I have seen it mentioned about 'statements' for gifted children

[Cat98]

Can someone explain this, please? Does it mean a statement of special needs?
Would it help ds (very talented at numeracy) to have one, and if so how far advanced would he have to be to get one, and how would we get one?

Sorry for all the questions, I am clueless about this stuff but I'm a bit concerned the school won't be able to differentiate appropriately for him.
Thank you.

I hope your dd is ok la q.
I agree fwiw - (about moving up) but as my ds is in a small school they are in a large open plan classroom with some year 2s and 3s too, so I think they tend to interchange a bit in small groups.
That's the impression I've got from ds anyway - but as I say, he isn't particularly forthcoming with info about what goes on in class so I will try and clarify all this at parents evening!

I am struggling to find out what my daughter is doing at school, just gone into Yr1. She is plainly very bright, she could do subtraction in her head at 2, she is reading above book band 11, not so keen on long chapter books but able to read them and enjoys shorter ones. writes poetry on her own etc and has even written a play. She is probably dual exception as she has visual processing problems but her intelligence masks this quite effectively and I have worked quite hard to help her find a way to work with her problem.

School don't have a clue how bright she is I don't think. I am unsure if her groups are ability groups or mixed ability. I THINK ability from some things she says but I am starting to wonder. There is no extension work as far as I can find out from her, sometimes an additional task is put on the board for people who finish the other work but nothing specific. If they finish work they take it to be checked then go and play/sit on the carpet/look at books. She says the additional challenge/tasks are still too easy. So far from what I gather she gets everything right with the exception of once where someone had kept distracting her apparently. Obviously this is just what she tells me but generally I am inclined to believe her and certainly the work she mentions is stuff she could do a year or so ago. guided reading is at level 3....

I am probably going to wait until parents evening in 4 weeks to mention it to the teacher but she has now started to say that she likes school but the work is boring now because it is so easy and she says she tries to make it harder for herself but it isn't always possible. not much I can say to that is there. she says she likes getting everything right but I have fears she is going to become complacent and disengage and then get a real shock when suddenly she DOES have to think having coasted so far.

I just wonder how the teachers can know just HOW bright a child is. I mean they can't just keep testing them endlessly with different tasks to see if they can do them but equally if parents go in and say 'my child is bright' do they just groan and think 'here we go again'. My mum was a teacher but having raised my sister and I she was very good at picking up the extremely bright ones. I was clever but my sister was in a different league. But some teachers will rarely have come across extremely bright children and may not have realised if they have.

I am waffling now and I am not even sure what my point is.

Some children with high abilities will have IEPs, individual educational plan. My experience is that you would need to have seperate meeting, parents' evening doesn't necessarely give you enough time to discuss this. You could raise it and book a longer appointment with teacher.

Statements of special educational needs in our area is only provided for children with severe learning difficulties and/or disabilities who need a minumum of 15 hours of one-to-one care a week. An IEP is more realistic for a child who has been identified as G&T.

My son has both, he has a diagnosed and monitored disability and is also on the G&T register. But boroughs/schools work differently.

Our dd2 was put on the gifted and talented list when she was in year 1 for reading. However her teacher left the school 1 month later and I found that nothing seemed to change in my daughters learning and I kept having to go in asking them to review her book band etc as it was too easy for her. Even starting in her new class this year she had been put on the wrong book band by mistake and therefore in some of the wrong groups as they are ability based.

LaQueen - yes I think it is experience at the end of the day. My mum had the experience from her own child so found it much easier to see the signs. I just think it can be hard for a child to show their intelligence if that makes sense. Her teacher seems very good, as was her teacher last year but I still think they have no idea quite what she can do. Her report at the end of reception was listing her ability to do things she could do when she had started preschool (9 terms before because she had 2 full years at preschool due to her age). I didn't get involved in Reception other than raising the reading book thing because I feel the point of reception isn't academic stuff but I do feel Yr1 should be starting to make progress. I remember mum saying she did supply in schools and would find the entire class were on completely the wrong reading books, way below their abilities. But then she was doing supply towards retirement age so had 40 odd years experience.

One of my dc was put in with the year group above to address their needs as far as matching work to ability was concerned. I was asked for my permission for the school to do this and I consulted my child too, although in a very casual manner.

I stated my concern that friendship groups would suffer and the plan was revised such that my child popped into the class above only for part of the day and was always with their own age group for other stuff, lunch and break. Staff got used to dc popping along the corridors by themselves or sometimes the dc was told to line up after break with the older kids and slipped back at the end of the session ready for lunch.

My child is very much a "fly under the radar" type of child, makes little or no fuss and slipped fairly seamlessly between peers and the older children.

