Anyone have experience of having a child who was very behind in early primary who caught up by the end?

[2Magpies24]

DS is 7, and has really struggled with schooling since the start, he is a long way behind his peers in terms of academics (SENCO thinks at least 18 months) and has been very slow with learning to read/ spell/ basic maths. He does get there, but in his own time. He hasn't been diagnosed with anything specific per se, but has had a lot of investigations and borderline slow processing and poor working memory have been mentioned by an ed psych.
Since he has been back at school after the summer holidays, he seems to be really keen to learn to read and is working hard at it, he also wants me to buy him some books so he can do maths homework (which I have done with the schools guidance) and he is really making good progress.
So my question is- Has anybody had a child in a similar situation who has managed to catch up? Or is he always likely to be behind and facing a struggle?

Yes! Dd scored 0 1 and 1 in year two sats. Scored 1, 2 and 4 in year 6 sats , the 4 was maths. Something about age 12 clicked with spelling and reading, she is dyslexic but she achieved a*aab at a level, yes sciences but still not bad for a kid who was in 1:1 English lessons because she was so far behind.

I'm just glad her teachers recognised it was dyslexia holding her back rather than a more global learning disability

Teacher.

Yes, I have seen this.

I've also seen (but rarely) kids in special school transfer over to mainstream and take GCSEs.

A lot depends on why they are behind - there's a reason the standard first tests are test hearing (glue ear) and test vision (if the child cannot see properly they will struggle to learn to read).

She has slow processing apparently and working memory issues but learned how to get around this. Still works harder than some peers for same results but without being outing, she's doing a job that's very difficult academically speaking, think like rocket scientist!

Ahh, that's really lovely to hear. Good on her! Apparently slow processing and Working memory is quite hard to work around so that's great.
It's so demoralising for them to constantly be at the bottom for every subject, and he was starting to lose interest in school. But I'm very much hoping he will keep up with his new found passion for learning. I'd be thrilled with average, for his sake! So it's really nice to hear a success story like this.

Yes. DD1 was a very late August baby. In fact,if she'd been born one day later,she'd have been in the following school year.
As it was,she started school the day after her 4th birthday.
I was called in a few weeks later, because they had concerns that she couldn't hold a pencil properly. I did point out that a few days earlier, she'd still been 3 years old.
She scored average/ below average in her SATs and one teacher was convinced that she had hearing difficulties as DD1 didn't seem to pay attention and follow the work sometimes. Her hearing was fine though,she just wasn't that interested in what they were learning.
By secondary school,she flew though. She left with three grade 9s and nothing else lower than a 7 at GCSE,and at that point,was their highest achieving pupil ever. A levels were the same and her tutors were encouraging her to apply for Oxford or Cambridge,but they didn't do he course that she wanted to do. I think all her A levels were A or A*.
She graduated last year,with a first,the first member of both our families to attend uni too.So not bad for the child who couldn't hold a pencil.

DS was always about 18months to 2 years behind academically in primary school and didn’t sit SATs (he wanted to but school said no). He’s just sat all of his GCSE’s passing at levels 4 and 5 in most subjects except maths (which had always been the biggest hurdle). So not top of the class by any means but at the start of secondary we hadn’t anticipated him taking all of his GCSE’s.
his biggest issues are working memory and auditory processing.

I don't want to give you false hope because obviously every child is different.

But my daughter was a bit of a slow developer. Bottom sets in maths and English throughout primary school, we live in a multi cultural area and she was in English classes with all the kids who had English as a second language. But she ended up getting A level English and a good degree in Psychology.

Good Luck to your son and it is worth giving extra support & encouragement at home.

When I taught at Secondary I had students whose parents told me they had struggled at Primary but I would never have known.

What I would say though, is as important as academics are if he spends 25+ hours a week doing something he finds really difficult he needs some sort of release outside of school that he enjoys and excels at whether that's gymnastics, or tinkering with bikes and putting them back together again, cooking or baking. Anything at all that means he knows he is good at something and doesn't tie his entire identity up with finding school hard and allows him to have a healthy self esteem and positive sense of self.

I think it depends a lot why child is behind.
I have a teacher friend who tutors 1:1 - and works with the reasons behind the delay. Quite often no one has done that before her. She has identified more than one with dyslexia and other serious issues.
She has brought quite a lot of children up to standard over the years learning how to study to in a way that takes into account their challenges.

So his work is like a 5.5yo?
So mid y1?and hes y2 or y3?

Just keep plugging away with the reading. 15-30 mins daily.
A kid i know was still on the reading scheme end y3 but got exceeded on y6 sats.
Theres a lot of time to catch up y3 to y6. As long as they ars putting the time in at home

Thanks for all your responses, some really heartening stories. I will continue to encourage DS at home without becoming too tiger mother! Its just lovely to see his confidence boosted after years of being told to try harder.

I have experience from your child's perspective. I struggled academically and by UKS2 I was basically held back a year; I was in a year 5 class for year 6 (at the time I glibly accepted the explanation that there wasn't space in any of the year 6 classes, despite there being the same number of students there always had been 😂).

At secondary school I was placed into special needs (as it was called then) classes. At some point, in year 9 I think, it was like my brain woke up and steadily I started to perform better academically. I can't really explain it. I went from special needs English to top set over the course of a year, for example.

Whilst at university I was diagnosed with dyslexia, dyspraxia and dyscalculia, none of which was a surprise. By this point I'd developed my own strategies for learning and the perseverance I'd built up out of necessity in my earlier years was (and continues to be) super useful to me, so on balance there were certainly positives to the whole thing. Also, I work in academia now and have turned the experience into a tasty paycheck so there's that 🤣.

