To ask the school to stretch my DD

Thank you for sharing your experiences - this is an excellent, nuanced and insightful response. Absolutely spot on.

It can indeed be a mixed blessing to be further ahead. I put huge amounts of pressure on myself. I would be upset to score 98% instead of 100%, especially as I actually did score 100% in many GCSE and A-Level modules, followed by a double first degree. I cried when I got 1 B and 3 As at A-level, I wanted 4 As. Nobody really understood (‘but you’ve done so well!’), people were kind but I was personally disappointed.

I’ve actually just returned to further study at 39, and it is the first time I have ever studied that I am able to purely enjoy what I am learning about. I’m still getting very high feedback, but I feel completely different studying now I’m older. I don’t feel anxious, I don’t keep obsessively checking through things and worrying after I’ve submitted assignments, I am much more content with ‘no, I’ve done enough, this is good enough.’ It feels wonderful!

YANBU OP.

I asked for clarification about this regarding my DS (6). He has always been extremely ahead in Maths, he can easily compete Maths tasks for 2 school years ahead. (DH teaches Year 3, so was able to check this with resources he uses for his own class). He self-taught himself all his own times tables.

Fortunately, his school already streams, and he is sat with a table of other high attainers. As a child who was identified as gifted academically, I thrived in top sets which could move at a faster pace, mixed ability usually means for high attainers letting friends copy their work and explaining things to them. I actually never minded helping friends, but didn’t get much challenge myself. Sadly, this often doesn’t fully come until sixth form/university.

His teacher reassured me about the ways she is both deepening his knowledge and extending him. He has to show her multiple ways of solving a problem, and describe them. His table have access to ‘Power Maths’ books for extra challenges.

I was never as concerned about writing, as it’s naturally more open-ended for self-extension, but his teacher has done an excellent job of extending his vocabulary, punctuation and editing skills. Reading is also good, as we can access a new book daily, which is great as he reads so fluently and understands the books. Very able children can move at a faster pace.

The teaching standards make it very clear that the needs of all learners, including high attainers, must be met. Check out Potential Plus for further advice and resources outside of school. Good luck!

All children are doing foundation gcse type work in y6 . Sats test gcse foundation topics.

Students who get greater depth in sats go on to do higher maths curriculum which goes to grade 9.

DCU do all year round and summer courses for academic high achieving and/or gifted students. You can apply to do the exam and if accepted you can choose which cotto do. I didn’t know about it for my eldest children but my 5th was accepted after the exam but then didn’t find any courses they liked. The courses can be expensive.

I am a teacher and I dont think you should word it like that, but you could definitely say she comes home and says it's boring and can do it all, ask what she needs to do next so you can explain to her her targets.

Also you can ask the school to stretch her and I agree they “should” but they are busy dealing with so many behaviours and problems many will find it hard to deepen understanding without just providing additional work. it sucks- as a teacher I can see the kids who are bored and I feel for them but I am struggling to teach most to get to the standard so going that step higher is a when I have time moment… sounds horrible because it is but it’s the reality of education

You say “She is already an anxious child who does not realise her ability so the very last thing I would want to do is make her more anxious.” I think she would be better off if you focus on improving this aspect of her life. Anxious people often can’t sit still, find it tortuous to go through something they don’t want to. She’d be a lot better off learning to chill out and enjoy the moment than to feed her anxious brain

Chat gpt can come up with really good stem activities and then deeper thinking activities. Also some mental maths work. I use it to get teen boys off screens

personally … I would consider getting her to do higher level exam…

for example in the UK … you can do a GSCE at a younger age.

The best success with this was kids we had at private schools (we used both private/public depending on the child and what they needed/wanted).

While the schools stretched in maths by dividing into cohorts with one being advanced, I can’t recall any extension or differentiation with English. However, I had one maths whizz who quickly went through the work easily, but could not ride a bike, or indeed tie their shoelaces (not for our lack of trying, so they were given dispensation to wear those elastic laces that didn’t need tying). So, every few maths lessons the pastoral care team would organise personal bike riding lessons, did intensive work with shoelaces etc. This benefited them way more than getting more maths work and being well over a year ahead of the average cohort. Extension does not always need to relate to maths/english and education can be viewed in broader terms.

