Can year 2 pupil go into year 3 for ability?

[icklepicklesmum]

My daughter is currently in a year 1/2 class and has achieved the grade she needs to achieve by the end of year 2 already.

Next year she is going into an all year 2 class as our school does not have a year 2/3 split class.

This means she is going into a class where the remainder of the children are basically anything up to a year behind her.

Is is possible for a year 2 pupil to go into a year 3 class based on ability?

This year the teacher has worked with us to ensure she doesnt get bored which is what happens when the work gets too easy. Each time she has said she is bored or the work is too hard she has made it harder. She has ended up getting better grades than most of the year 2 pupils in the class.

If any teachers can help with this or if any of you have experienced this I would appreciated your help.

I plan on seeing the class teacher to discuss our concerns so it would be good to hear some of your experiences beforehand.

Thanks very much

The OP expressed concern for my daughter, claire70.

Motherhood is a funny thing isn't it? I am on another forum, more professional than personal IYSWIM? My identity is not disguised there and some other poster (who does hide his identity) researched me and my family and tried to call me a bad mother based on absolutely no knowledge at all. I could have reached through the screen down the phone line and throttled the little s**t!

mrz, exactly, didn't mean it was an issue, rather, that schools were well used to this.

ninah thanks!

Bizarre. You were right about the passive-aggressive thing, though. Perhaps she felt that it was time to just get aggressive-aggressive

I don't understand why she feels she needs an IEP for her child who is a bit brighter than average? I mean, there are tens of thousands of children who are the same as her DD.......

Also, at the comment earlier "We have a friend who's daughter goes to this school and has actually gone BACKWARDS this year!!!" my parents are both teachers and there's many a time when I've had to listen to them despairing over a child who has gone backwards for no reason whatsoever.

My Granny would have said 'many an early bloomer fades fastest'

ah, can you imagine Picasso' iep? only a 1 in 'literacy' really must get the blighter to stop doodling in time for his SATS

hit the nail on the head Ninah

I truly believe so much creativity and ' philosophising' (for want of a better word) is thwarted through this kind of over focused education

I have my brightest child performs least well on paper - but he is fantastic company

sorry bad editing I have

Posy - think you're granny is talking about my dd!! she was the one in Y1 and 2 who we thought was really bright and could read well ahead of most of her peers.

move on 3 years and she's still a great reader but not doing as well with complicated maths. she's been used to coasting thro school until now and its suddenly hit her that she's not good at everything! but she still loves school!

not that i'm saying that this will happen to the OP's dd but not all children are G&T - some are just bright at certain things!

Sorry claire70 I couldn't find anywhere where the OP actually stated the NC levels (only that she had achieved the grade she needs to achieve at the end of Y2 ) but if indeed her daughter is a 2B that is far from exceptional in Y1 and really isn't a reason to miss out a year of school.

claire70 where does the OP say there are 70 children in Y1?

Morning icklepicklesmum - sorry havent read all of this thread and you may have mentioned it already, but can you clarify exactly what levels she has achieved ?? thanks.

"The OP expressed concern for my daughter"

and then she had the message deleted by MN.

The thing is, learning and development is very fluid at this age. The children who are top at the end of Year 1 may well not be top within 6 months. Some children suddenly come on enormously at that age and overtake the ones who were early bloomers.

If a child was 3 or 4 years ahead, then you could probably confidently say that they would stay there. But only a year ahead can change quite quickly (and I speak about my own children as well as the OP's).

I think the way ds2's schools operates works pretty well - thought it was fairly standard. Each child works at their own level for certain lessons (maths, literacy) and they all work together for things like topics (which are easy to differentiate). So for example for maths each child has a workbook which is suitable for their level - so you can have a wide range within one class and children can progress at their own rate. For reading children just progress exactly at their own rate, there are no class specific books. DS3 is entering year 1 bang on average (somewhere in the midst of ORT), DS2 entered year 1 a free reader. For spellings there are different lists. DS2 (year 3) is meant to pick 10 each week from the year 4/5 list, but is a lazy lump and usually tries to pick from the year 3 list. He only confessed this to me when I asked why he was getting easier spellings in year 3 than year 2 (when they were teacher picked). I could only really see a problem in ds2's school if you had a child in infants needing to work at a secondary level or something- but that is going to be incredibly rare - and would be likely to be only in one subject. And doesn't sound the situation here.

I thought that in many schools the mixed groups were random rather than based on ability (so no difference between a year 1 in a year 1 class or a mixed year1/2 class).

Wow, this has really moved on since I posted yesterday.

OP - I guess you're probably still reading, I'm sorry you got more than you bargained . Regardless of how far ahead your DD is or isn't the school really doesn't sound like they are able to cater for her, are there really only 2 children above average ? This just doesn't seem possible - how is it graded by Ofsted?
I'd strongly suggest you look for another school if that's at all feasible for you.
Good luck.

Imarriedafrog, no snnering here. You sound well balanced and keeping perspective. Just like pixieonaleaf, despite her DS's profound giftedness. The difficulty I have is where a parent of an above-average child decides that their child needs special measures, then refuses to accept the advice of anyone who dares to suggest that normal teaching methods in the age-appropriate peer group will suffice & that there is more to education than storming through a 2b in year 1 , going on to say that this is particularly important because their child is a 'miracle'. Well aren't they all?

Mrz - I could be wrong about the 70, but I thought she said that there were 3 classes with year 1 children, one of which was mixed with year 2. So I put two and two together (possibly making a zillion!), and thought that schools wouldn't have mixed classes unless the first two were full - 30 children each - and I think the OP also said that there were 10 year 1's in her daughters. So 30 + 30 +10 =70. But i could be completely wrong on this!

pixieonaleaf - it was more abusive to the mother, Lougle, than concern for her daughter. That's why it was deleted.

I think the emphases of various posts here are illuminating. People are operating in different paradigms of what constitutes an education.

Consider the worldview of a parent who wants a good education for her child, and thus goes to the school to ask if the child can be moved forward. This is doing the right thing by the child in the parent's perspective. In others' perspectives it's a rather linear approach that doesn't take into account factors like problems with repating / coasting later on, or sideways approaches to learning more deeply in parallel with peer groups.

Consider the worldview of a parent who wants a good education for his child, so teaches the child pure maths, physics, latin, russian, french, woodwork, piano, botany, astronomy etc. outside school hours, on the grounds that these subjects would not be taught at school and should be learned regardless of what's happening in school.

The parents mean equally well. One sees the school as the provider of an education that she herself has not had. One sees education as being about more than a school can provide.

There's room for both viewpoints in the world, though the second one probably makes more happy, empowered people.
Also I'm glad that I got the second type of education, since I'd have been hideously bored in Year 3 just as much as in year 2... and all the kids would have been even bigger and even better at sport....

I'm talking about my parents here (and while praising my father's educational attitudes I am saying nothing in particular about his social attitudes as referred to in my earlier post).

I got a good education by staying in my peer group, staring out the classroom window at the trees, going to the library on weekends.
I even got it despite being massively socially handicapped by being far too dazzled by my own brilliance for my own good. All the extra subjects led me out into the world where I managed to catch up on social skills eventually

Just realised you're tortoise hell, not tortoise shell, ostrich. I hope you have never kept tortoises as pets!

It would be interesting to know how many peoples' nicknames mean something, rather than being the result of an irritated and desperate attempt to find a name nobody has used already.

ps I agree that part of the problem here is a strong difference in educational philosophy amongst various posters(and a few hurtful, personal comments).