DD was slow to read and write and had 1:1 in reception and Y1. She caught up eventually and slowly made her way to top sets but it took her until about Y9. She now has 14 x A star at GCSE, ÅÅÅA at A level, a diagnosis of ADHD and is in her first year at uni. The hard part is keeping them motivated as it's so easy to lose interest and get disheartened when you're always behind the rest. I knew she was clever though and just kept telling her.

Yes. DD2. Sitting next to her right now. Lowest 20% of class age 6-9. Slowest reader needing intervention until age 10. Tested but found no learning disability (although we could have pushed to get something as i see that's a trend now in some circles) Now age 15, top 15% of class. Works her butt off to get those grades but I'm glad we didn't give up or seek special accommodation because I think it would have told her she wasn't capable. Gifted physically but academics needed time to catch up.

Surely she didn't get 14Astar at GCSE, unless she sat them over 8 years ago.

Secondary teacher here. We have an increasing number of children arriving in year 7 with reading ages of 5 and 6 years. They are really struggling to understand basic introduction assessments and need readers but there aren't enough TAs available. Please read daily with your child and check he/she understands the vocab and deeper meaning of what is written.

Yes. We moved Ds aged 7 as he was struggling to access the curriculum. He went to Steiner as he could effectively start again there. He started to pick up aged about 11, got his GCSEs and did a Btech. Now has a good job.
He is probably autistic, though diagnosed with dyslexia and dyspraxia and is also dyscalculic.

Non existent working memory. No good at arithmetic (numbers?), though perfectly capable at maths (all the maths that doesn’t need you to grasp numbers).

He was always noticeably bright though. Complicated language, Lego models, interests. Just had trouble articulating and recording.

My friend’s daughter. Was in remedial class for everything during primary and told she should look at a job “helping” with children or animals. They moved before she went to secondary, and the new school was the making of her. She’s an actual nuclear physicist now and has just completed her PhD!

Surely she didn't get 14Astar at GCSE, unless she sat them over 8 years ago.

Sat in 2022, her school do them over three years and take some exams early. They do 9 x compulsory (8 if double science instead of triple), 4 x options, plus she did add maths. And Welsh Bacc which I didn't count but is a GCSE equivalent qualification.

Not caught up but has massively improved. DS4 started reception still in nappies and unable to hold a pencil. In year 2 lockdown happened and the teacher kept giving me year 2 work for him that he couldn't understand. I said to the teacher he couldn't understand any of it and she said the reading is most important. So we did a lot of reading and not much else. He went back to school with his reading massively improved but everything else even more behind. He learned to write his name in year 3. In year 6 they gave him a scribe for his sats and he did so much better than they thought he would. A lot of year 6 was repeating the same things over and over which he seemed to really thrive on. He is in year 7 now, still behind and his handwriting is illegible but he loves it there so much.

My son could not even talk properly at aged 8 yet alone read or write. He is SEN but managed to get a B in History A Level and D and E in the other two and several GCSES. His working memory is on the 1 and 3 percentile and his language is on the 1 percentile. So he’s pretty severe. He would have done better in his A Levels but adolescence caught up with him and he was distracted. He did not revise properly and then panicked.

Hes doing an extra A Level and seems to be doing well before going to university where he has an unconditional offer to study.

Thanks all for the great success stories, they are really encouraging.

@Noras This is amazing, you must be so proud. He. must have worked really hard to achieve that.

@2Magpies24 that was me as a kid I barely knew my timetables. I had to use my fingers to add until the age of probably 11 if not older. I didn’t peak until I was about 16, and I literally can remember the year I had the ‘I get it now!’ moments. I went on to get very good results in my A-level equivalents. I had no idea what I wanted to do as I had several interests. My 1st degree was in psychology and sociology and I got a 2:2 I then went into the primary school teaching post grad. I taught for a number of years but I didn’t love the job. I then retrained as a microbiologist through a degree apprenticeship program and I came out of that with a distinction. It was a very heavily chemistry and microbiology based degree, including maths and statistics etc.
Don’t worry, they will come into their own.

As a former teacher, it's quite rare but it occasionally happens.

Usually, it's because a barrier has been identified and removed or reduced- child found to have vision/hearing issues getting glasses or a hearing aid, child diagnosed with ADHD and gets medication.

However, every now and then, everything just falls into place, the child gets the teacher than brings their best out, and suddenly makes rapid progress out of nowhere.

Yes - family history of dyslexia, dyspraxia and inattentive ADHD.

We did a lot of support work at home and by secondary they were in top sets and keeping up.

Can recommend https://www.themathsfactor.com/ for maths. Little and often and builds up and recaps a lot- we did 20 minutes every day and then summer and winter school because they wanted to. Gets basic sorted - maths teaching at first primary was lot of teach concept faffing then games activity to embedded but DS had forgotten by then and was just confused.

Time tables - can sing them on top as well - https://www.percyparker.com/

Reading - https://www.teachyourmonster.org/ - https://www.soundfoundations.co.uk/product-category/dancing-bears/ and keeping interest up with comics and audio books graphic novels. DS was about 12 month behind at one point - took about 18 months to get him caught up and then kept going. DD1 struggles - though hid it better - but her vocabulary improved with audio books even when she was not reading much.

Spelling - huge issue https://www.soundfoundations.co.uk/product-category/apples-pears/ - working with DS really showed how much his poor working memory was affecting him.

Little often and slowly built it up - and lots of built in repetition. They needed more practise to get basic in - honestly despair of DD2 ever learning last time table but working with fractions finally remember last one - but then were very quick with recall.

One at Uni doing well one looking to do well at A-level after fantastic GCSE results and one in mid GCSE and should do well.