How exactly do you know your child is top of their class

[shadesofsun]

As per the title, I am curious as to how so many parents claims their child is top of the class, so who tells you that?

Are teachers really telling parents this or giving a hierarchy of where the children sit?

@2bazookas

I have no idea where my child is in their peer group with schooling.

Doesnt your child's school provide end of term reports, and Parent evenings where you discuss the child with their teacher?

But that tells you how your child is doing compared to their targets not their position in the class.

What does it actually matter?

The important thing is surely whether or not they're fulfilling their ability, not whether they're better at maths than Johnny and Susan.

Caringcarer that is so sad for your DFC. As if he doesn't have enough to contend with without school overlooking his real achievements.

Did you query it with the school?

tbh, I don't believe the vast majority of children are naturally top of class. Over many years, just about every 'top performing child'I hear about, is being force to study by parents, who don't seem to take any account of their child's mental health.
I would be surprised if those who are 'force-educated', with little or not down time, end up being emotional wrecks.

As long a s your child is happy, and enjoys what they're doing, they should thrive.

He's obviously very academically able - why does that need to be validated by comparing him to others and him being labelled the best? If another pupil achieved exactly the same as him it wouldn't lessen his achievements. Why does it matter?

It doesn't need to be, but comparing ourselves to others and competing is pretty universal human behaviour. Every time there's a test or an exam, kids(and parents) always want to know how the child's results compare with others. It's only natural.

@DanielRicciardosSmile

What does it actually matter?

The important thing is surely whether or not they're fulfilling their ability, not whether they're better at maths than Johnny and Susan.

In terms of fulfilling their ability, it is actually pretty important to know if your child is at the top of their class in a subject as the child at the top of a class may not be given sufficient opportunities to fulfil their ability if work isn't adequately differentiated.

I've found that this is particularly the case in Maths. My DD seems to be stuck on a where it takes the first term of each year (and my intervention) for that year's teacher to understand that the standard school approach to Maths isn't giving my DD the opportunity to fulfil her potential and she needs something different. If I didn't know that she was the top in her class then I wouldn't be as confident in challenging the teacher to provide more appropriate work.

I know that not all schools are like this, but ours is.

The kids just know. They can call the sets anything they like all the children know which is top set. And top set know who the 5 brightest kids are and can probably rank them very accurately in order. Might differ by subject. Always the odd anomaly too. Mega IT kid at DDs school. They're super competitive at the academic top too, they know what everyone in their peer group gets in every test by %.

I knew both Dd and Ds were absolute bottom of their classes.
They knew they were bottom of their class.

They really couldn’t have cared less.

They just found something they were good at outside of school.

I don't know that my daughter is top of the class or anywhere near (she's only 5 and in reception) but we have started to wonder where she is in terms of ability for her age because of the work that's being sent home from school during lockdown. I understand they have to pitch things to the lowest ability level but she'd be bored to tears learning the numbers from 1 to 20 and putting them in order when she's capable of adding up the coins in her purse to see if she can buy an ice cream, or doing very basic phonics activities when she's burned through all the early readers books, Mr Men, Julia Donaldson and so on that we've bought and is now working her way through the easier Roald Dahl books like The Magic Finger (albeit slowly as it's a bit of a step up). We do know she's a very good reader but I have no idea where she would sit on the spectrum of reading ability for her age.

To be fair even if we were told she was right at the top of the class for everything, I have no idea what we'd do with the information. We just keep buying her plenty of books to crack on with.

You have no idea. Most of us with actually able kids are not sitting there hoping they're top of the class or trying to push them to be top of the class.
We're hoping for other children who can keep up with them so they're not constantly having to choose between lonely or held back. If I mention on an anonymous forum that DC is it's because it's relevant to something I want to say, and their being ahead does come up in discussions with teachers, usually in the context if it causing a problem. I would never say it to other parents. When people talk about top of the class they're always talking about a specific subject area as far as I've seen. Though there is the odd child who is ridiculously good at academics and sport and music and it really does seem to be across the board - that's less common.

Very able kids are not happy and engaged if they're not learning and progressing. Some end up doing stuff out of school because school are not meeting DC's need. We've tried to divert some of DD's energy into learning music. I'm sure some people think she is hot housed as she is an outlier, I sometimes wish i had that sort of control but no, no idea what she's doing, I can't write the way she can myself so I'd be a rubbish force feeder anyway.

