Why do parents who are moving their children to fee paying schools

[silverfork]

... so often complain that their child was 'bored' at school because they are 'clever'?

Quite a few children from dd's school have transferred to prep schools at the end of infants/beginning of juniors but these never seem to be particularly academically successful children. Nevertheless, I frequently heard them talk about boredom in relation to their own child's intelligence.

Thread this morning reminded me (sorry).

My dd was "bored" at her last school. Here's an example. She found the maths easy. So she finished any set piece of work very quickly. The teacher gave her a note book, which was called her "busy book." The idea being that when she finished her piece of work, she doodled or busied herself with her "busy book." On parents evening, I discovered four volumes of busy book in her drawer. It was full of doodles, colouring, lists, times tables written out backwards, elaborately coloured-in bubble writing of her name or the adjective - Bored. Anything really to relieve her tedium. So I moved her from her prep to another prep. She's not bored anymore.

^^ that

They may feel they need to justify moving their child, shame as it is nobody's businesd outside parents and child.

I think you need to have confidence in your own choice of school. Sending a child to a private school is considered maddness by many people because of the sheer cost of fees. Many parents who use private schools are making huge sacrifices and they may feel that they have to justify living like church mice for the next ten or so years.

Life is often boring. I don't think that all learning can be done through play and there is a need for some rote learning. I feel that certain boring activities like handwriting practice, learning times tables, grammar, punctuation and spellings are important.

From my personal experience going to a private school can be pretty boring at times. My son is at a state school and he is certainly not bored. He is achieving well academically and his teacher does differentiate for different ablities.

I just moved DS to state partly because he was so under-extended in the private school. "It's nice to be using my brain again!" he says.

When DD (state school'd) finishes her work she launches into her social life. But not every kid gets much socially out of school time. Agree it's a shame if anyone feels they need to justify.

My dc are bright and at a state school, they get bored from time to time too. As I said previously, it is nobody's business what schooling choices people make for their dc as long as they are getting an education.

I think, sometimes, if a child finds work boring, they will do the work slowly and get distracted - thus the "brightest" children are not always the ones getting on to the extension activities, because they are too busy daydreaming over the boring, easy work, without realising that they are thus the authors of their own boredom and lack of success, because they didn't pick up on the fact that if you jump quickly through the boring hoops, there might be more interesting work at the end of it (in a good school... in a bad school, it's just more of the same....). Dull plodders who just get on with it, children who work to please (more often girls than boys), or children wise beyond their years and with a good dose of self-motivation, can thus get greater rewards than bright but bored kids... whereas I suspect in a private school with smaller classes, there is more structure and pushing of children who do not yet have the requisite maturity to understand why they shouldn't be getting bored and daydreaming, or shouldn't just be doing what appears to be expected and no more. So, I guess it depends on your own child and how they react to situations... each child has its own particular strengths and weaknesses.

I would guess you hear if from parents moving their children because there has to be a reason for the move, a reason they think their child would be better served in a different school. One of these reasons might be that they think their child would be better suited in a different accademic environment.

I think for some people its to try and pretend that they hadn't planned to always send their child private in year 3 or whatever, and were just using their excellent oversubscribed local school as a free pre-prep. Obviously this is their right and choice, but it really bugs me that they pretend different (the usual dead giveaways are that all their older children also did this, and the child is going to a private school where you had to have their name of the waiting list for several years). I would just find it so much better if they said "we choose to educate our children privately from year 3" or whatever - or indeed don't say anything at all.

What rabbitstew said. I think it is more common for bright kids who are bored to start to daydream, mess about in their work, not be motivated by academic tasks because it is all old hat....and thus fall under the radar of the teacher. And so the teacher continues to dole out boring tasks because, afterall, they haven't even finished a previous simple exercise properly. A child whose imagination is fired up, who has to concentrate hard to do a task, who needs some input from the teacher is a child who is not going to get bored.

This is much more common than the child with 5 busy books filled with times tables who has completed all the class work IMHO.

Rabbitstew and Greythorne have described exactly my own DS2 who became progressively more disengaged as school progressed. I think the primary school he was at is excellent, truly excellent, and there is plenty of extension work, but you did often have to jump through easy hoops to get it and that depends on character as much as ability.

We moved DD2 last year from a state primary to an independent school. She was not bored but she was not really enthused either! She finished her work quickly and was often then tasked with helping other children or reading a book. She loved school but was frustrated that she was not able to work at her pace and was constantly being held back.

At her new school she is thriving! She is constantly challenged and is blossoming there. She also has access to subjects such as Latin and Mandarin, Current Affairs, Music theory etc. She is being stretched and inspired and that is why we are paying for her education.

We moved our son over 6 yrs ago from a "nice" village primary; 80 pupils on the register from reception to yr 6. He was bored rigid especially in maths, indentified as G and T particularly in maths, it later turned out his general IQ puts him in 1 of 250 and his maths IQ puts him in 1 in 500 of the population. At the time I approached the head and governor responsible for sen and was told that the school had neither the time money or resources to help him and they couldn't and wouldnt justify channelling extra effort into one child and that children like him didn't come along often enough for them to bother to make special provision policies etc. Just after moving him I wrote to the head of the LEA expressing my concern that state ed wouldn't provide help to children like my DS. We has the money to do it but not everyone would be as fortunate he told me that the school has a legal obligation to help him I never needed to find out how true that was!
We moved him to a prep I'm not going to pretend it was perfect but the children were streamed from when he started in yr 3 lessons were all taught by specialist teachers in specialist classroom two language were introduced and the maths jumped 4 levels overnight. Knowing what we know now about him he would probably have been better in a selective prep but it was still better than our sweet but useless state primary.
Anyone thinking of making the move for this reason needs to be careful look at the destinations of the leavers especially if your hoping to send your DC to a super selective your prep needs a recent history of regularly sending children there even more so if your hoping for a scholarship into a super selective. Preps come with other problems IME heads are generally conservative with a small C and quite petty and authoritarian very bright children often can't or wont conform particularly in tiny preps we found this can cause problems. Also demand for places in super selectives is increasing especially the handful of super selective boarding schools because many foreigners in particular Chinese and Russians are sending their children. Small preps who used to send 4-5 a year to these places are increasingly finding they are just not preparing the children sufficiently to compete against super bright children from abroad.

