academic 4 year old

[soundevenfruity]

I've been pondering an advice for parents of primary school age children the general gist of which is that if your child is academic, do everything to get them into an academic school. I have no idea what that means. Or is it one of those questions: if you ask the answer is no. As far as I am concerned at 4 they are too young for such labels. I have no idea if my DS is academic. Did/do you know and how?

Thank you everyone. So much to take in - I am so ignorant about the whole education politics vs actual results. Our nearest school gets less than 15% in KS2 so not promising for an average child leave alone an academic one. I am a bit puzzled about the whole talented and gifted issue - surely you can't be talented across the board. Gifts and talents so to speak are normally very specific. This questions kept popping up in a couple of school I recently visited. Generally it was dismissed by head teachers in the most polite way so in my experience state primary schools don't think it's relevant for their work.

Well, on state Ed terms, 'gifted' is usually referring to academic (and of course may be across the board, or in specific areas) and 'talented' refers to less academically tangible stuff like music or gymnastics.

There is no legal requirement for a school to make any g or t provision, which is really why it's necessary to judge each setting in the context of the individual child's needs.

The old 'g&t' label just referred to the top 10% academically in any context in any particular setting, and was a complete nonsense. If a child moved schools, they could easily not make the 'g&t' cut, or vice versa. Same kid, no change in ability or output.

If you suspect a child is gifted academically at 4, you are better off logging onto hoagies or whatever. Most schools do 'cope' - it's easy enough to loan books from a key stage or two higher - but it is rare that a school will truly look at an individual and meet their needs.

soundevenfruity - to even think about sitting for a selective school at 11+ you need to be confident of level 5's across the board at KS2 and since the exams are taken the year before the child really needs to be at that level a year early.

So if a school only gets 15% of kids to L5 at KS2 then you haven't a snowflakes chance of getting a place at 11+ without tutoring.

It doesn't mean you need to reject the school outright. If I thought a school was good for my DD in terms of social development and that she was happy there, then I would be looking for them to have the right attitude and work with me in getting her up to the standard needed. What would make me very worried would be a school that had an issue with my wanting DD to exceed the levels that they were teaching at.

Seeker is right, the value added scores are based on the average point score at the end of KS2 compared to the end of KS1.
This means a 6 scores more than a 5a, a 3b scores more than a 3c etc.
So to get a good value added score (100 or more) the school needs on average to move EVERY child up by 9 points. (for example from a 2a to a 5a)

OFSTED are looking more closely at the value added score so that every child gets suitable work, not just the borderline cases. IN the past schools may have been tempted to focus on the borderlines to get as many of the 3a's up to 4c's and 4a's to 5c's

BTW I am a governor of a junior school, and we went through all these scores last week, so I do know about this.

Having said that, some schools do "push" children harder, but how much difference it makes in the long run is v. difficult to prove. A child going to secondary with solid level 4s and a positive attitude to learning may do better in year7 than one with "high 5s" and a jaded attitude from working purely to get the scores.

At the school where I am governor, we are now looking to get some feedback from the secondary schools, as to how our (probably less pushed) DCs do over the next few years, compared with the other main feeder schools, some of whom seem to push the more able children harder. Anecdotally, the "top sets" from all the primaries correlate roughly to the As and A*s at GCSE, despite some of them coming in with level 6s and some with 4a's

So the short answer to the OP is "it all depends"...

When my DD now 16 was 4 I would have put money on her being academic as she was clearly bright and enjoyed writing, having stories read to her etc.
She did QUITE well in her GCSE's - at an excellent local state school, but is not remotely interested in anything academic except modern languages and I can't get her to read for anything.
She was bright for her age IYSWIM.
She has turned out to be gifted in a non-academic field however.

Choco mine was the opposite remedial group for everything in reception. Not interested in reading until about age 8 and then went straight up all tge groups and now one of the best at secondary. I have probably said this on other threads but academic at age 4 usually just means they pick up reading quickly but no sign of how they will do later. However op and partner both academic so much more chance as parents educational levels are supposed to be an indicator but no guarantee. As many have said children develop at different rates and it would be impossible to plot a graph and some kids with all 4s do well at secondary. Same when I was at school. Out of those winning prizes for O'levels very few did as well at A'Level and a lot were sent to private cammers by there very disappointed parents. However I still monitor my kids levels to see they are stll progressing and will intervene if they don't and that is what I would advise the op.

Neither ds nor I were "academic" enough to get into private/selective schools via their assessment process at age 4.

My mum told me that she found out afterwards that most kids got special coaching for the school they tried to get me into, even though it was supposed to be based on potential.

