G&T and moving up school years

[Miggins]

Hi, my son is in year 2 and is, we've been told, very good at maths and is on the gifted and talented register for this. We have now been told that the school cannot really cater for his maths needs in the year 2 class and they are suggesting that he now goes to year 6 for all his maths lessons. We are concerned about the social aspect of this and feel that it may be difficult for our son to adjust to. I was just wondering if anyone else has experience of similar? We're not sure if this is the right approach for the school to take. Has anyone else a child with similar needs and, if so, how did the school accommodate them? Thanks.

The school should accommodate his needs. Ask them what they intend on doing with him when he's in year 4,5 and 6? Are they going to give him secondary school maths? They should be 'stretching him sideways,' ie, if his class is working in tens and units then he should ge working in hundreds, tens and units.

What Belle said. My son is similar, now in Year 4 and school were very good at sideways stretching in Y 2 and 3 (e.g. multipying decimals rather than single numbers, lots of abstract problem solving). They have now started him in KS3 maths as they admitted they have nowhere else to go. However, they have been able to do this within his class group, taking him out 1:1 a couple of times a week.

He would no way have been able to cope socially in a Y6 class. I think this is a bit of a cop out on the schools part. They need to think more creatively.

Hi Miggins,

I'd get more info from the school about how they intend to manage it. My DD's experience is the opposite - she was advanced a year but the school won't do any 'sideways' stretching as they feel putting her forward a year was enough - it wasn't and, tbh, I'd welcome the opportunity for her to move her work in any direction! Although, it's been great for her socially.

If they're suggesting carefully managed group work just for maths, then maybe it could work, as he would still be returning to his peer group? Maybe he would benefit from working with others more on his mathematical wavelength? What are the benefits of that weighed up against always having to work on his own in Yr2? How does HE feel about it? (My DD would bite their hands off if her school offered it, instead she's frustrated and upset at 'never learning anything new.') There's a lot to consider, but you know your son best, so maybe your gut instinct is spot on!

I'd advise not burning your bridges until you've thoroughly investigated what they're proposing (I'd get it all in writing from the school!).

I'm home educating my mathematically gifted Y5 son. He is working at level 8 now in Maths. Have you thought about home ed or flexi schooling?

I've made a few posts in the past about my DS who scored an L5A in maths when he was in Y2. He is in Y4 now. The school finally put together an IEP for him, have a secondary school teacher involved and he gets a 1-2-1 maths lesson once a week. For the rest of the week the class teacher struggles to give him material appropriate to his ability.

Stretching is a word that riles me. Teachers often expect a pat on the back for "stretching" a DS. They've had no formal training in the teaching of gifted children and, TBH, the average teacher doesn't know much even about teaching intelligent children who are not gifted - like my DS - but who are simply in the top 1% of ability.

That's going to get up some teachers' noses, but we've been there and done that before in other threads. They are entitled to their opinions. Some work very hard and go to a lot of trouble to "stretch" the "more able" but they have neither the training, the resources, the time nor the support to help these children achieve their full potential. The state system is stuck in a 1950s time warp when it comes to educating these brightest pupils.

"if his class is working in tens and units then he should ge working in hundreds, tens and units."
That's what they tend to do. It's the most unimaginative cop-out possible. What if that hundreds, tens and units is still far below the child's ability? They'd move him up to thousands and tens of thousands! In Y2 my DS was able to take million, billions and trillions, reduce them to powers of ten to make for speedier writing and find the square and cube roots to those numbers. But because he faithfully handed in the sheet of 14,000 + 16,000 = 30,000 type sums, he'd get a few more of those to practice on before they moved him to adding 100,000 + 200,000. They did not even know what he was capable of quite simply because they never asked him. Ridiculous. In Y2 we had to go in, see the head and complain before they agreed to test his ability. They put him through a KS2 paper and were dumbstruck when he scored what he did. How can an OFSTED outstanding school have a child for three whole years and not know what he's capable of?

These children need to be learning at a speed that's right for them and determined by them ....and that speed is quite a hectic one. Studies have proven that the best results are achieved when these children work with other children of similar ability. At least your school seems to recognise that. You're rightly identified that Y6 may be academically well suited but the wrong social group. There is another problem with this accelerated curriculum.

The good schools, the very good schools think they're doing the DCs a favour by teaching them more material from the curriculum. Why? Because they haven't the vaguest idea of what maths they can teach from outside the curriculum and teaching from the curriculum is easy - simply get a teacher from a higher class to provide the material. These DCs need to keep learning, but pushing them up the curriculum creates problems for you and the child in later years.

Sorry to say this, but if your DS is as you say he is, there's almost nothing the school can do to cater for him appropriate to his ability. But there's a lot they can do to give the impression that they are.

idratherbemuckingout has what's probably but sadly the only solution.

Is he happy? Apart from the usual ups and downs.

Do you work well with school on what they can do? Does he like other subjects?

Isn't there an 8-year old who's completed A level Maths last year? He schooled part-time and was tutored outside for the rest. Children who complete A level Maths before senior school have never been that rare. Mathematicians say that A* in A Level Maths is perfectly do-able for 18-year old 'thick' kids, if they've been taught well. Their words, not mine, I hasten to add.