It worked for us. However,...... now dc has moved up a year along with classmates and there has been a complete switch around of class teachers. I realised they are going over much of the same stuff they did last year whilst dc worked with the class above and this year's teacher is frosty/unapproachable about extension work for my child. I'm waiting until parent's evening and if things haven't improved I'll be involving the head who seems to have forgotten about my dc. Why extend them last year only to have them mark time this year ?

there does seem to be a certain amount of extending for 1 year then they move up and have to start the whole fight all over again. It makes no sense

I used to be in trouble at school (Yr1 and Yr2 oh and Yr4) because I apparently did correct the teachers a lot (and I was right) strange it didn't happen with Yr3 and 5 teachers. By Yr6 we all knew she was rubbish so I didn't bother and in Senior school it was fine.

So yes I can see that some teachers don't like superbright kids. such a shame though because some teachers LOVE having bright children who they can give different things to. I remember sitting with mum when I was a teenager helping to come up with ideas for 'extra' challenges for the really bright kids she had (Yr1 and 2 VERY deprived area).

DD is in yr1 and does get extension homework and extension work within the classroom (given to all kids on the top tables) that they are expected to get on with once they have finished the class work which is set for the whole class.

I am lucky in that the school knows she is very bright but I still think they don't know how bright or exactly what she knows.

Her teacher said to me last week that they had been talking about reading with expression and she had told the class how to read a sentence with a ! At the end and she was pleased that DD picked it up v quickly etc. apart from the fact that she has known what a ! is since being in nursery and if the teacher had asked her she would have said so.

DD is starting to misbehave be very naughty, refuse to work that she thinks is beneath her (ie guided reading at stage 7, basic numeracy) and generally be a bit of a handful.

I would be quite happy for DD to go to specific things in a year group above ie phonics for 20 mins or guided reading etc as I think she would handle it (not the work but the social side and not miss out too much on friendship groups) but that is not allowed either and I guess I have to respect the HT's decision.

I have just had a look at our inclusion policy on the website and whilst it waffles mostly about special needs as in traditional learning difficulties in the overall bit at the beginning it does say it includes G&T. Now the school don't do G&T any longer as far as I know (if they do then they do it behind the scenes silently) and it does say that it is reviewed annually so therefore as it states all children should be taught at their own level with appropriate support they ought to be teaching them all at their own level whatever that level is.

DS is in yr4 and I only found out that the school do G&T last year with DD when she was in reception.

DS's yr3 teacher (last year) told me DS had been on it for numeracy since the end of yr1 but I didn't know about it.

The school at which I am a governor is also cagey about G&T, and TBH there are some very good reasons for it. One of the principal ones is that sometimes, children will be G&T at an early stage in their school career but then plateau and the rest of the peer group catches up. At that point, the child would have to be removed from the G&T register and that does not always go down well with parents...

The HT told me DD was G&T at her first parents eve in reception while I was waiting to speak to her class teacher.

To me as long as the school set/give appropriate level work to my kids it does not matter if they are G&T or not, but if the G&T list helps them to get this then so be it!

There are 5 kids who are G&T in DD's year (out of 90 kids) and they have all been put in the same class together ( this is literacy/reading, don't know about numeracy) and DD is very ahead in this group.

@LaQueenForADay: "they're bringing in a supply teacher to teach Level 6 maths to a small group ... because the Yr 5/6 teacher isn't confident to do it"

DD does a couple of L6 lessons in place of whole class Numeracy lessons. That happens here because Numeracy is difficult to differentiate i.e. ask a child to write a story about X and the advanced children will write a more advanced story, but in maths you really need to ask different ability levels different questions. [Generally speaking, exceptions blah-blah-blah]

I sympathise with teacher when they might have a class with an ability range from NC/SATs level 2 through to 6 or beyond.

@ LaQueenForADay, oh I didn't mean it that way. It was just interesting that they'd openly mentioned confidence because even if they were confident I think they'd struggle.

Some separate teaching is the pragmatic solution e.g. upstream secondary sets for just one subject from the very start of Y7 and it is of course, maths.

Can I ask how your DC were 'assessed' at G&T?

DS2(7) has had reams of assessment (suspected ASD/ADHD) and was put on SA+ in reception as he saw the SALT for pronunciation delay. Partly due to his speech and the fact that his classwork is minimal, the CT seemed to think that he was of below average ability. One EP assessment recorded 98th percentile verbal and 99.3rd percentile non-verbal reasoning ability.

He passed the level 3 maths paper but was awarded 2A as he doesn't work at level 3 (is not taught at). He doesn't work at as high a level as 2A in the class. He has hypermobility and so his motor co-ordination is on the 9th percentile but visual perception is on the 94th. Writing was assessed at 2C. Single work understanding is on the 99th percentile but whole sentence understanding is on the 25th. Reading was assessed at 2B.

EP was adamant that results did not mean that DS2 was in any way gifted or talented.

Is it possible to be cognitively G&T but only achieving average? Would this be taken into account to assess his expected progress? I'm confused. If a child were average (50th percentile) but achieving as if their ability were in the bottom 2%, the child would warrant assessment and possible statementing.

single word

The deputy head is the only one who teaches L6 maths in my DC school and he would pull them out of a numeracy lesson and teach them as a group. There were 4 kids targetted L6 in maths last year in yr6.