Does the school tell you if your child is put on their G&T register?

[goodomen]

I was just wondering if a school tells the parents if their child is put on the G&T register.
What is the procedure for it all?
My ds starts school this year and I am intrested to learn how the system works but don't want to ask in RL as it may make me sound pushy.

Freakonomics talks about it but I've come across it elsewhere too.

I find it deeply reassuring, myself. It's arguably the one parenting thing I've ever got right.

Is that really true about books in the house? That's the best news I've heard in a long time (Amazon beckons!)

Nope

I know, isn't it marvellous? It's kind of the opposite of knowing you built up your optimum bone density in your teens and your chances of getting osteoporosis are horribly over-determined by now. Presumably even DP's quite hair-raising collection of books (I use the term loosely) with Dragon in the title counts.

No, that's the thing about the "house full of books" statistic, you can't just go and buy books. They have to just be there. Buying books or reading them to dc isn't particularly correlated with academic achievement. It's the having of the books which matters. Or - most likely - the being the sort of household which just has books around.

But what if you are all readers but give all your read books away to charity or bookswapping? Another little dilemma for the eco-parent.

And what about the library, eh? A constant flux of reading matter but one which actually belongs elsewhere.

ooh I have 100s of books in the house - must be why my DD is a genius

And what if the books are all called things like "Bullet" and "Twang" and "Shopping for Shoes and Drinking Cahmpagne" and "Little Pink Fluffy People and all the Lovely Things tha Happened to them When they Moves to the Country"

... presumably maternal typing ability has not impact on children's intelligence?

Memoo, in the area where I work,every school has been told by the LEA to keep a Register of gifted and talented children. However, the criteria is such that what passes for G&T in one school, could be average or even lower in another. This is because it is based on the top 10% ability range for each year group in the school, not on nationally agreed levels of achievement. Teachers are expected tio differentiate work appropriately for all children in their classes and we run an after school club fir G&T children. The club is intended to be fun whilst stretching their minds and we try to do something different every week. Sometimes they play games, and we also have some secondary school teachers who will come in and give them a taster lesson in a particular subject. We try to keep it fairly informal so that they do not burn out in any way.

Our school does not explicitly tell us if children are on any register. My ds is a very able mathematician, in Year 1 and confidently able to tackle his Year 5 cousins homework. His teacher has said very little all year except that she is aware he finds the Year 1 work far too easy. However, she did recently admit that she gave him a Key Stage 1 SATS paper 'to see how he did'. He did very well and achieved a Level 3, so this is now on his school record and the school will need to think about what work they give him next year.
As said by other poster, I know how he is doing, and have a pretty good idea of what he is capable of (although my own maths is not too hot so I'm sure this will not last long..)He is only 6 and in a class with many bright children, at a good school - so I leave it up to them. If he really is that good at maths he will have years of being stretched ahead of him.

Our school has compiled a register, as although primary schools have not been obliged to do so (unlike secondary schools), they're aware that things are moving in that direction and parents are asking about the school's provision.

The school as far as I know doesn't tell people if their children are on it, as in most cases, it makes little difference to the provision. Children are streamed across the year group for Literacy and Numeracy, and set within the group, so the top 10% -15% of mathematicians etc are working as a group anyway.

Given our catchment, there are lots of very able children at the school, and the head has always felt uncomfortable giving a pretty meaningless label to a percentage of them.

Goodomen, I totally understand your want to understand the whole process of G&T before your DC starts school. I'm guessing you suspect your child is bright then. If that is the case, there are lots of things you can do to help. Look at the NAGT website. It explains on there the importance of knowing if your child is gifted. I think one of the most important things that I have learnt is that gifted children do learn in differnt ways to others, and this is a challenge to you, his/her parent. You may have to be dealing with a very stressed out child who is not being challenged, or who is dealing with social stress at school, or whose ability in one area outstrips his ability to express that ability. This is why I believe that a parent should know whether their child is gifted. At the end of the day a parent is responsible for the child's entire growth as a person, not just that child's academic performance. I can understand why they wouldn't want to tell some parents, but to be honest, I do feel its helpful for someone to say, yes, your child learns differently, and we need to make sure we are aware of what they may mean to that child.

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If being gifted was just a matter of educational performance, I can why schools might not tell the parent. But being truely gifted (not necessarily what the government decrees is gifted in order to identify those that truely) does have an impact on other aspects of that child's life. In my opinion anyway.

I think the G&T government label is cack. But of course I would love a teacher to come up to me and tell me ds is G&T, even though I think the whole thing is daft!

No idea what his school do about it, so either ds isn't in the system or they keep it very quiet. Probably the former.

Don't understand why you wouldn't want to know if child is G&T - just as you'd want to know if they won the flat race or the borough competition to design the best sandwich. But, more to the point you'll know because your child will tell you, assuming school are doing something concrete rather then just compiling a list.

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"I would have thought schools would want parents involvement as much as possible."

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
You've got a lot to learn.

Oh totally agree about the pointlessness of the paperwork / existence of a 'register' if it's just to meet some govt guidleline - tho sometimes it is necessary to unlock the extra funding.

I suppose what I am saying is I would want to know that school is meeting the needs of the individual child - differentiated work for children who are significantly ahead in one or more subjects in the same way that children who are identified as needing help get extra/different work (at our school anyway I know there is massive variation in how schools deal with SEN but that is a whole other thread). But my view is skewed by having an older child with LD so I am used to being heavily involved, I may have a completely different attitude if I didn't already have a child with SEN in school.

What is the point of g and t register if the school does nothing about it ie our primary school but then again they don't tell parents if a child is on the register.

Only heard about it from the year 7 link teacher who said DD is on it at the primary school The secondary school has fantastic facilities for gifted and talented which can also be accessed by other children who wish to go to the talks and clubs. They also do after school activities for the feeder primary schools but our primary school does not pass on the details to parents who find out from other sources.