The Gifted and Talented Register in schools

Gingham_Ribbon

On the upside, this guy makes some excellent points:

Toby Young, journalist, writer and ­broadcaster
One reason social mobility has ­collapsed in this country is that state schools aren't always very good about making sure their most gifted students realise their full potential. With a few notable exceptions, the emphasis is on making sure no child gets left behind, rather than ensuring the brightest get ahead. For middle-class children at state schools, this isn't generally a problem because their parents make sure they're adequately stretched outside school hours, often by hiring private tutors. It is the bright working-class children who are let down by the system.
Clearly, the gifted and talented programme wasn't sufficient, but I'm not convinced that a new programme that puts the emphasis on IT skills, among other things, will do a better job. Most children know far more about IT than their teachers – it's the one area they really don't need help in.
What's really needed is a new generation of small, high-performing secondary schools – hundreds of them, all over the country – with mechanisms in place to ensure they don't become the exclusive preserve of the middle classes. If Ed Balls really got behind groups of parents and teachers trying to set up schools, like the one I'm leading in Acton, I think we'd begin to see a resurgence of social mobility.