Private versus State for the profoundly gifted

[avidskier]

I am trying to decide what to do with my profoundly gifted DD. She is currently in reception in a State primary school, considered "outstanding", with a huge waiting list.

So far the school has been very good on the pastoral care, but have no clue what to do with her academically. She is 5.5 and used as a mini TA going around teaching others to read (she can read an adult newspaper and spell 90% of the words in it).

The school has quite a few bright kids in the class. We have already asked if DD could be moved up a yeargroup (which her teacher thinks a good idea), but it wasn't endorsed by the Head ("if we allowed one kid to do it, they would all want to do it!").

There is no gifted and talented register that we know of or any other provision..

We cannot really afford to send her to private school, but know that they should technically be able to cater better to her needs.

My major worry is that DD will work out by about year 3 that there is nothing more the school can offer her and go off the rails.

By then however she will have lost her place at the highly selective private school as their main intake is for reception or year 1.

Can anyone offer any advice?

I can't believe you think state schools in West London are average to poor! The very best state schools in the country are in West London. Kensington and Chelsea, Hammersmith and Fulham, Richmond are all rammed with high achieving, Ofsted outstanding schools.

Hi- in case you get around to reading this...

My son read adult text age 4 and can just about spell any word you throw at him without learning.

Skip the child a year, it will help a bit

Private schools will not be helpful

Take online classes on outschool

Haven't read full thread but I don't think you can assume that private school will automatically be better.

In my area there's a state school (secondary) that far outperforms a private school in GCSE and A level results and has award winning gifted (or more able or whatever it's called now) programmes and schemes.

Class sizes are of course smaller at private school. But that can be a problem too - we remortgaged to do two years for DS at private school but despite regularly getting top scores in exams they won't put him in the top set as there's no space!

I assume the OP made her decision 8 years ago when she started this thread.....

Come back AvidSkier and tell us what happened!

London has pretty good private and state schools. Our girls were in very academically selective private schools at primary level (Haberdashers and North London Collegiate) and even in those schools which at a guess have girls in the top 20% of intelligence only you would still get some who were much much brighter whose needs were met I believe.

I changed private schools at 10 and missed the top year of my first school so was a year out of age range and graduated aged 20 in law with prizes etc. I didn't find it a problem being a year younger at least than others in the class actually but that is not so often done these days.

If you cannot afford fees even if you work full time with a weekend second job which a lot of us do by the way then yo ucould give her out of school things to do - we were taken to university lectures for teenagers when a bit older by our father when there were events on in the science dept for children; we played chess, I did 4 grade 8s music as life went on, speech and drama exams, wrote some books as a child etc. You could home educate her if you think school is failing her if you don't work.

We’re about to move my 6 year old DS to private year two. But he was desperately unhappy, hence the decision to move him. If we are careful, we have savings to get him to the end of year six by which point we might move him back into an excellent state secondary. If she is happy I wouldn’t feel pressurised to move her yet. Lots of very bright kids do very well at state primaries whilst being stretched sideways at home (music is a good idea, or learning history etc. outside of the curriculum). Year three is a good entry point to primary and there are usually bursaries on offer at that point. I was a late bloomer compared to DS. I wasn’t reading until 6 then moved to private in year three. I went on to score too GCSEs etc. in all subjects.

Hello,
This is an old post but was interested to know what the options were back then. Not a lot has changed and I am keen to know how you all supported your gifted/profoundly gifted children. (By that I mean 99.99 percentile on WISC V or similar). DD was accepted at The Latymer School but we didn't go there due to the lack of flexibility in supporting an 11 year old who had science and maths at GCSE level. What did you end up doing?
Thanks!

Hold on, how can she be 5.5yrs, but in reception?

This little girl is about to turn 13. Children in reception turn 5 between the 1st of September and the 31st of August. The original post was from the 22nd of May. If the little girl was five and a half she will have turned five the previous November. This made her one of the older pupils in her class, but it sounds like she was in the correct academic year for her age.

Sorry, the young woman would be around 18 now. Obviously nobody would be discussing me on a gifted and talented board.