DS been asked to leave school due to low CAT score.

[omgitcantbetrue]

Just had a meeting with DS Prep school and I'm feeling so worried and anxious for DS.

He scored 92 average on the CAT test.
The teacher gently informed me this means he'll not manage to achieve above a C grade in any subject at GCSE. He's only in year 5, and I'm amazed they can make such predictions.
I was then informed that it's in his best interest to transition to a more gentle secondary school.
I don't know what I want really. Advice from parents in a similar position?
Are her life prospects totally limited? With C's only I'm assumings he'll never go to University. Which is fine. I'm worried for his prospects.
Do children who score 92 ever improve? How below average is this?
Thanks for reading

I have twins - they both scored around 100/102 in their CATS - they got average point score in their GCSEs of 7.5 and 7.2 and that was not teacher assessment grades. Their Dad who went to Cambridge always does really badly on intelligence tests but he runs his own business in a very intellectual field.

@omgitcantbetrue

Sorry. Should have said. He’s dyslexic. I did know that already, but thought he was bright.

He is in the wrong prep school, he is bright, all mine were dyslexic but bright, all three went to uni. One an architect, one on way to being an architect, another a geophysicist.

Find a school which suits him through the dyslexia society

www.dyslexicschools.co.uk/page.asp?t=Home

@wombatchocolate I think your posts are misinformed. How well a NT (and non NT, depending) child does academically is more to do with the sort of input and stimulation the child gets. And there are many other variables - some children are late developers; G&T children can underperform up to a certain age until their executive control catches up in development. The tracking you refer to is a blunt instrument based on performance not ability and is a very broad brush guidance - ie it may given an indication for a percentage of students on the assumption that the stimulation and input the child has at 7 will not change and that they are not falling into categories of students who are likely to change over time - it is just a broad idea. The selective schools will weed out students because they are not a good fit for that particular school. But the idea that you can accurately predict gcse potential at age 6 or 7 misunderstands the purpose and scope of the tracking tool. If you think that I am wrong about this, please could you link the relevant authority or research?

@omgitcantbetrue the teacher was saying your dc was not a good fit for the school, it seems, no more. The idea that he would do "better" at state school is slightly bonkers as many parents who can afford private schools do so because the facilities are so much better and there are fewer behavioural issues, not to do with the amazing teaching, necessarily.
I would take this discussion to the head and see what they say. And then like a pp has said, look for a school which has a nurturing and intelligent ethos, keep your expectations high, while also providing the right level of support needed for your dc's learning style - as another pp has said, how well your dc will do will be a lot to do with your giving him the right level of attention and help and backing. I know someone who was "written off" in a similar way at primary school and then got a first in Maths from Kings College London in his twenties! So take heart!

Actually I just want to say that again for @wombatchocolate's benefit - I know someone who was "written off" in a similar way at primary school and then got a first in Maths from Kings College London in his twenties!

My school used cats to predict gcse grades- they were on every report from years 9-11 And I candy I’ll remember one score was 123 and the others 130 odd. In my case they were quite a good predictor. I imagine they are less good at the average ranges.

For your school, they can probably quite easily cream off the children getting 120 plus and know they don’t have to put in so much effort in terms of maintaining their gcse results. In some ways at least you know now rather than going through any internal entrance exams and finding out in y6. Is your school one that is a bit of a hot house? There is nothing wrong with being average but it must be hard to be lower down the ability range in a very high achieving school so it may have been a blessing in disguise.

I agree with others and would be looking for a new school ASAP. Isn't it the job of a school to guide their pupils and encourage them to reach their full potential? Surely it's not to write them off at such a young age!

Obviously this school is more interested in exam results than in their students and I wouldn't want a child of mine there for a moment longer than necessary.

Ah the old dyslexic but bright scenario.

I have so much to say about this I don't know where to start!

Yes, your DC needs to attend a "gentler" school.
No, this does not mean your DC will not achieve well on their GCSEs.
Being in a less selective school will do your DC the world of good as they won't always be the low achiever.

I would change schools at the end of this academic year, no way would I give anymore money than necessary to a school which didn't believe in my child.

My very dyslexic DD has awful Y6 results and teachers are now bemused because she's exceeding her targets by several grades in some subjects.
I couldn't even read by the beginning of Y5 and I passed all my GCSEs.

The CAT scores are extremely unreliable for a child with dyslexia. So much so educational psychologists uses a variety of other tests to assess children's ability.
Your child may be very bright masked by the dyslexia. He may have many other talents in other areas
Get a full assessment by a recommended educational psychologist who specialises in dyslexia. S/he will be able to give you a profile of your son's strengths and weaknesses.

