DS is 10 and at a selective private school. He is very happy at the school. However his exam grades are not great. Let me be clear that being top of the class is not important to me - I just want him to be happy (and to do as well as he can). However the school's ethos has changed and the focus is on exam grades. I should make it clear that whilst he is a bright boy he is never going to be the school swot and I think there are 3 issues. 1) His exam technique is awful. He rushes through papers and never checks his answers. As a result he gets on average 5 or 6 easy questions wrong. 2) He has fallen out of love with reading and I think this has had an impact re reading and understanding some of the questions. We are addressing this and he has started to read again. 3) He was premature and born late August. Most of his class mates have birthdays falling between Sep and Nov - it is very clear DS looks and acts much younger than them. Anyway with a bit of support from home and school things are improving. Anyway I raised the possibility of DS repeating a year if there is no real improvement and the school are receptive. I really want to know if anyone has been through this with their DC and was it a positive experience.