If your child went to a rubbish primary school…

[Schoolqueriesss]

How did they get on at secondary?
My child’s school is terrible. The entire class is behind, and they haven’t had a teacher last more than a couple months and hasn’t ever had a teacher last all year. She’s now fallen quite far behind and is in year 6.
If your child had a poor primary experience and/or was behind, did they make good progress once they moved to secondary or is it that once you’re behind, you’re behind. Wish I could afford a tutor but I just can’t right now so we’re doing lots at home but it’s like everything is brand new. Thanks

I felt like three of mine could have gone better - and this was reflected in SATS. They mostly got exceeding, but just. I was not part of the tutoring parents, I just didn’t want that stress for them. The teachers seemed to feed this also and there was some bizarre mentality of how special each child was based on how clever they were. My eldest was not in Gifted and Talented either. 2/3 are neurodiverse.

They still were in top sets at secondary. Also, because of their SATs scores, their GCSE targets were 7-8. It meant that they were generally always above their targets so they had praise heaped on them!

my 4dc misses out on SATs because of Covid. She was assessed in y7 and given much harder GCSE targets, even though she is not as clever as the other three.

dc1 achieved seven 9 in GCSE and two 8. Dc2 has just sat GCSE, but I would expect her to get about four 9.

They can definitely make up for it in our experience. They are just at a local comp school, but one that does push them. They haven’t been tutored and I am glad they were able to catch up un line with their own abilities.

I went to a rubbish primary school and was behind.

I found that I did really well at secondary, the teaching style worked well for me and I enjoyed having more independence. Something ‘clicked’ and I went from middle-bottom ish to top of the class.

There's lots of evidence IIRC that the most important thing for kids' achievement at primary level is the home environment, so if that's positive and supportive of learning, outcomes should be good.