They claimed the same thing at the private school we had tried to see if ds could get into (back-up plan 'cos we didn't realise we were already in the catchment for the school we wanted ds to go to). However, it was useful, at the 2nd assessment (they did 2, in case one was an "off" day) to see other parents getting their children to read to/at them before the session. We looked on, thinking, "ds know the letter Mmmm " (his first initial) . We therefore weren't surprised when he wasn't accepted.

He would have struggled at this school in P1 as he wasn't actually ready to read until near the end of P2 (despite lots of 1:1 support from the school). However, he left primary school in the top group for both maths and language. He is now in S1 (Y7) and in the top set for both English and Maths (they were set very quickly for Maths 'cos they could do a test to sort them out but they only chnaged the English classes arounf a few weeks ago as they wanted to take time to form their own views of the S1 cohort) and has just brought home an interim school report with a clean sweep of "Excellents".

You can't pigeonhole kids at 4.

BTW - I went on to get 8 As at "O" grade and 6 As at "Higher" (most Scots only do 4 or 5 Highers). Something my mum took a lot of pleasure from!

losingtrust, we are not academic.

I guess, my own experience is clouding the issue. Because we moved half way through primary school I had an experience of what would be in UK oustanding and good schools. I was desperately lonely and unhappy in the oustanding one and actually once told my mum that in our class there were 2 idiots, me and another boy - we were repeatedly told we weren't doing well. It was very results driven and we normally had some teachers from other schools watching our lessons to improve standards in their classes. Another school was good, inclusive in today's terms and local. I flourished there, at the end of it I had only As and A+s. But in terms of knowledge the first school really gave me a great foundation in maths and reading, writing. I did MA in university, did well there and enjoyed every minute of it. I don't think my first primary teacher would've predicted it.

I may be in the minority but I have nothing but praise for our local state school. DD1 is a genius (and I don't use that word lightly). She is the country's youngest Mensa member, one of them once in a decade children. She is thriving at her state school, has friends and is learning there is a lot more to life than academics

noisytoys good for you - and her!

I must admit I am a big fan of comps because they do cater well for the different progression of kids. Having had two late developers who as sound said struggled through the early part of school. Both said to me 'at one station that they just could not do it but then Ickes up speed later in the school, grammars would have been useless because I did not know that ds was suddenly going to kick in in year 6. The kid that struggled managed to go from scraping 2 just in year 2 to all 5s at the end of year 6 and we would have needed to tutor for grammar school at a much earlier stage as the school did not do any exam work whereas with the comp he sailed straight into the top stream. There are kids moving up and down all the time and this leads to fluidity and the kids constantly challenged to stay up as others overtake but that is the best way. To separate children at 11 when kids are still developing is not something I could ever agree with.

Sound you are academic if you have an ma and I feel for you in the early years. It must have been tough but you may have been a wonderful late developer.

I didn't think of DD as academic at 3 as I had nothing to compare her to.

She was very verbal, very interested in books, was writing her name and numbers at 2 -I thought all children did this

1st day at nursery -the day after her 3rd birthday, she was painting and the teacher came over and asked her what colour she was using

she answered blue

the teacher said do you like blue, and was visibly when dd said...

'I do like blue but only light blue because light blue is a happy colour like the sky on a sunny day, I don't like dark blue because that is an angry colour like the sea in a storm, so yes I do like blue but only if it is light blue'

people talk about not having a real choice about schools but I'm lucky in my area I had a realistic choice of 4 schools

I actually chose the one that was considered the least academic of the 4 and at the time was 'needs improvement' -people thought I was bonkers!

I loved the feel of the school, it's very inclusive, everyone is important and adds value to the school community. There is a great sense of peer support and the efforts of children are always praised

it's very local and both DDs have a number of local friends and are both very social children

DD finished y5 on a level 6 for maths and reading and 5a for writing so she has definitely had the opportunity to do well academically

she also
plays on 3 sports teams
is a peer mentor
playtime buddy
school councillor
listens to the yr2s reading
is a student advisor to the PTA
takes part in community schemes (the school helps maintain a care home's garden)
has campaigned for financial support for a new school building
been involved with a traffic calming initiative outside the school

I honestly don't see how she could have had a more rounded primary education

I have chosen to look at the more academic schools for her but if that ends up being beyond my means then she would be more than happy to go to the local high school, and I would be happy for her too

state does take a bashing but like anything there are good and bad and I don't think the good get enough recognition

DD is in reception at our local primary school and has been identified as g &t.

She taught herself to read before she started nursery and her comprehension is very good as is her spelling/writing.

I have had no problems at all with how the school differentiates for her, but it is helped by her having the same teacher that she had in nursery.

She has phonics/numeracy lessons with one other boy (same level as her) taught by the TA.

Having said that, I am concerned that this continues in KS1.