Do not listen to this teacher - get him out of that school.
There are so many children and adults who have been written off by teachers - I am a teacher.

I know so many children with dyslexia who were bright or had so many other talents but this was masked by the dyslexia.

Find out what he is good at - where he can achieve and build his confidence - this is the key.
Having a child with dyslexia will mean you will really have to push for him to be given the opportunities to succeed. But it is so worth it.

Don’t worry OP my DD scored 99 in her CATs test at the beginning of year 7 (she came bottom of the year, Grammar School)
Turned a corner in year 10, suddenly her spelling went from awful to ok, not dyslexic just couldn’t spell to save her life.

She ended up getting the prize for best A level results in year 13.
Having taught for ove 30 years now, experience tells me CATs scores aren’t always a good indicator of future results.

What was the aggregate and breakdown?

Is it across all areas or did, say verbal reasoning lower the score?

Brilliant post freebirdfallenfruits!

I am dyslexic, and this happened to me 32 years ago. It really saddens me that during this time nothing has changed.

I was told by the private school I attended at age 8 that I had to leave due to being dyslexic.

I still carry the stigma and anger 32 years on, especially as my non dyslexic younger sister was allowed to stay. However, it make me determined growing up to prove them wrong and I did!

I went to uni, played 3 instruments very well, had a very successful career, and was internationally published.

So much for them telling me I would amount to nothing due to being dyslexic.

Please don’t listen to them.

@WombatChocolate
People want selective schools to exist because they want their child to learn with clever children and have the chance to get the very highest grades many people choose private schools because of their vastly superior facilities, smaller classes and better behaviour of the children and perceived good peer influences

However, they don’t like it when their child isn’t in that by-nature small group of students and are suddenly excluded. They only like it when it includes their child and excludes some other children. there is no evidence for this at all - it really is just your opinion. It does not reflect the reality I know of. The parents I know who send their children to private school want their children to go a lovely school, and do their best. The idea that they are buying into exclusivity on any level is wildly incorrect.

@OutwiththeOutCrowd thank you

This might not be relevant, but the French system is better, i think. I was kept down a year ehen i eas in the equivalent of year 4 and it made a huge difference to me. I basically wasnt listening in class and then behan to make more of an effort. I went on to get As in GCSEs and A levels and then a first at uni in philosophy. Dont write him off just yet but the right school is probably crucial. I hate the way some schools try and weed out and pigeonhole so young. Kids learn in different ways and different rates. Its awful and wrong. But thered probably not much you can do at this school. But dont write him off!

What an awful attitude from the school. I'd take him out just because it seems like a terrible place where your son is not going to get the support he needs and I wouldn't want to keep giving them my money!

As far as predicting his future goes, my DH is dyslexic and struggled a lot in school to GCSE level. But he is really bright (probably the cleverest person I know) and ended up doing a Masters in Engineering, now has a successful career with very good salary etc. So please don't give up your ambitions for your DS.

Year FIVE and written off?! That is a v bad teacher.

Plenty of dyslexic people go to uni and get good jobs etc. My dyslexic friend is a lawyer. All it means is that the school has to put extra effort into the right teaching approach / resources, which clearly this school has no intention of doing. Exams may need to be dictated instead of written, etc, I know a couple dyslexic people who dictated their GCSEs. One went to Cambridge.

I am livid on your behalf how they encouraged you to write off your child’s life chances. Don’t take this shit OP. Complain to head about discrimination and start researching now how best to support your child.

You shouldn’t have to move your child but it does sound like this school is a badly taught exam factory and he might be much better off somewhere that is actually interested in teaching.

Ha. Typos dont help make my case! All thumbs

And that is EXACTLY why private schools get such ‘good’ results. They weed out the one who won’t perform brilliantly. They manipulate their intake so that they get good grades and then that persuades more people that private school is a better education and are prepared to pay for it!!!
Pretty sure if state schools were allowed to get rid of all pupils that weren’t predicted to get above a C they would all be outstanding schools too!!

Yes, like grammars.

Free bird, I don’t disagree with you at all.

I fully understand that all the systems track based on thousands of students and most likely outcomes. They don’t chart individual children nor say a likely outcome will occur for every individual child. They absolutely are broad brush as you say. Schools might use them to predict the overall performance of a year group if they have a large year group, but won’t be able to say with any certainty exactly which students might achieve which results.....although they might hazard a guess and be right in lots of cases, there will alway be surprises.

