Do I need to consider private schooling or keep hassling the school?

[finefatmama]

This is a rather lengthy one so please bear with me.

DS2 5yrs attends reception in an oversubscribed catholic school (DH's preference not mine) but I don't think the school is working well for him.

Since starting reception, his teacher has complaining about his refusal to spend 80% of his time playing. He sneaks back indoors to turn on the interactive whiteboard or computer thus refusing to follow instructions. He's a september baby and bigger than most of the kids so he plays roughly with them (he also does martial arts) etc. He eventually got the class reward cuddly toy because he didn't have to be told off over the course of the day.

He now thinks of himself as a naughty kid but claims he can't help it (I don't believe that). During parents evenings, she usually has odd feedback ('he can read the whole word but can't sound out the individual parts when I ask him to break it down', 'you haven't taught him x' - often said smugly, 'when I left the class to go for my lunch he scattered the contents of my filing cabinet which I forgot to lock', 'he can count to hundred but most kids learn this by rote at home and don't know what these numbers mean so that doesn't mean he's brilliant', 'no he can't be extended because I have 30 kids to deal with and some don't even know the alphabet which is a priority', 'I know he's bored but I can't give him more work as it HAS to be 80% play for all our children', 'He has poor social skills which is why he won't go out and play' - very smug look). He once had a supply teacher who allowed him to work on the whiteboard and rewarded him for doing a correct sum which resulted in a negative number but according to him, his regular teacher would have told him off.

We have been working with him at home and he has just started year 3 maths and is currently reading Through the Looking Glass and Horrid Henry. We were ok with doing the extra work at home and trying to convince him that the teacher probably didn't mean that he's no good.

Most of the supervision is done by dad who works 9.30am -2.30pm about a mile from home. Fortunately and unfortunately following events at work, he's been promoted to a full time role in London and his current role is no more. We are now very concerned about leaving him to the mercy of the school. They have't been v helpful and have hinted that they are oversubscribed anyway and will have some kids waiting to take his place. our local authority has a shortage of primary school places already so a transfer is unlikely. If we keep fighting the school, we may end up making enemies instead of gaining allies.

We are now wondering if we should tighten our belts and pay for a good independent school where he would be taught at the right level, have access to sports activities, music lessons (dad currently takes him to flute lessons as the school dont allow for under 8s to learn instruments) etc. Or am I just romanticinsing the private school idea?
What other course of actions can anyone advise that we take to ensure a good education? We moved here to get DS1 into a very good special school and I'm not sure if we can keep the special school place if we move to a nearby LEA.

Could you spend more time at home on playdates etc? I guess it is hard with dc1 but do you have a good friend with dc who could invite ds2 to
Tea and model good social skills? Could you take ds2 and a friend swimming or to soft play? Does ds2 get a break from ds1? It sounds like you really need to work on his social skills, especially of he doesn't seem to be supported in that area at school. And you could check out his phonic knowledge yourself too.

Would second mrz's tentative suggestion of Asperger's, especially with the genetic link your older ds's diagnosis gives. My Asperger's ds was not that far advanced to be so 'bored' in reception but he was very focussed on maths and science facts, could read well but not good at phonics, also have had incidents with him correcting the teacher and the obvious poor social skills; he doesn't see the 'point' of playtime.

It doesn't seem like the right approach would be to stretch him further with his academic abilities without tackling social and behaviour skills which seem more underdeveloped. I would be asking for assessment from whichever direction you could get it - approaching school and HV/GP simultaneously.

If it truly is not the case that he is on the autistic spectrum, you do need to be looking at joint strategies for improving his behaviour in the classroom, as well as, on the other hand, not accepting school's reluctance to differentiate for him academically. Maybe (hopefully) the Yr 1 teacher will be more empathetic to the abilities he does have, 'superficial' or not!

Boffin, you could be right. But we're talking about five year olds. It's not going to be a very long conversation about the square root of minus two.

I was wondering that too mrz, especially since his older brother is autistic. Granted it is something of a sore point for me ATM (recently discovered I am an Aspie myself and my life would certainly have been better if somebody had noticed in childhood) but that did spring to mind. Either way he seems like he's struggling socially and needs help before it gets worse.

I was very precocious and probably came across as a right little know it all but I don't think I was ever told off for it - that isn't on IMO, unless he was genuinely rude and calling them stupid or something.

I think it's a :( 5yo that doesn't enjoy spending most of his time playing & socialising.

Definitely look carefully at private schools; what you expect from schools you won't find in the state sector.

learnandsay
out of interest,how would you tackle the golden ratio with a reception child, even a bright one?

