To consider private school

Are you still in the armed forces? If so, some private schools offer a hefty reduction for children whose parents are in the armed forces so that could be a route.

As you say that you can only just afford it I would concentrate on doing secondary only and save towards that. If your DD is gifted then she will get much more out of secondary school. Whereas if you start at primary and run out of money I think that would be hard for her.

Theres nothing to stop you sending her to private nursery - then state primary - then back for private secondary.

That would be my advice anyway, I’ve only done private secondary for mine as tbh that’s all we could afford.

Lol op my son is exceptionally academically able. He's old enough that its not my opinion, its whats school have identified.

Your child is 13 months old. Whilst I appreciate you are “trying to prepare” the only reasonable thing to do is save money to pay school fees.

My niece went to a state primary school. Year 5 she moved to a private school. It was clear to everyone except BIL and SIL that this was a bad idea.

From birth, they expected this little girl to be a genius and outsmart her peers and her cousins.

This was not the case, she was an average student who struggled academically.

Fast forward to now, she won’t pass the Year 9 exams to stay at her current private school. She now won’t manage with the transition to state secondary due to her personality so will be moving to another private school out of our area and will need to get two buses each way.

It’s all too much based on assumptions made whilst she was in nappies and being so determined they had a genius they weren’t sensible in thinking about her as an actual person.

OP, I absolutely wouldn’t send your child to private school just for a couple of years at the beginning of school. What I would do, though, if you are in a position to afford it, is to find a good Montessori nursery and send your DD there - it will give her a very good grounding for school, and not all the children there will go on to private school.

I think that choosing Nursery + Reception for private, then state thereafter with the hope of bursaries or grammar at secondary, you are spending money at the point where actually state is pretty good, and so not using that money most effectively.

If you have money for 1 year (assuming you have to spend nursery money anyway), I’d use it in late KS2, with the aim of preparing your child for selective entry exams. For state grammars, tutoring in at least Y5 in addition to state or private school is the norm, so saving fiercely to see if you can manage Y5 and Y6, plus tutoring in Y5, would probably serve you best.

For nursery, consider whether you only need term-time or full-time childcare. Term-time, a private school nursery might be fine, though holidays are LONG.

you can’t put her in a private school with the plan to move her after two years. That wouldn’t be fair at all.

Some of the things you have mentioned have nothing to do with intelligence. I remember speaking to a GP about speech when my DS was a similar age and she told me that her DD didn’t talk until she was 3, she went on to study medicine at Oxford and become a neurosurgeon.

I could read full books at age 3 and was considered an amazing reader. I’ve always been good at English but nothing exceptional. I’m pretty average academically.

I would drag myself over hot coals to keep my kids out of the state school system.

If money is tight I would start at primary age and figure it out from there. If you have skills that will allow you to do a second job freelancing in the evening, get that going now.

OP, the nursery attached to private school is similar cost to other nurseries - is that right?
In which case, just put her name down for the nursery you like the most, for her.

I honestly wouldn't worry about secondary just now - you can't afford to save toward it and may well be moving house. So there's nothing you can DO about secondary education now anyway, so no need to try and imagine what your 13 month old will be likevatv13 years old.

Given how bad state school funding was under the Tories and is getting worse if anything under Labour, YANBU.

Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.

@Emanresuunknown - ah, ok, not the sound blending, but letters are easy enough for some. And that just reminded me that one of my children could “read” the local supermarket name at a very young age (obviously they couldn’t, but definitely recognised the colour / font etc!)

Shape recognition is not the same as recognising phonic graphemes and understanding how the sounds join together to make words which is what reading is.
Its extremely extremely unlikely that OP's 13 month old is recognising phonic graphemes. She may recognise a word in the sense that it's akin to a picture and if she's been told many times what it is she will recognise the shapes and say the word. That isn't reading. Its like children will often recognise 'Asda' or 'Tesco', they are recognising the picture of the word

@0ohLarLar - you mock, but it’s far from unusual in babies / toddlers with autism. They are “pattern seeking” and so recognise shapes and letters etc from very young.

This is a very wise post OP but a couple of years in a private school will not help these issues and may hinder.

But firstly - it is really important to understand that there is no perfect solution and no such thing as perfect parenting. Whatever we do to avoid making the mistakes our parents made, which traumatised our childhoods, we end up making different mistakes that traumatise our children in different ways. There is no avoiding this. Accept that you are imperfect and that is ok. Mistakes are forgivable.

You would have to be exceptionally careful to identify a private school with the attitude you want. Most will pay lip-service to the whole child and the importance of play and creativity but the chief priority of the majority of paying parents is getting the highest possible academic results and the school will deliver to that expectation.

