Anyone's dc seen peter congdon or joan freeman?

[mrsshears]

My dd will be having an assessment and we are looking at it being either of these two.
Does anyone have any experiences with either?and if so what can we expect on the day.
TIA

*I do not wish this to be turned into a debate about assessments,this is what we have decided to do and have thought long and hard about what is right for our dd.

sorry ........."(you cannot tell how clever children are at that age very well!)"

A high achieving school is not necessarily the answer, in my experience they can be very inflexible and not willing to accommodate exceptional children.

evilclown you took the words right out of my mouth! this is the position we are currently in at an outstanding state school.

When is her assessment , mrsshears ?

Its in october half term iamnotinterested

Thanks Iggly2.

In my experience, (which is a lot more than I would have wished for) High achieving schools in the state sector often have lots ofbright, but not necessarily gifted children and there is a huge difference between bright children and gifted children. Note one is not better than the other, just vastly different.

Gifted kids are totally different in all they do and they learn in a different way. The schools tend to lump all the children together and you hear a lot of, "We have lots of bright children here".

Yes you do, but that does not mean you can meet the needs of a child who thinks outside the box and push the square peg into the round hole.

High achieving schools, to me, teach a narrow curriculum and concentrate on getting all children to an acceptable level and not beyond. That is why they didn't work for me and ds.

However, there are lots of high achieving schools such as Westminster and Winchester that I would not like to put in that category. If a school can be flexible and confident enough to deviate from what they always do, then that would be the school for me!

Often non selective schools are far more prepared to treat a child as an individual as their selling points and emphasis tends to be on nuturing the whole child, not a narrow band of academic ability.

Joan Freeman has got a lot of work off the back of Child Genius but don't waste your money. Her tests do not cover any weakness or potential SEN. We got a second IQ done that came out with the same score but showed us that one side of DS brain was functioning at 160 and the other at 115, which was causing problems. Other son's results were off the scale and she thought he'd be just fine in an inner city state school. She didn't believe upbringing helped and it was pure IQ that made a child successful. She lives in a multimillion pound town house and her whole family went to private school!

"She didn't believe upbringing helped and it was pure IQ that made a child successful"

Biggest load of rubbish I have heard in my life.

good luck mrs shears. hope you get some answers this week. when do you get the results/report?

Thanks susan
we should be told the results on the day but get the report sent out at a later date.

I'm really nervous about tomorrow
dd is being a real monkey at the moment and i'm worried she wont play ball,
Dh says we will just have to see what happens(but he suspects the same).
I'm really hoping our experience will be like evilclown's,he must be used to seeing children like dd manipulative,stubbon little buggers so i'm hoping he will get around her behaviour.

I hope you get a thorough assessment and results that help you know where to "go next."

Thanks susan,i will post tomorrow night and let you know how it went.

Hoping it went well mrsshears. Waiting for results

Hi ladies!
evilclown i'm really so so greatful for your recommendation,i just cant thank you enough.

Well,we got to solihull at about 8.45 and parked on the drive as we were a bit early but dr congdon came out and said it was fine to start straight away then he ushered us into his front room and took dd,who looked a little startled, straight off.
During the 1.5hrs the assesment took i nipped out to the tolilet a couple of time and could hear some of what was going on,much to my surprise dd was really vocal and sounded like she was really enjoying herself!
When the assesment was finished dd was put into a seperate room with her older sister and we sat in dr congdon's lounge with him and discussed the results over a cup of tea,he showed us a piece of paper with IQ results on and then he said such and such a % of people get between these numbers and so on leading right up to the highly superior intelligence bracket,he then asked us where we thought dd would be,dh said in the above average bracket and i said in the one above that,but it turns out we were both wrong and dd is in the top bracket and he estimates her IQ to be 145.
Dh was not expecting this and is a little shocked tbh,but as dd is his first child(dd1 is his step daughter) and there are no other children in the family dh has never really known any different.
To cut a long story short dr congdon thinks dd is underacheiving at school due to boredom and says he will recommend in his report that she is put up a year,which will go down like a lead ballon with dd's headmaster,but i'm not too worried about that,dd is my main concern.
I'm going to organise a meeting with dd's teacher when she goes back to school.
I just feel like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders! after everything that has gone on with dd recently its such a relief to know the cause.

Ok so that puts her at the 99.9 percentile, about one in 750 or so.

You were right about her and can now start to advocate. I very much doubt that a year up will be enough though. You may want to start looking around for another school.

I really cant see dd's headmaster agreeing to putting her up a year anyway,i think you are right about looking for another school too.
I'm not expecting dd's current school to be helpful at all,however i will give them a chance and see what happens in the short term.

Hi mrsshears.

I've been reading your thread. Ds was put up a year in primary school, it caused no end of problems. Emotionally, he was fine and enjoyed the work. He made friends and was behaving better. The problem was when he moved school. The next one didn't want him to be a year ahead so he ended up repeating year 5. The repeated year was incredibly stressful for him, he was very unhappy at his new school and his behaviour declined because he was repeating work that he'd already done. The school didn't really care. I had to move him again, the next school was a state primary and was closer to home, they couldn't differenciate either. He ended up being moved again at the start of year 6 to a private school which was able to give him work that was to his ability (pre GCSE). I'd think very carefully about allowing your child to skip a year. It's the easy option for the school as they don't have to differenciate the work.

Best of luck.

santac and belle thank you very much for sharing your experiences,i love the fact that there are people on here to talk to who are in similair circumstances it really is invaluable.

Mrs shears,
I've also been following your thread with interest (as have been considering getting ds tested). And am quite surprised you are being advised to move your dd up a year. As belle's experience shows it's not uncommon for senior schools to refuse to take a child before the right age. Also, as a mum & psycholgy graduate, I've done some research, (I'm not an expert, but believe I have a basic understanding,) and what I've read is that most gifted children don't really seem to benefit from moving up 1 year, as they are usually working further ahead than that & even if that is their current level they will continue to learn faster & also once they are accelerated, schools often think they've done their bit for the child. Of course, you're the ones who know whether that might work for your child, and obviously Dr Congdon is the expert, but personally, I think I'd be reluctant to do this with my child, and would rather go down the route santac mentioned.

I'm sure he knows a lot about high IQs in young children, but how helpful can someone really be when they see someone for a couple of hours out of their school and home environment???? What research has he done, personally, on the effects of particular strategies used on/for gifted children? He's clearly seen many children over the years: how well has he kept track of the effects of his advice? What, in his opinion, would be a "success story" when it comes to the education of a child whom he has identified as particularly gifted?

wow.

I doubt they will put her up a year, but they should be extending her work more. hope you get some positive action from school.

If you go for the up a year approach (I am dubious of this if they are young for their class for lots of reasons-eg sports , size, socialising esp later) and if you are unhappy with the school maybe a school change would be better. Could you keep the acceleration quiet-maybe possible in a private school as they adhere less strictly to the age rules! I do not think the age acceleration though is always best as at primary they will probably be above the next class up. The difficulty with private Vs state though can be that at private school due to smaller classes/year groups they are less likely to encounter the very intelligent outliers, in state more likely to get the larger classes and outliers but have less opportunity to offer 1-2-1.
with the results there maybe more opportunities for scholarships/bursaries in the private sector.

Thanks for your replies everyone.
If anyone has any tips for how i should approach the school i would be really greatful,i really want to get it right.