Skipping a year. WWYD?

[jenniferalisonphillipasue]

My dd is in year one at a very small school where the classes are mixed. She is a winter birthday and one of the oldest in her year. They work in ability groups and she has been doing her work with the Year Twos who are mainly summer birthdays. Last week they did some SATS papers for practice and dd scored 2a's.
Her teacher spoke to me and asked how I would feel about her skipping year 2 and going straight into year 3 which is in a different classroom. I don't really know what to do. She has friends in both year groups but I don't want her to feel socially alienated. I also don't want to push her too hard but don't want her to be bored either.

Does anyone have any experience of making this kind of decision?

Thanks

iThe point people are missing is that it is a very small school..There might be only 4 or 5 children in a year group and you don't necessarily get the spread of age and ability.It might be that the OPs daughter is only a few weeks younger than all the y2s and 10 months older than everyone else in her actual year group.In small schools situations like this do happen a lot and staff have to be a lot more flexible.
However I wouldbe concerned if the plan is to send your DD to high schoool a year early simply because she isn't ahead enough for it to be in her best interests.
I think I would be inclined to move her up there for now and see how things pan out.Children develop in fits and starts and in another year or 2 may be others in her year group who have caught up or even overtaken her.You just can't tell

I think the issue is that it is a very small school too! That's why I prefer my children to be at larger schools.

If you move her up I would be worried that her relationships with the children in year 3 would change. My DC have all had friendships with children outside their "age group" but these would have changed if the child had been accelerated to join them.

Your DD is also not that far ahead! At my DCs school probably 40% are at that kind of level at that age.

If she was very very bright, the issue is that accelerating one year might not be enough to challenge her, in the medium to long term. If she isn't very very bright, then what happens if she has a blip and is suddenly finding the work too hard?
That is excluding the social issues.

Thinking longer term, if the school is having to accelerate your 'averagely bright' child at this point (a course of action normally recommended only to the extremely bright, and really quite rare in today's primary schools), are you sure that they will be able to meet her needs properly through KS2?

Also, you will be faced with a bg dilemma in Y6 / 7. If the secondary school refuses to take her early, then she will have to repeat Y6 in a school that sounds as if it is unliklely to be able to meet her needs well if she remains 'above average'. However, if she remains in her 'accelerated year', then she may well be only average, or even below, in that year, despite being 'above average' in her current year.

If she were 3-4 years above the level expected for her year, that would be slightly different - i do know a very successfully-accelerated child, but they were 5-6 years ahead in maths and well ahead in other subjects. But she only appears 'unusual' because her current cohort is small, in a noram cohort she would simnply be 'one of the brighter group'.

teacher genuine question. Why is it that accelerating a child that us really above their year, by 3 or 5 years be ok to do but bit if it's by just one year?
I would have thought that all the issues a child would have to integrate themselves socially would be there regardless if the number if years they are ahead with.

It's a balance of harm issue, really.

It would always be better socially, in the English system, for a child to be educated in their own year group with good differentiation However, the difficulty of delivering the right education for that child gets greater as the distance from the 'norm' gets greater, and at 3, 4 , 5 years either side of that norm - ie genuine outliers - it becomes more possible that delivering an appropriate education won't happen all the time, or will happen to a more limited extent.

So for those outliers - like the pre-verbal 9 year old I taught who had been held back a year, or the 9 year old doing GCSE level maths, the balance of 'educational harm' vs 'social good' switches.

Exactly where it switches does depend a little on the school and the child. Both the outliers iI mention were socially unusual anyway, and their lack of integration was likely to be as acute in their 'altered' year as in their 'normal' year. I Had another child in the same class as ther 9 year old who was almost equally delayed in terms of their learning, but was mucgh more socially integrated into their year group, and in that case the change of year would not have been appropriate.