I absolutely agree with you OP that it's the child being happy and resilient and having friends that matters. Coasting in school has a big detrimental effect on resilience which we have seen in practice with DD. So we do need to find ways to make sure that even if they're way ahead they still get challenged. This is the sort of context in which discussions arise with teachers where it becomes clear that a DC is an outlier in their particular class. It's not well done you're first in the class have a gold medal. If they stop being an outlier or move to a school where they're not an outlier the problem goes away, great, as long as they're still progressing.

@thirdfiddle
I agree it’s only people with normal children that like to brag about thier child being ‘top of the class’ (and thier child probably isn’t!) those of us who’s children are tend to hide it or play it down in real life (I’ll talk about it on places like mumsnet when it’s relevant to the conversation like this thread) but in real life when people mention how brilliant he is I will always pope up with ‘oh yes but he can’t tie his own shoe laces!) or something equal silly.

Most of us with actually able kids are not sitting there hoping they're top of the class or trying to push them to be top of the class.
We're hoping for other children who can keep up with them so they're not constantly having to choose between lonely or held back. If I mention on an anonymous forum that DC is it's because it's relevant to something I want to say, and their being ahead does come up in discussions with teachers, usually in the context if it causing a problem. I would never say it to other parents.

Absolutely - I would only ever talk about it if someone asked, as you have on this thread. I had to move DS1 to another primary school as his teacher would just send him and a friend out of the classroom and get them to play games on the computer because they already knew everything the rest of the class were learning. When he moved to a different school he was put on their G&T programme and went on to achieve As and A*s at GCSE despite not doing a single moments revision. That’s how I know he’s bright. But like others have mentioned, that doesn’t mean he’s perfect, he most likely has ASD, he can be rude and unhelpful, apparently can’t manage to push his recycling in the right bin and cooked himself something other than pasta, at the age of 20 for the very first time recently!

I appreciate that those whose DC are not excelling academically can see merit in other achievements, and the whole “their mental health is more important” thing may well be true, but it presumes it has to be one or the other. Mental well-being and good grades are not mutually exclusive if a child is naturally bright and inquisitive. If you are pushing or pressurising them to do well, that’s a different story.

thirdfiddle I think school is for the average pupils if you are at the bottom or at the top by a fair way it really doesn’t cater for you

My dc were at the bottom and we went down the ECA route which has got them jobs as adults

The kids just know
I'm not sure about that really. Some do, but not all. Some don't care. Some don't have terrribly accurate perceptions of themselves. Both my boys would probably say they are "average". Actually they are well above average but are in friendship groups that largely consist of children who are very bright indeed. They only ever compare their marks with their immediate friends so know that they dont score as highly as highly as them but they don't really know, or care, where they are in comparison to anyone outside their own group.
With my upside down reading skills, at parents' evenings I have deduced that they are about a third to half way down the top sets in most subjects, and in the subjects where they are in the second set they are at the top. So actually probably performing at broadly similar levels in most subjects, as there is bound to be overlap between sets. My youngest got moved from set 2 to set 1 in maths last year and I was initially very worried as I thought he would be just hanging on to the coat tails of the super bright youngsters and would struggle. I had always thought of it as being a linear thing, with the most able child in set 2 being "below" the bottom of set 1 but actually that's not been the case, and he has settled comfortably into the higher set. So that taught me that what set your child is in doesn't always accurately indicate how they are performing relative to the whole year group.
I think that it is useful to have a general idea of how your child is performing in relation to their peers as it can give you some clues as to how realistic some of their aspirations might be, and can flag up potential issues if their relative position is changing, or one subject is massively out of step. But I wouldn't want to go back to my schooldays when the teachers read out every test result to the whole class in reverse order. Whilst it probably does incentivise some children, I think it damages more. I don't really subscribe to the "competition is bad" ethos which seems common these days, with non competitive sports days etc but I think it is potentially very damaging to continually and formally rank children in the way that was the norm in my childhood. I like to know what general ball park they are in but it is of no real interest to me to know if they got 1 mark more or less in a test than some other kid.

evilharphy rather than always buying have a look at reading chest. My DD is a teen now but used it for a couple of months when she was your DD's age. Our local library was poor. Really helped her reading take off. I only heard about it on mumsnet.