Agree to the conservative with a small c and petty authoritarian behaviour comments of happygardening... In the last couple of generations of our family, we have had experience of petty authoritarian prep school headmasters, of putting too much emphasis on children's academic ability over and above their emotional and social needs, pushing children in the wrong way, boring children to the point of serious underachievement... and I've come to the conclusion that there is no perfect answer to a child's education. You can only do what you think is best at the time that you do it and live with the consequences at the end of the process. And if you have money, you have more choices, which is obviously better than having no choice where the only option is awful, but can also be a problem, in that you have more wrong choices to make, so it's harder at the end of the day to look back if things didn't go to plan and tell yourself you couldn't help it. Money can't guarantee perfection.

When people move their children from a school they feel the need to justify the decision. Particularly when it's going to cost them. So they always end up criticising the first school. Which is extremely rude when said to parents of children at that school. Your child might not be happy there. But it doesn't mean that my children aren't. And incidentally, my children have been stretched just fine.

jeee your views/experience is valid but as i've said this is not my experience of state ed either at primary or secondary level. Those with jaw dropping IQ's 160+ there needs are definitely not being met in state ed.

When my son was at his primary he was better and a dam sight quicker at maths than his teacher how could she stretch him? How can you give one child completely different maths form the rest of the class. He was given a extension maths book to do at home. None of the teachers in his school could answer the questions!! Neither could I for that matter but I'm not a maths teacher.

At primary level, though, happygardening, it is not beyond the wit of a good state primary school with a good relationship with its feeder secondary to bring secondary school teachers over to help and advise. Some teachers in the state sector are more willing and able to go the extra mile for unusually bright children than others. Mind you, you aren't talking about pure IQ, you are talking about a mix of IQ and personality and about the loneliness of being the only child working at a particular level when none of his peers are working at the same academic level.

happygardening - do you think society is meeting the needs and expectations of people with IQs of 160+ once they leave school???... At what point do they have to accept that they are living with idiots?!

That may well be true of kids with IQs with 160 plus, but silverfork is not referring to them. The vast majority of children dubbed too bright for state are no such thing. I could pay school fees if I had a pound for everyone round where I live who says to me, 'well yes we'd like to go state, but you see xx is so sensitive and so bright' without stopping to think just how rude that sounds. I feel like saying, 'yes well I'm lucky that mine are so thick and brutish as to survive the hellhole'.
Actually I think it's the children who aren't particularly bright who might have the best reason to go to a school with smaller classes.

"it is not beyond the wit of a good state primary school with a good relationship with its feeder secondary to bring secondary school teachers over to help and advise."
I know its not beyond the wit of schools to this but as I've already said my DS's primary was not prepared to use its wit. They didn't want to mark one child out as special was the impression I got. All have to be treated equally.
Also I know from experience and as you've said bright children need each other and not just in lessons as you said its lonely being one of one. For those lucky enough to understand something the first time they find even repeating something once more tedious and start to become restless and fidgety; education becomes a chore rather than a pleasure its only now that he's at the super selective that I really see what a difference it makes.

"happygardening - do you think society is meeting the needs and expectations of people with IQs of 160+ once they leave school???... At what point do they have to accept that they are living with idiots?!"
We have a very able friend who effortlessly falls into this category I don't think he's ever accepted it. I personally don't see it as something that is necessarily positive or something to wish on your children. He's generally very unpopular with work colleagues his intolerance is legendary and as for his long suffering wife......

I know why you did what you did, happygardening, and can fully understand your reasons for it. The fact is, you could buy greater personal fulfilment for your ds than was on offer at is local state primary and, understandably, chose to do that, because you could.

Do bear in mind that not all state primary schools are obsessed with "equal treatment" in the sense of denying opportunities to certain children, though.

"Do bear in mind that not all state primary schools are obsessed with "equal treatment" in the sense of denying opportunities to certain children, though."
I do accept this and Im sure there are some excellent schools and so there should be because not all have the choice or the desire to pay, As I pointed out to the head of the LEA its outrageous that I feel that I've got to pay to get what my son needs.
From my experience admittedly this was while ago a lot depends on the head and the governors some heads are basically non aspirational and the governors are as well. This school was in a county with grammar schools but the school had no interest in getting loads in. I don't mind but what really pisses me of is when they tell you before you arrive that they do do things but the reality is that they don't. We cant they just be honest? The county was positively heaving in primary schools we had about 15 within a sensible drive.

I thibk most DC thrive in the early years. All that lovely play and friends on tap. And art and playtime and learning things for the first time, whatever they may be,.

For me the crunch comes at around seven/eight. Many DC are ready for much greater challenges by then. Some schools simply can't provide that.