High IQ but not achieving at school

[whatanewyear]

My ds is in year 1 and not achieving much at school. He may be average for maths, certainly is below for writing especially hand writing although he loves reading.

He was referred to a multi disciplinary team on the NHS for assessment last year due to a misdiagnosed medical condition and found to have IQ in top 1%. No concerns were raised about disparity between IQ and performance in school at the time. Now his medical needs have been addressed and take less of our focus we can see the huge disparity between achievement and potential. Whilst we understand that a high IQ does not ensure academic achievement school appear happy that he is progressing and seem content to aim for average results for him.

We are unsure how to progress this as we feel that if school aim for average results he would not have achieved potential and school should not be happy with this. We dont know what we should be asking for. School have indicated that they only give IEPs to the couple of children who are at the bottom of the class which he is not. School have so far indicated that whilst their aim is for every child to achieve potential they have not been faced with a child with an IQ report at this young age and dont have a policy to deal with the situation.

IS there anything we could reasonably be requesting? Should they have some sort of measure that follows him through primary school with a target to achieve faster progress each year than average and to reach above average by year 6 so each year teacher is aware rather than us having to discuss this each year. Would being on G & T help or is that irrelevant as he is not achieving anything at the required levels for G & T?

ask them what he needs to do to improve from where he is a t the moment. do you think that the medical issues mean that he has not had chance to learn stuff? the g and t lists are not compulsary anymore.

how is his reading? is his physical ability to get stuff down on paper masking his actual ability?

what is he achieving at maths? what does he need to learn to make progress? has he missed a vital stepping stone while he has been ill and that is stopping him learn. have you tried to find out what he knows at home? there could be a number of reasons why his attainment is not matching his potential at the moment.

whatanewyear will watch your thread with interest,we are in a similair situation in that our dd is in y1 and on the 99.9th percentile and her school acheivement is nowhere near that of home (although school recognise she is above average in reading and literacy)they are very reluctant to see her as gifted,despite us having an ed psych report as 'proof' and my concerns are the same as yours,that dd will not achieve her potential if she stays at her current school.
Sorry all of this is no help to you but at least you know your not on your own

It has been a similar story for my son whom we eventually discovered had dyslexia. Mild dyslexia in a gifted child means that they may actually be achieving at average levels and not have any obvious reading problems, so nothing will get picked up. In my experience, junior school equated g&t with achievement rather than potential and were quite negative and dismissive of my son's IQ results. You will probably find that they won't offer any extra support unless your child is at least 2 years behind average. Your child may well be 2 or more years below their potential based on IQ but as this will put them comfortably in the average band then nothing will be done. I found a lot of interesting information on line by searching "twice exceptional" and "underachieving gifted children". If you child is on the 99th percentile then in theory, you would imagine that they would be several years ahead at school.

On a positive note, my son has just started secondary school and it is absolutely brilliant - they were on the ball within days! Such a contrast.

Hope this helps a bit,

Nora X

My DTS's are similar, P4 (equiv to Y3). I did ask the school for an IEP for them as I think these type of children deserve provision as much as the bottom 5% do. Talk to the school again, I found the legislation (Scotland) that pertained to their rights to be challenged at school at the appropriate level and went in on the strength of that. However, I think primary school in general does not cater well to brighter than average children and the schools and teachers do not really seem to see it as part of their remit. What I mean is, they don't take exams as such so no real reason to push for better results unlike secondary schools. Try to do some more at home with him, he is still quite young and may yet start to accelerate away in some areas.

I would also agree with Nora, my sister was extremely bright but undiagnosed profoundly dyslexic and went through school as 'average'.

OP, it might just be that he hasn't clicked yet. My son was below average in Reception and Year One. He didn't really read until Year 2. The school still put him in the G&T group, as to them he was interesting. Personally I wouldn't have said he is G&T (though obviously he's perfect!) but he is clearly bright and is now top set for everything in Year 3. In fact he's zooming along. Sometimes they just take a while to get going educationally.