In the OP's case, because of the size of the school and the apparent low ability of both the Y1 and Y2 cohorts (as OP says that her DD was higher even than the Y2s), if she were to stay in that school forever, it might be appropriate to accelerate her because she is 3-4 years ahead of her 'age peers'. The problem arises because she is not very far ahead of any more representative group of age peers, in fact in line with up to half in other schools, and so problems of transition become acute. To be put up a year and then to be behind her peers in the new year once in a larger and more representative group would seem to me to be a very difficult situation.

I was accelerated a year, as I said earlier. However, I remained top of my new year group, even in a highly selective school and then university environment.... but even so, I would have benefitted from NOT being accelerated.

Interesting stuff. I was accelerated myself and was very happy with it. YY to the fact I was still top if the class but I was also very much on the same level socially with my peers. I was always more at ease talking with adults as a child so if I had been left with my 'original' age group I probably would gave struggled to fit. Tbh I did struggle to fit with my accelerated group too in that I was still more comfortable with older children anyway at least all through primary and the start of secondary. I think that differences weren't as noticeable when I reached 15~16yo.

What I always thought though is that when you move and grow up with a group of children that are a bit more 'advanced' you tend to blend in that group and probably mature a bit more quickly.
So a child that is accelerated but is from September, beg of October won't have much more problems/differences that the one burn in August. He/she will grow within that peer group and will 'mature' within that group. I would see that as a much bigger issue if that child was accelerated by 2 or 3 years because then it is clear the differences in maturity won't be minimal but really huge and noticeable.

So my September born dc would have been very well integrated with the class a year ahead. He was when he was on a mixed level class. And still would now both on an academic pov and on a social pov.
For the OP the question is much harder because it us possible that her dd isnt actually that ahead if she was in a more 'academic' school. But from the setting it will be difficult to know how mature she is compare to her peers too.

It's worth thinking also about the new curriculum coming in.

I went to a curriculum change briefing last night (am a school governor) and the advisor was telling us that they are stepping back from advancing high ability children.

The new curriculum is based on an end of key stage assessment which shows if a child is 'secondary ready'. Once a child has reached 'secondary readiness', regardless of their age/year, they will be encouraged 'to apply their knowledge across a variety of areas' to allow them to go to secondary school with those skills and knowledge embedded firmly. They will not be taught 'upwards' (as the current NC allows for with the introduction of the L5/L6 tests). The focus is shifted to that 'sideways development' of children instead of 'upwards' development.

That may have implications for your DD.

If she is in Year 1 now, and ahead of the Year 2s, and gets moved up a year, then she'll potentially be 'secondary ready' for two or even three years before she goes to secondary school (if the LA then insist that she remains with her chronological year group for transition to secondary school).

Lougle- slightly alarmed by your post below. It sounds as though the new curriculum will introduce glass ceilings, beyond which children are prevented from progressing. For the most able this is surely going to lead to frustration. Extension and broadening is fine but progression must be allowed, and how can you artificially stop it. I agree there is a point about pushing average children to achieve artificially high levels without ensuring a solid understanding, effectively setting them up to fail at secondary school.
Will this apply to KS1 too ie no upwards progress beyond equivalent skills of level 2? In which case DS1 would be scuppered. He's in year 1 and can confidently do all the level 2 stuff- did practise SATS paper with year 2 and scored a 2A. He loves to find out new things, move on, and gets concepts very quickly. Some things he seems just to 'get' innately. Literacy is the same- he is reading himself Harry Potter (the first one) at the moment... And I mean reading not decoding, with inference, comprehension etc.
I really don't think it's reasonable to give the message to children that they have reached a certain level and they have to wait for an arbitrary age/ year group before they are allowed access to anything new.

I had the same reaction than you abby.... Not that teachers have been able to push dc1 at all...
His Y5 teacher seem to have gone for that idea already- stretching side ways. It still means that he is bored most if the time and then is missing some points as he isn't as attentive as he should.
But they will still do lots of practice for SATS so that's ok.

The assessment process isn't very clear right now, Abby, but teachers will continue to teach.

Another thing that's worth noting is that the new curriculum in the core subjects is more demanding and certainly in maths, the curriculum is moving 'down' - as in things that would have been introduced in year 3 are being introduced in year 2, etc.