But more importantly than this is that if it's likely your child may have neurodiversity issues, the process for identifying and supporting her needs, especially as an academically able child, is going to be a very difficult process to navigate. It will be more difficult, not less, if you have her in private to start with and later move to state. Getting an EHCP organised to facilitate a smooth transition from private to state for a child with neurodiversity is nigh on impossible - the state mechanism requires the child to make the transfer without any EHCP, at which point if the child falls apart and is unable to cope with the transition the process may then kick off and you eventually get your EHCP after 2 years of school refusal/trauma/eating disorders etc. That hopefully won't happen for your DD but it's within the range of possibilities for an academically advanced neurodiverse girl. Not that it would be plain sailing in the state sector but you could at least use the money you aren't spending on school fees to help in other ways - especially perhaps funding play therapy if she starts developing the kinds of anxiety issues that can be common among highly intelligent neurodiverse children, or funding other kinds of therapies and diagnostics to help maximise how much she is able to thrive and enjoy her childhood. The intelligence she has is not going to go away, it will always be there.

Save it for Secondary if needed.
I have one really bright child and one a bit above average and both did well in a good, mixed, large Primary. In fact I think it gave them some advantages over their peers that had been in Private since 3/4.
If we had a decent State Secondary available we would have opted for that as well

Hint. Every mother sees signs of genius in their child. They all love books/being read to etc Loads of people are very able at maths with fuck all work - there are 3 boys among the kids in my family who just never have to be taught any of it.

Early walking i found was completely uncorrelated with aptitude in any area at all, whether physical or cognitive. Its quite culturally influenced, children in many African and caribbean communities tend to sit and walk earlier for example.

Op, I understand you. I was there, with an exceptionally able DS (and a more ‘normally’ bright DD).

However, I came to make the above point: at Reception, you have only the ‘normal’ admissions barriers to navigate to get into ‘the best state primary in your area’. You put it on your form, you are considered against all other applicants using the over-subscription criteria for the 30/60/90 places.

At Year 1, you have the much higher barrier that the class is already full, and you are relying on movement out to create a place for your child to fill. While falling rolls in London may mean that fewer classes are full, the ‘best’ one you may want for your child is much less likely to have places than the ‘ok’ one down the road.

Joining state in Reception gives you the best chance of getting a place in a school
that you want. (This is one of the reasons that canny private schools keep fees for Reception relatively low - they know that the barriers to moving to excellent state at Y1 are high so they will keep more pupils)

Also - and I speak from experience of both DS and DD - Reception in state schools can be absolutely excellent for the unusually able. The free-flow learning through play model - while it looks chaotic to the outsider - in fact gives freedom for such children to learn at their own level. DS browsed the book corner for non-fiction while others admired the pictures; constructed football league tables including negative numbers; calculated with 4-6 digit numbers on the whiteboard in the ‘school’ role play area. DD wrote multi-page stories and painted realistic copies of book illustrations using the tiniest of brushes.

Y1, with its ‘now sit down and listen to the lesson’ was much more difficult, and was when we ended up needing to find a different school for DS through moving. Luckily, both thrived in good state schools with a cohort containing able children, and both have university destinations that reflect their ability.

I’d also second enrichment - music, sport, dance / drama, art clubs, etc etc. The discipline and tenacity required to become really excellent at any of these in a high quality specialised setting has stood mine in good stead, and in both cases the freedom to find the best provision in the community rather than being tied to ‘in school provision’ in a single private school has given them much, much higher quality training.

I wanna see the video of the 13 month saying 90 clear, intelligible words without prompting from a parent, identifying a parallelogram independently, consistently recognising phonic graphemes etc.

I nearly peed myself reading it.honestly op you will look back in 10 years time and be completely mortified that you put this online 😂

Also pretty much all little babies and toddlers love being read a story, love turning the pages, they love sitting on mums knee and the sound of mums voice. You are almost certainly reading too much into things convincing yourself she is super duper advanced, I'm sure she's a bright little girl but you can really tell nothing at this age. Early walking is not linked to advanced academic achievement at all.

The thing is OP the early years are actually done very well at state. With kids aged 5-7 you do not have the behavioural issues you see later on and at this age private schools are not really selective like they are later.

Private schools will claim they are working at a more advanced level but honestly at age 5/6 you will see very little difference between kids in a private school and kids in a reasonable state school.

That's why people spout things like 'state til 8' and you find numbers at private school increase as you go up the year groups.

In decades gone by private schools gave out extremely generous scholarships to very bright children eg 90 or 100% discounts, but those days are gone now and most scholarships are 10%, 20% at the very most.

There are a tiny number of bursaries but for these you'd need low income and expect your finances to be scrutinised very closely.

Given this list of potential issues I would say that a nice state school would be the greatest gift you can ever give to your daughter I would prioritise this above everything else . My neighbour's daughter was at a private school from 7. By 8 she had raging anorexia. Her experience ( at 8!!!!) was that you didn't count unless you were the tallest, slimmest, prettiest, cleverest, good at sport. She was very clever but short and ' ordinary'. It was absolute torture for her.