No sense of where my child is in the class

[Enjoyingmycoffee1981]

I was very anxious about my August born son starting school this year. As it turns out, it has been fine. I am actually gob smacked at his progress. Before school, he knew how handful of letters, no sounds and blotchy counting.

Now he is reading!!!! Not everything obviously, not even close, but if he doesn't recognise the word by sight, he can sound it out and then gets it.

I would love to know how this compares with other children in his class. I want to know if he is doing well for a summer born, or if he is doing well. Period.

I have asked the teacher and she said, yes he is doing very well, but it is a large busy school and that was the sum total of our conversation.

So I would be keen on your thoughts.

He is 4.5, he recognises all letters of the alphabet, he can sound them all out, he can identify a number of words without needing to sound them out e.g. It, is, the, and, go, on, no etc. He can read most 3/4 letter words by sounding them out.

It is this doing ok, or is this just doing ok for a summer born?

Thanks v much

We've had numerous children transfer into our school who were apparently "average" only for teachers to immediately raise concerns

Funny how some people get so het up about 'summer born' babies and how they are doing at school. It never occurred to me to even think about this as an issue. Kids learn stuff when they're ready and unless they really are having problems, what's the big deal? 2 of mine were youngest in their year and the third was a December baby. Didn't make a jots worth of difference (but then I wasn't even thinking about it). I do remember overhearing a conversation between form teacher and another parent demanding to know where her child was in the class ranking (they were in Reception at the time) - I wrote her off a crazy bee-atch.

Statistically birth month does make a significant difference in education.

Bmo, when does it stop mattering?

Statistics may change when summer borns receive the same time in school as their older peers but starting a term or two terms later has always meant that they were playing catch up from their first day in school.

It doesn't benfold, sadly. From a statistical perspective, summer borns, especially boys, pay an 'age' penalty all the way through to GCSEs. You'll get loads of people saying 'ah but my summer born did fine', but as a cohort, that is still the position. My understanding is that this doesn't happen to anything like the same extent in countries where children start school later. It suggests that some children are being written off/writing themselves off at an early age, which is pretty depressing for the parents of summer-borns (or worse, boys like mine who due to prematurity are in the year above where their original due date put them).

Yes, birth month does make a difference. The evidence is overwhelming. Something like 60% of Oxbridge graduates were born in the first quarter of the school year; a study by the Institute of Education at London University found that by the age of seven, just over 70% of the children born in September were in a top stream, compared with fewer than 30% of those born in August. About 30% of August-born children were in the bottom stream, compared with about 10% of September-born youngsters.

And it's not just academia, in the sports arena too. A story if the birth dates of professional American footballers revealed that the overwhelming majority were born in the first quarter of the school year. Of course the older of the school year were bigger earlier than the younger boys, hence giving them an advantage at school, more the spent doing the sport, therefore got better.

So the likes of clobbered... dismissing the the very sensible premise that a just turned four year old might not be so ready to learn as a child 11.5 months older than them and the knock on effects that may have on confidence etc., are very short sighted. But I guess if it didn't even occur to you clobbered, then it is unlikely you will give a flying fig about the research.

As for the rest of the comments, thank you. Lots of food for thought. I won't ask the teacher, I will just wait and see how the year pans out. It is such a relief to see him enjoying school and progressing, when I had been anxious.

The evidence from the U.S. shows that the principles attached to sports doesn't transfer to education.

Not according to this... www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18084635

A recent study tracked over 900 American kids from kindergarten through the third grade. Researchers found that kids who were younger at kindergarten entry got lower teacher ratings in language, literacy, and math. And years later—in the third grade—these younger kids were still doing a bit worse than their older peers.

But I obviously love to hear research that suggests otherwise. So please let me know where you found out that the situation in sports in the US doesn't transfer to education

JanuaryBlues

It still gives one an idea, and most people have friends with dc at different schools, all different abilities.
Its part of the jigsaw and is helpful to know.

Actually IME lots of people don't have friends with DC in different schools (in areas where everyone goes to the local school) and if they do they don't tend to sit and compare reading abilities, or at least not in any way that allows for sensible comparison.
In Year 1 my DS was in group 3 of 5, at the same stage DD was in group 1 of 5. Who would you say was the better reader?

