I've just been to my first parent evening/ consulation for DS (5). He has been at school since January and I thought he was doing pretty well - not brilliantly, but well enough.
However his teacher described him as immature, bottom of the class, struggling to keep up, too quiet.... etc etc and said they have put him with the new reception children when he should be year 1 now.
On the one hand it is no surprise to me that he has more in common with a child born in September than one born in April as he was born mid-August so is more or less the youngest in his year and he was 5 weeks early. So I am happy enough with his progress I supose. Its a system problem rather than his problem.
But I am worried. Will he catch up? In a small village school where 3 classes are put together its easy to be flexible with him but what about later on? And I'm worried about how he feels about it all although he's showing no signs of being upset. And I'm worried that he's already been labelled as struggling and that this will stick with him.
Most of all I feel that the school system has let him down. At the moment they use a cut off point 1st Sept, to decide what year a child should be in but children vary so much. The teacher said it was just a shame he didn't hang on a couple more weeks as then he'd be fine. I think that there should be a grey area, from say July to October, when parents can choose which year their child enters so that if they feel its best, a child can be held back and stay in this position throughout their school career.
I'm probably worrying unecessarily - after all he's right at the beginning and has all the time in the world to learn but how should I handle it. Do I need to do more work at home with him to help him catch up? I prefer to let him play at home as he does enough learning at school. So do I just ignore it and wait and see?
Just needed a bit of a rant really.