That’s why I don’t think this school had the conversation purely based on one set of CATs tests. I think there is a bigger picture, and Op herself said much of the conversation washed over her and she didn’t absorb all the info. There will be a bigger picture here beyond one CAT test, although that’s the thing Op heard and jotted down.

Yes, it would be impossible to tell a parent that their child will categorically achieve certain grades at GCSE (or not) based on this one test. I very much doubt that this was what was actually said and Op herself says she didn’t hear the full message.

I guess my point really is that it isn’t always wrong for schools with selective seniors attached or for any school with families who hope to go onto selective senior schools to be honest with parents about where their child is. It isn’t writing children off. Children do have different levels of ability and whilst we cannot box them up too tightly, some senior schools are not suitable for some children. Parents and children deserve to hear that information from teachers and schools who have had time to see how a child is getting on.

And the thing is, senior school entrance exams do box children up. In the end, they get their palace based on a test result on one day or sometimes on the recommendation and assessment of the attached Prep which is formed over several years, but can only be based on what has happened so far and what looks likely. There will be children this system fails. Lots in here talk about loser performance when younger but great achievements later. Those kids probably wouldn’t have passed the selective entrance exams...but those exams can only test on the day. And that’s how school places are allocated.

Ops school knows this and they feel her son won’t be getting a recommendation or passing an exam to the senior school. The CAT result will be only 1 part of their judgement on that. And my key point is it’s right to tell parents. It has to be done gently and in a careful way. Op will need another and possibly several appointments with the school to get her head round this and to make decisions about the information and next steps. She will choose what to do next not the school. But they needed to voice their concerns and the possible realities of them for the next couple or few years or they wouldn’t be doing their job and Prepping. Whether they have done all they can for the boy and provided for his needs is in my mind a different issue...perhaps they have or have not....but they have told the parents that they need to consider alternative senior schools.

CAT tests test all sorts. He could be extremely able in one area and weaker in another.

My ds scored low in one area and extremely high in another and had 'extreme spacial bias' which is only how 1% of people learn.

I moved him secondaries because the one he was in didn't try and accommodate his learning style. The new one did.

He went from behind expected learning to achieving GCSEs of 4-9's.
4 in English and 8/9's in maths and science.

He wants to do computing and is studying that so the English "c" is actually irrelevant .

I agree to move him now. Find a school who want to nurture talents and support weaknesses rather than 1 who will make predictions without trying to find out how they can remove barriers to learning and improve outcomes.

Apparently when Chris Whitty became a Professor he put up a slide of one of his (private) school reports during his inaugural lecture which said 'Don't even think of sending this child to University - he can't even read'. So there you go!

OP your DS is not at a school which will help him to thrive. They should have told you before the summer term of Y5, so you could move him at the start of an academic year, but they’ve left it until you’re committed to paying fees until the start of the summer term. This cannot be a surprise for the school.

Have a look at Bruern Abbey. It is an utterly wonderful place for getting dyslexic boys confident and back on track. www.bruernabbey.org/

And with regard to what parents want from schools Freebird, I’m sorry but I will have to disagree with you to some extent there, although I think I agreed with most of your first post.

I’m thinking about selective schools particularly in London and the south-East - parents are often hugely competitive and ambitious for their children. They absolutely want the most selective school they can get to enable their child to get the highest result they can. This doesn’t mean they do t value pastoral care and facilities and wide ranging activities...but there is a Cerys front sense of pecking order of schools and many people will be looking for the highest ranked school they can get. Lots of schools have many applications per place. People choose Prep schools based on the schools they feed into and look for schools with attached senior schools that might give an easier route through too. For some parents it’s about kudos of ahvi g a child at a certain school but for most I think it’s more that they just believe their children will have more chance of doing super well in a more selective environment, whether that’s true or not (a different debate).
It’s all great when your child is able to move into the next level and doing well, but everyone can’t be top notch and that’s where it’s hard for parents (and of course the children who didn’t choose it) because no_one wants to not make the grade for the thing they aspire to...and it’s especially hard if the next thing is an attached school that also St everyone else will go to.

I’m sure lots of parents pay for small classes and lovely grounds and facilities and trips and extra curricular opportunities and Perhaps some aren’t very bothered about academic achievement......but I think lots are.

It’s a similar thing with the London state grammars or grammars in super selective areas. Lots of people highly value selective education and the. Ire selective the better....look at the numbers applying for Henrietta Barnet or St Olaves and the tutoring and testing to check ability levels via systems very like the CAT test. Parental ambition is certainly alive and well.