Moving up a class in a state school

[Comfy55]

My September born son just started Reception at a state-run primary a week ago and already I am very concerned. The problem is that he's been in a private run nursery for the past two years and he is quite advanced for his year group. He reads competently, does very well at addition, subtraction and even multiplication and division, writes short stories etc etc. Since he's been at school all they have done is had a couple of books read to them, they have played in water and sand and done some colouring. Although this is all good for learning via play etc. I am very concerned about his academics and given his personality I know he will soon tire of this and start getting distracted. I am thinking he probably needs to be assessed by the school and perhaps moved up a year. His nursery school teachers advised me to try and pursue this before he left nursery but I have no idea what the process is and if it is even possible. Has someone being through this and what is the process? Or is it better to leave him where he is as he has started making friends.

I think if we can as parents teach our children one thing it's that school plays a tiny part in education.
I failed GCSE sciences by 2 marks and that shaped my whole career and life for 15 years. I've now gone back and proven to myself I am actually quite good at Maths and Science and it's never too late to learn.
I want mine to be challenging themselves every day for the rest of their lives, so if they spend a year in the sand pit age 4/5 then that's ok surely ?

Oh FGS Florence nobody is saying that! you're seeing hostility and resentment where there is none.

the points people are making are that:

• one week into reception is far too early to make any kind of decision like this.

• apart from in extreme circumstances, acceleration isn't the best option because reception is a valuable year, due to the emphasis on play.

sorry Florence but you are reading things which aren't there.

Algebra you are treating all the children as the same not individual. Some children start school at 5 never having attended nursery therefore a year of play is useful. OP son is already 11 months older than some of his class and has spent 2 YEARS at nursery playing already !!!
yes maybe he is the extreme circumstance. And she is not moving him next week, cosidering it, which would take a copuple of terms, i would think, to assess how he is doing etc etc.
What are the extreme circumstances you would move a child up ?
And for what its worth I would not have moved any of my children up but im not OP.

and if you read my thread earlier - you would have seen that generations of children spent only one term in reception. Can you provide a link to the evidence that those children are less rounded individuals. I would be interested to read it.

Thinking putting your child up a year will automatically result in less boredom is seriously misunderstanding the education process, imo. Keeping an exceptionally bright child engaged is far trickier than that.

I think the point a lot of people are trying to make, FlorenceMattel, is that the comments about boredom often seem to come from the parents and not from the children themselves, and that you should never impute boredom on your child just because you personally think they aren't being stretched enough. My uncle has still not forgiven his mother for that - he ended up at Cambridge at the age of 17 (having waited for a couple of years to be old enough to be allowed to go), surrounded by men who had done their National Service. He was miserable, did not ultimately do well in his degree, and became quite poisonous towards his mother in later years for viewing his brain as more important than the rest of him. There was only one way he ever felt he could please her. She thought she was doing what was best for him - I'm not sure she ever asked him about it, though. In other words, even if he had been bored with his own age group (and I suspect he was, so something had to be done about it...), moving him up until he was suitably academically stretched clearly wasn't the best policy.

Yes, this is obviously different to a child who is bright enough to go up just one year and is already a September birthday in any event, but the same applies - don't push for something your child doesn't even appear to be asking for, the consequences of which you haven't in any event fully thought through. Maybe it would work OK for this child, but you really can't tell in the first few weeks of their school career, however amazingly tuned in you think you are as a mother.

rabbitstew I agree with all of what you have said.
And did say at the beginning of the tread that I would reccomend a gap year, never send a 17 year old to uni imo.
And yes I know alot of parents think a child is brighter than they are. But the OP said that the nursery had also said this.
Having a son who was not engaged at primary school alot of the time. I never realised how bright he was until he went to secondary school and was put on a gifted programme. At primary school I think some of his teacher thought he was being sarcstic when he questioned some things, but very bright children do question everything. Im sure most teachers are very good but there are still some who are not and dont recognise and know how to teach very bright children.

extreme circumstances I guess would be really major giftedness - many years ahead. but even then it isn't necessarily the best option, Pixie's DS is around 7 years ahead and he's doing just fine without acceleration (sorry for seeming like a stalker Pixie!) and though OP's DS sounds very clever, being able to read and do sums isn't 'profound' giftedness or whatever they call it.

as for the assertion that I'm somehow treating all children the same well the whole point of reception is that it doesn't do that.

Florence, there is no hostility.

We are just pointing out the obvious: that a mother should not decide that a child is going to be bored before it has even happened. Particularly since so many bright children (including many competent readers) do thrive in Reception and thoroughly enjoy the learning through play.

Also that a decision should not be made until it is totally clear what will happen to the child later: will he move up to secondary school a year early? And what about university? What will happen if there is a gap when no educational establishment wants him?

May I add that it is highly unlikely that nursery staff are qualified to offer an opinion on what should be happening when a child goes to school; that is not their area of expertise.

Now if the teacher thinks so, that might be different. But still leaves the other queries.

People are not necessarily hostile because they have a different opinion.

" I guess would be really major giftedness - many years ahead. "

Is there any reason to believe that children who are early learners end up any better at 25 than anyone else? To take the classic example of Ruth Lawrence, she's had a distinguished academic career in mathematics, but no more so than many other people who go to Oxbridge and do a PhD. P=NP is still standing...

Florence it sounds like your DS was very unlucky with the teachers he had. of course this may be the case with OP's DS, but again, there's no way OP can know this within a week! if her DS keeps complaining of boredom, then of course something should be done, but one week in is ridiculously early.

