hello everybody and welcome back to a man who has five feet my name is evan edinger and this is
a luke cutforth i am a little comfortable it is true today we're making an interesting video about
being held back or not a thing that the uk doesn't do also today's video is sponsored by nordvpn
you'll hear more about them at the end of the video but yeah luke why don't you guys hold your
students back if they fail over here uh why don't we okay this is the thing that i think there's
every few years it kind of gets discussed in parliament i'm disgusted what okay uh every
few years he gets discussed and then um i guess it's just like there's there's not an awful lot
of evidence to support it as far as i know what that is that it helps that it helps yeah i think
the stuff i've seen it generally is like uh it helps maybe for a couple of years but by the time
you actually get to the end of school the results are sort of negligible but and one of the theories
on that i think is like because actually it gives you quite a big knock of confidence to be helped
oh yeah definitely and so that might actually then make you less like his confidence is part of
it's not just being like thrown a bunch of information it's also about confidence and
um emotional development and all that kind of thing so then cause for us if you fail a grade
which means if you get under a 70 usually like a d for the entire average you strongly get i
think it's not strongly you just have to get held back at that point if it's under
which means you then spend an hour another year not with your friends you have to make new friends
yeah being the older kid i think you've just answered why we don't have it i guess it's because
i think but then what do you do do you just constantly have the kid like failing upwards
uh yeah very possibly obviously there are downsides to both strategies yeah but your
side sort of leans towards outside sort of leans towards a kind of holistic view of education which
is it's not just about um information retention and comprehension of that information yeah
it's also about you know you're learning how to operate in the world and learning how to sort of
make friends and sort of uh you know but to be a person isn't that a risk then of having
students finish the schooling system not being able to retain like the derivative of 2x dx
oh yeah from 10 to 13. what a horrible outcome that would be well basic things then like certain
history geological stuff yeah so that's exactly exactly the point is that i guess at least english
it's sort of a wider philosophical discussion about what the purpose of school is and it
sounds like the american system if you have the system where you're holding people back or indeed
letting people skip years as well um that is focusing entirely on information retention and
information comprehension which is the sort of surface level yeah yeah purpose of school more
than that is what you're saying yeah and i think that the the downsides of holding people back
i guess might be the reason why it's not been implemented although i think it is quite a popular
idea i think it's fairly well accepted by by sort of general population if you poll people in the uk
they're actually kind of favorable for it because don't you feel like rather than have
a student failing and then gra going to the next class and then always failing to possibly be
held back so that now wow they got they did well and then they get confidence from that
from actually like being better because they've had to learn it already once and so then
they're a bit better off yeah to be clear i don't think there's any any
bad like and there's nothing inherently bad about the idea of holding your back and actually yes
what you're sort of describing there i guess is like the idea of holding people back sort of moves
it closer to this um like you having your own individual uh almost like tutoring right yeah yeah
if you're taking longer the school holds you back and then you get to relearn everything and that is
the positive side i guess of it is that um you get you get like sort of a slightly more customized
schooling experience whereas in in our schooling experience it's just like you're in this class
you'll be in this class you guys have sets don't you yeah exactly we don't we don't really from my
experience i've never really had sets until you get to like high school then you have like the
standard college prep and then honors or ap events placement and maybe you don't have sets because
if you fail you just get held back so like our version is like um if you've got for example maths
yeah you go into like different math sets and which are full of people students that are also as
the same level as you yeah right it'd be like it's like you know a few bands right you're like higher
you go to the middle and then you'll have like other end personally i think that allows the
students that are really good to excel more but then what about the other people well
the other people get sort of like you probably each set is probably targeting a certain grade
and so if you're in the top set you are looking to get an a star a if you're in the medium set maybe
you're looking to get a b or a c and if you're in the lower set maybe you're looking to get like a d
um or a c right and so um if you're in the lower sets they're probably not teaching you
they're probably teaching you enough to get what they expect the grade that you will get and that
can be to a certain extent like a false uh a self-fulfilling prophecy yeah um but it's about
like accepting where somebody's at yeah meeting them where they're at and then trying to raise
them up and if you you know are like targeting a c or a d and then you're being taught the stuff
that will like set you apart in the a star a band that's a waste of your time to be honest
really i mean i think do you think every student has the potential to get the a's and the a stars
i don't i don't disagree with you but then also everyone has different problems with their family
and things like that oh yeah yeah exactly and and you know school can try and do something
about that but there's only so much the school can do especially when it's a state school and
there's limited resources and limited number of teachers and massive class sizes yeah um the thing
i find really sad about it really about the idea of being held back or not being held back is it
sort of a weird discussion where actually um there are people with different abilities and
if we had sort of smaller class sizes for example the idea of having to set people and also having
to hold people back might not be necessary because the teacher can actually just give
