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?

Because they come home with all A’s.

But that is not the same as being top of the class?

Quite a lot of children get all As, don't they?

Getting highest possible sat score (dd1) Sent to the next class up to do English (Dd2) as her and another boy were so far ahead. That said both girls maths distinctly average so not getting smug 😁 English and humanities comes very easily to my two maths not so much...

Neither of my children have been top of the class for anything. I still think we'll keep them

Most kids know where they are in the year group. Especially if it’s a small class. I definitely could have ranked my classmates by academic ability from about P2 onwards, if you’d asked me to.

We also did end of year exams in secondary, and obviously all the kids used to compare marks. In higher years the results were even posted on the notice boards. So everyone knew if they were top, middle or bottom.

The children know, the other parents know. If they are clearly the top, they stand out.

One of my DD's primary teachers asked to have a chat and told me that DD is the most able child she has ever taught - we then discussed how best to stop her from being bored at school. I'm not sure how long she's been teaching for, she's a bit younger than me, so I'd guess maybe 10 years minimum, so DD is the most able out of about 300 children. That doesn't make DD a genius, just quite able and happy to demonstrate that when others might not be. To be honest, I wasn't particularly surprised as DH and I both come from very academically families.

Sadly, being academically capable doesn't particularly translate into a stellar career. It's other personal qualities that really make the difference.

I never said being top of the class was a good thing, or meant you were set up for life, or any of that. OP just asked how we knew - answer, teachers mentioned it. Not phrased as top of the class, ahead of their peers, more able, whatever.

If anything being top of the class can be a bit of a problem. The main point of school at primary stage is learning to learn. If you can coast, you're not really learning the serious bits of how to learn. You're not getting the two way feedback interaction with peers, you're not learning how to persevere when things get hard. I'm happiest when DC are around bottom end of top groups, then you know they are getting on well and will get work that is still challenging them. For me and increasingly for DD, musical instrument learning is a big help - you get new hard things every week so get to really experience trying hard and seeing the results.

DS was cleverest boy at primary. Moved him at 8 and from that point his school reports subject by subject gave place in class/year, % mark of child and median mark for the year.

DD wasn't the cleverest at primary and I think it disappointed her. However 9 of the 30 children, including her went on to Oxford, Cambridge or med school so hers was a pretty exceptional year.

How did I know.? Teachers and their friends told me. Both mine are Oxbridge - one at each.

@likeafishneedsabike

I'm sorry about your brother.

IME people who are genuinely, seriously clever, often struggle.

I think when on threads like this people talk about top or whatever, they mean clever, still with social skills, a desire to succeed etc etc

Which is what anyone would wish for their children.

The people I know or have known who are genuinely gifted at something, or are generally very very clever, struggle.
Generalising now. But engagement in 'normal' life is tricky. You're always 'different'. A lot of addiction or looking for alternative ways of living. Opting out of society. Feeling lost. These are things that the really properly clever people I know end up with.

Being clever enough, and being personable, confident (but not over confident), hard working is way better.

I agree about not learning how to learn and coasting. My DD gets the same school report each year - exemplary effort, high achievement and the advice to improve is about the importance of learning from mistakes. But they don't give her many opportunities to make mistakes, so I'm not sure how she is meant to learn from them at school.

I was top of the class and I knew this because I kept winning prizes and by the time I got to secondary my teacher would actually read out my work to everyone else as a prime example. So embarrassing.

Also like many have said here the teachers always told my parents at parents evenings. On the one hand it is nice to feel recognised with prizes etc but it didnt exactly endear me to mainly the other girls in the class, who didnt like me and actually complained I was winning too many things

You are told that your child is scoring in the 99th percentile during standardized tests.

Your child comes home in first grade and tells you the computerized test she was taking broke. When you ask the teacher, you find out it ran out of increasingly harder questions and the software crashed.

The teacher develops an independent study program to try to keep your kid busy.
After class presentations, parents you have never met come over and rave about your child’s work.

There has also been specialized testing to help figure out how best to teach her. Educationally, she needs to skip several years, but she is already the youngest and the smallest in her class. Probably one of the most socially immature as well.

DS2 - his teacher once excitedly told me he'd got the highest mark in the class in his end of term test. Not necessarily top of the class, and she said they wouldn't normally tell parents that sort of info but she knew it would mean a lot to us ( DS has SEN )

If your child is academically ahead of everyone in the year the teacher usually provides extension work and since it’s different to everyone else in year they tell you.

