Primary school experience

[Inyournewdress]

I don’t personally label DD ‘gifted and talented’ as a category, I am not sure exactly what it means and I think she is maybe just a bit ahead of schedule and has a good memory, along with obviously being bright in several ways. There are definitely aspects of development where she is behind her peers, either because she hasn’t picked something up as quickly or because we haven’t given her the exposure we should have. I just wanted to post here because I don’t want to be seen as stealth boasting or anything.

We have just been allocated our third choice of primary school so I have been looking at their curriculum. I have noticed that in maths DD has a good grasp of everything covered in both Reception and Year one. She is also a fairly fluent reader. My mum is a retired junior school teacher and thinks DD’s reading age is at least 8. We didn’t actively teach her to read through phonics or anything, she just picked it up.

There are definitely gaps in her knowledge and understanding and she does need to cover this early curriculum in a systematic way. So that is good. I am just wondering though if the pace of learning and the learning focus on any given day will be boring or frustrating to her. Should she just reinforce or should she be stretched a bit? In your experience can the average primary school be trusted to handle learning well for pupils who are a bit ahead?

Thanks for any advice.

It will massively vary by school and also by child. I have one child who is ASD and extremely academically capable, but who is also very happy to coast through lessons and assignments as it means she is left to her own thoughts once completed. She is very good at self directed learning and has license to pick up a book and do her own thing once lesson completed. She would probably hate extension work unless very carefully chosen for her areas of interest. For this child, school’s primary value add is social exposure - she will stretch herself academically on her own and hates being pushed.

Other child is has a ‘spikey profile’ academically in that she is well in the gifted range in some areas, but is behind in others. This one really needs support to achieve her potential and avoid massive frustration. We are very lucky to be in a private school that can provide a more nuanced and individualised approach to her education so that she can stretch in some areas but also receive support where needed.

high achieving children are not really a priority at most state schools. given
limited resources most will (rightly) focus more on closing the gap for struggling children than accelerating high achievers.

To have a reading age of 8, your daughter would be reading chapter books such as Matilda, Charlie and the chocolate factory, diary of a whimpy kid, Dirty Bertie, 23-story treehouse, etc. in addition to being able to read them, she’d also be able to comprehend the story lines and understand the characters. How old is your daughter?

Son DS12 4 years ahead in maths, 3 years in English. Assessed as gifted. No help from 2 primary schools until year 6 then teacher said that it wasn't fair on 29 children for my child to be ahead. The effect on his mental health was irrelevant to the school but devastating for him. If you think your child could be gifted then i would get them assessed formally to confirm.

As a rule, teachers differentiate as much as they can, but no, they can't plan an individualised curriculum for each and every child for every hour of the day.

So it depends if you are talking "one of the brighter ones, likely to be in the top 1/3 of the class" or if you are talking "child genius who needs an individual curriculum".

Is private school an option? My son is ASD and has a very spikey profile. He is in Year 1 but is apparently reading books read by Year 3 and Year 4 (chapter books, eg 13 storey treehouse) to himself. His maths is insanely good. He's stretched a little at school. Thankfully there is another student as academically able as him so they do a lot of extension work together and dont follow the class's maths curriculum. The thing is though, the class (private school) only has 13 or 14 pupils, so the teacher can differentiate. He's not bored academically as a result (and our priority is more the social side at the moment anyway, as he is autistic). Your daughter sounds phenomenal by the way!

@Labraradabrador Thank you for sharing, a lot of what you describe rings true for me. I suppose I won’t know exactly how DD is going to respond until she gets there, because she likes self directed learning too.

@tellmesomethingtrue I should have been clearer, sorry. I meant reading age as assessed by the kind of test where you are given a list of words to read. I have not given her any chapter books because while she could probably read the words, I don’t think she would want to just yet. I think that her interests align more with books for children her age, in terms of themes and having illustrations. As for understanding the characters and so on, I don’t think she would be similar to the average 8 year old there. She definitely does have good understanding rather than just pronouncing the words, but it isn’t massively advanced. She loves nursery rhymes and reads them to herself and recites them, so her interests are really quite in tune with her actual age I think. She just turned four this month.