With my son they told me from the start not to worry, as gentle encouragement and keeping his enthusiasm for learning going was the way forward and they were right. If you don't feel the school know your son or can see that he's intelligent, that's when I'd worry. Lots can change in the early years.

Lovely post be Smee. "OP, it might just be that he hasn't clicked yet" very wise.

There is a boy in DS year who I think is amazingly bright; his questions and musings along with vocabulary are very advanced and insightful. He is blossoming (year 2) I would not say he is advanced in reading for his class ORT 9 (but summer born) but he has progressed very quickly now interested. For him interest is the key. I certainly think he is more intellignt than DS.

Writing from the perspective of an experienced EYs/KS1 teacher and school manager, I think it is very unlikely that you will be able to get any kind of special provision for your child.

I know that is not what you want to hear, sorry. However, I think that schools would view the results of an IQ assessment at 5 with a fair amount of scepticism. It is not something I have ever come across in practice or in training, having taught in a number of primary schools in different local authorities. My classes have included some gifted children working well above age-related expectations.

If I were told by a parent that a child had an extremely high IQ but was performing at an average level then I would continue to provide for them as part of the differentiated curriculum, but maybe keep a 'watching eye' on whether I could identify any particular areas where they might excel or could be stimulated. At present your son is working within expectations for his age, so it is those basic skills of reading, writing and mathematics that he needs to work on along with the other children in the class. It may be that his particular strengths have yet to show themselves. I totally support what Smee said about things taking time to 'click', particularly at this still early stage in Year 1.

The 'measure' which follows your son through school is his NC attainment level. Of course the school is going to want him to make average or preferably above average progress, but this is likely to be done in the context of existing classroom provision or, if he falls below average, then a group intervention.

In principle, yes, your son should receive personalised attention to ensure that he fulfills his maximum potential. But unfortuantely resources are limited and many headteachers are struggling in the current climate to maintain existing levels of provision.

Thanks for these responses. Totally agree that it may be it has not fully clicked yet, or may be due to dyslexia, lack of dominant hand, or lack of focus in previous years due to health or just not having an adequate desire to please and to do things he cant see the point of or an issue with the previous teacher etc. A combination of factors I am sure. I totally agree with posters stating a child with dyslexia and a high IQ may well be reaching average levels and hence school not concerned but actually several years behind where they should be and may be very frustrated.

My DS demonstrates his intelligence to anyone who meets him verbally. School stated that he has gaps in basic phonics etc, struggles to write as he finds it frustrating compared with the speed of his thoughts and ideas and I think he probably needs more stimulation than he received last year at school. At home he is always engaged and frantically busy but all projects are his own ideas. I think because we have had awful medical issues I am less concerned about the academic side of things as it puts it all into perspective and I have always felt very confident that he will do something fulfilling and be happy as an adult even if not via the regular school straight to university route as he is so interested in everything so am not really worried.

At school we have had discussions about the finer detail of what should happen and have had very conflicting views between last years teacher implementing an IEP but putting him on G &T to this years teacher being very happy with progress but removing from G&T. We want to take a backward step from any detailed discussions and just ask school for an overall target/measure to follow him through school so each teacher could have same expectation and we dont have to discus expectations again each school year. Not sure if this is a reasonable idea. We dont personally think he should be G&T for any achievement as there is nothing he is achieving at school that we would think fits this criteria, unless you can be on it just for IQ and potential?

We would like to give school our trust to find the reasons and motivators and help him achieve potential but just want to ensure that every year the teachers expectation will be for him to achieve potential which should be well above average rather than us being told he is doing very well if he gets to average. We dont want to be telling them how to do their jobs and requesting specifics such as 1 to 1 help or investigation into reason for discrepancy as we feel they should be the experts and if the target is agreed then they should be working towards this by whatever is appropriate and by investigating as they feel necessary but with some consistency from year to year.

