Aibu to not expect the school to educate my dc?

[Christmascarolle]

Met a teacher friend for coffee, her child is 11 like mine & are in the same class both would be high achieving.
I mentioned to my friend that I do extra at home with my dd, she has extra maths, literacy, geography & history which she really enjoys doing & reads lots in her spare time.
My teacher friend said she shouldn't be doing this extra work that it's up to the teacher & school to educate the children in their care.
I disagree as there is 30 in a class & all different levels. My dd enjoys going beyond the basics & is thriving in school.
Aibu or is the teacher friend? (according to my child the teachers daughter does lots of extension work with her mum. She never mentioned this to me just criticised me for going the extra mile with my child!)

My kids went to private school. If I had my time again, at primary I would not want them to do any of that project nonsense (that parents ended up having to do). I would just do maths worksheets and spellings and reading.

So much of the work at primary in private school seems to be about filling the time and appeasing a certain kind of parent. I genuinely don’t think it was needed, looking back.

I would embrace the free time at home and just follow your child’s lead.

Well done you are parent of the year 👏👏👏

Well that's clearly what you want 🤷‍♀️

If you and your daughter are happy with it, I don’t see the problem. Friend could probably do with minding her own business!! It’s natural for you to want to help your daughter - if she’s receptive & not missing out on other after school activities to do it, I don’t see an issue!

I think you could be teaching your child more important things. If she’s bright and academic she shouldn’t need extra tutoring, but she might need more help with practical skills like cooking, sewing, car maintenance, sports, music, household finances, tax, DIY - the broader things she’ll need to get by in life and won’t learn in school.

I’m very academic, hold my own (and am generally better than) grammar or privately educated colleagues. Absolutely bloody useless at anything practical though as I always preferred academic activities so never spent any time on those broader skills.

@Christmascarolle you're absolutely doing the right thing, continue and don't be discouraged by those who feel knowledge and ambition are somehow shameful.

I assume you just have the one child.

@Vinrouge4 no I have three but was just referencing my eldest as the teacher I had coffee with has a child in my eldest dc's class. Why would you assume I have only one? All three go to the same school & all do a bit extra.

That's not my experience of private schools re: homework during the holidays.
Also they tend to have longer school days and with the higher teacher to student ratio that would equal more work during the school day.

My mother taught me to red and write Welsh and English before I went to school a age 5.

But not how to proof read? 😂

Sorry - I couldn't resist. I'm guessing those are just typos (and those happen to all of us) but purely academic skills are just a tiny part of what makes someone successful in life. Other skills (perhaps, for example, accuracy and attention to detail) are also useful and can even enhance your other skills. Too much focus on a small skill set does no-one any favours.

Out of interest how do OP and other parents topping up at home ensure that they are not covering something the school will be doing later that week?

Why would it matter if they covered something twice? It would just cement their learning or give them more practice at a particular skill

Because they’d be incredibly bored in the lesson

My kids were too bright to need extra academic work. It was more important to do nice things as a family.

It's great when that happens. It gives dc such a confidence boost and makes them open to more learning.

In fact, I sometimes did this intentionally. When ds was falling behind in maths, I made sure I found out every week what they were covering the following week and covered it home.
When they were doing a particular topic at school, we'd watch a documentary or take a trip to the museum to learn more about it.
When dc enjoy watching tv like Horrible Histories and documentaries, they often know things in advance of school learning.

In a perfect world it should not be necessary but the education of your child will likely be held back which teachers are distracted by badly behaved children, over indulged children, children who through no fault of their own do not understand the lesson and children who should be in a school which caters to their health needs, but who for money saving reasons are thrown into mainstream.
Do children attend and learn for the "community good" or so they develop, gain knowledge and attain qualifications to help them on the future?

From your replies I don’t think there is anything wrong with what you are doing. Some children love to learn so why not encourage it? She has other hobbies as well.

my only concern is burn out but so long as you don’t push things and also encourage her that it is okay just to chill out in front of the tv or something on occasion it should be fine.

Its individual, having a child who hates school (for good reason), and no extended family, out of school enrichment is really important to us. I don’t care what she does for a living but want her to be able to develop strong friendships and have resilience.

I don't think your being unreasonable but maybe you could do something a bit different occasionly perhaps? It's all very well them being in the top group at school but if they have no life skills beacuse they always are reading or doing sums I think that's when it becomes a problem.
Cooking, how to do the weekly shop etc are also good ways for learning about money etc too.
Are you able to go to mueseums or day trips?

Sounds like she wants to beat you. That’s never going to change, so just know that about her. Make your own decisions with your daughter and ignore your ‘friend’s’ advice. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t ask yourself the question periodically ‘is this too much?’ as other interests and priorities may develop or it may all become too much. Be a quiet ‘is my child happy?’ detective with eyes wide open.

That wouldn't bother me as it's reinforcing the learning & sometimes the school might only have time to cover a topic once or twice so at least if it's done at home it will sink in more & there is more time to delve into it in depth if the dc wish to.

Yes we do lots of days out & weekend trips. The dc only do the extra bit of work on school nights Mon to Thurs, nothing over the weekend but they love reading for pleasure so don't count that. As I said it's only 30 mins mon to Thurs, they have no commute to school so get it done straight awayn

I don't know. Our children go to state school and we have many friends with children at private schools. I've never once felt these children are ahead of our children. They all read and write at the same level, have similar maths skills etc. One of the private schools does more sports than ours but my daughter chooses to go to three after school sports clubs a week (offered for free at her school). I don't see it as a competition between her and her privately educated friends. They're all doing well.
Good luck trying to maintain all this when she's a teenager. That's all I'll say!

There are so many things that dc don't know anymore that we take for granted.

I realised my dc didnt know basic things like which which colours mix to make other colours, what the map of UK and Europe look like (I absorbed this through watching weather reports that my parents would have on after the news. Now we just look at our apps). So many kids can't tell the time on analogue clocks.

If we're not proactive, we don't realise where the gaps are.

As for life skills, I go along age appropriately. Chores are essential for this. They also give dc good self esteem and a 'get on with it' attitude.
As teens, they mow lawns, change light bulbs, fix minor things like door handles and so on.

Your friend is BU. I'm Asian and have noticed this is a common theme in UK bred parents that they should let "kids be kids" ie don't push them with academic stuff at home, and some really don't do anything and some do in secret.

We live in a grammar area and most who have been doing some extra work at home have got into super-selective schools and those kids whose parents have actively "not been doing maths and English at home" pre year 5 have either failed or just scraped the pass mark in their 11+ exams. (One should note that there are always some who claim their kids are gifted and have put in zero effort yet got into the highest achieving schools though)

Pushing a child who is not interested wouldn't be a great idea, but if the child loves to learn why not!? They also learn study skills that they will later need for the more difficult GCSEs and A Levels. If you let them coast they'll think that's how learning works and struggle later in life.

Obviously academics isn't everything, they learn through doing extracurriculars etc but that's not to say you should limit to those and ignore the academic subjects as they'll be taught at school.

My kids are a bit older now but I've always done 10 minutes of maths and English just to instil a study habit since around Year 2 and started 11+ prep in Year 5 and got into super-selective schools and thriving there.

OP ignore your friend and do what is right for your child.