Does your state school cope well with your DC?

[AnswersToAnything]

We have a meeting with school coming up because a few issues have started to crop up, mainly around our reception-age child being bored and not stretched at school. I know that on this board I don't need to explain that this is coming from our child's 'need' for information rather than us being pushy, but I feel I have to anyway!

The school is great - they know our child has different needs but don't really seem to have the resources to meet them. Not their fault, but nonetheless a reality.

I was hoping some of you could tell me the things your child's school have done to make sure your child is stretched
so we can go to the meeting with ideas rather than problems.

Apologies for a certain vagueness. I have my suspicions that other parents from school are MNers though.

Thanks.

Infant school: not much help at all.
Junior school: did a lot more, including bringing in secondary Science & Maths teachers to cover KS3 work.
Secondary school: completely set up for this, he is doing appropriately differentiated work in every subject. In Maths, the top 4 sets are all G&T, and set 1 only has extreme high end ability.

The very earliest he was provided with any kind of differentiated work was Y2.

I can't imagine that Reception was that interesting for him, as he had taught himself to read before his third birthday.

I'm sure I don't have to remind you (but I will) not to discount all the bits of reception that aren't "academic". Play is children's work at this age- he will never have so much time to play again, and not being interested in the imaginative and other play that is focused on is an issue that needs to be addressed (not saying that this applies to your dc- but others will be reading this thread). The important thing is building a happy,well rounded individual- that means being provided with satisfying intellectual challenges, but also working equally on creative, social and physical development too.

Reception and yr 1 my dd was given the "responsibility" of teaching another child to read. I had a long meeting with the sen/gt team about this.

Basically she could read well and do yr 2 standard maths before she started school but wouldn't speak to a soul or make eye contact. (I had tried !!)

We decided that it was more important to boost her confidence than her getting miles ahead of the class. Her shyness was one of the worst her infant teacher had ever come across. She had hysterical crying episodes a dozen times a day over nothing - couldn't find a pen type things.

She is now yr 5 - the school are fab and she is still gt but isn't miles ahead of the others - she doesn't get masses of extra work as often as helps others with the class work.

She does music lessons during class times 3 times a week (i pay half the usual cost) and helps the head with IT/setting up for assembly every day. So she spends a lot of time out of class so she has less time to do the work (she always gets it finished).

She doesn't want to be different - friends are more important to her and fitting in. Her confidence is so high now - she has gone from a ridiculously shy, unconfident, crying hysterically child to playing a music solo at the end of term concert.

Her infant teacher and I both watched this solo with tears in our eyes (the head wasn't far off either) - she is growing up to be a fantastically confident , intelligent , happy adult which is the ultimate aim of me and the school.

I could have pushed the academic side - she could have gone down the sat her gcse's when she is 12 route but it would have destroyed her to have been in seperate tutoring with secondary school teachers/being taught with children much older than her

This might not be the same for other children - can only go with her nature.

What we've learned is that a good teacher can do a lot within the classroom but heaven help you if you get the other kind. And you are spot on, the lack of resources is increasingly a real issue. Some things that were done for DD last year were dropped this year because they just didn't have the money.

In reception, the main things that worked were DD writing book reviews each week as homework (the teacher gave her a form to fill in) which meant that she could have a chat about the books she was reading. Also starting music lessons early, to give her some kind of challenge.

The best things we got in year 1 was a brilliant teacher who encouraged all DD's interests and got her to talk about them in the class. But they also organised a fortnightly g&t group for children across the years and gave her 1-to-1 tuition in literacy and maths, as well as doing ICT instead of phonics.

Then the money ran out in Yr2. They tried putting her into Year 3 for the mornings, but for various scheduling reasons that didn't work. She also had a teacher who didn't believe in differentiation. So she's in a private school now.

Curlew, you are right, but it is very hard for schools to provide this sometimes. DD got very frustrated in reception because other children were praised for things she could do, but she never got praise for anything because they never found out what she could do. So she was genuinely unhappy for a while until we worked this out.

And as you go further up school, there is less and less play and more and more sitting through lessons that aren't teaching you anything.

