Top 2%, very superior, average school....now what?

[neverknowinglyunderdressed]

Looking for advice...I have DTS aged 7, P3 (Scottish system) who were disruptive, fidgety daydreamers at school. I suspected they were highly intelligent so when called in to meet the Head and the class teacher to discuss 'behaviour issues' I tried to steer the discussion towards enrichment rather than discipline, successfully, I think. School then informed me that they had been placed on 'Accelerated learners program''. Kids have now settled down in class which could be to do with AL or could be coincidental.

I wanted to know for sure so I bit the bullet and coughed up the money to have one tested by an Ed Psych, turns out I was right (about one of them at least).
Felt better for about for a millisecond, now feel dazed.

Does anyone know anything about the AL program, how do I check up on it? Do I share the Ed Psychs report with the school? Do I need to look into a different school, ie. independent or will AL suffice for now?

Current school is small (80 kids) shared Head, composit classes and in the last inspection it was noted that it struggles to stretch more able pupils. New teacher (graded Excellent) has now been put in charge of AL so think they are trying to address it.

Concerned that at this school they may just coast along, not working to their optimal level, although I've no real basis for this belief. Equally, I don't necessarily buy into the fact that all private schools are better and successfully get the best out of bright kids.

DadatLarge, I ask the question as I am not entirely convinced that private schools - the ones near us anyway - offer what you describe or anywhere near. Also the very long day with homework on top seems rather too much for young children in my opinion.

HE is certainly very attractive to me, especially as we have the bilingual dimension and this often suffers once school starts. Would you mind sharing your experience with me?

It would be really helpful as I have been thinking about this a lot recently. Main issues coming to mind is the ability to work and I guess for me the inevitable having to use tutors as I can't imagine being able to cover all subjects successfully!

PS I have ordered the book you have recommended, thanks for that.

In theory HE would be great academically in some subjects if the parent had enough knowledge in the field, but in my opinion I would not want to HE from the social side of things.
Of all the subjects maths is the one people would say is most reliant on the expertise of the parent. I'm not going to bother to learn more maths to teach DS. Suffice that I put in the early effort to build and support his interest and enthusiasm. I believe that once those foundations are set one needs to focus on teaching them to teach themselves. The advantage with most intelligent children is that they can take control and do it themselves with a bit of guidance.

The only thing that prevented us going HE earlier on was the concern (squidgy shares) about the social side of things. After a bit of research, speaking with other HE parents, meeting up with their kids etc., I realised that I was mistaken. Badly mistaken. HE kids are better equiped socially. Life isn't like schools where you are forced to mix with people the same age as you. HE kids mix with older and younger children and are much better off for it. Further, they get a lot more opportunities to socialise than those locked in schools. When they do mix it's not in a playground with a million others all letting off steam after having spent the morning cooped up in class - the ideal environment for bullying, cliques and other less than socially acceptable behaviour.

emy72, there is a good HE section here on MN, but I haven't participated much in it - for a long time I just didn't bother coming to MN because many who posted in G&T were anti-G&T, here to mock and ridicule. If you want HE info I don't have that much of experience with it but there are forums specifically for HE, books on the subject, groups local to you, meet-ups, newsletters, camps, national bodies like Education Otherwise, online and offline resources .... and, it will please you to know, more and more people are choosing HE in the UK. HE is the new private schooling. (BTW, more and more private schools are considering converting to academies so you could still end up in the state system if you go private now.)

Some HE parents use tutors but it's really not necessary at all even for secondary age children.

If you like the John Gatto book you'll like with a different perspective (how creativity/divergent thinking is stifled in the system), but the same core message: schooling is bad for our children, it is a "one size fits all solution" that fits nobody.

thanks DadatLarge, very useful info!

HE kids are better equiped socially.

It's funny DAL posted that. I know, and have known, a great many people who are/were home-edded. In different countries and in different eras. The adults all say they suffered socially for it. I can see the children now being HEd at a disadvantage for it in the same ways. There are a great many plus sides to HE. I am fascinated speaking to HE'd children and people, they are "different" in so many ways (mostly nice ways). But socially... very striking disadvantages.

A recent Washington Times article covered two studies. From the first study in 2003:
" In all areas of life, from gaining employment, to being satisfied with their home-schooling, to participating in community activities, to voting, home-schoolers were more active and involved than their public (government) school counterparts."

Of the second study the article says, "The study compared home-schoolers who are now adults with their peers. The results are astounding...."

Some more research.

All of this info is from organisations that have a vested interest in talking up HE, but from my personal (limited) experience in our area HE children seem to have higher engagement with and interest in community, voluntary groups/charities and the political process.

alardi, are the children you see part of any local HE groups? Do they attend HE events and experiences? Parents I've spoken with seem to think the problem is not too little social interaction with other children, but too much! Would you care to elaborate on what you see as the social disadvantages for those HE children you know?