Our policy at home is to provide a stimulating environment, we have thousands of books, he reads several a day such as Beast Quest and non fiction and we provide fun resources for great projects. As he has unlimited ideas and continual interests he is learning and happy all the time at home. Perhaps I am too relaxed at home but I dont want to put him off learning as he is a joy to be with when it is his idea whereas it could become a battle if we tried to get him to do additional work.

I just dont want school to tell us at every parents evening that he is doing very well when he has made less than government expected progress in a year or is achieving national average or below results. I would like them to acknowledge that it is an issue and confirm that they realize this and are not complacent and have some higher expectations for him by end of primary even if they eventually prove unachievable. Does that make sense? I appreciate that it is an unusual situation but we did not ask to be referred and for an IQ test to be done. School instigated the referral which ended up with this outcome and it was all on the NHS so it is certainly not like we got IQ tests done privately as pushy parents. At the time it was the very least of our problems, our only focus was his health and still remains our main focus but we are aware of his frustrations with learning too and want to ensure his happiness too.

whatanewyear if parents choose to get an IQ test done privately it does not automatically mean they are pushy parents.

Sounds like your DS had a lot to deal with medically last year hopefully he will pick up academically and healthwise.

I would keep an eye on the writing as that seems your main concern in case there are physical issues (eg is he otherwise well coordinated with good muscle strength). You also mention his reading is very good which may reduce the chance of him having dyslexia-though certainly does not discount dyslexia as dyslexics can certainly learn to read early but only encounter issues as they progress. I agree with branchingout that a school is unlikely to offer additional support until a child is demonstrating evidence of working at a level significantly greater or less than average.

Can you set your own personal targets for DS , maybe I will try to relax until year X (to allow for recuperation) then check attainments at this level in these areas. If this is not reached maybe delve deeper (though keep an eye on other things people (and yourself) have mentioned. Year X may coincide with 7 years old (where diagnosis of dyslexia for instance are more reliable).

Keep his interests going and encourage him lots with his projects.

mrsshears - I totally totally agree - I would do private IQ now for my others if I had any major concerns especially if it was affecting their happiness at school as we have found it so helpful in understanding strengths and relative weaknesses and I would recommend it but dont consider that pushy although would not personally have it done quite so young.

I guess I was just trying to look at it from schools viewpoint as generally schools and professionals recommend waiting until at least age 7 for testing and I think having IQ done at age 6 when he was not yet significantly behind could well appear pushy to professionals if done privately. Maybe I am wrong but I certainly got this impression from MN that many other parents think this too and are also of the opinion that people should relax and wait a bit.

Hi again,

I'm afraid that my experiences have left me disappointed, bitter and very cynical. You are so right to have confidence that your son will do well even if it's not via the traditional route - there are lots of brilliant and successful people out there who have not excelled at school - Bill Gates and Richard Branson being good examples! I have the same confidence in my son but it's been extremely disappointing that teachers have been unable to see beyond spelling mistakes. Junior school seems entirely geared towards getting the children through SATS tests which do not measure things like creativity, imagination, originality, vocabulary. Teachers don't seem to be trained in G&T, dyslexia, let alone a combination of the two together.

It's interesting that you mention "lack of dominant hand" as this was one of the first things we noticed in my son as well. There is left-handedness and dyslexia in the family too. My friend's son was suspected of having dyspraxia but things sorted themselves out over the course of junior school and he is now happily settled at a good grammar school and doing really well.

Hopefully, as other posters have said, things will just click into place. It's still early days and it sounds like he is thriving on his out of school activities.

My son is really taking off now at secondary school as there are so many other things to be good at apart from maths and English (he's actually great at English but dreadful at spelling - he's about to dictate his first novel to me). Sometimes, having a bit of a difficult start can give you the drive to succeed and prove the doubters wrong.