Thanks for all your replies. We know that social development is as important as any other sort of learning at this stage (or any stage I suppose) and there is certainly a case to be made that our child needs some (but perhaps not lots) of help with that.

I don't think though that justifies being bored and unstimulated though. The two are not that related. If a child were an excellent drummer no-one would suggest that it was ok to say that they could only play a wooden block because they lacked social skills. Or that a level 10 reader had to stay on level 1 books because they weren't very good at math - but saying that it's ok for a child to be bored and un-stretched academically because they need to learn more social skills is the same thing as far as I can tell. The majority of the class comes up against something they can't do, or find a bit tricky most days I would hope, and I don't think our child does - those skills of perseverance and sticking at things and working things out that the others are learning are also very important, because one day our child will get to a point where things aren't so intuitive and will need to know how to stick at something, and that's it's ok to not just be able to do it.

I don't mean to criticise the school in any way; they have been excellent, and dealing with a class of 30 in which one pupil already knows a lot of what they are expected to learn over the next few years is incredibly difficult given the resources available. It's a problem to which I cannot think of a solution, hence I was hoping to get ideas to take to the meeting.

My two daughters have both been way beyond all school academic work they have come up against so far (they are R and Yr1 now) and have coasted their way through school to date. In R I really would just leave it, in Yr1 I would start pushing for differentiation. Just my opinion but I honestly think you need to treat R as just another year of preschool really, the EYFS runs through both and proper academic work starts in Yr1.

I think you also have to remember it isn't just social skills in reception but nor is it academic skills. a bright child should be able to take reception tasks and use them to stimulate themselves. My daughter used to find class reading boring so she would do things like count the number of words on the page, count the number of times a word appeared, how many times could she see different sounds in the sentence and so on. Art and creativity is at any level they want it to be. She didn't say she was bored in R. she said the work was easy but she never said she was bored. She could have done an awful lot more, she was most definitely READY to do an awful lot more and so in some ways the year was a little wasted if you look at it like that but I think she did learn some, can't think of a way to put it but sort of self challenging skills and ways to amuse herself.

We did pick very academically selective private schools from age 5 which of course worked fine but not everyone can afford that. It took every last penny and they wore second hand school uniform etc but was worth it.

Well all children are different (including the smart ones), as are their parents so I'm turning the thread's question around and saying my Y6 DD has coped well with state school.

I think DD eventually benefited from being summer-born because it narrowed the ability gap, but she's also very self challenging so finds ways to make easy things fun and rarely talks of boredom. We've done a lighter variant of @Chocotrekkie's trade of (probably too much) academic progress for some useful social/character development and that has worked out very well.

Because DD isn't like the OPs DC I don't really understand their viewpoint except at a trivial level so this might be foolish, but surely there's some compromise to be made? It's a bulk-education system so where's the line between school bending to accommodate a child and the child bending to accommodate school?

But PiqueABoo, would you say that about a child with SEN of any kind? In that case, it is absolutely the school's job to accommodate the child. So why should it be otherwise in the case of a gifted child?

Coped well, but then they rarely had class sizes over 27, 22 in the class several years in primary. DD could not love her state secondary any more. The only subject she loathes is ICT and everyone I talk to has a story about how that's badly taught at her school (at all ability levels).

I am never really sure in these threads if OP really means that their child is absolutely brilliant at EVERYTHING and therefore bored all day because nothing is stimulating (least of all the social life, I guess). If they are bored only sometimes, well, Newsflash: it's normal. The ordinary ability kids are quite bored sometimes, too. Just life.

DD (yr1) is having an amazing year and she has a truly fab teacher. She is very strong in reading/literacy but age appropriate in numeracy although top set/table but so was her brother at this point in yr1.

She also had a fab reception teacher who stretched her but she still learnt to share, listen, take turns, roll in mud etc

DS (yr4) is having a very bad year with zero differentiation within his class and doing stuff he could have done in yr1 in maths which is his really strong area. He was not amazingly strong in maths then either (in yr1) he just has a very bad teacher this year

Agree that I would not push for differentiation till yr1. There was one point in reception when my DD's behaviour deteriorated in school and at home but straight away the teacher knew she needed more so just gave it to her.

