To expect my daughters teachers to suggest supportive strategies when they ask to meet with me?

Having read your updates, @Bushmillsbabe, to be honest the school sounds crap, and it sounds like your DD’s experience with her teacher last year has been detrimental to her learning.

I would get a tutor and muddle on through to the end of primary and not bother too much with what the teaching staff have to say. If it was year 3 or 4 I would move her but prob not much point now.

So you have 2 issues

1. lack of focus
2. catching up to recover from lack of focus

Does your school give any curriculum overview, even if only every half term? That could help. Or just CGP books for the right age. Or ask you DD each day what they have done. Or ask the parent of a more focused child to tell you what they have done.

But really the lack of focus needs to be thought about as if that could be understood it could maybe be resolved or adjusted for.

It is a class half the size of normal, with more adults. They should be able to be more helpful somehow.

Can't you tell what topics she is covering by looking in her books, and by asking her? Then talk to her about the work and go through anything she's finding difficult or getting poor marks for. A tutor would pretty much know what they will be teaching in school, I would have thought, the curriculums are fairly uniform. Do some extra reading of books she likes, practise spellings and arithmetic if she is willing, but don't make it too much of a chore.

A lot of people buy the work books from Smiths and then just work through them at home without teacher input. You don't need to do the topics at the same time as the teacher or for the teacher to tell you what pages to do when

You are still the parent

It's the teachers job to engage the children and ensure they are on task. (Ex teacher)

Would you be in a position to get an assessment done by an educational psychologist (assuming that the school wouldn't agree to her being put on their list of kids for assessment)? At a similar age, I noticed that my child was struggling to start tasks, was distractible, and not producing work that met their verbal levels of production. It turns out that they are dyslexic and can't integrate all of the processes that result in written work. The educational psychologist recommended different strategies to help (including the use of task planners, printed handouts, change of seating position so that they always face the whiteboard, and use of a laptop for longer pieces of written work).

All that said, it sounds as though your school are very resistant to adaptive strategies and you may well have to fight hard for any considerations to be put in place.

They are not telling you to do work with her at home, they want you to tell her to focus at school and stop messing about /daydreaming

Feel for your daughter OP. Getting ignored because you're not being generally disruptive has been an issue in schools forever it seems. You either have to be genius level clever, or naughty to get teachers attention and help. Of course she's going to sit there doing nothing if she doesn't understand the work and no one is teaching her.

A tutor may help her keep up with the learning that may solve the problem, but if the teachers call you in again you should consider telling them about this. They need to pay attention to the quiet students too, if they can't then this kind of thing is going to happen

100% this

The more I read about this teacher the more worried I am, seems a case of blaming the student rather than finding the solutions. I'd be tempted to speak to the Head Teacher. I agree with not setting special work etc but it is their job to engage the student and ensure progress. There are a ton of strategies a teacher can use.

All the evidence suggests that primary school homework is useless at best and damaging on the whole.

Schools looking at evidence based learning have rejected homework - usually in the face of parental objections because parents erroneously believe it helps.

They've thought about where she sits and who with, short instructions, reminders to get on with work, timers to get maths done, bespoke rewards for things she finds difficult, e.g. writing inside the boxes in her maths book.

The main thing for me is to try to work out what helps whilst at primary school, whatever the issue is. That way the 12ish different teachers at secondary school have some information to go on, rather than having to work it out themselves.

I agree with you OP this was not helpful!

I can see others have suggested the possibility of ADHD but neither you or the teachers think that’s the case, which is fair enough. I will say that my own experience with a child who did eventually turn out to have ADHD diagnosed mid pandemic as a teen just prior to GCSEs at great expense privately, is that I also had a lot of frustrating confusing meetings like this in primary school with him! Settled to some extent after reception year where I was constantly called because he wasn’t sitting still in carpet time etc. But still not producing work quickly enough, daydreaming, getting distracted etc. Eventually in year 5 I said ok are you telling me you think he might have ADHD? And they were like oh hmmm well we never really thought about it as he’s so bright academically but now you say it I guess we are repeatedly saying he struggles with his attention and concentration so if you think that’s a possibility that could explain some things… I think teachers do struggle to bring the possibility of SEN issues up sometimes as some parents react badly to the suggestion.

However if you think it’s an understanding thing as above then maybe your best bet is to encourage her to be assertive and vocal, keep her hand up and loudly remind the teacher if needed that she’s still waiting to ask her question before the teacher moves on etc if she’s really not understanding something. It may be worth getting a tutor involved to support her with the things she’s struggling with, they’ll generally know what’s being covered at school for her age and will be able to recommend materials needed.

Yes I think it sounds like they are gently suggesting she may have some SEND and were sounding you out to see if you’ve noticed issues at home.
Did they mention the GP or involving other professionals?

Who suggested she had these? Did you come to this conclusion yourself?

For clarity, you wanted a teacher to provide suggestions about homework from a book outside of curriculum, provided by yourself, and feel they're not supportive because they're not doing that. You also seemed to suggest that the teacher should communicate with your private tutor to say what should be studied in private tutoring sessions outside of school and were disappointed that this wasn't supported.

It was another poster who suggested incompetence, but I was interested what structures you're going to put in place to support monitored focus.