I don't understand the Scottish primary system can someone please help

[heather1001]

Hi, I have just moved back to Scotland from the middle east where we had my son in a British school. My son started primary school in Scotland, he has gone into a P5/P6 class. The school has said he will be getting the same education as the P6/P7, I don't understand how this can work.

My concern is in the English system he was finishing his final year at primary school and doing well, but his age meant he had to go back to P6. He was doing very well at school before. And now it seems like he has gone back 2 years. He told me this morning he hasn't learnt anything yet. I know it is early days but I am so worried.

@k2p2k2tog some of the stories from parents of kids with SN on here are utterly heartbreaking, they and their children have endured some absolutely awful ordeals, and have had no help or support or even reasonable adjustments to help the child cope. It’s depressing and infuriating all at once!

DS1 was written off by his Nursery, yet when he got to school and got the right support he thrived from day one (incidentally he is above average in all subjects and is doing S2 level maths and science in P7 because it’s a tailored timetable for each child )

DD is being transitioned to primary already, despite not starting until August the school (mainstream as she can cope with that) and Nursery are working together to ensure she’s coping with each stage of her preschool year and into P1.

DS1 is in his pre-preschool year and has had a staged transition from toddler room to 3-5 and they’re already planning for next year and what he can manage.

DS1s transition to high school is already in progress too, and they’re considering everything, even the emotional trauma (my mum died in June) he’s faced in the last year as part of it.

I can’t ask for more than that.

Is your DS staying in Scotland for uni? I don’t think he’d thank you for that pink striped blazer if you sent him to Fettes
!

k2p2k2tog (BTW - love your user name - although I keep looking for the yo ) Indeed. Glasgow Academy, Hutchie and the High School of Glasgow aren't proper private schools

FWIW: I have a friend (same age as me) who went to Glenalmond and only managed to get into Dundee on clearing to study Law.

The education I got at my obviously crappy state school just outside Glasgow meant that I was able to go to St Andrews the year before him. Not only that, but I'm always correcting his English as he makes silly grammar mistakes.

I don't think even an SNP schill would be that obtuse.

I agree that Candog should hoik her child out of the supposedly top performing State school if it's serving her child so badly. It just demonstrates how league tables and raw exam results don't give the full picture. It doesn't sound like a good school at all.

Ds' school probably wouldn't fit into Candog's definition of a "top performing state school" (after all, it's "only" a state school in Glasgow with a highly mixed demographic) yet despite this manages to get kids into Oxbridge, the Conservatoire, UCL, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee, Aberdeen, Strathclyde, St Andrews Unis, to do courses like Medicine, Law, Vet Science, Engineering, Languages, Politics & International Relations. And that's just off the top of my head over the last few years. The school has high expectations of its pupils - and supports them to meet their fullest potential. Not just academically, but in sports and artistic pursuits too.

in a perfect world I would prefer to have the breadth of up to 12 subject at GCSE stage (Scottish Nat 5) rather than the 6 Nat 5s offered at our local school but I appreciate that the Nat 5s have more depth, However, I do think only doing 6 subjects so early really cuts down on an overall breadth of knowledge. I agree though that doing 5 highers Is better in comparison to only 3 A levels as again it gives more breadth but conversely the A levels in this instance have more depth. For a child who isn't sure about what route they want to follow, the Scottish system of 5 highers offers more flexibity than the English system and the point made about making Uni applications from known higher grades makes the whole applying for Uni experience much better. My ideal would therefore be GCSEs followed by highers and advanced highers (as I said, in a perfect world) lol.

We've not long moved back to the UK from overseas, and we specifically chose Scotland, in part at least, because of the education system. DD1 has ASD, and we were concerned that she wouldn't get the help and support needed if we moved to England, having read about how support can be hard to come by. As it is, we were only here for a month before I had a meeting with the school SEN teacher so that she could find out what extra support and help is needed for DD1 to thrive. I also met with the head of Learning Support at the high school DD1 will be going to in August, so that they can help support her transition.

Both of our children are in composite classes here, which they have been in before at their overseas school, and which in my opinion work very well. Due to the different cut off dates, DD1 has gone from being among the youngest to one of the eldest in the class, and since DD2's birthday is in February we opted to keep her back, meaning that she also is among the eldest. Both of our DD's are reasonably academic, and I am sure that whichever system/school we'd chosen they would be fine academically. I like the fact that the education system is more relaxed here. I didn't want my children to go through the stresses of SATs, I like the fact that they do a slightly broader range of subjects at higher level as opposed to the more limited range of A levels, and I'm hoping that those things will help create happy, well-rounded adults.