Do the schools assess for this at primary level?

[SolidGoldBrass]

And if so, what happens? Is there something I should do before DS starts school?
He is 4, can read whole books, follow a tube map (and happily tell everyone how to get across town from specific start point to specific destination) count up to about 500, do simple arithmetic...

"dadatlarge The top ten percent are there because of test results within a subject area do you agree with that?"
Oh boy, if your school didn't explain it to the staff it's been repeated here often enough: Test results have nothing - absolutely nothing - to do with it. Teachers recommend children based on what the teacher thinks of their ability. Parents can recommend their children for the G&T as well (and the Leading Teacher would take the decision).

If you believe that children are chosen based on how they perform in tests - and if that's what you've been doing as a teacher - that's appalling.

And that's just one of the facts you've got wrong.

You really do need to go back to the ABCs of G&Ts.

Lockets: read yout posts. "I am also a teacher and have huge reservations about my daughter being put on the G&T register" "I get the feeling she just fills the % for them." "on the G&T register for literacy, she is not stretched in any way -even her reading book is at about 6 levels too low for her" You comments about G&T are scornful, disdainful and dismissive.
You said that you "would very easily be a able to choose the top 10% of my class" Not I have, but I would. Sounds like you haven't actually done it yet. "add them to a register" is this the sum total of what you do for your G&T!? "this is after all what teachers are asked to do" Wow what a ringing endorsement: you don't do it because you believe in it but because it's another tick box exercise.

And I second what D@L said to lijaco. With every post she reveals her ignorance of the topic.

SGB - please don't assume that all the just turned 4s are going to be doing A is for Apple whilst your autumn born kid is way ahead. This is not necessarily the case - there will be autumn borns who don't know their letter sounds and summer borns who can read (I have one and would be a bit miffed with you if you voiced an opinion like that - although I'm sure you wouldn't).

I don't think your ds sounds normal at all - to be reading so well and counting to 500 but I'm not an expert nor am I a teacher. IMHO you will serve yourself and your ds best by holding back on mentioning what he can do and letting them work it out for themselves in whatever assessments they do. Keep an eye on things as if they aren't spotting it you then might need to take action obviously. But definitely better ime to let them spot it than be the mum who proclaims her dc as gifted (not suggesting you were going to do that).

Maybe normal is the wrong word.....he doesn't sound average?

Don't know if SGB is still around, but just to say that your ds sounds like a complete star, and I'm sure he'll get picked up really quickly I think the advice about letting the teacher do her/his own assessment and talk to you is very, very sensible (as per Acinonyx)

Also worth remembering that reception is very much about social learning (how to cope for a whole day without mum, how to cope with kids with different ways of operating to you, how to cope with school structures and routines, how to have munch with 30 baying 5 yos etc )
All of that stuff will probably take up at least some of your ds' time and brain-power.

SGB - does your DS go to nursery/pre school? If so, they should be filling in a transfer document for him (and you should see it too). This covers the six areas of the foundation stage, with boxes (yes boxes!) to tick about where each child is, and space to add comments. This is then sent to the school.
Your son's abilities should be quite clear from this document, so I would hope that after the first couple of weeks, the school would be differentiating approriately.
FWIW, I think he sounds pretty smart - well done your DS! My DS is quite bright too I think, but he hs no interest in learning yet, so I have no fears that he will have nothing to learn in reception lol!

Georgeandtimmy - that's interesting as I wasn't aware of that. Is it a country-wide thing that all pre-schools have to do?
When roughly is it sent to parents and can you have input / add comments before it's sent to the school?

Pigs - I assumed it was country-wide - maybe it isn't . The document template is from the LEA.
Ours was done a few weeks ago. Once completed by the pre school staff, it is given to the parents to read - and yes there is a space for parents to add to it. The pre school then send it on to the school. In our area, the school also give you a document to fill out before your child starts, asking about likes, dislikes, whether they can dress /toilet themselves etc. Again, there is plenty of opportunity to make general or specific comments about achievements or idiosyncrises.
Teachers then get two documents to help then get to know the child, but will also undertake informal assessments in the first few weeks to establish which children know letters/numbers/can read/can share/can listen etc!
I am in the SE btw

GeorgeAndTimmy, the form the pre-school sends doesn't have a box for gifted. Children are measured against certain targets for their age, that's it. If you're above there's no measure for how far above. Any space for "idiosyncrises" is usually filled with things like fear of clowns or preference for orange juice over apple juice, not the ability to navigate around London. My DS could read the time on analogue clocks with Roman numeral faces and solve complex time problems involving planes leaving different time zones on the day the clocks changed.. none of that or his other achievements in maths made it into his form when he moved into school three years ago. EYFS doesn't change anything.

funnypeculiar, yes, Acinonyx agreed with my suggestion to give the teacher a term or so to assess the child. I've changed my mind on that. I think the best course would be to let the teacher do what they call the baseline assessment and ask to see it when they're done. The earlier you catch an incompetent teacher the better.

