Son very gifted at maths - state vs private academic school

[Peaches212]

Hi,

We are SW London based. Son is 6 years old, in Y1 and attends a state primary school. His maths tutor (who we brought in recently to help keep him sane) has assessed him as being 6 years ahead in maths. He is also a good few years ahead in reading (e.g. his favourite books to read are Harry Potter).

The kid is incredible at maths - he is a voracious learner who can do amazing mental maths and pattern recognition work. He also has a great memory. Maths excites him more than anything else. He is likely to be able to do GCSE maths within the next few years.

He is generally bored at school. The school try to help by giving him workbooks and 1 hour a week's lesson with the maths teacher but they are overstretched as it is. We are wondering if a private academic school like St Pauls would be better for him? It would be murderous financially so I guess it's about the value add. I'm trying to work out whether a place like that would really be able to accommodate and nurture his love of maths much more than leaving him in a state school to teach himself soon using materials like NRICH? We are not interested in having him in an "elite" school for the sake of it. We are just trying to find him a place where he can be challenged, happy and thrive on his own terms.

We are having a meeting with his current school soon to discuss what the limits of their offer to him look like.

Thanks in advance for your advice!

Very similar situation here although ours is a few years down the line from yours.

DS has stayed in the state system, and although it's been up and down he's generally happy where he is now.

Would St Paul's consider bursary option if finance may be a struggle and he is exceptional? We don't live in London so privates around us wouldn't have made much difference for him unfortunately.

Considering private for secondary though.

If he is truly gifted I think the SW London academic hothouses will be quite keen to get him in and are likely to offer help if you need it. Whether you want him in a school like that is another question altogether

Can you afford Private school?
If not (bursary or scholarship not withstanding) then it’s not a choice you can make

Have you thought about a superset time grammar such as Tiffin ?

I would keep up with the tutoring sessions through primary school, as well as things like chess club, rubiks cube competitions, etc, and then have him sit 11+ for Tiffin and Wilson's. Check you fall within the 10km priority zone for Tiffin though.

DS was and is like this, at Oxbridge now, still comes top in exams 😂 I would leave him at state school and get him into a wide range of activities - music in particular is a great joy for mathletes, languages, puzzles, projects.

Grammar would be my suggestion .. ( not London so can’t help with specific suggestions) though that doesn’t deal with the boredom now

Also just to add bright kids do find their own extra curricular interests just make ideas and kit needed freely available - mine was a vociferous reader and loved Lego , he has friends who live for Chess .

DS2 is 20 now, and if I had been able
to afford it then I would have sent him somewhere that would have been able to spend time with him and push him with his maths. He went to the local secondary, they didn't have time/capacity to further him in his maths, and so he spent his school life bored. I'd do it if you can afford it.

Try St Paul 7+ or 8+ exams. Registration opens from October.

They offer means-tested fees assistance for talented boys. Here is an indication:

Some super-selective elite schools (with high fees) actually quite generous to offer bursary to those academically outstanding but parents cannot afford the fees

Murderous financially doesn’t sound fun

He does sound advanced though

Would you qualify for a bursary?

I’m pretty sure some big name schools would bite your hand off if you brought this little boy to them. It is certainly worth asking.

I think you can have a family income of up to £120K or £110K or something like that before you would not qualify for any bursary at all at SPS. Obviously you would not qualify for a large bursary at that income level, but if it tips the cost from 'murderous' to 'affordable with some sacrifices' it may well be worth contacting the school and asking to talk to the bursar about what might be available. If you can give them an outline of your financial situation, they will be happy to tell you what you might be eligible for.

On the academic thing, my daughter was nowhere near as advanced as your son in Maths, but always comfortably ahead of the rest of the class and got really fed up with being an outlier. She is now at SPGS and has massively benefited from the level of challenge and the pace they work at. She likes being one of the crowd. There is a qualitative difference between being in the top set with a few others working at your level and being in a class where every child or many/most of the children are working at your level. She also sat for Tiffin Girls' and got in but there were a number of curriculum-based things and some other things related to the specific schools that made us choose the private option.

We didn't think prep school was worth it, so we made the switch at 11+ but things may be different for your son.

DS was like this. In year 1 he ‘took’ a year 6 sats paper and didn’t drop a mark. He was at a state primary and had some excellent teachers who kept him challenged and interested. From year 5 he started doing the UKMT through school which he loved. A supportive school is vital!
He’s doing his GCSEs at the moment, and is highly likely to get a 9 (has done in mocks etc) but at high school he is less ‘exceptional’ and the top set is full of very very good mathematicians. He is doing a double maths A level ‘as a safety net’ but his true passion is drama! He has been fully state educated and they have always supported and stretched him.

My DS is brilliant at maths and went to excellent but diverse state schools with fantastic teachers.

At primary they gave him lots more challenging maths to work on separately and luckily they had a teacher who volunteered to work with G&T DC.

And in secondary school he sat on a table with a couple of others and they very quietly worked together on more difficult maths at the back of their lessons.

He's just in the middle of A Levels doing Maths and Further Maths. So coming to the end of his first year of A Levels Yr12 he's sitting Maths A Level (which you do early if also taking FM) and next year with his cohort he will sit FM, Chemistry and Physics A Level.

He has now been placed into an Oxbridge Form group with other DC from all subjects and they will complete their 2nd year. Doesn't mean they'll necessarily get into Oxbridge but they will push each other more I guess and have their random conversations that can go on weird tangents.

DS got a 9 in Maths GCSE and was 16 points from full marks whatever that was.

We've never pushed him at home and just let him get on with it and enjoy it and work out his own path

Originally he was very science oriented and planned to do a physics degree but he knows now his passion is for pure maths which he'll focus on in Yr 13. They split off into either mechanical maths (more applied so good for engineering) or pure maths

Not meaning to top trumps y’all but distant family member is extraordinarily gifted at Maths, A Level Maths at primary school and dropped one point or full marks or something completely 🤯😳
Child is at state comp with extra tuition- 90% certain this is paid for by the school or local authority, having a normal childhood with peers. If you can get such support he’d be happier than being a fish out of water at St Paul’s or Westminster.

I'll be honest DS is so good at maths it wouldn't have made too much difference where he'd gone to School.

DS refused to go to a selective secondary school as did his friend.

They just didn't want to go and they could have with or without a bursary.

The schools here wouldn't allow that ie taking A Level in Primary school not where we live.

Very trendy progressive part of the UK because they'd not want to put that pressure on DC plus they encourage music and drama to really broaden their horizons and just socialise and play.

I loved that about their primary school. It was just brilliantly well rounded and got my DS to explore arts and creativity which is so not his thing at all

Ds1 has always been exceptional at maths and his state schools always stretched him. It can be done, the school needs to be supportive. Ds1’s secondary school wasn’t even very highly regarded at the time he started there but they were amazing and really did nurture him.

Ds1 is now at Oxford doing engineering.

If bursary is an option, definitely worth exploring private options.

If you can get such support he’d be happier than being a fish out of water at St Paul’s or Westminster.

What are you on about?

To be doing an actual A Level at primary school is bizarre no matter how good a child is at a subject.

It quite a lot of pressure but I guess if it comes naturally it's just fun for them like soling a puzzle

Their brains are just wired somehow to understand it without much if any studying

They just get maths