Nora X

Regarding the reading, my son's reading is well above average but still 2 or 3 years behind what you might expect from his IQ. He learnt his letters and numbers almost spontaneously when he was about 2 and would shout out bus numbers and shop names from his pram, but he only learnt to properly read at about the average age of 6. He memorizes words - once he has seen it once, he will remember it but his decoding of new words or nonsense words is very very poor. I tried to explain this to his wonderful Year 5 teacher but he was having none of it.

Nora X

Nora - Sorry to hear about your experiences, hopefully I will be left less bitter as I am starting with what I think are fairly low expectations. Yes I have read a fair amount about twice exceptional. Dyslexia is very prevalent in our family and DS still says he is ambidextrous although has chosen a hand now, think he is cross lateral too.

Am doubtful dyslexia would ever be diagnosed as he reads so well but actually only from having a photographic memory ie he has learnt look and say and does not appear to be able to sound words out properly to me but I am not a teacher. He reads several Beastquest books a day and appears to have total comprehension and understanding but also great recall ie can often recite huge chunks of a book he has read. Reads fairly inaccurately out loud ie reversing words within a sentence and poor tracking but not sure if this is just due to high speed and if it is normal or not as am sure I was the same so have not been concerned by it.

I believe there is a test for phonics knowledge that tests using made up words which would be interesting to assess this but no idea if that has been done. Yes agree that secondary school with separate science etc will be helpful as I have seen with other family members. I also believe that those who love learning purely for itself like my Ds will get far more from it later in life than those like myself who did so well at my DS?s age in a desire to please the teacher or just to get the right grades but never found it exciting.

iggly ? thanks for your support too, yes agree dyslexia may play a part. Yes agree if school dont want to look at targets we could try to establish where he is now and then look at the increase made in a certain timescale and agree what level would cause a concern and plan for intervention outside of school for example if necessary although we are very reluctant to do this and want to work with school.

I have a couple of practical suggestions re handwriting.

Any chance he has hyper mobility in his thumbs/fingers?
Regardless, a writing slope and some rubbery pen grip things might make writing easier. Worth a try.
Also, there are some books (and shockingly expensive courses) called Handwriting Without Tears which some of my friends from my asd parents support group rave about. I don't think it's exclusively for asd/non-nt.

When ds1 was in yr1, the lovely teachers told me he was doing fine and dandy, he was on the g&t list for his reading etc etc, but age appropriate for maths. Given that he was doing multiplication, addition and subtraction at three, I just grinned and asked them if they'd ever asked him any maths related question he'd been unable to answer.

The national curriculum is so extremely rigid that I'm not sure it is possible for teachers to identify more able students tbh. I'm going to ignore the private testing remarks though... We had to pay for testing in yr r because we needed to prove she didn't have a learning disability (because all kids with cp have a learning disability, blah blah blah)

Anyway, dd2 had ieps in yr r for both sn and her gifted targets, so it isn't impossible to sort. (she has cp, so it means she does need some out of the box ideas as her recording is interesting!)

There are a lot of reasons why children who are theoretically more able might not be achieving at school - confidence, specific learning disability, add, ADHD etc etc.

Ds1 is a prime example. He's never going to fly at school because it bores him rigid.

If I were you, I think I would ponder it a bit longer and then when he starts to blossom in a particular area, use that as your way in to discussing differentiation and extension. Until that point I suspect you are a bit stumped unless you can pay for a change of environment, which may or may not be beneficial...

My Ds1 ,now 8 in year3 is a very gifted young man.But he struggled before reception, started to be normal from reception, stood out a bit at the end of reception, started to shine in year1, and being outstanding in year2 . year3...
A star will shine at his/her own time.

Top 1% is superior, not vs, isn't it?for vs it's above 99.9%?
(apols for pedantry - have just had ds's report and it's been a while since I looked at either of the dd's so doing interpretation again!)

