What makes a child "academic"?

[5exybomb]

We are moving back to Elmbridge, Surrey next year and are looking at private secondary schools for DD1. I was thinking when people say my child is academic, what do they mean?
My DD1 goes to a prep school with 45 in the year group. She is top set for spelling and English and middle set for maths. She was in top set for maths but got put down as she was struggling to keep up with their pace so is now top of the middle set.

She is hardworking and outgoing but can lack confidence in her ability. She is very popular and sociable and has many friends. She also loves drama, and some sports but isn't particularly sporty.
Would you say she is academic and therefore would she suit academic schooling or do you think she sounds more of an all rounder?

IME graft (diligence) in young DC is often not a sign of great intelligence and many hardworking and high performing DC at primary are distinctly average later on when being quick to grasp new information and ideas and to relate them to existing knowledge far outweighs technical skills in academic performance.

Bonsoir
Its perfectly possible to do extremely well at school without super intelligence. Infact very few jobs require high levels of intelligence.

A hard working child with reasonable social skills can go far.

Bonsoir whatever happens in school, post degree I think you underestimate diligence.
I work in an academic area where intelligence /brilliance is commonplace but hardworking, persistence and reflective skills have the edge. I do not underestimate the apparently 'slow graspers', there are some who are reflective with great originality and insight into less superficial aspects of problems. I know that when I understand and move on quickly I may be missing a point that one of these people won't have.

That's a different point. I don't underestimate diligence in adulthood at all - it's vital to success. What I mean is that diligence (coupled with parental support) can mean that DC learn the technical skills that are the focus of primary school early and thoroughly without being particularly "quick".

I agree that DC with good/early 'classroom skills' may not necessarily turn out to be hugely academic later on.

However, in order to be successful in an academic sense, you need to build up those 'classroom skills' at some point and to a good enough standard.

Intelligence and quick thinking are great things to be, but not enough to produce acadmeic success (though they may earn you a lot of money and/or make you successful in many other arenas).

Bonsoir cross posts.
I agree.
And I also think that early articulacy in DC is not necessarily a sign of either intelligence or academic ability.

This is one reason why late born DC need their parents and teachers to understand that early classroom skills and the ability to talk the talk are not signs of high-set-in-stone ability.

DD is dyslexic and has had regular assessments. Quite early on on psychologist said she would be "fine when she was 16". A surprise as her Prep school school did not think she would cope in an academic school, class performance, aside from maths, was below average and her CAT scores low.

She did better than expected at 11+ gaining a place at a selective school which was considered aspirational for her, and sure enough by 16 was considered bright, passing some of the diligent girls who were top of the year in Yr7.

I don't think she would have described herself as academic until recently. Humanities were difficult, and education was not much fun. She has done well to continue to be engaged, and looking back I think it was important first that she went to a school with a broader academic range, and that she gained self esteem and resilience through extra curricular activities.

Her brother in contrast was always considered academic, and so had a fairly easy path through school. Oddly from now on, life may be easier for DD. The dyslexia is still a problem, but she is tougher.

I think there is a lot to be said for early and rigorous teaching and constant rehearsal of phonics, number facts etc but spelling and times table accuracy are not highly correlated with great problem-solving ability. IME some DC don't do very well on technical skills at primary but are startlingly good at problem-solving requiring the application of the same skills that they find hard to restitute with 100% accuracy when tested in isolation. For those DC, being accurate spellers or calculators outside any context is not meaningful. Those are the DC who will be better relative performers later on.

Needmoresleep I hope this will be the case for my dyslexic child too who has a real curiosity about the world and like my DH can surprise me with insight. School has been tough in parts (primary particularly) but getting better.

My DD1 is someone that really needs to be pushed. Just as an example if I didn't force her to take part in a school piano solo she wouldn't because she said she was worried about being nervous etc. I said to her this is a life skill- getting nervous, getting through the nerves and performing in front of people. When she did do the performance- she practiced so hard without any prompting and she was so happy when she did it faultlessly and everyone applauded her for her performance. Afterwards she said "Im so happy I did that now!".
I feel like my DD1 is academic but needs to be pushed to be this.
Would you say she is suited to academic, pushy schools or should she be in a more nurturing school?
I have asked her current school but they are totally non committal and cant comment on schools in Elmbridge as its out of their area!!

Any comments are most welcome!