@MissSquiggles I am so sorry that your son didn’t get the support he deserved. How is he doing now?

@CarpetKnees I think something in between, but it’s really only in reading and maths. I don’t think she’d be ahead in other things, maybe it will even out as the others read.

@surreygirl1987 your son sounds awesome too, and I am glad he has a companion in learning, that helps so much. I don’t think private school is an option right now as we are in London where property costs and school fees are really high, but maybe at some point. I did go and look at one and I felt she would like it, but to be honest there was some self indulgent wishful thinking on my part about the finances. Smaller class would definitely be good.

Thanks everyone for the replies, it is helpful to read your thoughts.

So she’s good at decoding words. You can’t claim that she has a reading age of an 8 year old…!

As I said, I should have been clearer and will be in future. I cannot remember the name of the test administered but it has word sets and if you can read all of one you progress to the next etc, and each word set corresponds to an age. It was one my DM was trained to use as a primary teacher. A few months ago in that test she reached the age 8 word set. I don’t mean in any wider sense than that, so will rephrase.

@tellmesomethingtrue it’s a blunt instrument I guess, gives a limited insight but as you rightly say, doesn’t indicate reading age in the fuller sense.

I'd take a watch and wait approach. It might be that reception is educating her socially and she won't learn much more academically. That's OK.

Think that may be right @Hercisback1. She has so much to learn from the experience. I just didn’t know whether it mattered to maximize advancing learning in certain subjects or not at this stage. If I feel like we have a wise teacher I will be happy to follow their guidance, so here’s hoping!

If, that should say! If we have a wise teacher…

Check out Beast Academy for maths

Realistically by the time she's in year 5 or 6 she probably will be bored if she's towards the top of the class, yes. Mine were. The teachers were lovely and did their best but ultimately lessons are geared for the majority. Luckily I could get them tutored for private school 11+ entrance exams and they are happily flying at an academically selective private secondary.

Agreeing with @Setyoufree, though I’d add that the earlier years can be pretty painful too if you’re at a school where they won’t flex on things like reading books (being stuck reading books far too easy because ‘Y2s don’t go higher than X’ can be a problem). As long as the school is sensible about not making her constantly repeat things she mastered years ago, it should be fine and give her solid basics, and ensure she gets plenty of social and emotional learning.

For challenge, you’re likely to need to find it elsewhere - music, drama, sport, chess, museum trips, theatre etc. I think it’s important to find something she’s not good at, where she learns at a young age how to keep going at something even if it doesn’t come easily. Otherwise giving up too easily can be a problem later, for DC who never learn how to put effort in because everything academic at primary level comes so easily to them.

I’d also avoid doing anything specifically geared to her getting ahead academically (as much as you can, I wouldn’t stop her reading!) as that just makes it even easier and potentially more boring for her at school. Much better to challenge in ways that aren’t on the curriculum - music is great for this.

I think it is possible to try to minimise boredom for brighter kids in school, by using after school time to do many extracurricular things rather than academic things.

School are unlikely to be able to put in special provision for her just for being ahead. Having said that, state schools vary hugely in how much they tolerate kids just being ahead. Some seem very keen to squash it - and to assume that a kid hasn't really understood, or that parents are pushy. Others are more flexible. It might be worth asking whether kids are kept rigidly to a book band plan, or whether they'd mind if you sent her in with a maths puzzle book to do only after she'd finished in class maths work.

I would wait and see. A lot of people talk about rigid phonics schemes and boredom but it hasn’t been our experience at all. Reception offers many opportunities for learning outside of the standard reading and maths.

We’ve always offered other books at home and she’s never been bored or put off reading despite being well ahead of her school phonics level.

My DD was head and shoulders above most of her peers at her large mixed Primary from day 1 across the board and while she got a bit bored at times she was fine.
She did really well in the 11+ and got a part scholarship for Private
Just chill out and focus on your child having an overall positive school experience

Ds was always seen as gifted and talented but went through the state system. He was often given harder work in primary school but I agree with others about needing to understand the comprehension side of reading and not just the words. We stretched him with things at home including music lessons and made sure he had access to lots of different books. That was the biggest issue with school as he hated the easy reading books but often they need to complete them. Be open to the reality that she may not always be the best at everything.

