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 it's fair to say that acceleration can sometimes work for some children. The main problem is that often it doesn't and it's not easy to tell in advance if it will or if it won't. Also, I agree that a single year skip isn't really enough for a gifted child - it's a good 'quick fix' in the early years but can then be an excuse to not make any other accommodations. After the early years though there's really not much difference in levels between adjacent year groups and a huge overlap in achievement levels across them, so a child may as well be in the regular year group.

Sorry, I wasn't clear. I went to primary school in the 1970s, when 'child-centred education' was at its height. However all too often, child-centred meant the teacher leaving us to get on with it for hours and hours, regardless of whether we wanted or needed to, and whether we were learning anything. Frankly, it was stultifyingly boring.

Many of our teachers were very young and newly qualified, and had little clue what they were doing, with hindsight. There was no accommodation for children's personalities or individualities, ironically, and I was frequently told off for being too clever by half. In the end I got very naughty at school and the head got my parents in, and apologised that they coulnd't do more for me, and arranged for me to be airlifted into a local prep school, who let me jump the waiting list. It was a lot more interesting, the other kids more interested in the same kinds of things as me, and I didn't look back really.

I think things are better for children now, but there is still a lot more that could be done for the top and bottom 10% of a class - what I would now call 'non-standard' children.

I've heard of children going up a year or two just for specific lessons (usually maths) which sounds like a great compromise!

Ps I did jump a year but I think that's never a good idea socially. I think it's rather better to let kids visit the higher class with one or two others, if they are good at a particularly subject or activity, rather than completely move up. Just because you are age 15 at reading or age 18 at maths does not mean you are necessary the same age at making friends or remembering your PE kit. That's where a lot of giften children fall down - people expect them to be brilliant at everything.

Cross posts!

I am also age 4 at typing, I think.

"Just because you are age 15 at reading o"

There's also the non-trivial problem that there's more to reading than being able to parse the sentences on the page, and the concerns of books aimed at fifteen year olds are entirely different to those aimed at ten year olds, and the differences aren't just language. It's noticeable that arguments about advancement focus around either maths, or five year olds reading as though they were eight. No-one appears willing to square up to the implications of carrying this forward, which is thirteen year olds sitting in on seminars about Sarah Kane's plays...

"Sorry, I wasn't clear. I went to primary school in the 1970s, when 'child-centred education' was at its height."

I think pretty well everyone, from every part of the political spectrum, agrees that a lot of what was done in primary schools in the 1970s was crap. I think to argue forward from that (which you're careful not to, but a lot of people do extrapolate from their own experiences) is unhelpful. One of the undercurrents of 1970s educational thinking - and I suffered mixed ability English teaching at 14 in a full-spectrum comp, so I share your pain - was a wilful refusal to accept that there are in fact differences in ability at any given point. No one rational today believes in mixed ability teaching in secondaries for any remotely academic subject, for example.

(As I've said before, a good question to ask academics who do claim that mixed ability teaching works well provided the teachers are good enough is "OK, then why do you need AAB at A Level to get into your lecture theatre?".

I agree, CloudsAway, that in some ways a particularly bright child will always be different - of course the way your brain works affects the way you interact with people. I didn't find anyone I could really talk to "on my level" about my interests until I went to university (despite going to a grammar school), but still had plenty of lovely friends I could joke with, share my feelings with and who cared about me. But as you say, you really aren't likely to fit in like a glove with a group of children several years older than you, either.

I really think you were better off in the role you describe than as the little girl in a group of older children who wondered why they wouldn't treat you as their peer when you were every bit as intelligent. Better to be looked up to than looked down on... and better to learn the patience and empathy required to help other people understand concepts that come easily to you than to look down on others as stupid and irritating little pests! The role you describe yourself as having had sounds like it was hugely beneficial to your personal development, even if it didn't help your personal intellectual advancement an awful lot.

Yes, I think it did help aspects of my personal development a lot (and probably prompted my current career!). I've always liked teaching, and helping, and listening.