The things they did with DD in reception was to let her chose her own non scheme reading books (she was fluent), she has her own little tray with worksheets in for whenever she wanted to do one (she loves them), 121reading more often to push her, phonics not with the rest of the class but with another TA, 10 minute121 handwriting sessions as she could write well but this included using punctuation etc. I don't post this to come across as bragging but to give you ideas on how DD was extended that worked very well

Oh, and DD had 90 in her class (reception) although the ratio teacher : pupil was the same.

@theendgame: I'd say what I wrote in that last sentence about any child, but having set foot in a couple of 'special' schools I would certainly draw the state's accommodation line much closer to e.g. an MLD child, than my DD.

I might not do the same trick if I knew something about the OP's DC because it is clear that some do find school extremely difficult, but again they're all different and don't have the same needs.

'Gifted child' seems to be rather cliched: Tortured genius, thoroughly miserable unless supplied with wall-to-wall 'challenge' to hasten their progress to 'full potential', preferably in the company of their own distinctly different genre of humanity where they can all relate to each other and 'think out of the box'.

OP here - I didn't say my child was bored all the time, or that they should never be bored. I was a little vague because I don't want any of the other parents to recognise me or my child. Maybe I'm too paranoid. It's all about how much of the time they spend being bored.

Thanks for the ideas of low cost things the school could do. I much prefer to go into meetings with ideas, options and solutions.The meeting is next week, so any other ideas of cheap things schools have done for extension much appreciated.

@Piqueaboo. I think that the real issue is that the spectrum of giftedness is so wide. So some gifted children can manage perfectly well in a mainstream school, while others find it very hard. And that this is a factor of personality as much as level of giftedness (and also how much the school is prepared to adapt).

But I do think that the cliche in part arises precisely because there is some truth in it.

Like Answers, I don't want to be too specific because it will out me, but we have found that when DD is not given enough to get her teeth into (whether at home or at school) she behaves like a stroppy, door-slamming teenager, at age 6. Give her the 'challenge' and the behaviour stops, immediately. So it is a kind of need.

And I don't think that they should be separated off, but at the same time they do need peers of some kind or another. Otherwise they end up thinking they are weird, they dumb down their abilities so as not to be bullied and, in the end, it's good if they can talk to someone about the stuff they like. To give you a really trivial example, DD read the first three Harry Potters in the summer after Reception. She'd have loved to play Harry Potter games in the playground, but no one else knew what on earth she was on about. That's a small thing, but it's the kind of stuff that happens all the time, and so I do think they need other children like them.

Hello.

First, OP I would like to say I recognise your issue and am fully supportive of your concerns.
Second, in my opinion, it is entirely reasonable for you to expect your child to be provided with relevant intellectual stimulation and appropriate differentiation at any stage within school.
Third, it is especially difficult to provide that differentiation invisibly but I would imagine that one of the routes could be that your child could be given more independent learning tasks e.g. on the PC/iPad etc. which could be tailored to ability/need/potential. This would fit very well with the self-directed play-led approach to learning in Reception. Also, there should be plenty within their book scheme that is age appropriate but still for more advanced readers.
Fourth, if this is a small school, one issue you may encounter later is that your child will lack an intellectual peer group. If and when this occurs, and if and only if your child has the emotional and developmental resilience, it is quite ok to discuss acceleration to cohorts above (this then of course can mean moving to secondary school early). There is academic research to back up why this can be appropriate. It entirely depends on the needs of the individual, but from my own experience and that of one of my children, it can be the best solution with the most rewarding experience for the child. I resisted it for a long time - mainly due to the type of opinions that some have expressed within this thread. At the end of the day, after discussions with all relevant authorities and schools, you may find it the best fit.
Good luck with your meeting. I look forward to hearing how it goes. Remember that you must work with them or a battle will ensue.

I think something you have to bear in mind when you talk to them is that your child probably isn't the only one ready for or needing more than they are getting. Whilst your child is the only one you know and can talk about perhaps if you word it in such a way that it isn't 'I want x y z for my child' but more 'I wonder if the teacher will be stretching the children who are ready for it more after half term' or something then it might be more likely to be taken on board by the school.

If I remember right from last year the work and differentiation did change from Feb half term and then the summer term. not as much as would have suited DD1 but on the whole it was definitely different in the second half of the year.

