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?

All the children, from about year 2 upwards can put the rest of the class in ability order and will pretty much get it right!

@D4rwin

You sit there at parent's evening and notice the scores down the list of names. Teachers are not very discreet unfortunately.

Yes, in my experience teachers go out of their way to not tell you, and just talk about whether your dc is meeting some arbitrary target or other. They won't tell you how your child is performing in relation to others in the class.

So it pays to learn to read upside-down.

I love that my school seats children according to a Kagan structure, so each table has a high achiever, a low achiever and 2 middles. I am sure the children know who is which, but they learn that they can still work together regardless.

My DS isn’t top of the class but he is in the ‘top group’. He’s year 6 and I’ve found out through him really-he knows who’s the cleverest, who gets top marks, which kids have helpers. You hear who he’s sitting next to for Maths/English. You see the ‘green group’ spelling lists which you struggle with yourself and then you get the school report at the end of the year which confirms he’s doing well.

Because when it comes down to it, people like to boast (and are proud of their children's achievements). I hate report season and parents evening season for this reason- It makes me feel like my child is the only one who struggles with school. But I have no problem with people being proud of their children. I'm proud of mine. It's just I have one who is probably top end of average, but a bit lazy,band one who does have issues.

A teacher said it to us once about one of our kids. Because I have seen SO many people claim this about their kids on MN I nearly laughed.

I'm not making any assumptions about her being top of the class forever! Kids aren't linear in development, there's list of fits and starts. Maybe the kid that's struggling with maths this year will smash it next year and move to top spot. No big drama.

I went to a small primary that named their tables after mountains. The taller the mountain, the smarter the kids.

My best friend and I were on the tallest mountain table in year 5 when it was a split 5/6 class. All the kids knew the code, regardless of which table they sat on. Top of the class or not, children are acutely aware of their relative performance.

The kids all know just like they know the fastest runner and the best reader... it doesn’t matter much really.

I never say anything about where a child sits in relation to other children in the class. Certainly not to parents. It's irrelevant. What if the child who is 'top of the class' is actually really ordinary on a national basis, but is 'top' because the rest of the class struggle? Would be irrelevant.

In my sons' old primary school they have mixed ability tables, there isn't a high ability table they believe in peer on peer teaching, so the high ability ones are great in table discussions or are paired with a lower ability child who they can help out.

In secondary it is fairly obvious as the teacher has a printed off spreadsheet, it is colour coded, red, amber, or green and has everyone's grade on and they use a ruler to find your child. So you only have a look.

Or in the case of Ds1's teachers they would say the test is out of 100, the top score was 82, the bottom score was 28 and most people got 57-62 and then each child knows where they rank for that test in the class.

In Ds2's case the teachers confirmed that for certain subjects it is always my son and his best mate either top, joint top or second. But they are very supportive of each other, it isn't seen as competition, yet. They are in year 9. Some teachers don't tell you, but the spreadsheet does.

Do you not get reports, with the whole exceeding/meeting etc?

My DD never won the academic awards at the end of the year throughout primary (although did sit at the 'top' table and I heard every second parent in her class claiming that their child was top of the class.

Yet when it came to the 11+ exam, my DD was the only one in the cohort that actually was awarded an academic scholarship. Now four years in secondary school and she is doing very well and attends further academic programmes the school runs.

I'd be weary of those parents that claim their child is the best at anything. How would they know how my DD was doing? And to be frank, she was so bored in primary that she didn't really try and therefore was missed entirely by the teachers as needing to be challenged.

my child once told me that the yellow and green tables got much easier work than the red and blue ones.

"Oh do they? Can you think why that might be?"

"No! It's really unfair!"

(he's very bright... in some ways...)

Our (primary) school stream children for some subjects. For those who are more able, they get 'top up' sessions, and for those who struggle they get 'assistance' sessions.
Each time we have a parents' evening, the teacher gives us a printout which shows whether progress in each subject is slow, expected, or rapid and that is alongside their overall 'score' as meeting standards, falling below, or exceeding.

Despite the fact that at home my child is slow to do homework/schoolwork and professes to be bad at a number of subjects, they seem to score quite highly in a number of areas, and do not need any remediation/support.

Also, primary schools now don't really have 'top groups' either. All lessons should be pitched to be low threshold high ceiling - all kids have exposure to the same curriculum. It's only children with specific SEN who might have different work to fill gaps.

I am a secondary teacher by the way. A pp comment about the green/yellow/red is misleading.
Green means exceeding where I thought they would be. That might be less far than someone on red, who had a higher target but isn't meeting it.
Eg student A is expected to get 5, but is getting 6. Green
Student B is expected to get 8 but is getting 7. Red.

You just know. I had one exceptionally bright one at primary school. Rest were just good.

However it doesn't mean anything really - one of my average ones is now being encouraged to go apply to Oxbridge after getting a string of 9s at GCSE. My autistic son who was written off by his primary is at university doing engineering. (My dd who was exceptional has remained so).

(and yes, they all know who the cleverest person in the class is - my 8 year old is well aware who it is in her class)

In dc’s school they used the shapes: from hexagons to circles.

Actually I think that this and other examples of rankings given in this thread are rather appalling. Teachers are grown ups, surely they can remember which table is which without suggestive names. There seems to be some phony attempt at keeping confidentiality while not making the smallest effort to actually do anything to ensure it.

I think it would have been much better to just be open about different levels while making sure that kids and parents know that they are not something fixed in stone but rather just reflective of age background and working ethic. No need to make it a dirty little secret that a six year old can figure out.

I think most of the class you probably wouldn’t know but if you have a child that is extremely advanced or extremely behind then you will know.
DS1 is extremely clever. When he started primary school they were astounded with him and had him assessed by ED psych. Every teacher he’s ever had has said how amazed they are with his ability. He’s in year 8 now and at parents evening his English teacher was new and said when she looked at the expected grades she thought it was a mistake but when she met him she soon understood.
On the other hand his social skills are poor and he had to go to occupational therapy to help with his handwriting and fine motor skills.
Likewise DS2 had hearing problems and so was behind in speech and as a knock on effect reading. He’s caught up now but o knew at the time he was at the lower end of the ability spectrum for his class in literacy.

When he was assessed when he started primary school his reading and comprehension was 14+ so I had a pretty good idea he was top of his class!

I get asked it a lot at parents evening, I tend to use thirds so top third, middle, bottom. Normally its only those parents with students in the top third who ask!!

Normally its in relation to being pushed up a set.

As others have said we tried to name classes so not 1, 2, 3, 4 etc it took the students about 2 weeks to figure them out!!

From conversations with my childrens peers mums I can get an idea of where my children are, not in a braggy way but just general conversations.

But to answer the question... well, yanno, sometimes it's - erm - obvious? And then you get things like

• he's got a reading age of 7 (beginning of reception - ok this one didn't actually tell me anything about the rest of the class)
• [the sticker was because] Mrs SENCo took me and [Y] out to do some extra words (Reception)
• [new boy] is very good for [S1] because he's excellent at maths so they challenge each other (yr2)
• we're experimenting with who can cope on the red table with [S2] and [X] (y1, in a very different sort of class from his brother's)

when S2 was worried about his grade in y7 I (because I am excellent at discreetly reading upside down) was able to tell him that only one other person in the class had matched it

all the way up to

• if anyone gets all 9s it will be [S2]
• he's a genius! - S1's A-level maths teacher