Your daughter sounds similar to mine. She goes to a ‘good’ school which has a good reputation locally but the stretch for higher attainders is minimal. Everyone works through the phonics scheme, even if they can read fluently. Obviously we read harder books at home but she wastes time in school reading books which are about 12-18m below where she is. She’s now y1 and the maths in her book is all stuff she could do in preschool. I think you’ll find she isn’t challenged at all to be honest. I do find it frustrating but like your daughter mine isn’t ahead in eg topic, science, and needs the social skills.

Generally it’s not too much of an issue in ks1 (up to age 7)

reception isEYFS.

what that means in practice is the in the whole day there is a lot of free flow with activities the teacher has prepared and very limited whole class carpet time (everyone sitting on the carpet while the teacher talks).

because the focus is on transition from nursery, adult led activities are varied by group so your child will do activities appropriate for them (it might take them a few weeks to work out exactly where your child is).

a lot of reception is learning the skills for school - changing for PE, slowly extending carpet time, walking to assembly and sitting quietly in it etc.

at ks1 generally there’s limited teacher input at any one time just because children of this age struggle to concentrate for a long time. If school are on the ball then she will then be doing work appropriate for her level.

i’d suggest extending and exploring further outside school as well - a musical instrument is a good idea, as well as things like rainbows/beavers and a sport.

Some good advice.

My DD is top 1% and having gone through the whole primary system now, I'd say it's teacher dependent not school dependent. This is also advice for the top 1-2% not the top 15-20%. There's a big BIG difference between kids who are exceeding as per the guidelines and kids who are flying.

As a PP has said, it's much easier with kids who are top 15% and probably get general extension work than the top 1-2%. That's more manageable for staff.

EYFS i.e. reception is easiest. Mainly because it's free play and the teacher can dedicate time to giving differentiating work. Most staff will be used to parents coming in and saying their kid is a genius and can read / do maths / tables etc. so don't be THAT parent. We had a slow start to reception until they caught DD trying to teach the other kids times tables during "playing schools" completely unsupervised. Before then, I think they just thought we were THOSE parents. It got easier after that.

Infants (Yr 1-2) is harder. The other kids in the class will be just about managing to sit still for 10 minutes and learn to be in a class room. This is the most frustrating period. They repeat everything a bright kid will have covered in preschool and in reception again. A lot of kids will score exceeding in their SATS in a nice middle class school. It means nothing as the school just prep them.

Juniors and upper juniors is much better because there is a big jump academically and some kids who are previously exceeding will be "caught up" by the others. The only problem is here is that an exceptionally bright kid who has pushed themselves and developed skills for self teaching is likely to know more than a general primary teacher. We've had several instances of being called in because our eldest has form for correcting teachers and is seen as being disrespectful in the way it's done (to be fair, academically she's right but her tone needs some work).

I would say push sideways. Music. Chess. Sports. Languages. Travel. Find something she struggles with. Teach resilience. Teach the skill of self motivation. If she is genuinely exceptionally bright, an ability to self direct their own learning is essential. Try and focus on things they find trickier. Lots of kids will have spiky profiles i.e. be good at maths, less strong at reading and comprehension. Work on those. If they are equally as strong, throw in a language or two.

Thank you so much to all of you for the advice it is all much appreciated.

Honestly, as a former "gifted" child and also having experience of teaching, UK schools are absolutely hopeless for higher ability children.

The ones that struggle get a lot of interventions and support, and the majority of teaching is targeted at the ones in the middle. The top end are often just expected to get on with it, regardless of how much more they could be achieving.

The NC rules discourage allowing children to move ahead in all subjects.

Even my DD's school, which has very small classes and dedicated teachers, now has to adhere to rules around phonics which say children must all progress to the next book band at the same time, based on the phonics they are currently learning. DD is being held at a level she finds boring. The teachers agree that it's silly.