What are my options here? DS very unhappy in Y6

[LittleSeasideCottage]

DS is in year 6 at a local state primary school. He is very unhappy and pretty miserable to tell the truth. He doesn't have anyone he considers to be a friend or feels a connection to (although others consider him to be a good friend). He is a very bright boy and is bored and unchallenged. The teacher appears to be going through the motions and if honest is struggling to control the class effectively.

DS is going to a local independent school from Y7 up to the end of 6th form. He is very excited and looking forward to it, and hopefully should be starting transition days soon.

The problem is we are on the verge of him refusing to go to his current school and he regularly comes home in tears. He feels bullied and isolated and is just so miserable. He has anxiety at night time about going in the next day and his shoulders sag as he walks in, it's heartbreaking.

I've spoken to his teacher and the head master but nothing changes. They just seem to be unable to actually help in any meaningful way.

I've always believed in finishing things off as a useful lesson in life, especially as DS knows where he is going next. I guess its the 'See it through to the end' mentality; however, DS has yet again come out in tears due to the bad behaviour of others in his class. I'm sick of seeing him so unhappy.

So I need to know what are my options here for the last six months after Xmas until he finishes in July?

What could I reasonably do?

I don't give a stuff about SATs as they're irrelevant to how he will be streamed in the next school.

What would you do?

Looking for advice or ideas from other. Thanks in advance ☺️

I know what the problems are and have a good understanding of the issues. So have a clear picture. It is 100% the environment.

What I'm hoping to get from this thread are the potential options open to the remaining time left in Year 6.

Yes, this is why Home ed is growing steadily these days. Unfortunately or actually , fortunately? Imagine you couldn't do that legally.

Go on FB and type: HEFA in groups search

It would be at the HT discretion but it's very doable, when I was teaching we had a few parents that homeschooled their children part of the week in preparation for entry exams to Secondary schools. As a parent it is your choice where and how your child is educated, the HT knows your son is unhappy so should support your plan to support his emotional wellbeing before it gets to the point of school refusal, that is a situation you really want to avoid!

https://www.facebook.com/HEFAinfo

these guys have a very informative group on fb

Look at the HEFA home education for all group on Facebook lots of advice on what to do and what your obligations are with the LA. The £2 tuition hub has lots of different online lessons you can try out for low cost. Or learn laugh play has a good range of live lessons online to join. I’d focus on keeping maths, English and science ticking over and whatever else he’s interested in and enjoy the break from school.

I can't give advice on what to do about schools, but I do think that learning to say, "I'm not ok with this, I'm not going to see it through" is a valuable lesson. Whether it us a job, relationship or something else, knowing you can stop and take a different path is a useful life lesson. Maybe less so if you have a naturally flaky child. But I doubt yours is.

What? Primary aged kids having a horrible time quite often cry. They learn not to if they have unsupportive parents I suppose.

I home educate my 3 and my eldest two are a similar age to your son. Both early secondary age. What kind of stem does he like? There are literally hundreds of options out there now for HE children to learn anything at all. Some are online and some are not.

Some ideas off the top of my head; science kits from companies like MEL science, online coding classes, maths online or at a centre like Kumon or Kip McGrath, engineering kits, exhibitions or visits to local science and technology museums, planetariums, observatories, natural history museums… there are so so many options.

Moving for 2 terms is preferable to staying in an environment that keeps reducing home to tears.

For 2 terms you could do whatever you and he fancy to home educate. Keep on the maths, but maybe STEM project on something that interests him? Something to research, analyse, write up and illustrate? Polution in local rivers? Space travel? Electric cars?

Just help get him to the right frame of mind for September.

Definitely remove him from a school that's making him unhappy.

My friends' son was increasingly miserable in primary school. They moved him at Easter of year 6. He settled really well for just one term. Don't dismiss it as an option.

Have you asked? Or is it solely secondary.

www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-curriculum-in-england-primary-curriculum

I had to home school for 6 months due to a house move falling through, slightly younger though. I used the national curriculum as a rough guide, bought the cgt books, the work books were particularly useful, and I just then set lots of projects, plenty of field trips etc. I admit it was a doddle for my bright elder child who just ran with it and much harder for my still infant school aged dd who since was diagnosed with dyslexia.

I’m intrigued by a secondary school that will offer endless transition days but has no junior school (hence early move is impossible). What do they do with them all - how do they have the teachers to look after them?

