Why can't parents ask this question?

[Creole]

Why is it a sin to ask how your child is performing in comparison to the rest of the class? Surely this is what a lot of parents want to know.

Or does this question make you sound like a very pushy parent?

I can see the logic of MB's position. People, especially kids tend to take the shortest explanation of a a situation.
I certainly reject the sport-inspired view that competition is inherently good and inspires kids to do better. Sure I feel smug about DS sailing past the other kids, but it's not actually useful.
That being said, my own history makes me very very suspicious of teachers hiding any info from me.
DS has items that need a bit of work, like all kids, and that's where the marginal benefit of parental support is greatest
To me, that's what parents need to be told, stuff like "DS is good at reading, but needs to practice this part of joined up writing".

This is exactly what we do DC. There is no point is giving unhelpful comments like 'Must try harder', parents and kids need useful information as to how they can improve. We have had the greatest sucess with our 'progress day',

Parents and child have a 20 appointment with the form tutor. During that time the child exact level of attainment is discussed, and if they are making the progress they should be. We also let the parents know what our expectations of te child are, and we discuss this.

This has proved to be very popular, and lets us pick up kids who are begining to drop off the curve, way before it becomes a major issue.

It doesn't woek in all cases, nothing ever does. But it is a rigorous anaysis of the child's progress and we all find it helpful.

If your childs school doesn't do it, it is worth asking if they can start. It is so worthwhile.

I am not interested in where my DD's friends are at or where DD is in the class. I just want to know about my DD - how is she doing? Has she made progress throughout the year? Is she trying hard and doing as well as she could be? Is she struglging with anything and if so what can we do to help her?

Knowing that she is top of the class or bottom of the class, etc. to me means nothing. That doesn't tell me about my own child's progress. Which surely is all that matters?

Have to say that most children figure out their relative position in class pretty quickly IME, especially when at secondary school. So if you really want to know - ask your child!

Ours uses PIPS scores and compares the results to internal tests to see whether a child is achieving his/her potential. I was quite surprised when we discussed it with the head and were shown a scatter graph showing all the children in the class. It was reassuring though to get a feel for where ds statistically falls, as opposed to anecdotally and teaching groups, and that he is doing his best.

Wow! I certainly wasnt expecting all these replies, this must be a touchy subject.

I guess I asked the question because in the previous year I was told what position he was and I'm a bit certain that he's moved a bit.

I kind of agreed with MB, knowing the position he was the previous year made me complacent and I didn't try to encourage him. So I can see the agruement.

However, I think I would want to know though if he is at the bottom.

Also, if schools are so against this why are they streamed?

At primary school too.
Has probably altready been said but classes do vary. I taught a year 4 class a few years ago in which there were 3 or so high flyers, 3 or so special needs and then the middle were pretty much or a muchness. Ranking not very useful there and as I've said already I don't collate the data in that way but I would always tell a parent whether their child was below average, average or above average in national terms but then ALWAYS ALWAYS put that into context for the individaul. Isn't this enough?

DC ?That being said, my own history makes me very very suspicious of teachers hiding any info from me.?

Seconded. When challenged, teachers usually come out with all sorts of wonderful theory of what is going on behind the scenes. But parents are kept woefully ignorant of this and, frequently, theory does not translate into practice.
I am very disillusioned by my encounters (5 schools) with the education system: they talk endlessly amongst themselves but do not engage with their ?consumers?. The system seems designed for their benefit, not ours.

I have been so turned off that I will be advising my DC to think long and hard before spending a huge sum of money (equivalent to the deposit on a house) on going to University.

Certainly one should think about university, but as someone who works in recruitment I have to say that not being a graduate completely bars many of the best jobs, even as is usually the case the job doesn't require a degree, and the degree people have is of no relevance.

It's also worth thinking about the changes in the job market since we were kids. Then only a tiny % were grads, also the workforce you were competing with was W.Europe, N.America and a few British colonies in the Pacific. E.Europe was a gulag, China a pitiful slum and India not much better.
Technology has made distance irrelevant for the majority of jobs.
Our kids will be competing in a workforce 10 times as large. There will be more than 10 times as many jobs, but being born white and British is no longer a major qualification in getting a decent pay packet.

There are alternatives to university which are better for many kids, but most of these alternatives ar much worse.

I would like to know for absolutely no altruistic/good parenting reason at all

I would like to know how he is doing relative to his classmates because I just would like to know

I can then judge others more easily and post-rationalise any failings more adequately

DC: interesting. I found the opposite when I graduated with a 3rd class (HONS) science degree. I was underqualified for all the degree related jobs and overqualified for all the non-degree jobs. I'd made myself completely unemployable.