time to an individual more than rather than having to teach a massive class and that's a problem of
resources yes like i believe i remember in when i took psychology psychology i learned that they did
a study and found out that students in the front row actually get a better education than students
in the back row oh my god which meant that and usually teachers like putting the students in the
front that they like the most and so they actually get a better education the people that are failing
continue to fail worse because they're not as engaged with the class and i thought that was
absolutely fascinating um so i guess teachers pets you know further dreams yeah that's really weird
yeah because i i had some classes where we're allowed to pick where we see it in some classes
where we're sat by your letter right like edinger was e so i had to sit usually fourth or fifth seat
oh no i don't think it was ever done alphabet ours was always alphabetical seating yeah that seems
so arbitrary like we usually had like like the naughtiest kid would have been in the front row
so for example that's good yeah okay because they're trying i mean i never thought about it
from the perspective of the t the the front row actually gets a better education i thought about
it as like teacher wants to be able to keep an eye on you so you're not being naughty or if they're
a bit skeezy what does that mean you know like a bit i definitely had teachers that put selective
girls in the front to ogle uh that was just my perspective it's very creepy just yes but it was
what year uh high school which is still [ __ ] up no that is but yeah i mean what year in high
school high school's oh i remember that happening in ninth grade but definitely one was ninth grade
great yeah i don't yeah it was ninth grade definitely and but this took a turn yeah that
doesn't have to do with being held back i guess but similar topic what percentage of students
do you think what percentage of students do you think get held back on average well i i mean i i
in the u.s obviously because you guys don't do it i would imagine most people get held back at least
one year what no really 10 10. i thought 10 was high when i read that figure so they got the hell
back at least one year no as in 10 students get held back once at all right okay okay right okay
i say it yeah it's quite rare to get held back but the max you can get held back is two years because
anything more than that the public school system doesn't afford uh people that are over 20 years
old so once you're 21 you you can't legally drink and be in high school just doesn't do you have any
information as to whether holding back actually works yes i believe there was a study done by
harvard recently that showed that i think it was uh it actually did help short-term gains of math
and english retention yeah so the students did have a big benefit but they didn't actually find
any correlation between students that were held back versus not and going into secondary education
oh so you can be held back in primary school as well yes yeah third grade third grade hold back is
one of the most uh popular times to hold a student back because of a certain reading level they want
to make sure that by the time you graduate third grade your reading level is at a very specific
spot and if it's not it's incredibly encouraged to take them back which of all things i do think
reading is the most important you know in society to know of reading and writing so that's the one
that was studied mostly but like i said it did actually have a benefit for most the students
in the short term but they didn't actually find anything for if they went into upper education
uh higher likelihood i feel as well like i mean obviously you can't cater to this because
um it it sucks like kids will always find things to bully each other for yes but i feel
like getting hold back held back would be like a real source of bullying and then you're just like
like there's already the problem but you're bigger than now well you become the bully you
are but maybe they'll all like hold back your face they're all gang up on you like
if you're you you might be bigger than them but if there's like five of them and it's also like
emotion emotional belief oh yeah like punching you yeah it doesn't feel good to to know that you
got held back it's a big confidence thing i think like you said um however i think usually after the
first year you're then part of that year yeah so it's not like everyone knows you from especially
because at least from my school area you go to the same primary school until sixth grade
and then you move on to middle school and then high school so people aren't going to know if you
moved to a different high school that you were held back in third grade it's actually a really
interesting point as well because like the idea of holding holding back um it also comes into the
sort of the idea we have which is like you're putting year boundaries based on when you were
born right it's like horoscopes yeah exactly and and what's really strange about that is that you
can be really young for your year and you can be really old for a year and you can you're actually
in the same year as somebody who's like like like 11 months older than you yeah and then peop the
oldest people in the year below are like a couple of weeks younger than you yeah you would have
been eight months older than me because you're in april i'm a july so i graduated high school at 17
and i was always the youngest in every single class and that's because you have the decision
as a parent when your child turns like four to put them in then or wait a year and my parents put me
in early and i played a lot of math blaster a lot of video games about learning so i was totally
fine and when's your year boundary in america i believe it is what i mean your boundary oh so
your parents can picks there might be isn't it you can only pick if you're a summer child okay
so yeah our year boundary i think is september i'm pretty sure oh i think ours is august because our
school year as you know starts in september and ends in june so we have july and august completely
off to party it up right because i was really young for my year as well as an april birthday
ah maybe i'm wrong maybe i'm wrong i don't know i i i well i was really small for my year
oh well you're really small for a year still so like so maybe yeah maybe not i don't know i'm five
foot ten plus so yes maybe i actually was about half i was like in halfway actually i think maybe
um yeah but i i do find it a very interesting thing that you have like you can be in a school
year based on um that is essentially like being held back yes if you're really or skipping old