Sounds pointless keeping him where he is. SATS serve no purpose to the independent school; they do their own streaming tests.

so you need to move him :

• is secondary school yr 7 and up only? If there is a junior school ask/beg/plead for a year 6 place. Really spell it out they can squeeze him in if they have to
• if no junior school, go to all the feeder prep schools where the other children are coming from. If you have no idea, the senior school can tell you what their feeder preps are. Again beg/plead for a place

private schools broke up for the holidays last week but there should still be someone monitoring urgent emails, which this is

having had a child go down a similar path I would encourage you to keep him in a school setting of some sort if at all possible as for some children (ie mine) once they get the idea that school is optional it becomes the default mode to avoid school whenever something unpleasant happens or is looming

I hear you - and we were in exactly this position at the end of 2019/start of 2020 and then Covid hit and I was forced to home educate for the rest of the year. DC has recently said that although the whole epidemic thing was obviously bad, it was brilliant for his education because he was so unhappy at school by then. We spent the Covid terms doing latin and more advanced maths and science than the standard state curriculum covers and diving into random topics that were interesting. Obviously without a handy pandemic you can't do exactly this.

However the state school system is obliged to give y6 pupils days off authorised as "educated elsewhere" (which isn't treated as an absence) for Transition Days that are part of a programme to prepare y6 pupils for their new school. You may be able to negotiate with the head teacher to allow you to define one day a week being educated at home with tutor support in a more advanced curriculum as Transition Days. Your justification being that next year's y7s at the new school who have had their primary education in private will have done a lot more languages, separate sciences and other topics than the state curriculum covers so you could persuade him/her to classify such enrichment as a Transition activity that they are allowed to authorise?

I wouldn't take him out entirely though. You don't want him learning that if he refuses to do something unpleasant he'll be let off altogether.

I wouldn’t rule out moving him to another school for the remainder of year 6. We did this with my DS and it was a great move for him. Lots of people thought we were crazy moving him at the time, but he honestly went from being miserable and taught in a chaotic environment to loving learning again. It then made the transition in year 7 even easier, as he said he’d already experienced moving schools so knew it would be fine.

Is there no year 6 class at the school he’ll be going to in September?

Maybe worth seeing if you could get him
into a year 6 class at a school that sends lots of kids to the school he’ll be going to, as then he could get a head start on making friends.

Another perplexed that the new school doesn’t have a class he can join now, but will allow endless transition days. How does that work in practice with the current established classes at the school if you have someone doing 4 days a week transition for 6 months for example?

I had a child who struggled with years 5 and 6 and 2 friends with children who also struggled, so the following is based on what worked and didn't work for them:

If his current school have already demonstrated they cannot offer the support needed I would not leave him there. The reason for this is you don't want to him to develop unhelpful ways of dealing with the situation, for example joining in with the disruptive kids or school avoidance. It can be difficult to break those patterns once developed.

Home schooling could be a good option. Covid hit at the 'right' time for my DD and the time at home and part time school in a reduced class suited her well. There were no problems with her transition to secondary and she's year 10 and absolutely thriving now.

Moving to a different school for 2 terms could also be an excellent option. It will give him an opportunity to practice transitions and, although you are 100% certain the problem is just his school, if there are any social or emotional issues these will become apparent fairly quickly and you will be able to work on them before the move to secondary. My friend's DC initially thrived at her secondary school after a very difficult year 6, but bu the end of the first term many of the problems started to creep back in. In her case it turned out it was both the school environment and ASD. It took another school move and a period of homeschooling to get her settled.

Yes, his new school does have a Year 6.

No, he can't join earlier and there are specific reasons for this which I'm not going to go into.

Yes, he is allowed to have as many transition days as he needs, this has been offered by the school.

I'm not going to answer anymore on the above so people can stop being perplexed and digging for information.

I think this is a really sensible approach.

I'm going to talk to both schools after Christmas and see if we can put this into place.

if you don’t want to send him to the year 6 in the new school and you don’t want him to move to a different school then I suppose home school would be your only option.

will you be able to fit home schooling around work?

I think people are only asking in case there's a way round him joining earlier, and can see that its unusual - I know you don't want to explain why but if its financial there might be a way around that. I don't think it would go down well in our class (with the parents) to have an extra child one day a week. I also don't see how it would work with the academic work. But if its an option for you and you can home school on the other days it might be worth a try.

In your shoes I would pull him out and home school but do it with a real and serious plan. Employ tuition if you can afford it. Get him really to advance in maths and other areas of interest etc because you have time to do a lot. It will stand him in good stead. Also the state sector teaches to a lower level in maths than the independent sector, so it’s advantageous to get him caught up.

My son was unhappy in his primary school he started to refuse to go, I found out he was being bullied by a group of kids, the teachers didn't sort it out and we ended up moving him in the feb, he had the best 5months at his new school and went onto secondary with a lovely group of friends. I had a few people say I was stupid and he should of stuck it out for the last few months before he finished but 5 months of being miserable and bullied is a bloody long time. Luckily he got into a school the little shits wasn't going too so worked out well in the end