Primary school help/advice please?

[TheOneWithTheHair]

Ds2 is 5, in yr1. He is great across the board academically but especially in maths. He has been complaining that maths at school is too easy and boring.

I made an appointment with his teacher to discuss it. I explained what ds had said and her initial response was quite defensive. She said, " I'm well aware how advanced he is! I can't make an individual plan for everyone!"

Now ds is in a mixed class of yr1 & 2. I explained that I would be happy with ds doing the yr2 work so she didn't need to do anything special.

She said it was a good idea and told ds the plan. Since then she has done nothing about it. This was two weeks ago.

I've looked at the curriculum and he is at least yr4 standard. I'm wondering what provision a school is obliged to give him? What obligation do schools have?

Any help or advice on this would be greatly appreciated. TIA

Mmmmm....well they are meant to accurately assess where the child is and ensure a good (outstanding) level of progress, every year from that point. So yes, they would need to ensure an individual plan if your DS is working at a level 4. If they cannot do this within a mixed ability class, then they should make provision for him to work with a higher year group.

It does not always work like this. Many schools avoid accurately assessing, so that they can ensure it looks as if a child has made progress to Ofsted, without having to do any differentiation. Also, assessing a child at such a high level does mean that they would have to differentiate to ensure progress - so it is catch 22. If they assess low, but eventually ensure that your child does make progress, it makes the value add score look fantastic.

My DS was working at a level 4 in yr 1 too and was pretty high across the board, but the levels were under-reported. We changed schools and the levels leapt in all subjects. In his new school, he had achieved the targets that his previous school had him tracking at for yr 6, by yr 3 in some and early yr 4 for others.

If your teacher does not put a plan in place within t he next two weeks or so, I would discuss with the HT. It does not sound as if they would need to move mountains to do this. However, if the will is not there, I would be tempted to look at scholarships and bursaries to selective schools.

The old system that is currently being phased out involved measuring children's attainment levels at the end of KS1 (i.e. about April in year 2) and then measuring them again at the end of KS2 ("the SATS").

All children were expected to make at least 2 whole levels of progress per key stage, and the school / individual teachers were held to account if that wasn't achieved. Attaining more than 2 levels was great, but there were no rewards for that as a teacher in the way that there was approbation for failing to meet the target for all children.

Obviously very able children could easily exceed the target and the least able needed a lot of coaching to get them to it - they call it intervention.

The system led to some manipulation, with an artifically low KS1 score obviously helping the KS2 teachers meet their targets without having to set special work or prepare lessons purely for the benefit of one or two very able children.

One of the obvious tricks was to fail to push the most able on during KS1. Maybe a child knows every part of the syllabus up to and including all the elements of GCSE. However, if they don't demonstrate each part in class to the teacher on three separate occasions, then the child is deemed not to know it. So, if a KS1 teacher doesn't provide an exceptionally able child with as many opportunities as he/she could easily cope with to learn new things and doesn't give them the chance to show her what they can really do, then as far as the teacher and the school are concerned, the child cannot do it. i.e. No evidence = its not true.

The mother/ father telling the school that their child can do these things is met with agreement that their child is very able but their child is not evidencing their higher level of attainment in class and until they do, they won't be ready for the next level of complexity. The parent (i.e. me) then points out that the teacher isn't providing the opportunity for the child to demonstrate the new level of attainment and the teacher replies that she regularly tests but that she'll make sure your child is included in the next batch of children that she questions to see if they have reached their current targets.

Three weeks later, she tests, sees that the current microlevel has indeed been reached and sets the child with a target to reach the next micro level. Meanwhile the parent walks away from the meeting feeling like the teacher thinks they are pushy parents, and possibly deluded too. Moreover, they are aware that if the objective was to get their child taught at an appropriate level, then the meeting was a complete failure. (All of which obviously put you off going back to see the teacher again unless you really have to).

And so on it goes until your child is given a level 3 test paper at the end of KS1 which they can magically do. Everyone is pleased. The KS1 teachers have gone above and beyond for this child bringing them up not to 2, but 3 levels during KS1. The KS2 teachers are now automatically set a target of getting the child to level 5 over the next four years.

With the introduction of level 6 papers, things improved a little for very able children. The papers are optional but most schools choose to send a few pupils for them. Children like your son (and mine who is currently in year 6) are obvious candidates, but its hard to say where they really would have got to if they had been allowed to learn without restraint.

Sorry.. very, very long post/ rant!

The teacher should make an individual plan though, surely? She'd do that if a child had SEN and was not achieving, G&T children should also have individual plans.

My only advice would be to not do as I did. After a brief fight at the start of each year and a visit to the HT in year 4, plus a change of school hoping for something better, I allowed the schools to put DS is a holding pattern each year.

I always hoped that things would change the following year once some of the other children had had a chance to catch up. The problem is that as soon as something new got taught, DS had already worked it out some time ago just by thinking about it (I don't know how he did that but he's brighter than I am). Then he'd go back to waiting.

Instead of just waiting, DS would try to show the teachers that he had really, really got it. So, they'd ask the class something and his hand would shoot up before the teacher had finished speaking but he was always the last person to ask after other children had been given a chance to have a go first.

Then in all the tests, DS started to see them as a time trial. So, he'd complete them in 25% of the allotted time. When he was tested on the same thing again (even though he'd got 100% right for six weeks in a row), he'd aim to do it even faster than last time. Explicitly, he was asking me what he had to do to be allowed to learn something new.