On the other hand, I never really had friends at school. I remained on the outskirts, in my helping role, and never really learned how an equal frienship would work. I listened to others' troubles, but wouldn't have been able to open up myself, as it was never an equal sort of relationship, particularly in the early years. I felt different, and very shy, and it was partly this experience of not having equal friends at an early age that contributed, I think. It wasn't a lack of social skills, but rather a lack of suitable opportunities for them. I didn't really want to play/talk/do what the others were doing, exactly, as I had different interests or did things at a different level. So I learned lots of useful things about empathy and getting along with them and helping others and fitting in where you don't share interests/abilities, which was indeed very useful, but I missed out on the sort of friendship skills and intimacy that you get from equal sort of peer relationships, and that hindered me later on in school. By that point, I didn't really know how to make and keep friends, because I had only ever experienced this 'older sibling' role.

I finally met people who shared my interests and love of learning when I went to university, but then I had to learn some of the basic friendship skills that I had missed, and it was very difficult. My self-consciousness and feeling of being different had increased ten-fold as a result of always feeling out of step at school.

I think I have never quite managed to fill in some of the missing gaps socially. However, I think I would have other, different gaps if I had skipped a year. So whilst I can see the flaws in my own experience, I can see that there would have been different problems if something else had been done.

One year, I was in Year 3, and got sent to the Year 6s for literacy, as they had it at the same time. My teacher was resentful about it, the year 6 teacher was resentful, I was embarrassed and ashamed because I knew it was causing problems for them, my peers were bitter that I got to do something different. The only people in the situation who weren't unhappy, in fact, were the Year 6s that I got to sit with and work with. They liked me, I liked them, we got on well together and that part of the experience was really worthwhile. Not sure how else it could have been done differently to make any of it any better, though. It is one of these things that has pros and cons to all options.

I can't understand how people can judge that a child is exceptionally gifted at 4 or 5, often (on MN) because they can read, or add to 100. Children develop very differently throughout the primary years.

How could anyone deny their 4 year old child the opportunity to play; to socialise; to experience texture, colour, etc; to climb in and out of cardboard boxes; to make sandcastles; to zoom around on little bikes; to explore.....

.... in the interest of getting them to do harder maths (which should be differentiated within the EY provision anyway)?

Surely early childhood should be for learning about the world?

(BTW - before anyone shouts at me - I do realise that there is the child who is 1 in several thousand and exceptionally gifted.)

I too had the same helping role as Clouds. Good for developing teaching and language skills, but a little isolating.

But really I cannot see that I would have been any better off from a friendship pov by being moved in with children 3 years older than me. Why would they have wanted me for a friend? Just because we were reading the same books and could understand the same political discussions doesn't mean they wanted a baby like me tagging along when they were talking about their boyfriends. I did have a summer holiday friend who was intellectually less developed than me but a few years older: I was in many ways a baby to her (and I am very glad that I did not start experimenting early with boy friend etc just to live up to her).

Hi, CloudsAway. I think you probably would have benefited from meeting other children your age with similar interests and levels of intelligence before you got to university, although I doubt this would have cured you of your self-consciousness/introspection, because that's partly an issue of personality, not just one of experience. I can see why some people are drawn to organisations like the National Association for Gifted Children, if they feel out of place in their school environment and are looking for other people who feel likewise. Better not to mix solely with other like minds, though, if that limits you to a tiny proportion of the population - you have to learn to get along with most people at one level or another, if you want to be happy in life!

ps my father is a lot like you - has always taken on a rather nurturing role, chose a career where he could take on this sort of role, and is not much good at socialising on a purely social basis (actually, I would say chooses not to interact on this basis unless dragged along by my mother)! He needs a point to his interactions, one where he is the helper - he is very poor at sharing his own problems and worries. It's just his personality.

ps I think you are really lucky to have the ability to explain things to others - I sometimes have difficulty grasping what it is that other people don't understand when I find something easy, which would make me a hopeless teacher! I either miss out all sorts of relevant stages when explaining things, because I think they are too obvious to express, or I go into too much detail and bore everyone to tears!

I also went to primary school in the 1970s when "child-centred education" was at its height, and I loved primary school. I was given so much freedom to explore and learn, and every day brought new challenges. There was loads of hands-on learning through play and lots of space for children to work at their own pace.

It was when I got to secondary school and had to sit through more formal "academic" classes that I started to get bored, because I had already covered most of the ground at primary school - just in a far more interesting way!!

?I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.?