wwyd - school's ofsted just confirmed fears over g and t provision.....

[eyeofhorus]

school gone from good to satisfactory, one of the main tenets being provision for g and t only satisfactory. school apparently have to draw up action plan - is that going to take forever and not benefit my child or worth hanging on for? or should we start looking elsewhere? dc in reception.

KATTT, I wish I had some good news for you.

My DCs were in an outstanding school that is far better at providing for G&T children than many other state schools, but that was still nowhere near what my (teacher) wife and I decided was in our DCs' best interests.

Despite our children being happy there we decided to pull them out and home educate them. It means making a few sacrifices, but we can ensure they continue to enjoy learning by progressing at a speed that's right for them - speeding up or slowing down based on their needs rather than what an institution deems suitable (or has the resources to provide).

My sincere advice to parents like you would be to consider HE. The socialisation etc., is not the problem many think it is - quite the reverse in fact. HE children seem to be better adapted socially than school educated ones (numerous studies to this effect).

If you can't HE for any reason, you had the G&T program to fall back on in previous years and various demands you could make based on that. Since G&T seems to no longer exist the best you can hope to do is to

1. Demand a copy of the school policy which should cover what the school aims to do for the more intelligent pupils
2. Ask them to demonstrate how they are meeting what's set out in the policy (with respect to your DCs)
3. Keep the pressure on. Keep the pressure on. Start afresh every year with the new teacher and keep the pressure on.
4. Have this as your highest expectation of the school: to not bore your children too much.
5. Take responsibility for feeding your DCs interests and abilities via your own efforts at home. There are numerous online resources that HE and non-HE parents use.

Hope that helps.

Dad at Large - good advice, thanks. just got to wait for their copy of the policy to materialise......

KATT - no I haven't heard them yet, but suspected as much. The school has no idea she could understand and order numbers up to 1000, or read complicated things, before she started school - because they simply aren't assessed at this level. She is in a split YR/1 class where the reception group is so strong that they have been doing Year 1 maths from the start (but it's not enough for her - she was also telling the time to the quarter hour at 3, and properly at 4 etc) and she's just been told she can have an individual reading book to change whenever she's finished it, as well as a group reading book - the only Reception child who's allowed to do this yet. It's not enough to stretch her, but she loves the topic bits and practical subjects so I'm not worried. I don't hold out much hope for her current teacher to extend her at all this year. Hopefully things will improve in Year 1, but I'm not holding my breath.

Incidentally, it's the research and music we do at home that she really loves. She has been playing for 6 weeks and has caught up with a Year 2 group I started at work 16 months ago. Obviously she is bright (and has a music teacher mummy) but I feel for those children much brighter than she is, who by the sounds of it sit there bored for years at a time in certain schools and subjects :/

(Hello everyone - been logging in for ages but haven't really posted about DD1 yet because G&T seemed like a bit of a nasty place a while back, and also don't want to come across as bragging, just a relief to tell it how it is, which I can't exactly do in the playground!)

DadAtLarge

I love point 4.

Wafflenose

Try setting up an extension school - every other Sunday my friend and I give our kids the best education money can't buy. We take a topic, do trips, enthuse, get them to find out, learn facts, expect the very best from them (and learn poetry). It's kind of HE without the commitment.

(Special Needs and this place seem very civilized and helpful - the other boards I'm not so sure about.)