To think the US system if repeating grades is weird?

People keep talking about the UK but I'm 34 and knew of at least 5 children in my average sized Scottish primary who were held back. I presume this doesn't happen anymore?

No, tracking is by class. So you can be in the top class for Maths, and a lower one for English. That's my dysgraphic one, for example. He was actually accelerated in maths as he's gifted, but gets extra assistance for English. His reading skills are excellent but he struggles with writing,

Is the tracking the same as streaming? So if you are great at Maths but bad apat everything else you are still in the bottom set for Matqhs? I'm not keen on streaming for that reason.

I do think often a mixed class is more beneficial, though. My DD's school only sets for Maths but in all other classes they differentiate which seems to work well.

I'm not saying it always happens but DC should be getting differentiated work and their different needs met. So it should be a very individualised approach.

The difference seems to be that in the UK, you don't do school - school is just something that happens to you, for 11 years. You just have to get through it. So children can fail, over and over again, particularly if they fall behind early. It's disheartening. A more individualised approach would be nice.

In France, it's not a matter of failing or passing the year. Essentially children are discussed and teachers recommend whether resitting the year would be beneficial or not.
If a pupil has just taken a little longer to acquire skills but is on the right path, it's often recommended. Where progress is unlikely or the repeat is not thought to be beneficial, alternative educational streams are often recommended from middle school onwards - into more vocational courses etc. I actually think it works really well and the attempt to keep everyone together in the UK is an ever-growing disaster, as it requires accommodations of all kinds for different pupils that are impractical due to their volume and require financial resources that don't exist.
It puts teachers under too much pressure as they have to cater to too wide a set of needs.

I will say that there's a tendency to abolish tracking in middle school particularly, which I have mixed feelings about, although there's still separate special education classes (as these have more modifications than just the syllabus; they'll be smaller or have both a regular and special education teacher, for example). Non-academic core courses are also not usually tracked.

As I said upthread the evidence favours intervention over repeating. If the child is attending school and putting in effort, but failing, the odds are high that there is another problem, and the Response to Intervention process is what's needed. The harder problem is when a child has poor grades because of bad attendance or simply not doing the work (with no underlying disabilities). This is a difficult problem to solve, especially if it involves family issues. This is a circumstance in which a child can be held back even in high school, and these kids are at high risk of dropping out.

If a teacher is any good they would not be surprised at a student failing an exam and the same is true of parents, tbh.

A child will receive multiple warnings during the year that work is not being handed in, that work handed in is not up to standard, that class participation needs to be increased. There will be weekly tests and many periodic exams too, including an exam at the end of each semester, the results of which will be tracked. The beauty of the GPA system is that you can't spend a full semester sitting in class and producing no homework andnnot participating in discussions, with teacher and parents surprised at the end of the year when you flunk your exams.

It is very odd to fail an entire year. Most high schools have many ways for students to improve their performance, from tutors to social workers for support if the student is experiencing issues that are interfering with performance. In a year long class, a student can change to a lower level at the start of the second semester if the first semester turned out to be too challenging, or can change to a one semester class in a different subject.

The level for a child with an IEP will be individual.

Nobody would ever know or care what grades anyone got in any given class.

There would not be a huge variety of expectations or attainment in any given class because tracking / streaming means students do classes geared toward their ability and learning style. At the end of your four years of high school, if you're on a typical honors style track, you'll find yourself seeing a lot of familiar faces in all of your classes. These will be students who hope to attend elite universities, and they will be doing mainly AP level courses.

So for an IEP student the mark doesn't change. The classes they have to pass, or their content, will change. So one of mine is autistic and has dysgraphia. His IEP allows him to dictate written work, and specifies reduced workload as long as he shows mastery, so he might get half as much that he has to write down. But he still has to achieve 70% which is the minimum to pass. He's academically capable, so this is within a mainstream class. If he were not, he could be placed in a lower level, and the levels are by subject, so a student who struggles with writing could be in an easier English class and a more difficult math class. There is a strong preference in the US for putting children in mainstream school (including support classes located within mainstream schools) unless they really need a dedicated setting. For example I know someone with a deaf child whose main language is ASL, so she goes to a school for the deaf. Because she has poor skills in spoken English, she wouldn't have the same level of peers in a deaf/HoH class in mainstream. I have another friend whose child has non-speaking autism, and goes to a specialist school for that.

It's been the same at my DS's college. Anyone who doesn't have a 4 in Maths or English (not Science, though) has to resit.

I feel your pain, though as I went back to Uni in my 30s. Some of the teens were a nightmare!

When I was in 6th form, anyone who had to resit maths, English or science did so there.

As an adult, I tried to better my C grades at night school... and found that there were school leavers there doing the same. Sadly, I dropped out of 2 classes, as it was literally like being back in school with the disruptions etc.
I was in my 30s, and had to witness a good 20 minutes of one class being stopped because a teen was arguing about having his phone in class.