Agree about later blooming as well. Dd1 is v solid in y7, and although has been resolutely g&t listed throughout, it's only in the last couple of years that school have bothered to assess specifically.

And sorry, but I have to say bllllleeeeuuuurrrggghhh arrrgggghhh freaking beast quest have been haunting me for the last 6 years. Get rid of them as soon as you can! They are worse than blardy rainbow fairies for predictability. As soon as he is capable of deciphering and comprehending them, get rid and get something that at least varies book by book. Try Cressida Cowell next. Or it'll get worse and he'll move on to captain underpants, mark my words....

Can I ask what the breakdown of his results were by the way? It might give a more meaningful idea of why he isn't meeting his potential in school. Was it in any way spiky? Or just superior across the board? (some kids are way way up in the sky in a couple of areas and average in others which still results in a high overall iq (and 'gifted' label) but obviously they are trickier to work with. A lot of the twice exceptional stuff fits here, of course, but the wechsler results or whatever test was done can be a good indicator of areas which might be causing him to not meet his potential (yet?) of course this also means that if those areas can be worked on (for example in the case of inattention, through meds or whatever) then obviously the overall iq would go up further as the individual scores are raised. So it might give you some ideas.

For example, you note handwriting, was this reflected in any of the results?

The other issue to address may be that of lowered expectations due to his medical concerns. I know that it is frequently obvious for us that most people (until they get to know her) have horrifyingly low expectations for dd2. So I do understand this element of your concern.

Hi again,
Your son does sound quite similar to mine - I recognise your description of him repeating chunks from books. My son is also very very articulate but unfortunately, this did not stop them putting him on a low ability table where he was bored out of his mind and one teacher described him as being "away with the fairies". He was also seen to be leaning right back in his chair to hear what was going on on the top table - heartbreaking. But you are armed with more information than I was at that time so you should be able to prevent anything like this happening to your son.

What we also found was that the problems became more evident as he moved higher up the school. In the early years, there are lots of children with poor writing, backwards letters etc. When my son got a Level 1 in his Yr 2 SATS, we began to realise that something might be amiss but it wasn't until he was 9 that we finally got the full picture but this was after years of worry.

We got a dyslexia computer test called Lucid Lass Junior which was very cheap via our local dyslexia association. School had previously given him a literary assessment pack which he passed.

We have found that the writing issues have stuck with him and there is a massive discrepancy between his knowledge and ideas and what he can get down on paper. I think the key is to get them using a computer and we are now trying to do some touch typing lessons (there are lots on line). Junior school were only interested in the need for him to learn to write and no sympathy or understanding of the need for him to express himself in other ways. Anything dictated to me was frowned upon and ignored even though the content was really good.

We have had to find our own path which has involved lots of acting classes, trips to the theatre and audio books - he will listen to audio books that he would never read in a million years - and neither would I! They have been a great revelation.

Oh, and another interesting thing to look up is "stealth dyslexia".

Hope I am not going on too much about dyslexia - your son may not even have it so I don't mean to cause alarm. I wish I had got the IQ results much sooner, as you have. Paying for them and the consultation with the clinical psychologist was the best thing I ever did.

Nora X

outofbody -

I understood that 98th centile is very superior not sure what 99.9th is and thought that superior was below the 90th.

I am not too worried about Beast quest as they are all from library so they can disappear if necessary! He nearly knows every detail of nearly every one - just a few left still on order so we must be coming to the end of it. We have already had 3 months of captain underpants, then non stop astrosaurs and astrosaurs academy so it seems to move on. He has been like this almost since birth with constant obsessions that change but never coincide with school ie space, volcanoes, egyptians etc. Now he never mentions captain underpants at all but last summer i thought it had taken over his life.

Yes profile was spiky although no scores were measured as below average but comparatively weaker on the areas that I am told are typically low for dyslexics and ADD etc. Could handwriting be reflected on WISC 4 as this was the only test done?