I think it is useful to be told where your dc is on an absolute scale - which you get in formal exams like SATS and GCSEs. In between, the best you can get is a comparison with their peer group. Over time, knowing that they have improved from 20th to 10th in the class shows thay have improved - relative to the class. Having said that, the exact position is pretty meaningless, but top 20%, middle 20% etc would have some meaning.

A very long time ago, we used to get marks out of 100 and position in the class for every subject and overall. There were school prizes for coming top in a subject. What I remember now is that I came 20th in class one year (and stuff like that), but no positive feedback on what I needed to do to improve. A friend of mine came top every year, and got more and more anxious about maintaining his place - in every subject - before eventually having a breakdown. So that system did not work for him!

However - imagine the uproar if you tried this at work. "You came 12th out of 20 in client services". An appraisal where you are told how to improve, or in some companies what you need to do to get promotion to the next grade, plus SMART objectives, is about as good as it gets. It sounds like that is what MB does for kids.

As someone who used to get hit if I ever didn't come top in anything at school when they used to put position on reports I'm quite glad they've stopped doing it now (not that I'd inflict the same on ds anyway).

fembear, I see it as part of my job to make sure that the parents of the children are well informed. I understand the theory of what I am doing and I am not hiding behind it.

Studies show that formative assessment of children has the largest positive effect of any intervention used by schools.

Of course I could just ignore that fact, and go back to 56/100, you can 25th. It would save time for me, but that would be a stupid thing to do, as the chilren's learning would suffer.

I'm very sorry that you have had such negative experiences of the education, however we are not all like that and I don't like being tarred with someone else's brush, thanks. I work long and hard to make sure that the kids I teach get the best they can from education, regardless of where they lie in the class.

A lot of parents have unreaslistic views of how brilliant their child is and it's just as well they are told. Sometimes I ask. Usually children have a good idea anyway even if no one tells them. It's patently obviously who is cleverest in most classes even if the school down plays it. If they're in a school where they go on to another school and you want to know which school they might go on to.

In France, where I live, all children are marked out of 20 for all subjects and school reports give, per subject, your child's average per term plus the class average grade. And then you get your child's overall position in the class, and the class overall average.

All this achieves in my opinion is in making some children feel very self-satisfied and arrogant and some abject failuers - as if the French national curriculum was the be all and end all of all human experience. I hate this system.

That is very interesting. I had no idea that the French run their schools like that. I did know that their NC is, in some ways , even more limiting than ours.

why would parents want to ask that question?

is my child better at reading than that child?

and ?

Martianbishop - I am afraid I am clueless about the UK NC as I don't know anyone in state schools in the UK - everyone I know is either in a private school or an international school.

The French NC is indeed very restrictive. My stepsons complain endlessly about how boring school is, and when I do homework with them I can see that it hasn't moved on from the type of rote learning I got myself when in a French-type system in secondary school (many, many years ago). Dreadful.

It is strange, in the UK we have the immage of France as being full of amazingly independent people, who know their own minds. Radical politics, union activism etc etc hundreds of cheeses

And then you find out that the education system is one of the most restrictive in europe. Funny old world.

How odd.

French people are brainwashed by the Ministère de l'Education Nationale from the earliest age. All schools throughout France teach the same national curriculum.

That's why socialism is still going strong here - they CAN'T think for themselves as they have never had to confront a different opinion about anything... No understanding of personal responsibility, difference etc

Gross generalisations of course, but no smoke without fire.

Is it just me or do all French children have the same handwriting?

and they form their numbers in a very uniform way. Not a criticism you understand, an observation

I think the French have some better elements than we have in their education system but I'm sure anna won't agree. We went too far the other way in the UK in getting rid of children's natural competition so children emerge never having had a cross or "poor" on their work and suddenly find in the real world they're judged all the time = one reason private school pupils in the UK can do better in life that state schools ones because they're used to normal comparison that they're insulated from in some namby pamby no one is better than anyone else kind of fake world some state schools choose to fabricate

I think that you are exagerating when you say children leave school without having a cross in their book or 'poor'. I'm a teacher in a state comp and this isn't ther case at all. There is nothing wrong with telling a child that they have written something that is wrong or that their work is substandard.

What you do is tell them that, and then tell them what they have to do to put it right!

and yet many private school students tend to do worse at university than state school students because they are suddenly without the pressure and spoon-feeding