Thanks squidgy - it was not an easy decision to come to and is not without some heart break at times for us all - when ds yet again does not get invited somewhere. However, I remain convinced that the best thing we can give him is self confidence and an ability to get on with other people. Everything else he will acquire as he goes along (if nothing goes wrong).

Today I found out about a lady who has just started to HE her 2; I understand the boy had social problems, although I don't think they were why his mum wants to HE now. Can't think of anyone else I've known personally who was HEd for social problems. All the rest it was very much a parents' life/educationa style choice that inspired it.

Some HEd with wider support groups, some not.

I'm a bit loathe to start listing the social aspects I see going wrong, would take a very long time and would just be reasons to get nitpicked at... plus I need to run off on school run myself. :).

Here's just one drawback: Narrow world views (the parents'). Which has a much bigger influence on the children than they would if the children weren't HEd. There are even books you can buy which claim this is a great thing, that adults' narrow world views should be the only and main influence. But as a result, the children end up sheltered at best, and in some cases quite intolerant of other value systems.

Sorry if this is messily written, gotta run.

GooseyLoosey, the reason why mine were in school was exactly the same as yours: "to learn valuable social skills".

I've since decided that the best way of them learning those valuable social skills was to get them out of school. After much research I'm convinced that the indispensibility of organised schools to teach our children social skills is one of our society's biggest cons. There's mountains of evidence to show that children - particularly children like yours and mine - develop better social skills if they are outside the school environment. HE is not all about sitting at home and feeding intellectual needs. ;)

If you get a chance download the Homeschooling 2007 pdf from the very respected Frasier Institute and scroll down to page 16.

My IQ is significantly higher than 138 and at school I frequently finished work a long time before the rest of the class. Then had to sit there with nothing to do. I was polite and well behaved enough to sit there quietly as I realised that the other kids were still concentrating. So sorry I'd agree that being bright does not excuse poor behaviour.

I don't think you need to look at independent schools. It depends how happy you are with their current school. I don't have a clue about AL, never had it back in my day . But you'd have thought at such a small school they would be able to set some seperate/extra work as required (I'm guessing that AL should cover this).

I come from a family where everyone on my father's side was homeschooled. This was the cultural norm for that social class in that country at that time.

I know it is only anectodal, but you would not have known my father and all his brothers, sisters, my grandma, my grandad and so many other relatives of mine were homeschooled. Some had excellent social skills, in fact my grandma was a socialite famous for her parties and directed a theatre as well as other very sociable pursuits; my grandfather was an accountant and successful sportsman and lots of others had different careers involving being sociable.

I think we have been brainwashed as a society to believe that school is the only way children can socialise - but to be fair because most children are schooled, it is harder to structure their lives in alternative ways that reconcile with work and other aspects, so many people opt out because of the hassle factor too (me being one of them).

I think my problem DadAtLarge would be that I fear niether DH or I would be able to teach him the required social skills as we probably lack them ourselves so he is better in an environment where he is forced to acquire them. There are many times when I doubt the wisdom of my choice though - very many!

I had a pretty rough time at school and was bullied etc. I know some will say that this is character building and I suppose it is. On the other hand the abuse some people suffer at school can damage them for life.

Parents always trot out the 'learn how to get on with people' line, the thing is, if your child is in the top 20%, the type of kids they will learn how to placate or avoid in order to get through the day, they may never meet again. At University and as an adult you can choose your friends - I have never encountered that hideous type of group bullying in the workplace that I did at school. Office politics is by comparison a walk in the park.

Consequently, if they are only learning how to socialise with those they will never see again and their self esteem may be irrevocably damaged as a result, it is worth it to be bored, working well below their level, and losing creativity in a mainstream school?

What about selective schooling, though?

I fear niether DH or I would be able to teach him the required social skills
What social skills do you believe teachers teach our children that you can't? I'm genuinely interested as I haven't fathomed this out.

The reality to me is that children working in small or large groups in the class may acquire some collaborative skills in that environment, but the bulk of their "social skills" are honed when they are just hanging out with other kids where neither activities nor social development are adult led.

If it was culturally normal to be home-schooled, Emy, then wouldn't everyone be rather similar? So of course they wouldn't stand out (methinks).

I agree that the ability to prevent bullying is a huge plus in favour of Home-ed.

True Alardi, the point I was making was that home educating per se doesn't make children unable to fit in normal society.

It was the cultural norm for that very small social class, so most people were still schooled. Still they mixed in circles where there were obviously a lot of children hanging around, so I guess they didn't feel excluded from anything as such. Also, it was more the cultural norm for children to take part in adult type activities, which I find nowadays especially in the UK it is very very rare. In our modern society we do like to put everyone in a box, and in a way, schooling children is putting them in a box that sometimes doesn't fit everyone!

alardi, isn't the opposite true? Home based education operates to as many education philosophies as there are parents. State schooling puts all children into a system with the same goals, the same expected "outcomes", the same thinking, the same top-down management, the same curriculum.... Homogenous is what works here.

