To be fed up with an education system that ignores bright but quiet kids.

[ButterMints]

DD9 came home last night upset because once again her efforts in class had been ignored.

The teacher in the class had awarded class points to kids who had "worked hard in maths".

DD had got every question correct but didn't get a point. Points were awarded to children who didn't get 100%.

This seems to be a pattern with both my kids, where they are consistently ignored in favour of loud but less successful children.

My older child left primary school last year frustrated and disillusioned with school, having spent much of the time in class reading whilst others caught up with the work that they had already completed. And in their words, "I get 100% on my practice SATS papers every time and get nothing, but the kids who go from 50% to 60% get all the rewards."

I get it, I really do. Teachers have finite resources. But as a parent it's incredibly frustrating to once again find myself reassuring my child that their efforts do not go unnoticed.

It's a sad reflection of an education that is letting children down across the board. Schools desperately need more funding so that ALL children can reach their full potential.

in their words, "I get 100% on my practice SATS papers every time and get nothing, but the kids who go from 50% to 60% get all the rewards."

You need to teach the child that they got 100%. That’s way better than getting 60% plus some vague school specific kudos. Teach the child to work for their own personal satisfaction not anyone else’s. That’s the lesson here.

If they are doing OK are they struggling? A child who has a nice quiet room at home can do homework and home study to get ahead. Another child sharing a room with two siblings and a busy house would struggle to do the same. I'd argue their endeavour involved harder work.

Your school was obviously very different to mine then - I was in primary school 40 years ago and people got house points even then for “trying hard” in their spelling test while I never did despite getting 20/20 each week because “it’s no effort for you”.

Which to be fair was true, but I just learned that I didn’t need to put any effort in and could coast, which wasn’t amazing when I hit the point where I actually did need to revise for exams/apply myself to understand something (university was a massive shock!)

@ARealitycheck This is what I hate. The assumption that a child who is quiet and doing okay has a loving and supportive home life with no challenges.
I went to the library to do homework as we were really poor and home was cold. I had free school meals, but back then there was no pupil premium or anything extra for pupils like me.

The point of a test isn't to make the playing field even though, if you really want to do that might as well give everyone an automatic B Grade.
The point is to see how many questions a person can answer correctly in a certain time period. When I did my GCSEs in 2016 I remember what seemed like a quarter or maybe even a third of my year group were given extra time, it just defeats the purpose.

Technically a low iq is a learning disability so shall we start iq testing everyone and give anyone who scores under 80 extra time? Or how about under 100? Just where does this end? Exams are becoming pretty much pointless now.

Well done for that. And you managed to find a way around your difficulty to do well. However, how common was that within your peer group with similar home lifes?

Incidentally I had a pretty crap childhood with some major issues I never discussed, alongside what now would be recognised as ADHD/ASD. Today's child will be assisted as it is the symptoms are now recognised. As a youngster I was just viewed as the disruptive kid.

Every child should be taught to reach their full potential - however schools are compared (e.g.SATS) on how many score over a certain level. Your child already exceeds that so there is no value to the school in rewarding your child

I agree 100% OP, and with the statement above. We experience similar with DD, and she isn't even particularly quiet - just consistently well behaved and gives of her best, so this is taken for granted and she is overlooked in favour of those who generally don't and need extra motivation.

As a country we are depressingly anti-intellectual and seem unwilling to reward excellence, or allow our brightest to fulfil potential. Our primary is very blatant about this - it's all about 'equity' and 'narrowing the gap' (which by definition means that kids at the upper end of the ability range can't be allowed to race ahead).

We'll be moving for secondary in order to access a traditionally academic girls' school (as IME the overlooking tends to work along gender lines as well, with loud, misbehaving boys taking up the bulk of the teacher's bandwidth).

The system only ever rewards bullies, rule breakers, the over confident, but mediocre and the loud mouths.

Every single time

Same. You see it all the time on threads about violent children. It's always assumed that they come from traumatic backgrounds (which is understandable), but it's also always assumed that the quiet ones getting traumatised by the violence will be fine because they have loving, kind homes and therefore just need to extend a bit of compassion.

I was a quiet kid who did well at school, but my childhood was abusive and home was very unsafe. It doesn't always result in kids being disruptive and violent!

@ARealitycheck It was not easy. Some others did it too, but many did not. But I do feel I did not achieve my potential even though I did try really hard. I could have done with more recognition and support.

Are you actually joking?

A learning disability is (or was) and IQ of below 70 and significant deficits in adaptive functioning. These children are likely to struggle in every area of their life and require support. Many wont attend a mainstream school and if they did they would be highly unlikely to be
able to access the national curriculum, therefore very unlikely they’d be sitting any exams so no need to worry about them having a time advantage.

