Shockingly bad yr 6 parents evening, DS in disgrace, what now?

[Flyonthewindscreen]

Every parents evening in DS's school career so far has been a 2 minute, he is doing well job.

At the beginning of yr 6 DS brought his first ever behave our sheet home and said he had been told off a few times but we thought he had settled down and DS was confident Mrs X would have some nice things to say about him.

Mrs X did not she said he was lazy, immature, silly, distracts others and is distracted by others, can't concentrate. He is doing the minimum of work to get by and not making an effort.

And to top it off she said and I paraphrase, that the class were the most challenging she had ever had, especially the boys who had an ethos of low aspiration and poor behaviour and it would be good when they were split in high school. This in a school meant to best in area and have never heard the class were such a nightmare from others.

Only positives that DS was a good reader and predicted to be level 5 at language, 4/5 maths, 5 sciences at end of y6 but as his reading age was 16 and his levels 4/5 at end of yr 5, surely that means little progress.

Me and DH came out of the meeting and told DS we were ashamed of him. He was in tears and saying he would turn over a new leaf. What do we do now in terms of improving the situation?

We had something similar in Y5. The teacher told any parent who would listen that this was the worst class (in behaviour terms) she had ever taught, that they were totally lacking in discipline etc etc. Pretty much everything you've said in your OP. Some parents were extremely worried about it, imposing sanctions at home and generally thinking that their previously largely well-behaved boy (the class was overwhelmingly boys) had turned into a delinquent overnight.

I was less concerned; the same teacher had taught my DD's class in Y5 and had said exactly the same things. As with DS's class, there had been no problems in previous years.

In both cases, the teachers they went on to have in Y6 had no problems and the way they described the DC you'd think they were totally different classes or had had personality transplants over the summer holidays.

In our case I think our particular Y5 teacher was a) pretty close to retirement and lacking the patience to deal with anything other than perfect children who behaved perfectly all the time and b) given to dramatic statements to make her point, which parents took literally.

I'm not saying that bad behaviour should be ignored, but do make sure that it's as bad as it's being made out before getting too upset.

All the above re behaviour but my 2p re " levels and progress" at this stage.

In a state school it's pretty much impossible to demonstrate progress at the top of the ability range. If the asessments go up to 5A and that is what the child is getting in year 4 or 5 then they will seems tio have made " no progress" when they hit a 5A at end of key stage. Clearly this isn't the case but the formal monitoring (unless they now take the level 6 papers) just can't " bean count" higher up the scale. (you do the paper, get all the q right. no way to tell how much further you could have gone with a harder paper is there?)

Given your son's levels, he must be concentrating in class.
I would ignore the teacher make your own judgement. Does he do his homework? Does he take time over it? What's his take on it?

The primary school my dd was at, took some of them to France. They didn't do a trip to France after that, citing bad behaviour by the kids. My dd, very quiet and well-behaved, told me that behaviour hadn't been bad on the trip. I believe her over the teachers, I feel it was just an excuse to get out of doing the trip.

Ds's year 6 class were a bit of nightmare, but they did behave for their teacher. There were several problems causing it

There were a lot of very bright, physically mature, autumn born boys, a lot of them already 5ft. The boys in my dds class two years later were no where near as mature physically.

The boys got blamed for everything. Girls used to wind them up and the if the boys reacted, girls shouted "Miss" boys were in trouble. Again the younger children could attack the yr 6 boys, but they yr 6 boys were always the ones told off because they were "older". This was mainly the dinner ladies but the boys ended up very disgruntled because everything was their fault. Their teacher was very good with them and their behavior was good in class, but the dinner ladies were the main offenders. We had a letter home about the boys behavior in the french class(different teacher), but the girls had behaved badly as well and nothing was mentioned.

I am hoping this will be a wake up call for DS. I am going to speak to the teacher on Monday and ask for a home/school report book with sanctions at home, also say given DS' levels at the end of y5 we will be expecting and pushing for excellent end of y6 levels. Not sure re talking to head at this point it seems quite extreme. I might talk to the deputy head who is also my DD's teacher and taught DS in y4 to get her take on things. Still mystified about how a child whose end of y5 report was all positives apart from "can be a little chatty" can turn into such a nightmare so fast.

Hmm, sounds like teacher trying to nip the usual Y6 sillyness in the bud in a very heavy handed way.

Very lazy to get the parents to have a go at their children rather than handling it together. Likely to be the wrong parents who come down in their DCs hard.

Y6s need to feel some advantages in being the oldest as well as being expected to work hard.

It really is a balancing act of mutual respect. For all the bravo they are still children. They still have a child's black and white idea of fairness. If they think their teacher is being unfair they will lose all respect for them.

No amount if parental input will stop Y6s thinking their teacher or HT is a total prat if, in their model of the world he is.

Work with Y6 and they are your greatest asset, get it wrong and they are a nightmare.

As parents our job is to ensure they get reasonable SATs results and continue to enjoy going to school and enjoy learning.

This means nodding and agreeing the dinner lady is a idiot and explaining that the HT has to back his staff. It doesn't mean that a 10y won't still think the HT was wrong to tell them off.

And in truth the Y6s are right, why should adult niceties get in the way of justice.

They are children they have years to learn the world isn't always just.

"The boys got blamed for everything"

I have a Y5 DS, who is well behaved likes the teacher's approval and even he says that the, largely female, staff always blame the boys if there is any trouble. He has correctly deduced that some of the girls are more adept at negotiating their way around situations including deflecting blame.

I'm sure your DS has had the wake up call necessary but I'm surprised that you knew nothing before parents evening. Nothing at parents evening should be a surprise to the parent. His teacher should have raised any concerns early on so it could be nipped in the bud.

I wouldn't be too heavy handed on the home sanctions. It is very easy to overreact when a teacher draws attention to your child. You know him.

Back the school up but keep some sense of proportion.

Definitely a sense of proportion.

I helped at a school where one boy was always in trouble at school. He told me his mum had removed all his privileges at home too. I got the feeling he felt if everyone thought he was naughty, he might as well be naughty.