If you have no choice but to send your children to the local state school, even if it is satisfactory or even inadequate - what can you do to help your child?

[conniedescending]

I suppose i mean - how do you compensate and bring your child up to the level they (supposedly) would be in private?

and we cant hire a tutor

I completely agree with those who say that it is important to read to your children - it is. But reading is not the be all and end all of home education - there are fabulous films and TV series on DVD that will stretch their language skills and story line comprehension if you talk to them about what they watch.

On an anecdotal level - buy a good educational cash register and some pretend money, and role play shopkeepers/customer. There is a lot of educational mileage in this game!

Litchick - I know - and that was one of the reasons that made DP cave in and send the DSSs to a Catholic (private) school, despite him being quite fervently in support of state secular education. The DSSs were getting totally of step with their peer group.

Smiling at the thought that Bonsoir has made shopping an educational activity

Litchick - my DP very successfully runs a chain of shops (and ran a chain of restaurants before that) and credits his Jewish mother (a lingerie wholesaler) with laying all the right foundations

There is so much that any parent can do, no matter what school your child goes to. And most of it can be done without ever sitting down to 'do some work'. It should be fun and link into what they are interested in.

Literacy Read with and to your child as much as possible.
Let them see you reading frequently.
Share all sorts of text types, not just books- websites, newspapers, junkmail, audio-visual 'texts' like TV programmes and adverts.
Tallk to them all the time about what have read/seen and ask them to do little jobs for you which practice/extend skills- can you check my train time/look up a phone number for me/check what the next stage is in the recipe etc.
Involve them in any writing you do- lists, postcards, birthday or thank you cards, letters.
Encourage them to write- a story, a letter to a famous person (they'll often get a reply which is hugely motivating, even if it's just a standard one).
Make sure they have access to a good dictionary and thesaurus when old enough and encourage them to use them.

Numeracy Involve them in numbers all the time, but make it seem as those you want and value their help, not just that you are 'testing' them. E.g. checking timetables, looking at sports league tables, working out how many packs of sausages you need for a BBQ.
Teach them time skills early on, it's much easier for parents to do this than schools IMO, use routine- what time is your favourite TV show on, how long will it last etc.
Use weights and measures- cook with them and discuss the recipe 'we need twice as much flour as sugar' etc, compare different units. If you need to do measuring for DIY, buying furniture or whatever get them involved.
Show them maps when you go on a journey anywhere and talk about distances, how long it will take. Look at road signs- how many miles to go, how long should this take us if we're going at x mph.

Sorry if any of this sounds obvious or patronising. I just think it's a shame when parents don't know where to start or how to help. There's a load of other things you can do, of course, but I think most of it comes down to talking and listening to your child and just involving them in everyday life.

And I'm sure you would still do all of the very good suggestions above if your DC went to a private school.....

IndigoBell - I must say that we have got off the DSSs case a lot since changing them from a state to a private school - the school really does do a better job setting higher standards, and that makes our life a lot easier.

I don't hold much store by ofsted inspections so i'd do exactly the same if my children were at an "outstanding" school as a satisfactory one.
Worksheets are dull as dishwater, chess is an excellent idea.

I cannot believe this thread. All of our local state primaries are excellent. The kids are well-behaved. They are not second class citizens. I feel sorry for the teachers who work so hard and achieve wonderful results. At the end of the day, if you are involved and help your child they will do well at most schools. I worry that people reading Mnet think they are letting their children down by not sending them private.

IME OFSTED reports mean nothing. I've seen shitty deaprtments/schools get outstanding while great wee schools get mediocre reports.

Only secondary comments here, having taught in (one in particular) very poor schools - the difference in state secondaries is huge in this country - i am only 10 miles away (semi-rural area as well) from a truely awful school, where students spat down the stairwells at the younger kids - no punishments - they were rarely caught - if they were, they would just deny it and senior management would always take their side, where even senior management fianlly acknowledged that y7s could go to the loo during lessons - because they were too intimidated to go at break. Where every lesson was disrupted, fights common, where senior amangement tried to suggest in their literature they were full, but there were 40/50/60 empty places in y7/8/9, I could go on, and on.
It's a total fallacy to suggest that every school in the Uk is fine, and it's only a middle class concern.
Ther are outstanding schools, I work in one now - a comp any parent would would love to send their child too, massively oversubscribed, loads of extra curricular, civilised, high standards and expectations - rewarded by the pupils living up to them.
So what can you do if you are unlucky enough to get allocated school a rather than school b:
Keep your own standards up - ensure your children are polite to you and others when you are around, hopefully it will stick.
Keep their attendance as near to 100% as possible.
Print off/read the exam specs online, and check it's all been covered in class, if not supplement it - if you can't afford to buy revision guides use bitesize and other websites.
Continually reaffirm that i's good, and cool to work.
And not unrelated - don't let brekfast degenerate into what everyone else has - a bumper bag of doritos...eaten at school before registration.

apologiose for numerous typos - long week

Here, here BitsyBetty.
I know there are truly awful schools, but most of those which are "satisfactory" will be reasonable. I hate it when it's implied that Ofsted "satisfactory" is code for "Pile of Crap".