We are known as the Lost Generation

@fitzwilliamdarcy I am sorry to hear that.
I had a friend at school who even then I suspected was being sexually abused by her father. She just got on with work and was as timid as a mouse. She was ignored by teachers.
There seems to be little recognition amongst teachers that children respond to challenges at home in different ways. Girls especially can often be quiet and compliant.

I suspect an awful lot of us look back on school days and probably life with a degree of 'what if'.

My daughter (Y5) had a rant last night where she suddenly revealed how much she resents the 'points' system they have at school. In her words: 'if you try to be good all the time, you only occasionally get points, but the kids who are naughty get tons of points every time they behave well for 5 minutes. So someone like me can't ever get enough points to get a gold certificate but it's easy for them to get one just by being naughty most of the time.'

She is also getting bored and frustrated because the disruptive kids are messing around in class all the time and so the pace is very slow. It's all very well to talk about how she will be rewarded in the fullness of time by her own intrinsic merits, but what she can see is that the badly behaved kids get to spoil her school experience and then get rewarded for choosing to behave that way, whereas she is just expected to be quietly perfect all the time.

We've talked about how the teachers have to find strategies to manage the behaviour of those who find it hard to learn, how points don't mean anything important and how I'm proud of her for behaving well without needing an incentive to do so, but I don't blame her for feeling that way. I think most adults would be pissed off if their employer had an 'employee of the month' award, and it always went to Jonny because he usually dicks around and leaves early, but one time he actually did his job properly, rather than Stevie who quietly gets on with meeting all his targets.

It sucks, but it sucks just as much in the real world too. I was always the high achieving quiet one too, and the only way I've been able to get ahead in my career is to really opyt myself out there and make myself seen. I'm so uncomfortable with it but got fed up of the alternative!

@ARealitycheck True. I do know I did the best with what I had. I don't think I could have realistically done more.

I was talking about my kids - who were plodders or wallpaper as the HT helpfully pointed out. They neither struggled nor excelled, they weren't sporty or badly behaved or loud and dramatic - they were quietly ignored. They were never acknowledged for anything at school - except the star of the year which everyone got and they got it in the last few weeks - when it was pretty obvious it wasn't for anything they'd done - it was just their turn.

So I told them it didn't matter who got picked - it made no difference, achieve for yourself, get your exams for yourself because your teacher does not know who you are, they don't know what you can achieve (they proved that several times) - no one does, so you go out there and do it for yourself.

And what did the class teacher say when you asked them why this was the case?

I now work in a job where results really matter. The results do speak for themselves however quiet you are, and the popular loud but poor performance people do get managed out.

DS is doing GCSE mocks right now and mentioned that his Bestie gets extra time. He said he wished HE got extra time and I pointed out that if he got extra time it would be becasue he needed extra time and would he want that?
He said not

YABU

If that is the only worry your child has about school then they are having a pretty easy time of it. I’ve seen both sides of this. As a child I got full marks or close to it in just about everything, although I did get prizes left, right and centre for academics, sports and the arts. It’s a little bit of a shock when you realise, at whatever age, that this doesn’t make you better than anyone else. As a child it very much gave me an over inflated perception of myself.

DS really, really struggles to be in school. If he actually manages to engage with a test it’s a good day. Often he can’t even be in the classroom. And whatever engagement he does manage, believe me, he will have worked way harder to do it than I ever did at school. I don’t actually think he does get that many awards. I certainly had way more by the time I was his age than he did and they actually meant something. A medal for winning a district sporting event surely means more than a bunch of stickers for sitting nicely in class.

Having said all that the school system is very much set up for the average child. All outliers lose out academically…but maybe some might learn other skills like tolerance and empathy whereas others’ lives will be ruined as they drop out of education altogether because their needs were not met.

I agree to some extent op - but this is a primary school problem only so I said yanbu.

I have one highly able dc who never got recognition for her hard work at primary school, and ended up despising her primary school and having contempt for the HT who just gave rewards to kids for “managing not to smash up the classroom and stop everyone learning this week”.

Happily she is now in an outstanding state comprehensive and thriving. At her secondary school those skills of self-motivation and hard work come into their own. And there is no consolation prize for under-achievers.

Meantime my youngest dc is academically average and working his little socks off at primary school.

I actually think he’s in the worst position of all - he’s not brilliant, he’s not naughty, he is just pootling along in the middle. Mum and dad are his biggest cheerleaders!

I really wish primary schools would find a better way to recognise relative achievement better.

Friends' DC who attend private primaries are streamed, and the schools are willing to let them work considerably ahead of age-related expectations if they can cope with this, which is absolutely not the done thing in most state schools currently. There are also more opportunities to make cross-curricular links through art, drama, music etc, and the smaller class sizes (of generally fairly motivated kids) leave more time and space to go off-topic, respond to questions in-depth and follow individual interests.

By contrast questioning, intellectually inquisitive, academic kids in many state schools (especially primaries) are viewed as something as an inconvenience, and are essentially held in a holding pen until as many of their peers as possible have reached age-related expectations.