And I also think that free play should include academic learning if that's what the child wants to do - I was certainly doing my own little projects when I found playing with others too overwhelming. But again if he is refusing to do an activity then that is not really ok.

I was also wondering about Aspergers. You sad that DS2 was part of an autism study at 20 months?

said

I'd start with www.amazon.co.uk/The-Rabbit-Problem-Emily-Gravett/dp/0330503979/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1339344664&sr=1-1 Greythorne

I agree that the school is not living up to what I would believe would be the very basic level of care/education, (and the comments you highlighted are definitely awful) and it does sound as if the relationship between parent and teacher (whole school) is very broken. This relationship is so important, I wouldn't stay at a school where I felt so judged and unsupported but I have a feeling this is a complicated issue with lots of different things being rolled into one. As a slightly neurotic mum myself I know how emotive all these things are and how sometimes we stop hearing what is being said and start hearing the things that upset us most.

As someone whose 5 year old DS (with distinct ASD traits) taught himself to add and subtract negative numbers while learning through play in a perfectly normal State reception classroom, I would suggest that, perhaps, the OP's son's inability to play and interact socially following normal social norms is holding his learning back as well. All DS needed was a corner, a friend, a whiteboard, a map of the world and a large piece of card where World Cup scores were posted (by him) every day... and from that and a basic understanding of the concept of goal difference he was away...

Year 1, with its introduction of fomalised whole class learning, was where it all went a bit pear-shaped - but learning through play, with its lack of limits, is perfect for very able children.

As a friend of mine with an extraordinarily able but socially awkward child once put it 'what the school needs to do is not more advanced maths, but more remedial empathy'....

I like your post littlemai, especially the last sentence.

Whether he is bright or not imo is irrelevant. If a school doesn't suit a child it is as simple as that. Op, as it has already been stated even private schools can get it wrong and be unsuitable for a child. There is only one way that you can be 100% sure that your dc gets the education you want and that is to home educate. This may not be possible for you but it is a fact, so bearing this in mind sometimes you have to just go with the flow, or visit lots of schools and see what they offer.

My dad taught me about the golden ratio at that age after I fell deeply in love with Donald in Mathemagic Land, and was particularly taken with the Fibonacci sequence :o he may have then used a spreadsheet to show the convergence...

What's remedial empathy?

I've found reading the introduction to some books has been enough for some of my class to ask to borrow the book for home

Fuzzpig, apologies for shorthand.

Said child was extraordinarily good at maths, had great difficulty with social interactions partly because they found it very hard to see someone else's point of view or read their emotions (classic Aspie stuff).

The parent could have said 'the school needs to do more and more hard maths with my child', but instead chose to ask them to work on the social stuff he had great difficulty with - ie to work on empathy at a 'remedial (much lower than chronological age)' level rather than work on maths at an 'extraordinarily advanced' level.

ooops wrong thread sorry ignore 17:35 post

Interesting post. It sounds like his and your relationship with the class teacher is rather dysfunctional. Maybe you need to just see this half term out and then start afresh with Y1 teacher. Think what your priorities are for him at the moment as well. If you can afford it certainly look round the private schools and see if you think they would suit him better, they may, they may not... I think the suggestion about helping him improve his social skills is good and giving him a bit of space from DS1 from time to time. Get him to invite a friend over for tea etc.

It seems he is not behaving that well in his YR class, but I can see that this may be due partly to the bad relationship you and he have with the teacher who perhaps hasn't really understood your son's needs.

I am rather surprised by having a tutor for a 5 year old- I have same age DS. We tend to challenge DS ourselves- rather like your DH does I guess, although it is always in an informal round the dinner table type manner rather than any formal stuff. My son also is interested and knows about some of the number concepts as yours. DS has taught him all sorts of stuff about science that he was interested in too .

Not wanting to play is surely not normal- even for the brightest. As others say could he be on the Autistic spectrum, not as marked at your other DS but with needs that the school need to give support too rather than see him as naughty as you have said.

phew...I was trying to work it out mrz!

actually it was wrong forum

mrz you are a demigod on the primary education board and I bow to your superior knowledge in all respects except this :o

Infinity can be a number, cardinal or ordinal. It's usually covered in the final undergraduate year of a maths degree or the first postgrad. It would be sloppy to write it, but it's the kind of thing you might say, as a shorthand for "countable infinity" when you're doing infinite cardinal arithmetic. It isn't an integer, and it isn't a natural number, but once you define numbers (as sets of particular types of sets), "infinity", written as omega is certainly a number. Of course, it would be sloppy to write, as there are infinitely many infinities but you could say it quite legitimately if you're referring to the smallest of the infinite numbers.

Still, good advice mrz