1. Become a parent governor and raise money and support for the school at every opportunity.
2. Make sure your child learns a language and a musical instrument to a good standard at home.
3. Consider joining scouts/guides/cadets or something like that to make a spare set of friends.

Thanks for all your suggestions. I guess I just want to do a bit more and am particularly worried about my year 3 child who just doesn't seem to 'get' it but I know she is bright and articulate. School say she is average and she was average in the SATs but I speak to friends who have children of the same age and what they are doing is a million miles away.

loving the idea of writing to a famous person so we're going to do that this afternoon - unfortunately they want to write to Cheryl Cole.

and actually times tables is something else we need to work on so thanks for that.

How do I find out what they are supposed to be doing in each year group? I'd like to do more maths with my year 1 child - I know they are doing basic sums but they do some sort of number line thing that isn't familiar to me.

I have had to move around beacuse of my job. My children are lucky to be currently attending very good state schools but they have attended a state school that was close to special measures. while the children were there we ensured they had lots of extra curricuular activties, read to them every evening and did basic numeracy. At the weekends we went on trips and did projects in the holidays. I found out what the theme was in school ( this was primary) and we boguht books ( which we often gave to the school) and planned trips etc.

The school did turn itself arouind, we were central in a small band of parents that helped it do so. I am sure we alone were not the cause but we certainly helped. We became governors, volunteered in the school. My husband who has a maths degree used to help out in the maths department. We found parents who were great at sport and they ran clubs whicb injected a sense of competiton into the schoool which sson became evident in academic work. We raised money for academic prize days. We also revitalised the PTA and organised events to break down barriers between parents and teachers.

bitsyandbetty "I worry that people reading Mnet think they are letting their children down by not sending them private". You get used to it on here and learn to take it with a large pinch of salt.

Believe me, private does not always mean good when it comes to schooling. Sometimes people can be shelling out £12k a year for less attention and quality teaching than in a good comprehensive, seriously. I wish more people appreciated that and stopped beating themselves up. Parents need to be very canny when sussing out schools and not believe the marketing as much as they do.

There are undoubtedly better and worse schools but please don't judge by Ofsted inspections, all that proves is that a school can jump through the right hoops when needed. SOme school obsess about that, others get on with the job of teaching. I've taught in some fantastic schools rated 'satisfactory' and some 'outstanding' ones I would never send my child to.

bitsy you are very naive if you don't believe there are some extremely poor state schools in the UK. State provision is very patchy and you simply cannot judge by your own good experience.

Boffin being canny is all well and good. But let's be honest, there is no real choice for most parents in the state sector.

So you can spend years researching and locating the best possible school. But it doesn't mean you will get a place.

You improve your chances of getting a place if you are prepared to transfer mid-term at short notice.

If you want your children to reach their full potential, answer every single question they ask you. If you don't know the answer find it out.

That probably sounds really obvious, but I read it in a newspaper article in 1992 when pregnant with DS 1. It was about an American couple who had 6 off the scale gifted children and were themselves only high school educated, and were mildly bemused about where the brains came from!

Anyway, the advice, which is basically just to be interested in your children and to encourage everything they do, made sense to us so we did just that.

Fast forward 18 years and my 4 all do fantastically well. They speak several languages (taught both at their schools and by themselves} they play several instruments each,and lots of sport.

All are many years ahead of their peers academically, and all get on with people from a huge range of different backgrounds.

People tell us what nice, happy and well balanced kids they are with alarming regularity.

We could afford to privately educate, but believe in the state system, and our lot attend state schools that would probably make some mumsnetters keel over in a dead faint

Our high school has just come out of special measures (not that I take Ofsted seriously!!),however DS2 is doing a couple of A levels two years early, and the oldest will be going to a top Russell group uni after taking a year out.

I'm really, truly not boasting, just illustrating that it's a myth that children who are privately educated necessarily achieve any more than children educated at their local state schools.

If you answer every question, give them lots of experiences, spend lots of time with them just talking, let them do sports, music, trips to theatre and museums if funds allow you won't go far wrong.

Good advice here. As I see it school is mainly consolidation for what children learn outside.

I've found that the teacher is too busy, in a class of 30, to really know my son and his strengths and weaknesses. You need to be aware of their progression and try to ensure that children are enriched and reach their potential. I've also observed that children that start ahead tend to stay ahead so will be taking that into account next time around :). None of this is easy to do, especially if you are working.

I've found, in part due to the teacher's admin error, my son was actually two sub levels ahead of his reported NC level in one area. He's one of the 'quiet middle' and easily underestimated. This has now been corrected but has made me fearful. If I wasn't as involved pushy as I am then I believe this mistake would have gone unnoticed.

Our school is regarded as an excellent and I do rate my son's teacher highly. Teachers can't work miracles and support every child when they have so much to deal with. People tell me that class sizes make no difference at all to a child's progress. I disagree. There has to be less scope for error and it's less likely a child's ability/potential would be missed for a start.

Frankly, I think having the belief that your children can and will get an excellent education within the state sector is all you need to do to "help" them. My dds go to bog standard state schools and I am confident they will be fine, and that their education won't be significantly different from if we were sending them to private schools. So we don't "do" anything much to compensate, we just expect them to end up well educated at the end of it.

It's not that hard, there are very many of us who got a perfectly adequate education through bog standard state schools and many children who still do.