Now he is 10 and in year 6. He refuses point blank to show any workings and he insists on finishing every test as quickly as he can. Its a habit he has learned and he is having a lot of trouble unlearning it.

Yesterday, he came home and told me that he only got 86% in a test and was beaten by two other children. Anything he had got wrong was by not reading the question properly and not showing his workings.

He is ashamed to have come third and he knows theoretically that i am right, but he just can't bring himself to slow down and explain his answers. So, he and I have some work to do to get him to unlearn the bad habits he has picked up through years of being held back.

BlotOnTheLandscape - should and being obliged aren't the same thing, unfortunately.

Apart from professional pride and treating teaching like a vocation, not a job, what is the teacher's motivation for creating extra work for herself when she already has the intervention group to worry about?

The new national curriculum makes even less provision for children that fall outside of the norm

It is very prescriptive in term of yr 2 we do this, yr 4 we do this -and as yet we don't know how this new curriculum will be tested

The expectation is sideways extension so problem solving using existing skills rather than learning new things from the next level as levels no longer exist officially

This is one of those areas where there is a massive variation between what individual schools - and teachers - are prepared to do. I also think that years 1 and 2 are the hardest for advanced children as well, because many of their age peers are still learning basic concepts while they are steaming ahead.

So in your shoes, I would ask the teacher again what she is going to do, and make sure that there are a clear set of outcomes defined (i.e he will get extra work or you will send work in or whatever). Then either it will happen - fine - or it won't. In which case you go and see the HT and/or SENCO or G&T co-ordinator.

By that point you should have a pretty clear idea of what the school's approach will be and whether you can live with it, and also whether it's just this teacher. This may turn out fine, but if it doesn't you have to decide whether you put up with it until KS2, when things might get better (possibly) and do enrichment work at home, or whether you move schools. Do you have many options in your area?

Possibly your son could have work set once a week by another teacher and then do it in class time? Also, think about Kumon as enrichment - some children love it some hate it so it may not be right.

var I'd have thought the motivation was the child and their achievements. That's what a good teacher would do.

I'm coming to the (very belated) realisation that you don't send your child to a primary school, you send them to a series of seven teachers. If they are all good (not even outstanding, just good), then you will praise the school to the high heavens.

However if most are just ok and one is really bad, then you'll probably have a very poor experience, especially if your child is exceptional in either a good or a bad way.

Two identical children, just a year apart in a one form entry school may have vastly different experience just because one teacher leaves, a NQT is recruited to replace him/ her and there is a slight re-arrangement of which years a couple of the other teachers take.

I used to think headteachers defined the school but having watched DS2 and his classmates endure a year with a really awful teacher, whilst the head was apparently either unable or unwilling to tackle the problem, I am realising that it is the luck of the draw of getting good teachers that will define your child's experience.

BlotOnTheLandscape - I wish it were so, but not in my experience.

Between them my two children have had 10 individuals teach them as their primary school class teachers (including 3 NQTs). Hand on heart, i'd say there were just two who had enough experience to be able to properly differentiate work and who were motivated to do it by the pleasure in seeing children flourish.

The rest were too busy meeting targets for the other children to be interested in actually teaching my two.

var, yes - this exactly. We struggled through for two years with bits and bobs of provision, but then in Year 2 DD got the teacher who really didn't care. He informed us that he wasn't going to teach Yr3 work, because they'd only have to do it all again next year. Which was a shame, because she'd already done the Year 2 work in year 1.

But like you, a big part of the problem was that our head hated confrontation and so would only 'have a quiet word' with the teacher. Unsurprisingly, this didn't work, despite the fact that he failed to deliver on promises so badly that we had two comprehensive apologies from the school. By the end of the first term with him, DD had given up working, so we ended up moving her.

I drove past that teacher just yesterday. I'm still furious with him.

var, maybe the following story will be useful for your son...
I was (well still am) very good at maths. When I was doing my GCSE maths practice mocks I would finish every exam even the 2.5hours ones in about half an hour and get 100%. On one mock paper we had to work out a mean average of a long sum of numbers. I was lazy and didn't bother to write down the working as there were a lot of numbers to write despite having plenty of time to do so. I got the right answer but only got 98% on the exam as the teacher docked all the marks for working as I hadn't shown any.
With the introduction of the new GCSE grades where I think that they are giving the top percentage of students a top grade, rather than when you get over a certain mark that could have been the difference between getting or not getting a top grade. It would be better to learn to show his working now than the hard way later on.
Sorry - complete side track from original post .

Var You have summed up the problems we had with dd exactly. We left many meetings when the teacher had spent quite some time getting across to us why dd was not as advanced in maths as we thought. It was only on teacher assessment and requests for KS tests to level her were refused. Eventually the only independent test open to us was GCSE.

I thought this would at least get her educated at her current ability, but from what I can make out her current school is looking at 5 years to get her from A* GCSE to A level, so the struggle goes on.
The "treading water" is given the trendy title of enrichment: In practice putting a worksheet in front of the child and getting them to put their hand up if they get stuck.

JustRichmal: There's none so blind as those who will not see.

You'd think though that there would some legal requirement to provide a vaguely appropriate education and there must surely be endless statistics proving that it doesn't take 5 years to do an A level course, unless you particularly struggle with maths.

Maybe its more a case of whether the teacher themselves know enough maths to teach A level? If so, then its time fro the LEA to step in.