@theendgame,

This is an entirely minor aside, but "spectrum" doesn't chime for me given it implies a simple linear sequence with opposite ends, further to the right is better and so on. Perhaps that aspect of G&T world has been influenced by IQ-test world? I'm more comfortable thinking of a 3D model/universe with constellations, clusters, large amounts of empty space where no one lives, but that probably needs 27+ more inscrutable dimensions to work.

--

Forums like this select for the cliche, people with problems as opposed to those for whom things are working well enough. G&T world certainly seems dominated by some relatively narrow cliches with check-box lists and I expect that has many people actively looking for the check-box issues, in some cases too sensitively.

That's my independent view, a sense of increasing loss of perspective, but it's clearly one that has been shared by the independent school sector for years now. You really don't have to look very hard to find people from famous schools, this and that association, essentially telling parents to turn down the heat e.g. just two weeks ago it was IAPS with: "It is all too easy for parents to be sucked into a competitive busyness, ensuring that children are constantly occupied and stimulated. We should not fear boredom however."

My DD is from a galaxy where they don't do boredom and has always supplied her own self-competitive busyness. There are several interests and abilities in her life that she doesn't share with her peers, but I suspect her chief talent might be finding and enjoying common ground because she's notoriously a 'good sport'. In G&T terms I wonder if the split here is because she's one of the 'all rounders' who prioritises play, art, music, sport as much as say maths?

@AnswersToAnything, "other ideas of cheap things schools have done for extension much appreciated"

Over the years DD has been thrown at computer-learning quite a lot, and as much as that pains me as a bit of a Luddite, on reflection that hasn't been too bad. The risk there is finding their way to something opaque and being frustrated e.g. I recall a protest a few years ago about encountering "stupid As and Bs!", algebra, in some program a little too early.

Ref computers. There are many things computers can provide....for example if a child is literate then he/she can do research on a given topic. I was not suggesting that it be used to advance maths and literacy skills in a linear fashion.

Ref extra-curricular interests. I agree wholeheartedly and my child has pursued sport and music with great enthusiasm.

Ref boredom. Why send them to school to be bored? Let them be bored in other less controlled environments so that they are able to make their own entertainment creatively. If they have to be in school, their time should not be frustrating/stultifying. There is a big difference between providing unscheduled time and sending a child into an environment where they cannot access appropriate resources.

Thanks for your continued input. The school already differentiate in that the groups they work in in reception are based on ability. I think it is the 'invisible' differentiation that LongDeadMotherofHorrors mentions that I am looking for. I don't want my child to think they don't fit, or are different. I want the moon on a stick, if I'm honest. But I'd settle for just the stick or just the moon :-)

I am more taken with LongDeadMotherofHorrors' take on boredom than PiqueABoo's. I would also say that being bored for part of a lesson because you know some of it is different from sitting through a whole session consisting entirely of things you knew when you were two, for example. And no, I'm not suggesting that happens all day everyday - but it does some of the time, and one of the issues is that our child is beginning to pretend their ability level is lower than it is, presumably in order to 'fit in' better.

Acceleration is something that has been mentioned before but I don't know if it would be appropriate at the moment because although I think our child could cope in many ways they have the social skills and handwriting skills of a reception-age child. It would also mean two negotiated transitions because the current school is just an infant school, so acceleration would mean getting agreement from both a junior and a secondary school to work.

Ref acceleration...just thinking ahead so you can research it and be prepared should it become an issue later. Getting agreement...you also have to get agreement from your local authority. The minimum criteria generally: to be working 2 years ahead of chronological age consistently for at least 2 years. And once you've gone forward (ie to secondary school), you can never go back!

DD has been put up one year (although she is an autumn birthday so the jump isn't as huge as it might be.

However, we don't want the skip to continue in secondary school, as I think that's when it can get difficult. In our case the options will be either to move her to an academically selective school back into her right year group (the one we are thinking of has its junior school on the same site and most children go up to the senior school), or to take a year doing HE. Mind you, that only works because children from her school go to a variety of different secondary schools, so being in a different class to her friends won't matter much.

So there are ways around, if you think it's the best option for now.