Daily Mail beside itself:
Betrayed by schools, the 50,000 bright seven-year-olds who fail to shine at 11
The devastating extent to which primary schools are failing bright pupils was revealed yesterday.
Up to 51,000 11-year-olds who achieved top grades at age seven have effectively gone backwards after being left to coast in maths and English.
Four in ten youngsters who were above average in the three Rs at seven are failing to fulfil their early promise, official league tables show.
Around half of primary schools – more than 7,500 – have failed to get each of their brightest pupils up to the highest grades in Key Stage Two tests at 11.
As usual, “it’s the fault of the schools,” yadda yadda.
May I be so presumptuous as to advance a few alternate theories?
No? Okay, here goes.
1. Kids that young tend to change a lot when they get four years older. I’m sure you can find 50,000 seven-year old outstanding Pee Wee League football players who aren’t so good in Pop Warner when they turn eleven. Mainly because their competition’s level of marginal improvement from age 7 to age 11 was greater than their own. Great middle school players sometimes don’t pan out in high school, great high school players sometimes wash out in college, great college players are sometimes pro busts.
I have told you in this space in the past that while I was one of the the best ten-year olds on my Boys Club summer baseball team, the very next year, while I know I improved, some of the boys who were my teammates both years improved a lot more. That’s when I knew I would never be in the major leagues.
2. Yeah, white elephant. Race, and racial differences in brain maturation. I bet a lot of these 7-year olds that are doing well in school are black, but between ages 7 and 11, their mental maturity levels out, while their white and other peers are still developing, zooming by them in that age range, usually in the latter end of that age range. This theory actually depends on the first theory quite a bit.