I don't think it helps to know in YR. Ds1 is an August born. Where he was in relation to his peers in reception has no relevance to where he is in relation to his peers now. It wasn't until year 2 that things clicked for him and he is now near the top of his class.
My winter born dd is in Year 2 now. Since reception she has been top of the class. However she has a very young year group and I fully expect some of them to catch her up in the forthcoming years.

Enjoyingmycoffee & all:

First off: summer borns. I think summer borns (or birthdays closer to end of school year) are recognised to be at a something of a disadvantage initially - and I agree with those posts that say research is starting to suggest that this cohort (as a whole) perform slightly (just slightly) worse than those with birthdays earlier in the school year.

Obvious explanation: If you are more able to express yourself, if you are in better physical control of your body & emotions, if you are more able to cope with a long & demanding school day - the transition to formal education in Year R is less of a shock. If however, you're slightly younger and find it a struggle you're learning that school is difficult and that you find it a struggle and I'd suggest that learning that 'mindset' is part of the problem for 'summer born' pupils.

Second: How is my child doing compared to classmate? Absolutely agree with those that have posted - it really isn't important how they're doing in the class but how they're doing against national targets. This poster lists the various types of progress against a scale of 1-9 (1 least able - 9 most able) for EYFS: www.esbjerginternationalschool.dk/images/eyfs_scale.pdf - by looking at this you can get a sense of where your child is at - remember that Year R is the last year of EYFS and that from Year 1 they move to the national curriculum. As others have posted in rather an own goal, the DfE has decided to abandon National Curriculum Levels and leave it to individual schools to develop their own marking systems. Some form of National Curriculum Level will be used in testing end of Y2 (KS1 SATs) and end Year 6 (KS2 SATs) - so my advice goign forward is find out what there system's scores mean in terms of SATs Level achievement.

So as others have suggested here possibly better to ask the teacher how is DC doing for children at this stage - below where he should be/ about where he should be, ahead of where he should be? That will give you a sense of how your child is doing that you can work with. However, I will add that some schools avoid any substantive feedback to parents (when it isn't great news) and tend to just always say your child is doing well - so balance these 'statements' against your own observations. (i.e. DD1 was not able to play a board game with her friends at age 7 - she couldn't read the cards, so they read them for her and she struggled to work out how far to move her piece forward, so they helped her. Nobody teased her, they were very sweet about it, but over that half-hour it became painfully obvoius that her friends from nursery where streets ahead of her and I knew there was a problem although for 3 years the school had been saying always was lovely/ she was a pleasure to teach/ etc...).

When you get into Year 1 your child will move over to the new national curriculum - and you can find information on what he should be doing & when here: www.gov.uk/government/collections/national-curriculum - scroll down and select specific areas English/ Maths/ etc... for detailed information by school year.

My personal advice (having been through this completely with DD1 (now Y7) and nearly done with DD2 - now Year 5) is be aware of what in theory should be covered (and presumably) mastered in a given school year. If your school doesn't teach long division (our primary felt this was better left to senior school for example) - and you feel hey this should be learned now - and it says so on the National Curriculum - you can do something about it. It may be you complain to the school, it may be you just quietly do something at home - but being aware of what your child should be doing does help ensure your child will be where s/he should be.

HTH

My dd is 1 sept so you can't get any older than that she started reception not really knowing any letters but could write her name. I would say she is at the same level as your ds. She went to a very free play preschool whilst some of her friends went to school nurserys and were already reading. It all depends on so much at this age!

Thanks all so much.

Pastsellbydate, very interesting.

I have to concede, I do have something of the tiger mum about me. Add that feature of me to the fact that my boy is August born, makes me fierce simply protective of him and so I can see that to some it might seem OTT, but really it's just an anxious mother who's first child has just started school and she is kicking herself that she didn't think about birth into before she started ttc.

As a teacher I've met many August born high fliers and just as many September born strugglers

Your DS may be well above average for the class - however, in a low achieving cohort that may still put him below average nationally. Equally your DS may be below average in the class, but in a very high achieving cohort he could still be above average nationally.

This.

If the teacher says he's bang in the middle of that particular class-would that make you happy?

While there are a few classes made up of very bright kids , and a few made up of underachievers, most will tend towards the average so I think it is, usually, useful information to have. Both my children knew exactly where they were in the class by yr 1, and were keen to let me know about any changes that happened, which at the DC's school are fairly frequent. Perhaps the school is unusually open but this type of info was given out freely at parents evening. My Dd is in a year that 3 teachers in a row have told me in underachieving in maths, and this helps me get a handle of what DD is doing.