Another, at another private school, were in a group identified as being ahead academically, and again, while given some higher level maths stuff, instead of pushing them years ahead further than the average of the cohort, they did another language again with them to extend them in another way.

Don’t have any experience with this in our public system, as those who went through public were average academically so it was not really relevant. To be clear, that’s not why they were public, it was their choice, they wanted to follow their friends from primary and as they had no specific pastoral care needs we were happy to let them. Although, in our system (both public and private) maths has to be differentiated after the second year in high school so I guess that would assist those who had waited until then?

ETA- I now recall in our public, the schools we used did some composite classes, which one of ours was always in. Guessing this may have been an easy way of extending some kids by mixing them with the grade ahead and that work but I can’t recall the details as was quite a while back.

I actually really like mastery and have always found it easy to stretch pupils when teaching it (I had good training though including from some visiting teachers from China). It is also worth saying - and this may not be the case here - that every student I’ve ever taught who has told their parents they are bored in class is not choosing to take on the challenges I set out for them. If I taught a student who was racing through absolutely everything on offer then I would of course find more ways to challenge them.

The obsession with mastery came from the last government’s kneejerk response to some PIRA results. We were then all trained on Shanghai Maths because China were seen as the gold standard. In China though, teachers are given afternoon slots for intervention so that nobody falls behind. In England we have afternoons for Science, Art, DT, Geography, History, Computing, PSHE, RE and PE…. Add to that the fact that the Chinese results are taken from the higher attaining schools in big cities not from the general population. It’s fashion and it will be gone soon enough.

I appreciate my own experience with my daughter is just one child/school. But I have a lot of teacher friends (ex teacher myself) who all confirm that this is the approach in schools now, and my experience of supply teaching is the same. That said, just yesterday I was in a school where half of y6 were just set off on their own to do an investigation from nrich, rather than do the classwork that was too easy for them! Problem was, it was a bit too hard without any input and I had no capacity to give them the support they needed to make it a really worth while activity due to the rest of the class needing me. If there’d been a TA available, or if they’d been in sets (dirty word!) with the more capable children from next door and a teacher, they’d have got so much more from it.

to the poster who said there’s no point stretching them cos they’ll repeat it all in secondary with everyone else - this shouldn’t happen. The rest of the class won’t just magically catch up. When it comes to GCSEs some kids take the higher paper and get A*s. Others take the foundation and scrape an F. In the vast majority of cases they’ll be taught different things in different groups. We accept this difference at 16, I don’t know why expect primary age children to be a homogenous group who all achieve the same and are therefore given the same work.

You can definately ask the school what they are doing to challenge her. A good teacher should be as capable at challenging pupils with high ability as they are supporting students with low ability. Unless she is some sort of genius, she is unlikely to be the only child in the year group that requires some challenge level work.

In my experience, secondary school is better though because there are more children, and so the chance is that there will be more pupils of her ability to make up a higher ability group or set.

Kumon, Atom learning, BBC bitesize - there are so many resources, free and for a fee. When my son told me he was bored, I started preparing him for 11+. He didn't pass the exam but was challenged and did a lot of extra stuff as well as his other 7 classmates. The teachers knew that certain kids were preparing for 11+ and were well above in Maths/English or both, and never adjusted the work for them. There were 2 levels of difficulty at Maths. One of the boys was doing a GCSE level Maths in Year 6 at Kumon, and I was wondering how he was bearing the tasks set in class.

You're lucky if you've found a school that doesn't just witter on about mastery.

Take a look at Simon Singh's parallellograms.

I asked my son's school to give him harder work in maths when he started literally crying with boredom (sobbing on the stairs, saying it was just so easy and dull).

Could you stretch her outside of school?

Make her abilities broader rather than just academic?

hmm last year in primary I would have thought they might do some sort of more advanced work/fast tracking with her

Lots of people have given you very good answers.

So I just want to say I read this as in 🙆‍♀️🤸‍♀️ stretch, not academically. I was wondering how that would work 🤣