Sir Ken Robinson calls it the production line and points out similarities with industry e.g. we pack kids together based on their date of manufacture rather than their personalities, abilities, interests, strengths, needs. Why? Because it's the most convenient for "the system" - the huge industry we call education.

Some HE parents are very religious and religion - whether Islam, Judaism, Christianity or Scientology - plays a big part. Others believe in autonomy and child-led learning. I could go on. It's in HE that there is the variety.

If it was culturally normal to be home-schooled
It's always been culturally normal to be home-schooled. It's only in the last 100 years or so - the blink of an eye in human evolutionary terms - that we've come to trust our kids' education to the state because we no longer have the time to do it ourselves. Maybe it's worth stepping back and taking a fresh look as to whether that's a good thing.

Met with the school today. Feel like they are making the right noises, using words like 'personalisation', and depth' but unsure even after talking to them what they are going to do for my child. The Scottish Gov produces a document for school on 'addressing the needs of highly able pupils' my child meets the criteria therein of IQ (on weschler ) of into the 130's, most of the document is spent on how to identify them rather than on what to do with them. The school strategy seems to consist of classroom based differentiation - conveniently for them, that means I have no idea what, how or if they are actually doing it.

Other suggestions were in the termly project he can do it to his deeper level (at home). For a child who is in the 99.6 percentile for verbal comprehension - this doesn't seem to be quite enough somehow?

Financially and emotionally not sure I could commit to HE.

Any suggestions? Do I continue with the school, and do bit of home ed after school, do I need special materials for this?

Do I demand one on one time for him with the leaning support teacher?

I don't think you can demand one-on-one time and you'd be unlikely to get it. I know kids who are a year behind in maths who don't get any one-on-one time as they need to be 2 years behind to be deemed worthy of getting one-on-one sessions.

Could you buy some Letts type books from Amazon and work through them together a bit after school if you think he needs stretching?

An IQ of 130 or even 140 is not that unusual, you know. One of my dc scored higher than that, above 99.9th centile (was being tested for something else, the Wechsler was just done as part of it) and is a perfectly pleasant, bright child who has coped perfectly well in normal state schools and is (hopefully) on course to get a full set of top grades in GCSEs. It's not freak territory.

If school is genuinely and consistently making him unhappy, then you just have a bad school and you need to move him to somewhere that has a more creative approach to learning. Doing a project at home is a lazy suggestion on the part of the school, but may well be the best they're going to offer. But tbh a mainstream school should be able to teach topics in a way that is sufficiently interesting and open-ended that children of all abilities can find something to get stuck into. Is the school you've picked a bit of a SATS factory? Ironically you may do better at a school that is (on paper) less academically successful, as they may be working a bit harder to interest all pupils. Topic work is often a good sign, as it can be adapted for all sorts of levels. Lots of SATS practice is a bad sign.

If you ask for 1 to 1 with the learning support teacher they will laugh at you, and rightly so. There are kids who need that support to access the mainstream curriculum. If your child is genuinely so unhappy that it's affecting his happiness and his mental health, then find another school. Otherwise find him stuff to do outside school, give him a book to take in to read when he's finished his classwork, and hope he gets a more interesting teacher next year.

You are writing as if your child's abilities put him completely outside the remit of what a normal teacher in a good school should be able to cope with, which really doesn't sound likely.

I was in a similar situation to you at school, viva, but I was disruptive in a very low key way ie fidgeting, talking to others, passing notes to liven up hours of being bored. Although some academic stimulation wouldn't have come a miss, neither would have a teacher having the sense to see that I was bored shitless and getting me involved helping other kids, taking the register to the office ANYTHING, ANYTHING other than sit there for ages with nothing to do.

It was a crappola school and I was very, very bright (with a less bright twin so it was played down to the point of me being treated as though I was being deliberately annoying by getting work 100% correct very quickly) and I do think I would have been much happier if some of my basic needs for meaningful occupation had been met more of the time.

Viva I was same as you, also found school incredibly easy/dull but very polite and quiet about it. Maybe more a trait of girls than boys? I'd say it didn't hold me back at all but I remember going up to Oxford and thinking wow, wow, wow if only school had been like this & I had been surrounded by such amazing, like-minded people. Now I'm totally torn between thinking state school is good enough for my kids, if it was for me, but also not wanting them to be bored at school like I was, so I totally understand where the OP is coming from. I think independent schools are much, much better about instilling confidence in bright children, whereas most extremely clever state school pupils I know were driven the other way by bullying/teasing and a feeling of 'not fitting in' at state school.