I may be wrong, but if he goes to University early, you may have to go along for the child protection aspects.

It's difficult to choose, where would you like him to be at 11? He'll almost certainly have his A level(s) by then.

What do we consider it sufficient if a child is "happy"?

That's not what we send children to school for!

They are meant to be learning.

Not just learning. They should be learning at the speed that's best suited to them (not the school!) and schools should be helping them achieve their full potential.

Happy is something we should expect in addition to the above, not instead of it!

DadAtLarge - I get your point and agree with a lot of what you say about stretching children outside the curriculum, but take exception to your use of the words "potential" and "learning," which I think can be interpreted in so many ways as to be pretty meaningless... What is a child's full potential and how can this be reached? Is this pushing them to get as good as they possibly can at the things they are naturally good at; encouraging them to focus on selected academic subjects, even if this is to the detriment of other areas of their development; encouraging them to work harder at the things they find difficult and would rather avoid, rather than pushing or encouraging them always to do better at what they already do well at; not pushing them at all, but supporting them in whatever their interests happen to be, however unconventional, and letting things that don't interest them or which they find hard, fall by the wayside; encouraging them to become as good as they can at everything they are ever likely to be confronted with in life, even if this actually means they don't spend as much time specialising in the subjects that most interest them when they are very young, because they are so busy working on other areas of their development; bringing them up to think there is more to life than personal academic achievement and self-fulfilment? It seems to me that you can have thousands of different views on what a child's "potential" is, hence happiness being many peoples' focus. As for "learning" - that doesn't mean much to me, either. Do you just mean academic learning, when you refer to what children should be doing at school????

I agree that potential could be interpreted in many ways. Whatever the interpretation, brighter children spend far too much of time in school not involved in any planned learning. They are being pushed neither towards being the best in what they are naturally good at nor towards what they need to work harder on.

In this country we have 30 kids in the class, often more. We put them together in the most demented way based on age rather than ability. We put them in the charge of a teacher untrained in catering for the most intelligent. We then give her every incentive to concentrate on bringing the laggards up to scratch at the expense of everyone else.

Any debate on the meaning of potential is purely academic. The most capable children are on a slippery slope towards the bottom end of mediocrity.

Intelligent children in state schools spend far more time than others engaged in activities that are best described by that term used on the Indian sub-continent: time-pass.

It does keep them happy though.

I agree that your first paragraph does describe the situation for some children. I'm surprised that you, personally, think that bright children engaged in "time-pass" activities are kept happy by them, though.

Was your ds kept happy by his time-pass activities, or frustrated by them? And does he hope to do maths, or a maths-related subject, at university, or does he just view the maths that he does as a fun activity? Would you mind if he ultimately chose to pursue a completely different path in life? Or would that be failing to fulfil his obvious "potential" and treating all the work he put in while of school age as having been a bit of an interesting and enjoyable hobby and nothing more? If he does end up viewing it that way, will it therefore have been a waste of his time to have expended so much energy on it, and for his teachers and parents to have expended so much energy on encouraging it? Surely devoting so much time and attention to that one area of ability indicates that you have a pretty clear idea in your own mind of what you view potential to be?

Or are you just trying to make the best of the existing school curriculum? (ie if they have to do maths, then they ought to do maths that is interesting and challenging).

Why can't time-pass activity be pleasurable? I see what you mean though. In the past we've had a situation where DS's time-pass was making him miserable and depressed and we had to speak with the head about it. Smart teachers, however, hone in on something the child enjoys doing be it playing on the computer or correcting his classmates' work!

I don't care what my DS does in university. His favourite subject may change at some point from maths to IT or science or needlework, I don't care. In fact, he may not even choose university. However, as long as he finds the subject fun and is keen to learn, it's in his best interest, as with other DCs like him, to continue to learn the subject at his own pace, not a pace set by some other child in the class or one set by the limitations of the teacher or the environment or the curriculum.

I'll have to disagree on the waste of time. I do not believe that any learning is a waste of time. Provided he's exceeding expectations in every other subject/area - and most children like him do - there's no harm in him directing the rest of his attention on something that interests him.

But it's not just the "rest of his attention". Pupils like him don't get "challenged" as much as others even in the daily maths class. And these are the children who most need the challenge and are most eager for it. They arrive at school travelling at 150 mph. They are slowed down to motorway speeds and then eventually to a sedate 5 mph in the pedestrian zone of the average state school. That's while others are given a bit of a "turbo boost" to 20 mph to help them catch up.

DS may choose a career that makes no use of maths at all and I, as a parent, would not feel I wasted time encouraging his learning of maths. Perhaps the school would be disappointed that their money wasn't well spent.

Maybe that's where schools differ from parents like me. We are about encouraging learning, encouraging a love of learning, maintaining the natural interest and curiousity individual children have in subjects they're keen on while schools are more about ticking boxes and making the right sounds. In mitigation, they would argue that with the best will in the world they don't have the resources. I can empathise with that.