My daughter in a private nursery where the norm a few years ago was for the children to be reading before they left. Now the staff have to stick to the early learning curriculum and shy away from teaching the children to read per se.

A lot of children peak early and then what? The OP's child will be out of peer group and possibly face being kept back.

If the child falls into the genius category there's a lot the OP can do to challenge him - teach him programming (very logical and as challenging as he wants it to be), learn an instrument etc. I wouldn't focus on the academic side for now.

yes I agree Algebra maybe my son was unlucky. and also I believe nowdays gifted children are classified as having special educational needs at primary. So should receive a more individual education.
And no ealry learner dont necessarily end up any brighter than other children who learn at a later age. But what a shame if they are bored at school. And yes hear what you are all saying maybe OP son not bored mother perceives he is.

You can't have read the OP properly FLorence, the mother has not said that she perceives that the son is bored. She used the future tense, not the present. Big difference.

agree about nurseries often being inaccurate BTW, have read many threads about this.

I was gifted, and primary school did my head in, it was so silly. Hours and hours playing in a sandpit with sand too dry to make anything decent with. Kids who simply couldn't read or talk or anything. Stupid poster paints and massive brushes that made creative expression impossible. But I didn't actually realise it was supposed to be interesting. It was just somewhere you got sent every day. I think that's why the comments tend to come from the parents. Kids don't realise the bigger picture.

In most countries there is more flexibility with moving kids up and down years - but in England it is very exceptional to not be in your year group.

When my DD was doing so badly I was desperate to keep her back in reception but couldn't. Now a few years on I can see the advantages of this system.

1. She is still very behind in Y3 - but actually she'd probably be on the bottom table in Y2 as well. So I'd rather she is on the bottom table of Y3 and feels good about herself then being on the bottom table of Y2 and it would be even more noticeable.

1. Because kids aren't pushed up or down teachers are expected to differentiate properly. I think in countries where kids can be made to repeat a year etc the teachers don't differentiate nearly as well as they do here.

1. Socially and emotionally she's in the right year group. She would find the kids a year younger than her (like her brother) very babyish. And while I suppose she'd cope, I'm even more glad that she's got friends who are her own age - because she's learning loads of age appropriate stuff from them and is being challenged in all sorts of ways by them.

BoffinMum - what point are you trying to make? That your parents didn't realise how miserable you were at school? That you should have skipped primary school altogether? That the teachers should have put a bit of water in the sand and provided better paintbrushes? That no-one explained the point of school to you? That you didn't make more effort to get something out of your primary education? That your life was ruined by the experience? That as a result of your primary education, you failed to achieve at secondary level and dropped out? That you appeared perfectly well adjusted and happy to your parents, but actually weren't?...

ps I know some children switch off and tune out when they are bored by school. But I would have thought that would be obvious to the parents and teachers in anything but an awful school, and that they would react to that, not to the belief that this is going to happen before the child has shown any signs of such behaviour.

I can't understand how any parent would want their child to miss reception! All those bikes in the playground - all that splashing in puddles! I often find my children wistfully staring out of the window, when the little ones are outside.

Fancy wanting your child to move up a year, when they'd have to sit down and write for several more long hours a week!

In the meantime.........

I'm not always convinced that the social skills aspects of staying with peer groups are as great as they sound. If you are easily ahead and enjoy learning, you are often considered in a slightly different way by your peers anyway. Not in the 'nerdy' sort of way that happens later on in school, which IS more a matter of social skills, and it's important to learn to get on with similar aged peers regardless of whether you like different things, but in a more subtle way in the early years - you are just seen as being like an older child to them. In early years, other children would come to me to have something read to them, I was always the one who did the peer tutoring and the helping and the explaining. I don't know that it helped me learn anything better by explaining it, as I did have a perfectly good grasp already, but I enjoyed being the helper, and was good at it, always did peer tutoring programs, etc. Never got taught anything extra myself, really, just picked up what was done in class without needing much instruction, and then could help the others. And that was all fine, except that I wasn't quite seen as a peer by the other children. They liked me, I liked them, but we had different interests, and I had a different role, somehow, and didn't always get to play with them like age-equals as a result - I was someone that you came to for help, or whose attention they might have wanted in the way that you like it when an older sibling comes to play. I was seen by them like I wasn't part of the same class, and it does affect social interaction in a subtle way. I was 11.5 months older than some of the children, but it felt like more at times. And it just made me very different.

I don't know that moving up a year would have helped either, so I'm not saying that is necessarily a good solution. Just, that it's not always such a given that keeping a child with age-matched peers will result in normal social interactions anyway. You ARE different if you are far ahead, and more than just academically.

I know a child who is also several years behind academically, and she is also not really having normal social interactions with her peer group. They know she is different too, and it's not that they are trying to exclude her or treat her differently or anything, but she simply fits in better and prefers to play with those who are somewhat younger (not as young as her academic level, of course, but a year or two younger than her actual age group). Her academic difficulties have also ended up keeping her interests in some ways at the level of a slightly younger child too. So she also doesn't have entirely normal friends in her year group, and ends up not really fitting in academically or socially.

No easy answers, but it's definitely not the case that a child will just automatically fit in with the social group of their age-matched peers, especially in primary school. Perceptions of that child as 'a helper/teacher' or 'someone needing help' mean that they can take on those roles and just end up being treated differently anyway.