group, but the school said that it wasn't possible even though I had demonstrated exceptional ability in Y10 science lessons during my free period in "detention".

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Hi, my son was put into year2 for maths when he was in year 1, so it definitely happens in primary school. Don't know if it happens at high school though.

Someone with more helpful info on this will probably answer your question soon. :)

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Yes, acceleration is possible for both whole curriculum (very rare and not often appropriate) and for single subjects (just a little more common).

 

whole curriculum acceleration (moving up a year) is frowned on generally because the child is removed from their own peer group and most have difficulty fitting into a group of older children - I know we're talking about AS people here who have that difficulty anyway but the argument is that you shouldn't make it even harder for them and if the move fails then they have to face moving back into their own year group giving them 2 huge changes and all the social complications that entails.

moving a child from one year group to another is always tricky whether it is up or down and should always be done with a great deal of care and consideration.

 

Com was accelerated for Maths by up to 2 years in primary school and did the Y7 curriculum in Y6.

At the moment we are negotiating provision for high school maths as he has been treading water for 2 years but although the head said they would do it, the deputy head came up with all sorts of problems like ' what will he do in Y11 when he's already done all the exams?' - I said to ask at the universities as I know there are G&T link programmes in Maths here but she didn't seem very keen and now they are saying he has to stay in his peer group where they've already said they can't teach him.....

 

high schools are definitely not into acceleration - it messes up all their nice systems and causes timetabling nightmares!

primary schools find it easier as there are often links with classes throughout a key stage and quite often they organise the timetable so that maths and english are always done at the same time.

They rarely accelerate beyond 1 year, Com was lucky in that his school had mixed year groups so that in Y3 and 4 he was actually working 2 years ahead.

 

it's extremely rare to accelerate for any other subject, partly because the pattern of learning is broader and less step-by-step for other subjects so it is easier for a child to work at a higher level within a class.

For example you might have children working across 3 levels in a class (normal spread at primary level) in English but one kid a level or two beyond that. You would automatically differentiate tasks and questioning so that the child ahead would be asked say to paragraph where other kids were just writing sentences or passages and you might ask more challenging questions about the same text, give them harder comprehensions etc, all within the same lesson base.

Science can be taught like that too if the teacher is good and the child isn't too far ahead.

 

accelerated learning is an entirely different thing - here are a couple of sites with info.

 

http://www.acceleratedlearning.com/

 

http://www.accelerated-learning.com/

 

this sort of accelerated learning is one of the current 'in things' in primary education, I don't know if high schools are on the bandwagon yet though.

 

Zemanski

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So it is possible to a certain extent to implement accelerated learning in a secondary school. I think one of the biggest defects of the education system is that league tables only count GCSEs taken at the end of Y11. If one takes a GCSE early then it doesn't count in the league tables. This is the real reason why schools won't offer GCSEs early.

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