Hi, DadAtLarge. I sympathise with your point of view. My ds2 is very much like this - eager to learn, fascinated by all and everything, phenomenal concentration, and often seems a little bit disappointed by the lack of challenge provided for him at school and the lack of stimulating company - he is socially and emotionally generally a lot happier around children his older brother's age, but physically this can sometimes be alarming for him, as he is rather small for his age! There doesn't seem to be another child in his class quite at his level socially, emotionally or intellectually, otherwise I don't think it would be such an issue. It was easier with ds1, because he was advanced academically, but struggled socially, emotionally and physically, so the lack of challenge in one area was more than made up for by the huge challenges he faced in other areas. I do hope the spark in ds2 never does go out - it's such fun to have a child around the house who finds interest in pretty much anything on offer and always wants to take things further and find out more. He really needs a like minded friend of his age, though, to share his thoughts and games with.

rabbitstew, sorry to say this, but there is no place like the average state school to kill your DS2's spark It's in their interest to kill it as quickly as they can. Teachers don't set out in their career to do this, but as part of the system they'll end up contributing to it all the same. We can't have sparks in the classroom, that's a Health and Safety risk and could lead to explosions of learning, huge fires of knowledge burning and an out of control pursuit of information and skills breaking out of the tightly controlled darkened prison cells.

Also, "it wouldn't be fair on the other children".

"He really needs a like minded friend of his age, though, to share his thoughts and games with."
Have you considered HE for your DS2 or at least helping him make some friends among local home educated children?

The average State school didn't kill my spark... but then I was in a group of children with one extremely precocious boy who made an excellent sparring partner (we couldn't stand each other, but it did make the work more interesting and competitive!...). And I went to a grammar school for secondary level (albeit it wasn't until I went to Oxford that I met people I finally felt I could be honest about my real thoughts and interests with; I always saw this more as a personality thing than an intelligence thing, though, as there were some very bright people at the schools I went to, probably quite a few brighter than I was, just not many who were both bright and academic). I generally look back with fondness on my days at primary school, when I had so much freedom to develop in the ways I wanted without pressure and the time outside of school to take my own ideas and interests further (my school didn't believe in homework...). Most of what I usefully learnt within school related to learning how to deal with my peers, how to negotiate, stick up for myself, develop my humour, work with other children with different levels of ability - ie cope with the world outside my own family and realise how very different my family was to those of most other people I met. I didn't really view primary school as a place where intellectual skills were particularly honed - that happened at home, in my own time, under my own steam. I also have relatives whose parents did not accept a slower pace for their children and have seen the horrendous social harm that can be done by accelerating a child through school. As a result, I'm now a bit confused about ds2 and whether I'm being a bit precious, but at the moment, the lack of another child to talk to and play with on his level in the classroom is depressing me slightly, because he socialises so readily with children a couple of years older (and generally shares the interests of children a few years older).

whether I'm being a bit precious
Not at all. Whatever the all-seeing, all-knowing state system that directs, monitors, tests and records "learning outcomes" for all institutionalised children says ....ultimately it will never know your child as well as you do.

In law it is your responsibility to educate your child, not the state's or the school's. You may delegate that responsibility to the school, but you are no more than a vigilant parent for recognising where the system is not providing what your child needs. You are the ultimate arbiter of what that need is. Trust yourself a bit more.

DadAtLarge and rabbitstew

You guys make me laugh - out of relief i think! Its nice to know i am not the only nutter parent wondering how i ended up with a gifted kid and what to do about it. Its odd to be dressed down by a 6 year old and to come to conclusion that yes, indeed, this child already knows more than you do! Scary to think about what to do with the next ten years. Oh dear...soon i will be an 'uneducated' embarrassment to the child.

Though you both might enough watching Sir Ken Robinson on TED Talks
Enjoy!

www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_changing_education_paradigms.html

rabbitstew, sorry to say this, but there is no place like the average state school to kill your DS2's spark It's in their interest to kill it as quickly as they can. Teachers don't set out in their career to do this, but as part of the system they'll end up contributing to it all the same. We can't have sparks in the classroom, that's a Health and Safety risk and could lead to explosions of learning, huge fires of knowledge burning and an out of control pursuit of information and skills breaking out of the tightly controlled darkened prison cells.

God, you post some crap, DatatLarge. Doesn't your wife teach in a state school? I am going to have to hide this topic.

My wife taught in a state school, but the connection goes further. My mother, my brother-in-law... and others in the family are in teaching. In our friend circle we have heads, deputy heads and retired heads (which is a pain at barbeques - they talk shop all the time). I've been closely involved in education, have done considerable work on the G&T programme, have run a business in the edu sector, been a governor, been a PTA chair. I don't claim to be an expert, but I like to think I know at least a little bit about state education.

indeed, this child already knows more than you do! Scary to think about what to do with the next ten years. Oh dear...soon i will be an 'uneducated' embarrassment to the child.
If your DC is as smart as you say he'll teach himself, don't worry. In this case I would see the job of the parent not so much to deliver the education as to deliver the means to that education (and encourage self-learning).

Thanks for the Ken Robinson link. He's a nice enough chap and makes some good points - I liked both this speech of his and the one he made at TED on creativity (but he didn't come across well in a recent radio phone-in with Gove).