To be tearing my hair out about dd and school

[tittybangbang]

DD just started in Y8 at the local comp. The school is 'outstanding' rated by ofsted, is well run and well resourced. But the pupil intake is from a very deprived area, so consequently the GCSE results are not the greatest. DD is in top sets for everything and is on the school's 'gifted and talented' register, whatever this means. Not much I think. She's refused to attend the additional sessions they run for bright kids, and actually, she's not really madly clever, just very sharp and quick, and with a very good memory. She's also very confident and articulate.

The thing I'm tearing my hair out about at the moment is the poor quality of the work she's doing at home. During year 7 she did about an hour, two hours at most of homework a week in total. She's been back a fortnight now and has done two pieces of work which took her about 30 minutes each. If I attempt any involvement in her homework she screams and shouts. She refuses to e

Glad it's not just me and mine.

Gawd bless mumsnet.

I live in a very deprived area full of immigrant families, many of whom seem to be very involved when it comes to their kids' schoolwork. My ds is in year 3 and one child in his class goes home and has an hour of maths, touch typing, reading and writing EVERY DAY after school. I'm experiencing a lot of guilt and feelings of inadequacy about my dc's education at the moment - that constant sense that I should be doing MORE, because everyone else around me seems to be doing it. I start off with the principle that school is for one type of education, and home is for another. That school could do the basics, and I'd spend time at home watching interesting films with the dc's, reading and talking. But dd has ended up at this local comp (she didn't sit any entrance exams) and I feel tortured at the thought that we've really let her down by not tutoring her and being more involved with her school work.

Wasn't helped by the head teacher from her Infants school saying last year 'A girl like msbangbang at a school like that? Couldn't you get her into a grammar or a church school? What a shame.' But this is the school that most children go to round here, and it's not terrible. It's well run....

how freaky.. I also had piano lessons, and my teacher was an old lady who lived down the road, who had also taught my dad, and who ruled with a rod of steel... if you hadnt done your practice or your theory, you were ripped to shreds... (I can still remember the musty smell of old sheet music, house plants like a jungle, and her budgie twittering away)... she must have been about 95!!

I abandoned my lessons at 14 too, another thing which I very much regret... but I can still play, just not as well as I would have been able to had I stuck it out a few years longer..