Year 7 (who is very good at maths) has been put in the bottom sets.

[ReevesJeeves]

My DD has always been very good at Maths. In Year 6, she achieved Greater Depth in her Maths SATS (achieving 115/120). Since joining Year 7, she has been in a mixed ability Maths Set. In the work that has been sent home from Secondary and that is set on Sparx, she is getting 80% - 90% correct, independently.

We have just had a letter home today, advising that Maths will be set after half term, and my DD will be in Set 5 of 6! The letter also explains that she has been assessed as finding Maths challenging and not to worry about sets, every child will be assisted individually. AIBU to think the school doesn’t know my DD at all, and to send an email querying how they came to this decision? I fail to see how she can now be finding maths challenging and in Set 5 of 6, having achieved 115/120 in her SATS only months ago. Maths has always been a subject she has excelled in, right down to her KS1 Times Tables test where she scored 100%. BTW this is not a selective school or grammar, it’s mainstream state, so it’s not as though the department will be awash with Maths geniuses (in the least offensive way). I also don’t want to appear as a trouble maker or someone the school will be fed up with, but I think this needs to be questioned to find out what has gone wrong so to speak.

My husband thinks I shouldn’t say anything as the school will just think I’m a neurotic mum, I disagree and I think it needs to be dealt with and questions asked pronto - something has clearly gone drastically wrong either with the teachers assessment of DD or in the way DD is presenting herself in class?!

My daughter was once put into set 5 for science,
stayed in it for a few months and then started coming home saying she found it ridiculously slow. I queried it with the teacher, he told me I was right to do so as she should have been put into set 1! That seemed a bit of a stretch from what I knew of what she’d achieved previously and sure enough, she ended up in set 2. It made me wonder how many others were in this position.

Definitely. I would go in in person to discuss it so it's not just another email to ignore before they break up.

Yes, of course. Chase it up. You don't want this hanging around over you during half term.

I'd follow up tomorrow. This feels like the sort of thing that's easier to fix before the sets have "set in" so to speak.

Yes Chase don’t wait. Sooner seen easier fix.

I’d try and go to speak to someone at the office first thing.

My advice is to take action now. Your DD sounds like she has a good grasp of maths- why is her teacher saying otherwise?

My DS was put in bottom classes - he was level 6 in SATS. Thry said they had no room for him. I fought, but it wasnt until the head teacher spoke to him that the school realised just how bright he is but it was too late GCSEs were a few months away.

Dont let the school make it hard for your DD to excel.

Please don't confuse behaviour with ability, some of the smartest kids are disruptive arseholes.
OP my main concern would be that she will find the work in the lower sets too easy and will therefore be unchallenged.

Yea get onto them tomorrow to save it all starting wrong after half term

I wasn't. I said kids in there would mess around and disrupt learning because they do. I was in a lower set initially in school and thats what they did and it made it hard to learn. I moved to a higher set and it was an actual lesson with everyone listening and learning properly. I never said they weren't smart, though likely less so since they're in a lower set, I suppose.

Do they have a policy about how quickly they'll reply? If yes don't chase.

It’s some years since I taught year 7 in a comprehensive, some decades actually, but the bottom set would contain children who can’t find the missing angle in a triangle, even straight after being taught, for example, also who don’t know their times tables so struggle with number work, fractions etc.
set 5 out of 6 will be a bit better, but still doing simplified work, certainly no problem solving.
I would definitely flag it up. It’s only been half a term, the teacher could be new and inexperienced and not have much of an idea how able each child really is. You don’t want her to end up stuck in that set where it’s only reviewed a couple of times a year and she might only have the opportunity to move up one set at a time.
The teaching material they cover in that set would be very different to the top set.

DS was very similar in Y6 and he’s finding Y7 maths so much harder. He’s ended up in a middle set. He did terribly in his first Maths assessment. We’ve been really surprised.