Apologies if I have offended anyone with my comment re IQ testing early it was not intended. I certainly do believe there are cases where it is appropriate to test IQ at age 5 or 6 but in our case at the time it was not as we were not unduly concerned about his academic achievement and felt it would come and he was not refusing to go to school and it appeared the least of his or our worries so it would not have been appropriate for us to request testing and if someone had pushed for this in our situation it might be seen as unreasonable or pushy. Certainly in your case it sounds essential if your DD is being discriminated against due to CP and I am sure for lots of others especially if children are unhappy.

Nora -

I totally agree with you re the dyslexia. I think everyone in our family has traits of dyslexia/stealth dyslexia even if they dont have it severely enough to be diagnosed so it has always been my first thought with all my children. He is now managing to get most of his letters the right way round with considerable thought after daily practice although not his numerals. Agree with audio books my DS still listens to them and has done avidly since age 1 again memorising them. Interested to hear your reasoning with acting classes as it is something I thought would be good for confidence - did you have different reason?

I guess our biggest frustrations are the lack of consistency between teachers ie re IEP/expectations etc and also school reporting that he is doing really well whilst achieving below average results. Surely they should at least admit he is not achieving potential and not appear complacent or even proud of progress? Even without the IQ report there would be huge disparity between verbal performance and written. It dosent need to make for a totally negative report if that is their concern as they could state like many of you that some children click later and confirm they have noted potential from verbal interaction but perhaps there is a reason not to do this because then they should be seen to be investigating the discrepancy and not just concluding that he is a late developer.

Hi,

I don't want to be doom and gloom but in the end, I gave up. We moved him to a school were most of the kids were above average so at least we knew that the lessons were pitched at a fairly high level. I have honestly not met one teacher that understood - they had fixed views and if a child is within average levels then there is nothing they can do. Maybe it's because they need to be seen to be fair. Why should one child get more help than another child who is on exactly the same level? Even the school Ed Pyscho didn't understand and was quite hostile - she was insistent that there was no problem with his spelling as it was within the average range even though it was 60 percentile points below his IQ. For someone with an average IQ it would have gone off the bottom of the scale! (Might be a bit of bad science in that). Year 6 teacher tried to say that he didn't have dyslexia because his reading was too good..... I could go on! It's incredible that secondary school has been the absolute opposite.

The acting was not for confidence reasons. He is extremely out-going, confident, extrovert and talkative so it seemed like a natural path to go down. He currently goes to workshops where they devise and perform their own performances. Through this, we also discovered that he has a real passion for the theatre.

You never know, I am sure there are some really on the ball junior school teachers out there. Hopefully you are going to strike lucky. Good luck with it all.

Nora X

If his profile on the wisc was suggestive of add etc, are they going to follow up with conners etc? Just curious- it would seem to be sensible, and might explain why he's not achieving comparatively in school.

Fwiw, this is ds. No one bothered to assess because he wasn't any bother and was bright enough to be able to produce the work at grade level. It's only this paed that suggested full testing, as he has other issues which overlap and we need to try and sort out the venn diagram lol! So ds had the full run of tests (including looking at as/ads because he has some quirks which could be indicative of social communication stuff etc.... Or of just being bright and a bit away with the fairies, or add...)

Nora - Thanks for this. The school my DS is at has very high results so lessons are already being pitched high. There are very few state schools other than some faith ones perhaps with higher results. Also very few SEN. Most of the parents at the school have our expectations that their child should be performing well above average I think but without the backing of an IQ report.

Outofbody - Thanks for this. I didnt mean to confuse issue. The IQ report was found to indicate no concerns at all as even the lowest score was within the average range. There was absolutely no hint of a mention of dyslexia or ADD etc or anything. I was just stating that scores such as digit span were the lower ones - it was just my personal comment. There is no plan to follow up as professionals had no concerns at all. I just mentioned it as you asked if it was spiky. What was the outcome of your DS's assessment out of interest?