Some good points that top of the class or top table in school A wouldn't even be top table in school B. DD is older now but her primary did those NFER tests each year - average is 100. I think over 120 was indicative of grammar school ability.

I absolutely agree with you OP that it's the child being happy and resilient and having friends that matters. Coasting in school has a big detrimental effect on resilience which we have seen in practice with DD. So we do need to find ways to make sure that even if they're way ahead they still get challenged. This is the sort of context in which discussions arise with teachers where it becomes clear that a DC is an outlier in their particular class. It's not well done you're first in the class have a gold medal. If they stop being an outlier or move to a school where they're not an outlier the problem goes away, great, as long as they're still progressing.

Yes! We had to move DD to another school to get her the challenge she needed.

She actually had stopped achieving well in school because she was so bored she stopped even trying. When she handed work in she scored high marks, but she'd stopped handing in a lot of work and was seriously depressed.

Moving her to a more challenging school was the best thing we ever did for her.

I have two other children who have been well served by our local school, and I think it does a great job for kids who are not outliers.

First school would tell you in terms of “ in the top 10%, or very near the top” But the school was very anti competition.
Next school they are all openly talking about their position in maths, eng etc. School gave prizes for top 3.
V different approaches

In wales we have yearly gets from year 2 onwards. There’s maths procedural, maths reading and literacy (there’s also welsh but our school doesn’t do it)
The scores are then standardised so that 100 is the average and you can compare your scores against the rest of your cohort. DS was often off the top of the chart with the following statement

• Similarly, very high achievers can only be given an age-standardised score of ‘more than 140’ because the test cannot assess the limit of their skills. Again, teachers will be able to give you more information about your child’s ability.

Given that a national test couldn’t assess thier full ability it’s safe to say DS is fairly ‘top of the class’ !!

I often ask the teachers at parents evenings how my son is doing in comparison to the rest of the class and they tell me.
Some subjects he's near the top, others not so much.

For some parents it appears at birth, there seems to be a need to compare their child against others or against development milestones and this continues in to their formal schooling. Maybe it is an extension of the ego or an expression of underlying worries: it is certainly true that we have built a society in which academic achievement seems to equal success.

Having just read John Holts 'How Children Learn' (highly recommended) it is disappointing that we still label children in such a way or derive any satisfaction from comparing our children with other children.

Hi, as a former primary school teacher and early years specialist, my answer to this questions is always to think of whether they’re making progress against previous years/terms. This is recorded pre-school And up!
A class with 30 kids can have 2 working way above the average and 1 working way below. Another few near top etc. This info is used across all schools in the UK to help the teacher set work.
Some are in similar ability groups to ensure support is equally split and/or for different abilities work in English and maths.
Many are in mixed ability groups now and children in Year 1 upwards are asked to choose the work they think is right to support or challenge them.
Secondary schools are moving to this way of working pre-GCSE too with some sets but even in a set the work will be at different levels.
Just worry about whether your child can do the work and is getting the right amount of support or challenge. Whether they’re top really doesn’t matter!

You can be top of a not particularly bright cohort but not be particularly bright compared to peers nationally. Ultimately, exam grades are awarded in a national basis. My DD was/is a high achiever from reception but now at a good uni, she is one of many so doesn’t stand out.

I think you know - we were told for one of my children they were so far into “exceeding expectations” that they exceeded what they expected of that category and was exceeding on the year above’s standard too. When we moved to a far more academic school, the spacing is more even - now assesses as meeting expectations in some areas as opposed to exceeding in all, but still exceeding in maths and english.

I think that's interesting @lilgreen. DS was very much stand out top at primary. And it really helped his confidence. He went to a v selective London school at 8 and that confidence stayed with him. No child from his first cohort went to Oxbridge/did medicine.

DD was in a cohort where 9 of the 30 went to Oxbridge/med school. She never consistently made top table and that has stayed with her and dented her confidence. She also was not good at sport which I think is afforded disproportionate cudos in schools.

Both DC are clever. One went to Oxford the other to Cambridge. 44 IB points v 4 A*A levels. One is much more confident than the other though.