I'd be delighted with bang in the middle!

My children didn't know where they were in the class even in Y6 which was one of the things I liked best about the school.
I would be very surprised if any of my Y1 children know where they are in the class

I'd ask 2 thing at parents evening.

• what's this class like in terms of ability?
• is my son holding his own/where does he sit roughly within the class.

This way you get a sense of the class itself - so if they are all very clever or there is little spread, if your son is low down, you might not be so concerned. If they are generally weak and he is at the top, you won't need to feel so thrilled etc etc.

Personally I want to know the answer to both of those questions. Yes, work is differentiated for individuals to some extent, but there are also lots of times of whole class teaching and the general/range of ability in an individual class DOES have an impact on the individual and their progress - pretending otherwise is daft.
And whilst a child making progress for themselves is the key thing, no child exists as an island, but within a class and knowing where they sit is relevant to understand how they might feel about school, their own progress, etc etc.
At the end of the day, the statistics compiled by the school are reported place the children in a comparative way, as well as measuring individual progress.
Schools know and report both absolute attainment and individual progress over time, so I want to know that information too. I'm not really interested in people saying that information isn't relevant - I want to know, so I will ask. And as they have that information, they will tell me.
Don't be afraid to ask. It's not something you will have to constantly keep asking, but establishing what the class is like in your own mind and where your own child is within it, seems very sensible to me.

In my experience, most teachers are perfectly happy to give this information if asked. The only ones I have experienced who have been reluctant have been NQTs, so perhaps not so confident to commit, or perhaps unsure about the school approach to this info. More experienced teachers will generally happily answer pretty much any question you have - honesty about children who are low down or high up in the class, helps everyone. Who wants to only find out at the end of a Key Stage that their child is significantly below average. Knowing earlier might not make much difference to the outcome, but knowing seems a good idea.
Teachers being honest in relation to questions is reassuring to parents....not just about their own child, but that the teacher has seen children of all abilities before and knows what they are doing. So I appreciated it when a teacher at the start of Year 1 said that my DS was highly likely to achieve L3s at the end of KS1. I also appreciated it when a teacher of Year 4 said my other DS was in the top third of the year and that group would have no trouble getting offers to selective schools later on. These were not promises and I understood that. However, they satisfied my desire to know where my boys were in the class and more broadly in terms of ability and also that the teachers had seen pupils like him frequently and what the usual course of progress was from this point. If the boys hadn't achieved the likely outcomes, I would not have been hounding the teachers and wanting to know why - I fully appreciate they were talking about typical progress.

When 1 teacher said they couldn't tell me about my child's current performance level, I asked the Head, and they told me the information. Tbh, it just made me doubt that teacher.....did they not know exactly, had they not seen enough children to be confident in making a judgement etc etc.

And does the teacher discuss the ability of other pupils?

The teacher does not directly discuss the ability of the other pupils but will place my child within the broad context of the class.
Actually, once when I was talking to the Head about my DS (at the start of KS2) he referred to the SATS results at KS1 of the class - q form entry school,mso fairly transparent (published already) and the low numbers achieving L3 in various areas (which I already knew about, as published) but also named 2 others who were working at a similar level to my DS - to make the point that he was not alone and the school were catering for that group. I knew the names as DS had always been in groups with those 2 since reception. I knew that, the Head knew and knew I knew....there was nothing secret, or to hide. We talked about my child and I never mentioned anything g we had discussed to anyone else.
I am a teacher too - not primary, but I my a teacher and perhaps the teachers of my DS speak to me in the knowledge that I am au fait with these things. However, I would ask the same questions if I were not a teacher.

mrz how on earth did the school manage that? DD is yr2 and though they obviously don't actively discuss levels with any of them, thank goodness, it's pretty obvious to her that she's on the table reading chapter books whereas some of the other tables are on books she read in reception. I'm rather sceptical that a yr 6 child wouldn't have some idea of where they stood in the class hierarchy. Obviously a good school won't make a big deal of it, and if parents have played their cards right children should be competing with themselves rather than others, but it hardly takes a hyper-competitive personality to pick up on how fluently or otherwise the other children read, write or pick up maths.

Not all schools group children by ability. I certainly don't my class choose where they want to sit each lesson not a single group table in the room.
My children attended a small school with mixed year groups and no ability grouping. Levels were only discussed after the SAT results came back and the school has managed 100% level 4 or above for many years.