"the whole G&T label means very little due to the fact it is so very much a 'tick the box exercise' it is about having to label a certain percentage of children rather than actually teaching to the ability of those children. I don't believe in the way it is done at all. "
Well, that's not how is supposed to be done. If the school or teacher is ignorant about G&T or their responsibilities -and we know that this not only entirely possible but quite prevalent - then go kick some ass.

My daughter was precocious like this when she started school (and was also a Sept. birthday). The school set her work with the year above (mixed year teaching) and we broadened her curriculum at home with lots of music lessons. She even started music theory quite young because she enjoyed the mathematical side to it.

As a side note, every time I hear that we might possibly adopt a more 'European' approach to starting formal learning later I wonder how the bright children would get on in this system. My two would have been bored if they hadn't been encouraged to read and do sums by the time they were 5.

abraid, I was a bright child educated in Sweden at a time when Swedish schools started at 7 and I never went to any nursery before then

two things stand out:

1. nothing prevented me from teaching myself to read when I felt I was ready, which I did about 2 years before I started school. I read copiously before I ever got near a school. But as formal learning started so late, most of my peers were ready for it, so I didn't have to sit through two or three boring years watching them struggling with the alphabet: most of them learnt it in a matter of months. So less time to get bored for the child who knew it already.

1. there were so many other things to learn in the kind of upbringing we had that I didn't need textbooks to be entertained, much as I loved reading. Sums were everywhere- we were encouraged to cook and bake unsupervised from a very young age, so learnt sums naturally from doubling up ingredients. We got taken out with a compass and map at weekends. Many of us learnt to sail a boat and navigate. Science was all around us in the shape of woodcraft and survival skills. We all had access to woodworking tools so would spend time designing and building (which I did very badly). We learnt to sew and knit, which also involves sums.

There simply wasn't that division between Important Learning and leisure time. We weren't bored because learning was everywhere. And the brighter you were, the more learning you could do.

This wasn't some sort of clever educational scheme for gifted children: it was just what all parents did with their children naturally. It doesn't have to be formal to be educational. After all, homeschooled children are often fairly bright, but seldom bored. The Scandinavian system is based on the assumption that some kind of homeschooling will be going on for the first 6 or 7 years, either with the parents or at a good nursery.

I didn't see any qualititative difference between knowing how to parse a sentence and knowing how to rescue someone from a hole in the ice- both of which skills I was taught at school at about the same age.

DaL, my post was for SBG and pigs to offer some information as per the original post on this thread. I am not getting into the politics of G&T.
FWIW, the forms I have seen have ample space for detailing what a child can do - and if a pre-school did not make explicit note that a child could read, do complex maths or had any other skill above what would be expected for their age, then that pre school would be at fault. I would expect that in that case, the parent would be best advised to talk to the pre school and for the form to be written together. It seems you did not do this?
IMO, the transfer forms from the pre school, plus the parental ones (which may mention fear of clowns or allergies type info), give a pretty good picture of a child, and if a child is obviously good (or quicker) at things, this will become apparent to the teacher pretty quickly in the first couple of weeks. I would feel pretty secure that a child like SGB has described would be noticed early on . If not, perhaps the child needs to concentrate on gaining the other skills children need to learn when they start school - like knowing when to talk and when to be silent, how to be kind etc etc

Lockets: I still want to take issue with you. This is a subsection of the Education topic. If someone starts their post "I am also a teacher" then it gives their comments extra weight. It now appears that your "I am a teacher" is on a par with all the waiters in LA saying "I am an actor". You say "I am not currently working therefore haven't had to do [G&T]" but since the big push was with the launch of NAGTY way back in 2002, exactly how long have you been 'resting'?

You keep repeating that your DD's teachers think that she is Gifted but you don't. Has it ever occurred to you that perhaps you are out of touch?

INteresting, thanks Cory.

"I am certainly not out of touch- I would say I know my dd better than anyone in fact."

Now who's being obtuse? I was referring to being out of touch with current education, not your DD.

"My post stating I was a teacher too, was actually a tongue in cheek nod to the other poster who was a teacher."

A poster who dismissively said that the OPs DC was doing "pretty normal stuff for 4 year olds" although she later back-tracked (very slightly). So you are now associated with an anti-G&T teacher: is that what you wanted?

"Is this clearer to you or would you like me to explain further?"
LOL. Is that one of those passive/aggressive smilies?

"maybe your child or your class[if you are a teacher] are thriving and benefitting well from the current system."
DD didn't, DS is. It's a lottery.

"I feel improvement is necessary in training to recognise and stretch gifted children"
Amen to that, but it also needs teachers who are receptive to the idea.

"most of my friends who are teachers agree with me on this."
Tell them to come on here! It would be nice to have some teachers who are sympathetic to the concept of G&T; most of the teachers on here seem to be antipathetic to it.

hold on here -

I'm not an anti G&T teacher, how can you possibly infer this from a few lines on a chat board?

ahh bugger - just deleted most of the post as I was editing it......

was saying that

I don't ignore bright children in my classroom
and
OP's son clearly would be in top 10% of his class so I was wrong saying 'pretty normal'
and
I have smart kids who could do some of the stuff the OP's kid could do at same age but I don't think of them as gifted

Its the terminology that needs addressing