Weird school report?

[sambaba]

DD, just turned 5, has been able to read since 2. She can now read for example Harry Potter. She will ask about and respond to punctuation in text. Comprehension is amazing.
She started school this Sep and her first school report says underachieving for language and communication.
Both her nurseries identified her language was very advanced.
For context DH and I are both teachers and were also both GAT at literacy.
Is this a bit odd? I don't really plan on saying anything but I'm just a bit baffled.
It's two form entry and there are a lot of challenging kids I think including one whose been a bit violent at time, I suspect she's a gentle soul and doesn't say much.

arethereanyleftatall

". So, crossing fingers that your husband is more humble, I would send him in rather to raise it. If he's worse, and the two of you can't even pretend to be humble when you raise it, you will definitely be labelled those parents. "

Good grief. Perhaps she could go in like Uriah Heep and declare herself "everso humble"

Last summer, another parent forwarded an excerpt of her child’s report which started with my daughter’s name and was copy and pasted from her report verbatim. They were at the same level, so it was the efficient thing to do. I’d rather this than the teacher spending 30x30 minutes painstakingly crafting wonderful bespoke reports.

it could also be a misclick. I had roles in medical management and medical education, and not infrequently, would have to go back to highly literate professionals to double check that they strongly felt that an individual they were assessing was completely unfit to practice medicine, where all their other comments were glowing,

These things do happen.

Obviously you need to raise this with the teacher and discuss it to find out what skills your daughter needs to work on at home or if it's some sort of mistake.

It hardly seems worth coming on MN to tell us all that your child's school report is wrong and then telling all the commenters they are wrong too, because you and your DH are more qualified to assess your daughter than anyone else.

At no point have I ever imagined DD to be perfect but of all the things to suggest we need to work on it was absolutely ridiculous.
If she wanted to offer a suggestion for improvement I am sure there were things rooted in fact she could have chosen

Well, everyone has been so charming and helpful that the OP has now left Mumsnet.

OP left after asking advice then berating good faith responders as ignorant.

ND = neurodivergent not neurodiverse. An individual can't be neurodiverse - it's a population measure. [Sidetrack - can people who have dissociative identity disorder be neurodiverse?]

A child who is G&T as required for this this board (which is basically that your child has to be genius level before they're considered to be anything but 'bight but normal' :) ) is absolutely also ND. A child who is old school, top 10% of the school cohort G&T is not necessary ND (might be of course).

Once you get to very very intelligent children (top 0.1% say) it can be hard to work out how much of ND traits witnessed are due to the intelligence, and how much due to other ND conditions. I have a working theory that the reason you seem to so often have highly intelligent children who turn out to be autistic is that non-autistic children who are highly intelligent (sadly) work out earlier that they need to mask their intelligence to be accepted socially i.e. they dumb down to socially fit in (and because they don't have a social communication condition they can do that instinctively from an earlier age). Also, the fixed interests that come with autism quickly become very impressive in a highly intelligent child and so are the things that parents use as 'proof' of intelligent but can be an obvious sign to an outsider who knows the condition.

None of this means that OP's child is autistic or ND at all. She may be a very strong early reader. OP will herself know that reading ability at 5 doesn't necessarily mean anything long term. Child could be a genius or could be 'bright but normal'.

I still think that if you get a report that says your child is underachieving at something, and there isn't something going on that would lead you to expect that (eg an acknowledged intellectual disability), then of course you should ask the teacher about it. What parent who cared about their child's education wouldn't?

I think also that OP’s child is so young, and nothing is ‘fixed’ in terms of personality/ability.

AuDHD DS1 always ‘failed’ the EYFS standards about communication/interaction in early years, but is now very popular and well-regarded for his social skills at secondary school. He just learnt how to rub along and make people laugh.

However, the difference is that we listened to teachers and put things in place for him, to enable him to make progress on this. OP wasn’t really ready to hear that her DD might need some support, which will make things trickier for her in school.

@crummygecko I completely agree with what you say about working out the factors are between ND and intelligence, but I think there is also a third factor which is not getting the kind of interaction they need through play with actual peers. I have seen this happen in all sorts of ways. Perhaps the most telling here is a six year old who wanted to play Harry Potter imaginative games but none of the other children had read the books.
I think this can make them wary and uncertain in social interactions simply because other children don't react like them - even if autism isn't part of that. What made me think that was seeing two v gifted children meeting at a NT place and even though they were 8 and 10, having a wild time with the play equipment for the smaller kids because they were with someone who was 'like' them.

I would hope she doesn’t fully understand- the stories are often quite disturbing.

We had similar with our DD first school report. A nod, smile, head tilt as if to say "I'm sure she IS bright"

Two months later when they caught her trying to teach the rest of her reception class their times table (not by rote, just knowing them) and she was making nets of different 3D shapes "to carry things in the play kitchen" they changed their tune.

That happened to us. Turns out the teacher could tell 2 boys in the class apart,,,

Hi op,

I would tend to think she needs more confidence to participate in as no concerns were raised and you think she has high abilities however I wouldn’t completely brush off the possibility of a discrepency between home and school because that is the nerve of a lot of neurodivergence.
sports is great to raise confidence, especially swimming.

Good luck!

@Flustration "Being cynical, is assessing down something a school might encourage teachers do to improve their progress stats? I know you are both teachers so apologies if that's way off the mark!"
No. You are way off the mark.

@sambaba You can only find out what's going on by talking to her teacher. Could be a mistake. Could be bad teaching. Could be that she's not showing her true capabilities at school. My nephew "regressed" with his reading at school-he explained later that he saw that the less competent readers got more one to one time and he wanted that too!

Could it be that she doesn't engage with/understand phonics because she can already read? There is a boy in my daughters year who taught himself to read and was reading fluently
by 4, he still likes phonics though because it has further enhanced his ability to decode words. My guess is they haven't heard your child read and they are not showing that much interest during phonics lessons.

Being cynical, is assessing down something a school might encourage teachers do to improve their progress stats?

I think our primary were doing this. There's absolutely no way they didn't know DD was a reader when she started school. Her preschool told them in their handover. We mentioned in paperwork when she started. She talked about reading at the home visit. She wrote about reading in her 'getting to know you' booklet.

Baseline assessment target: to read a sentence.

Immediately /after/ the baseline assessment, they did a proper assessment and gave DD targets based on her actual abilities. So it's not like they weren't capable or they disagreed with our judgement. In fact when they properly assessed they found some things that she could do that we didn't even know about.

They were still assessing down in the EYFS assessments. The teacher had a whole weird spiel in the parents' evening about it about not being 'allowed' to give Exceeding. They had to concede and give DD the academic reading/writing and maths related ones, but nothing else, and classmates who were really very able didn't even get those.

Could it be that she doesn't engage with/understand phonics because she can already read?

Preschool initially didn't believe DD was reading with phonics because she was by that time reading fluently without stopping to sound out words aloud, and because she was able to decode words like "cement". She didn't mind joining in phonics in reception as it was mostly songs and games. Somewhere in year 1 she got fed up and the teacher let her sit and do some comprehension worksheets instead.

I do think Harry Potter is far too mentally advanced for a 5 year old.

My 5 year old could read and understand roughly what was going on in Harry Potter, however, she wouldn't understand all of the themes throughout. Harry Potter is so much more than a children's book. The sheer volume of information is vast with so much to ponder and work out. You have to have a mature level of compassion, an understanding of finances, of friendships, of neglect, that a Reception child will simply never understand.

On the surface, HP is an easy read, but she will not full understand the book.