I'm an August baby, and I started primary in the summer term, then for the autumn term the summer borns stayed in reception for that term and then moved up to year 1 in January, while the autumn and spring borns moved to year 1 in September (also England, late 80s).

When I was in high school, I had one classmate who had a lot of health issues and missed a lot of school in Year 9, and at one point she thought she was going to have to repeat the year. But because she was an October baby and would have been quite a bit older than everyone else in the year, they had a change of heart and left her in her chronological year group (I do remember she wasn't happy about the idea of repeating; she'd been in hospital a lot of the summer term that year and when another classmate was in having her appendix out, she'd seen her on the ward and had complained to her about it).

Different situation again when I was in primary school was a guy the year below me who ended up repeating year 4 - the family moved away when he was at the end of Y4 chronologically, and then about half way through the next year they very abruptly moved back. While his sister slotted straight back into her original class, he ended up going back into Y4 - my friend whose brother was a friend of his said they moved him down because his original Y5 class was a very big year group, someone else had joined the class while he was away and there was no longer a space for him.

Or have I misunderstood somewhere?

Thanks for explaining. So a child with an IEP would progress to the next year despite not ‘passing’, whereas a child without an IEP, despite achieving better results, might have to repeat the year because they didn’t achieve a ‘non IEP norm’?

Does that create problems, where a child with diagnosed SEN progresses whereas a child attaining better does not? Does it not defeat the point of ‘repeating a grade’, if the standard required to progress is different for different children, so there is still a very wide variation of ability and attainment in every class?

The standard for extracurricular participation is hardly difficult. It varies by location buts it’s in the low 2s. A student basically just has to be passing their classes.

they can also take the minimum number of required academic courses and load up their schedule with music classes or sports related courses if they have a specialty.

If you genuinely struggle with academics, you have an IEP (Individualised Education Plan -- equivalent to an EHCP). Two of mine have IEPs, which modify the curriculum, and that's the standard you're held to. The students with the highest needs often have a 'life skills' non-academic focus.

Also, to be quite honest, the pressure on teachers is to pass students, not fail them. The GPA requirement for sport is a bare pass, and there's historical reasons why that is in place (there really were football and basketball players completely ignoring academics for sport).

In some cities there are specialised high schools for performing arts, like in Fame (which was directly based on the old NYC performing arts school; they opened a new, bigger one a few years after the film).

In Scotland we can defer a year for the youngest children.

I didn't do this with Ds1 and then found that the tiny school he went to wasn't managing to teach him anything. We moved just before the end of his first year. His new school said he was so far behind the others in his class that I'd either have to have him tutored the whole of the summer holidays, or keep him back a year. We did the latter and it was the making of him.

It has been my observation that extraordinary giftedness in music performance comes with academic success too

As a parent of a conservatoire child, I would say that this might be the case for some niche classical music areas/instruments but looking across the conservatoire courses, the correlation is much less strong.

There's a C to play policy for sports in my local high school.

Given the many tracks and subject options and the high level of support available in the school, along with the constant monitoring of progress that the GPA system requires, the vast majority of student athletes will never have to sit out a week or two to get their missing work completed. Student athletes who are very good at their sport will often have their eye on an NCAA athletic scholarship too, where the ability to graduate from the university giving the scholarship is important, so there can be a strong motivation to keep their grades up.

If you have an academic suspension from your team, you attend study hall and can access tutoring to help you recover academically and get back to your sport. Very often, a student will only let the academic side of things slide one time.

It has been my observation that extraordinary giftedness in music performance comes with academic success too, perhaps because parents who can afford to and have an interest in nurturing such talent are well aware of the pitfalls of putting all of your eggs in the one basket, and also tend to be very bright themselves and encourage attainment across the board. The top conservatories and theater schools want evidence of persistence and consistency in academic subjects as well as performance ability because they show your ability to handle varied demands on your time and intellect.

I don’t think it’s a bad idea. Children who still can’t e.g read well enough are unable to make progress in other subjects where reading is essential. Ditto for maths.

I have a child in my Upper KS2 class who will, in all probability, never read or write well, though they can access age-appropriate curriculum that is read to them, and can dictate their ideas using technology. They are not ‘bad enough’ to access a special school. Should they stay in Year 1 until they are 18, in line with their reading / writing ability?

In my childs state secondary children are held back a year. They can also move ahead a year, even just in some subjects.

But qualifications aren't automatically earned by everyone. That's very different to holding DC back a year at school.

It’s not just the US. IIRC Germany certainly used to have (probably still does) ‘sitzenbleiben’ (sit and stay) for children not considered to have reached the required standard for the next year.

I don’t think it’s a bad idea. Children who still can’t e.g read well enough are unable to make progress in other subjects where reading is essential. Ditto for maths.

I went to school (US) with a boy who repeated the 8th grade. He's now a doctor.

I think it probably helps if you've had a year that has been disrupted for whatever reason.

No one repeated years multiple times.