Maths interventions Yr 6 I don't want my dd to do it

[Chocolate2cake]

My dd, age 10 in Yr 6 at school has been struggling with mh to the extreme I've found suicide notes, notes saying she's useless at everything and notes saying she's fat and ugly. I struggle to get her in school.

She's come out of school today upset because she's been told she has to miss lessons one afternoon a week (probably art or PE, lessons she enjoys) to do extra maths for SATs. I'm angry.

I've told her Sats mean nothing, in 5/6years time college, apprenticeships or sixth form won't ask about sats.

I intend to tell school tomorrow that they are failing to offer her a broad and balanced curriculum, that they are failing to support her mental health and this intervention consolidates her belief that she's useless.

For all those that will say secondary school groups based on sats our local doesn't, it using CAT tests.

Am I missing something? Primary school should be about enjoying learning I don't care what she gets in her sats. I just want her to be happy.

Nbu...tell school she will not benefit from missing lessons etc

Bu..support school, make her do it.

She said she’ll either miss PE or art. Things she enjoys. It’s primary school. I think SATS are a load of crap. We missed them due to Covid. Nothing bad happened to my kids and they are flying at secondary.

She said :

"She's come out of school today upset because she's been told she has to miss lessons one afternoon a week (probably art or PE, lessons she enjoys) to do extra maths for SATs. I'm angry."

So at the moment it is just a guess and everyone is cross about nothing.

Not cross just agreeing with the OP that her child’s mental health is the most important thing here.

Also - they won't care if she doesn't do it. They truly won't care. There is no need for anyone to be furious. They'll offer the place to someone else who will jump at the chance.

I mean - really think about what you are cross about.

School identifies her as needing support. Parent doesn't want her to do it. School says ok.

Lots and lots of children don't do SATs at all, for a wide range of reasons, They all manage perfectly well without them.

We place too much importance on things like SATs. This thread is a very clear example of this.

The child is 11 and has mental health needs which need addressing as a great priority than their maths ability right now. There is a time enough later. It doesn't have to be right now.

Whilst SATs are used to predict GCSEs, on a school/government level, they are not the only measure used. And a missing or low SATs should make no difference to which maths group a child is in, beyond the first few weeks in a secondary school. It would be a very poor secondary school that wasn't monitoring ability and changing groups and sets accordingly throughout the 5 years from year 7 to 11. Most secondaries know that child's learning is rarely linear. Whilst SATs and other assessments have their place to an extent, any half decent teacher is making informal assessments almost daily and changing their teaching methods accordingly.

OP has also said that her DD is average/top in maths and she believes they want her to move up to top. Hence the intervention. Intervention should be for those truly struggling in the bottom set if they are to miss other subjects surely.

Funny how my dyslexic DS didn’t get any extra help with maths and I had to pay for a tutor.

Exactly this.

if a child needs support in maths then provide the support during maths lessons, don’t drag them away from other subjects or activities and make the struggles a bigger issue.

making the call with school that DS wouldn’t miss any other lessons for booster sessions made a massive positive change to his whole school experience. He could do the subjects he enjoyed not be expected to miss them to do something he disliked and struggled with. The support was provided during the actual lesson.

Agree - if she needs support (to move up to the stop set 🤔) then this should be in the actual lesson. She shouldn’t be missing other subjects.

Top set

I don't understand why being identified as having potential, with a little help, to get top results in her SATs would make her feel useless. Can you reframe this as something positive about the school recognising her abilities in maths?

Abraham. I agree with all of that. But a school would also be remiss if they identified that a child was not working at the expected standard and didn't do something about it. They've offered, it's not a court summons.

Yes it is going looking for an issue, the OP needs to find out what it is actually about before wasting time getting angry.

I agree, a school can offer. Though it still shouldn't be done during another subject, especially in that only happens once a week or is going to missed every week.

The op should be free to say no, that it isn't in her child's best interested right now and that she wants her child to be able to access the other subject too.

That is now good practise. Our LEA advice was reiterated in September re interventions taking place in other subject time. It's seen as a no no and isn't looked in favourable during inspections, etc. any more.

Apologies as I haven't read the whole thread but wanted to make sure you know that you can disallow your child from sats. I.e. withdraw them.
I havent had to do this but told my kids that if I thought the sats were impacting their well-being that I would and that alone was enough to take the pressure off them. Both ended up doing better than I expected.

We also refused the before school maths club and got a local maths degree student to build confidence which seemed to work well and was a lot cheaper than a sats tutor.

I'm a primary school teacher, the kids always miss the nice afternoon lessons to do these interventions

Primary school hasn't been that enjoyable for years, it's a boot camp. Prioritise mental health before your child hits secondary school because the school won't.

Well that depends on what you think are nice lessons. My DD would have been overjoyed to do extra maths instead of PE which she hated with a passion. She didn't hate art but she didn't like it as much as maths.

She might be an exception but it is wrong to assume all children love things like PE and art.

I just want to add as well that if someone doesn't like the way their child is being taught at school then they could always take responsibility for helping their kid catch up. It really doesn't take that much time to make a big difference. Mine is only in reception but she's soaring with her reading already. I don't pressurise her we just read her reading books some days and I do very short bursts with her phonics folder and make it fun by leaving her little messages on her wall. It takes up literally about 10-20 minutes of our day. School have the knowledge and resources to support her but I still see it as my responsibility to make sure she's basically numerate and literate before she leaves primary school. I know all kids are different but I do believe this is acheivable with most

Children are so varied in how they learn.
DP has 2 daughters one is like a walking professor, and the other is just disengaged. She is the one who needs the intervention. They've both had active participation from both parents. Both have been free reading for yrs.
However, math has always been complex and needed the most effort.

I find the mindset that accepting extra help to master a subject is somehow shameful really depressing.

It’s not the extra help that’s the issue. Like I said I would have loved my DS to have had extra help in maths…

We don’t have much info from the OP. Are the kids in the bottom set being offered extra help - or are they focusing on those on middle/top to boost those top SATs results…? That would be telling.

The school can't do right for wrong and are trying to help. Is she overweight op? That can be a massive hit to a child's confidence. I had a girl who suffered with low confidence who turned round and told me she looked so big. She was considerably bigger than the rest of her peers and it was so heartbreaking.

That isn't the issue here.

Missing other subjects to do it is an issue.
A child having MH issues that need addressing before they can take in extra intervention is an issue for the op too.

Well the OP said, this intervention consolidates her belief that she's useless. so I think it is at least part of the issue.

So the DD is 10. She was doing fine in maths in year 5 and OP has said she was middle/top.

Suddenly (because of SATs) the school have said she needs intervention with regards to the the maths SATs (not to help her catch up or because she is in the bottom set). This has upset the child (who is already struggling with her mental health to the level she is writing suicide notes - at 10).

She now feels she is useless (great for her mental health) despite the fact that her maths is probably fine - the school just want to bump up their SATs scores. Easier to do that with children in the middle sets who
maybe have the potential to do better. IF PUSHED and taken out of lessons they enjoy more. The school is at fault here and I don’t understand why nobody is considering this child’s mental health issues.

Another example of SATs strangling true education. Please talk to the school - tell them her MH problems - stress the importance of her doing those subjects she enjoys as well as the core subjects - and keep at the front of your mind the fact the school need her to do well at SATs for her own reasons and it is nothing whatever to do with her well-being.

To the poster who said that doing the extra maths would prepare her for secondary school ... the truth is that during the first year at secondary they go over everything they have done at primary again, which is another good reason to stop pressuring primary children to achieve some random targets.

Stick to your guns and talk with the school about values and priorities.