No clue esp in primary. When ds went to secondary he was put in top sets for everything which amazed me tbh so I definitely didn't think he was top of the class!! I didn't think he was stupid but he didn't really try and I thought he'd probably be 2nd or 3rd set.

Dd is 9, I know a few of her friends are much better readers than her - she's on David Walliams books etc whereas they're on much more sophisticated books. However she's quite good at maths And tbh anything she lacks in ability she makes up for in enthusiasm!!

So, a very very long rambling answer to say I don't know how they know and I've no clue where my kids are. Honestly couldn't care as long as they're teaching their own individual potential.

Other parents tell you. And try and make it a competition. It’s quite hard to manage. I ended focusing a lot on how rubbish she was at PE to try and avoid talking about all the other subjects where it all came very easily to her. Which may have been a mistake, she has no confidence at PE now and I suspect it’s because she heard me talking about how bad she was at it so often, as a sort of defence mechanism.

Also clues like exceeding across the board every year, being in her own reading group, being selected for maths competitions.

I thought it might be just a lower achieving peer group, but the super selective grammar place suggests otherwise.

In one of my daughter's school reports, it mentioned she got the highest score in the class. It was to do with reading and literature.

I was pleased it was mentioned as she hates maths and just can't get her head around some of the concepts of it, so to be recognised for something she is good at , gave her a real boost.

At primary school, the headteacher (30+ years of teaching experience) told me that DS1 was one of the two or three most able children she had ever come across.

I’ve always known my eldest is towards the bottom of the class because of the reading books he brought home, and just because I had a good idea of what he ‘should’ be doing at that age and knew he couldn’t. I also used to ask at parents evening if he was managing to keep up with his group, so I knew he wasn’t too far behind. At secondary I know he’s in bottom sets for everything but at parents evening a few teachers had their mark books open so I was able to sneakily look at what his marks were compared to others in his group and actually he’s now towards the middle of that group academically so I was thrilled! He generally knows who gets the worst or best marks in his class at tests or homework projects so I’d imagine whoever is top also knows their mark is top.

@StrawberryPea

I've got no idea but they always get top marks for effort on their reports and that's good enough for me. They are smart, funny and interested and I enjoy spending time with them and that's what counts, yes ?

Yes. 🙌

What do those hands mean?

With my eldest we were told he was in the top groups at primary and at high school he’s been streamed and fast tracked in some subjects and also won prizes. You also get told his test marks and when they are consistently high and can hazard a guess he’s one of the brightest.

My youngest isn’t in any top sets though

At the end of the day it doesn’t really matter I was brilliant at everything at school, great grades, great degree but it’s never manifested itself in a particularly stratospheric career. Being top is no indicator of future success and really doesn’t matter.

DD1's teacher said to us at parents evening "She's head and shoulders above the..." and then realised what he was saying and stopped himself.

I don't know what your problem is OP. It's always very clear very early on which children are bright. Even in reception Ds1 could tell you who was the best reader etc. In year 6, Ds2 tells me 'Eleanor got 30/30, as per usual'.

So what's the problem?

(Both my boys are reasonably bright, but not in the top few, top % etc, so none of this applies to me)!

I don’t see the op having a problem with it.

She is asking, presumably because she has never been told this about her child and wants to know.

Here you can certainly tell when your kids are in the region of the top, but I am glad my kids school isn’t so crass as to rank them. I don’t think it’s helpful at all.
For reference, I was that kid, outstanding test scores, ran out of work to do by the end of year 5 and coasted through year 6, got into extremely selective secondary school, clutch of A* etc etc and now I am a distinctly average adult. I really really struggled to step out of that rigorous academic environment and achieve in the workplace.

We used to get ranked at my odd private secondary. I remember being told in my first year I was in the bottom year, bottom set for Maths and I was bottom of that do I was the very worst child in the whole school at Maths.

I’m a data analyst now and my numeracy is fine (promise!) I still don’t understand simultaneous equations or in depth trigonometry but I obviously use maths every day including some knottier bits like statistical significance/standard deviations. I would never have imagined this career would be an option for me given that crushing feedback. I’m not sure ranking kids is very helpful.