for your year or you're really young for a year that's like being in the wrong year it's
like being held back and skipping yeah are you guys in the uk allowed to skip forward
no what so i'm talking very generally i think there are a few cases of people being held back
sure there are i don't think i've ever heard of a case of skipping forward really because that's a
big thing if you pass a lot of tests really really well they're like why don't we push him forward
because he can exceed even more like he's wasting his time yeah as a kid uh if i wasn't fully
engaged and i felt bored of the content i would then do badly before i put it on two times speed
if they had two times content in school i would have done so much better i just got bored and
so they had to have special classes to be like wake up i yeah i i okay i'll put it this way
i learned about being held back in school yeah from american tv that i was watching
so if it is occasionally a thing then maybe maybe yeah but your thought is it's probably
just because you've seen too much tv well i just don't think it particularly happens in the uk
ever uh and not even like a genius boy would skip forward i don't think so you might but be put into
um a special learning i did which was higher maths yeah so like i then did an extra thing
on top of doing maths i did like higher maths yeah as well so i learned more like i was doing
a bit of a level math whilst i was doing gcse maths what year would that be that was year 11
so oh wow so quite late yeah so that's us with advanced placement you can take the college math
and take the standard math but in primary school we only had the option of they'd pull you aside
if your school had the budget for it to the you're going to do the advanced like logical
reasoning and cultural diversity classes while everyone else does like basic reading
yeah and that would have been top set and we also had like the gifted and talented
that's what it was yeah um which you know has various uh criticisms i do agree but i also think
from my experience of it that helped me be better i guess but also i understand that not everyone
had that opportunity but i tested to it so it's not like my fault yeah but i also understand
that everyone should have the opportunity for that level of one-on-one teaching but obviously
that's a bunch of one-on-one teachers it was like three on one so it was like three students
in my entire year and we would spend about two periods of primary school being with a teacher
who would help us through logical reasoning tests and puzzles and that would help our minds grow in
that way and we learn about japan we learn about different cultures and then we go back and it was
because we had tested like 100 on the math and the reading test and so they were like we don't need
them to be in here i didn't do anything like that no not at all i went to like summer camp physics
that's pretty cool at durham university that's not cool i did after school
after school extra maths did you do a robot club as well did you get that from my wikipedia yeah
yeah i did yeah in year like eight i was part of like this robot team and we like built robots and
we went off to do robot challenges and we won one of the robot challenges so that was pretty cool
so in the end do you actually think we should hold our children back if they aren't up to spec no
really i think we should so yeah this is a bit of a lovely conversation but i'm also thinking
that still should be a thing but also the jury's still out but i think it's i like the option
for safety i think we should put a bit more resources into schooling and
have a bit more um have smaller classes absolutely yes and more opportunities for people to be helped
if they're struggling and tutoring yes there's 100 should be more tutoring for kids that need
that if you have it on the extreme end like so if you have like learning difficulties you're
taken away into a different class but that has a lot of negative annotations at least
yeah yeah of course which is frustrating because that's so important but yet
kids are going to bully for anything you know what i'm saying yeah it's interesting because i
remember in private school people being taken off for um special needs we had it for speech therapy
and i never knew where they were going i was always just like where's that i'm off to
i never really got it um they didn't really explain it that's probably best
for bullying classes yeah but then i i don't feel like i was in a class that would have
been particularly cruel about it if they'd known and maybe they did know maybe i was just really
oblivious but yeah i don't i don't personally feel we should be holding people back because
it i see school as about so much more than just numbers and retention and that stuff it's so much
more than that it's like little it's like a little tiny society that you're learning to be part of
and so if you you know if i if i gave you right we're in society and i want to find out how
good you are at using a mac and then you're not very good at using a mac and so i take you away
from all your friends like that's just well then you get good at a mac yeah and then you
don't have any of your friends anymore you have a mac it's fine this is not sponsored by mac however
please if you have a different opinion uh or you agree with luke or me leave a comment we can have
a discussion i just thought this is an interesting topic because i couldn't believe they don't
hold kids back in the uk and there's no right or wrong answer but i thought it was interesting
also states video is sponsored by nordvpn luke you use nordvpn right yes uh nordvpn is great
use of my time as someone who's been staying in different airbnbs the last five months so that
way no one in this place can steal my data or at least look on the network and see what i'm doing
if they're pretty knowledgeable also allows me to watch my netflix in the us where they have a
much larger i was gonna say suppository but that's not the right word they have a larger selection i
think that's a better word bigger things up there much bigger things on their flicks plus i believe
there's a massive holiday special on nordvpn so if you have not used nordvpn yet why not sign
up with my link nordvpn.com or use code evan at checkout get a giant discount on a two-year plan
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anyway thanks nordvpn for sponsoring today's video and like i said please leave me a comment if you
agree or disagree with me or luke and we can have a little chat in the comments hopefully
this is the final video you will see from this flat until i moved to my very own thanks for
all the support goodbye have a nice day goodbye there's another video in the corner if you'd like