Mine scored 112 in Sats and are in set 1 out of 6 sets. I woukd email again and copy in the head of maths and the headteacher. You can be polite but they need to reply to you. Go in as well if you want to.
you have to advicate for your child, ignore your husband, you’re not being awful in any way

I’d chase it up with a phone call tomorrow. Ask to speak to the high of maths. I wouldn’t quibble over say set 2 v set 3 but you don’t want her ending up in a foundation stream.

I would but I’d also get your daughter to say something. My child went and spoke to the maths teachers when we had a similar but almost opposite issue in year 7. They were very receptive to listening to her.

Definitely chase! You won’t be seen as a pest for this. She’s top 6% on SATS, my child scored similar and is top set in a comp. They are supposed to keep going on sparx till they get 100% though, especially if it’s year 6 content they should be sure of. But still probably an error.

Challenge & make sure the answer makes sense. A similar thing happened to my son. I don’t know where the error came from, possibly a report from his primary. In Year 9 the school used MIDYIS testing to set predictions for GCSE . The results placed him as the most able boy in the school, predicted to achieve 10As. The school’s response made it clear that they had misjudged his ability for the best part of 3 years. I had questioned some of their judgements/comments but hadn’t pushed it enough when I got vague reassurances. All water under the bridge now but his career path had a slower take off than it may have done had he not left school at 16 due to their incompetence.

No, clearly it's where there are bigger differences than that. If you are capable of a 2, it would be a better use of time to ensure you do indeed get a 2 than you leant the content to get an 8. Year 4s are meant to know the 12 times table. I don't teach them that though if they can't yet count in 2s.

Chase it tomorrow Thursday . Ring and ask to speak to the maths coordinator for key stage three. Ask for a call back by end of day. Don’t fanny with emails so close to half term. Don’t feel bad you have all the evidence. Don’t be afraid to say everything and advocate for your dd even if ( and they shouldn’t) the person gets annoyed.
if this doesn’t work ring and speak to the academic lead or the head.

as an ex teacher this sounds all wrong . You willNOT be seen as a troublemaker, your daughter will not be seen as different. Your husband needs to give his head a wobble.

Good luck 🤞 go get em mum . Looking forward to hearing a positive out come .

DS did a GCSE (as did all the bottom set) and got grade 9. Went onto maths A level, got an A. Did an engineering degree and masters. Now doing a mathematical modelling PhD at Imperial. But thanks for explaining his journey to me.

My DD was expecting to be top set for year 8 as was top of many classes so was very upset to be told she was to be put in a lower set.

i queried it, and they based the sets on the French exam result, as top set would then do 2 languages. DD had scored 100% in the French exam! Turned out she had been muddled with another child with same surname.

So pleased I did get involved as she ended up studying languages at Cambridge.

It will get sorted so try not to panic. My DS got put in the wrong maths set as they mixed up him and a boy with the same surname, they swapped them round either in the first lesson or the one after that.

On old friend. Now retired worked as a Secondary School.Secretary for over 30 years.

She said she was horrified at some of the simple and very obvious mistakes the teaching and other staff made about pupils.

Get it checked out.

I'd query it. I'd be wanting to know on what basis your daughter was put in that particular set - the original reason is obviously just a copy and paste.

I was put in the wrong set when I started secondary school. The problem was [partially] addressed the following year, but I had a miserable time of it: I stood out like a sore thumb in the original set and was stuck with it for PE [ETA and Home Economics] for two years.

In my case, anyone with an obviously foreign surname had been dumped in the bottom stream - even worse than being placed in a set for one subject.

One 'foreign' girl finished up blending in by joining the behaviour of the 'bad girls', though I believe she's now a T.A. One of the other girls became a charge nurse; I became a faculty head in a secondary school; the fourth girl became a secondary school depute.

What we had in common was that we are all reasonably able, but had Eastern European fathers. This was the 1970s.

You have every right to query what's happening at the school.

They're claiming that your daughter is finding some aspects of the subject challenging. I'd be asking precisely which aspects of maths she's finding challenging and what is being done to address the issue (other than moving her). How do they explain your daughter's high test scores?

ETA My experience of being a pupil and being a teacher is wholly within the Scottish educational system. Nevertheless, I think that it's relevant to your situation.