Dd never picked for anything at school

[schoolmum11]

I have a dd who is in year 5 (9 years old) at an academic competitive prep school. She is the sweetest kindest girl (her teacher always comments on this).

She isn't sporty so is always in the D team for netball, football, lacross etc which is completely fine, it's where I would expect her to play.

However what really upsets me is that she's good at drama, singing, acting etc. to be honest all the girls are though. With the exception of a few extremely talented girls who clearly deserve the top parts in plays/shows, the others are all very good and of a similar standard.

However it seems that the girls that are selected for all the sports teams also get the bigger parts in the plays. As I said, if they were significantly better I would be totally fine with this. But what I don't understand is why they wouldn't take a more holistic approach and select those girls who don't get the sporting opportunities to have the bigger roles. Of course, the lead parts are played by the really amazingly talented little performers (often also sporty which is fine) - I'm talking about the roles that are still big parts but not lead parts.

The school also selected a maths team who take part in competitions. Again there are some amazing mathematicians in her school who should of course be selected. However what has upset me is my dd and another girl scored equally in the quiz they did to see who would be part of the team. The teacher has selected the other girl (she emailed to say it was a v hard decision but in the end looked back at the last assessment from last term where the other girl got 1 mark higher) Now the other girl is also in all the A sports teams and also the lead part in the upcoming school play.

Am i being naive to think the school should take a more holistic approach and in a situation like this select my dd to be part of the maths team as she literally doesn't get selected for anything!!

happy to be told I'm wrong - i just would appreciate your thoughts.

just to note my dd is v resilient and this never seems to bother her much. it bothers me more as i don't want to see her confidence suffer.

thank you so much!!!

@uptheculdesac that was exactly my thinking.

I am a manager in my role and manage a lot of the graduate new recruits. Even I put more thought into it all when selecting people for presentations etc! And these are 23 year olds 😂

But the maths teacher doesn’t care whether little X has been passed over for a good role in the school play, or is on the sub’s bench for the D teams. He or she is looking for an objective criterion to select one child to represent the school in maths, so when two children tied, the teacher went back to the previous test and let that decide. This is the school’s ethos.

This is my fear. My daughter is starting to make off the cuff comments like 'I'm so rubbish at x' and almost putting some kids on pedestals saying how amazing they are at x, y and z.

I'm about as anti-private school as they come but I don't think it's fair that the OP is being told this is because of her school choice entirely.
Our very bog standard state primary in a diverse area in all senses of that word does exactly the same thing. Two of my kids are a year apart. One is very sporty and quite bright. The other is averagedly sporty and quite bright.
The sporty one gets picked for everything and as a result is getting more and more confident and is picked for more and more things.
The less sporty gets picked far less for everything and other result is less confident and then therefore picked for less things.

It's annoying enough between my two boys but then I look at some of the other children whose parents don't have the money, or the time or the inclination or all three to support their kids outside of school with sport or other activities. These kids tend to get picked for virtually nothing. In my opinion the kids that are doing loads of stuff outside the school should actually do less in school. I spend all weekend driving my kids to sports and other activities. My kids are just lucky.
I would much prefer that the school resources were unevenly spread and weighted towards the less fortunate children.

That was a bit off point but basically it's not just private schools.

@SoNiceToComeHomeTo that's true. I think we will seriously consider moving her

That's really interesting, thank you. And especially so for someone with no bias as both are your kids and you see such a difference.

This happened to my DC in a State Comp. Though tallented in may areas they just were not loud enough and were never picked. DC is now a very successful academic. The loud kids, mostly, really did peak in high school.

I agree that schools should take a more holistic and fairer approach. Many of them seem to have completely lost touch with what they were originally designed to do - provide a firm foundation in skills and knowledge to serve all children well in later life - and seem to now delight in finding opportunities to rank and re-rank children and make it all about pitting one against the other.

I remember getting sucked into the drama of it all when my DS was at that stage. Recently I walked past his old primary school and, looking into the playground, I saw that it was ... just 'toy town'.

None of these accolades or prestige opportunities, or lack of them, add up to a hill of beans unless you allow them to. Hold on to the original reason for education in your own mind and let others make a competitive game of it if they must. You don't have to buy into any of it unless it serves your own DD well.

It’s a competitive selective prep school. This is how they get all the results they get and the successes they have. My child who is distinctly average at a bunch of things gets picked for all kinds of stuff, because she’s at a state primary school. They don’t win whatever the local football cup is, they won’t win the regional maths competition and their school plays aren’t broadway standard, but they all get to join in and enjoy themselves.

It's a tough one. They acored the same in maths so checked the assessment before and the other girl did better by one mark so she gets the maths place.

I would be trying to find what else your daughter is good at! And work on that with her like music, poetry etc and hope an opportunity comes up for her

Wise words. Thank you ☺️

That's the problem though. She is good at so many things! She is a fantastic mathematician (has a real interest in it beyond school) and loves singing, dancing and drama and is very good at it. Will she be the best probably not but is she good at it, absolutely

Ex teacher

When I worked at secondary we would try to spread the opportunities around.

So in our area there were maths competitions for year 10,12 and 13 plus specifically girls ones. We'd make sure we only took a student once per year, so no repeats.

However, when my school introduced a gifted and talented programme and asked each department for names, the same names kept coming up again and again.

In the end they decided that the students who were "all rounders" needed to
Choose an area to focus their personal project on and the other spaces were given to the names further down the list.

It did mean that in popular areas like English there were very few spaces left over.

Schools do vary massively in how much they try to make sure each child has opportunities (the code is that these schools usually
Talk about "nurturing the whole
Child") versus just giving those to the best at X.

You've chosen a prep that doesn't spread them out. If you move to state, there are state schools that spread them out and state schools that don't. Moving sector on it's own
Won't fix this.

My bog standard comp did exactly the same, so it's definitely not something exclusive to private schools.

It was always the sporty pupils who got the parts in the school plays, leading roles in the choir, got roles in assemblies, were chosen as form representatives, sixth form counsellors, etc.

Unfortunately for everyone else, they were usually also the bullies, and were "protected" by the teachers when pupils/parents complained about the bullying, with the teachers either not believing their "favourites" would bully, or victim blaming the bullied, etc.

Heaven help any of us who were crap at sport/games and found ourselves in a class where the teacher was a "dual" sports and subject teacher. Because they could see you were crap at sports, they just assumed you're crap at everything else and got ignored/ridiculed in lessons too. Happened with me in Chemistry - sadly we got a games teacher for our GCSE years who showed no interest at all in the non-sporty pupils and it was always the sporty ones who were given the best opportunities in experiments, etc.

Shouldn't be that way, but I think there's something ingrained in the schools system where there's an inherent bias against non sporty kids and in favour of sporty ones.

That feels really unfair, Op. My ds's school wasn't like that. It was a Catholic state school. Secondary not as good.
When I was at school myself there were 4/5 kids deemed to be very bright and who had the advantage of secure homes. Those kids were taken out once a week with a teacher for what I suppose we would now term "enrichment" activities. It was circa 1980 and this was INFANT school. It seemed a bit unfair then but didn't strike me fully until I thought about it as an adult. Surely they should have taken out the struggling/disadvantaged children instead of their, "star pupils"? Similar thing going on with your ds. Obviously, she's not struggling or disadvantaged but appears to be getting overlooked in favour of bigger personalities. I work in education but I do think some teachers either don't notice how unbalanced things are or how much getting an opportunity means ti children. It's not necessarily deliberate. Could you speak to the school, Op?

DDs school is like this, same kids picked for everything! These kids are often the oldest ones in the year group and at primary age that does often mean more advanced/capable etc. DD is the youngest in her entire year group so hardly ever selected for things, even though the gap is closing now they are yr 5. Seems many teachers are set in their ways, auto selecting the same kids…

My DD turned to me on her last day at primary school and said 'I've been here for 7 years and I was never picked for anything'. She was right. She hadn't.

I don't think it will make any difference if you move her out of the school she's currently at, so if I were you I'd be having a word with the head of year. Just say exactly what you've said here. You're not being unreasonable. But they need to see that your DDs confidence is being slowly and surely eroded. And that's not on. They have a duty of care to your DD. I wish I'd said something to DDs school.

If you're paying for this school then you need to make an appointment with the Head Teacher and support your daughter. Vocalise, with examples (and reference their pastoral policies too), everything you've told us and make it clear to them that if this continues you will be withdrawing her and you expect them to waive whatever notice period they have.

They don't know it's a problem yet because you haven't acted like a typical private school parent.

It is often the extroverts who get chosen, simply because they are noticed more.