How do I get the best for my daughter without being a pain to the teachers?

[Meltedcheese2]

Wondering if anyone can give me any advice please.

My year 4 daughter is well behaved, quiet and relatively bright etc - hitting all the expected standards but not GD apart from reading. She is a lovely child, eager to please and thrives off praise

She is a state school which has a massively mixed intake including loads of children with extra needs, lots of deprivation. I absolutely feel for the staff in the current scenario as I can see all they are trying to do is keep their heads above water.

I have realised (and now DD is older she is articulating more) that in a class of 30 she is almost invisible and lost. I understand why - all energy goes on keeping children safe and supporting those with special needs.

We do all her homework every week and all extra tasks set and it is never marked and she never gets any feedback. I despair of that as basically the message she receives is that it doesn't matter whether you work hard or not.

I ABSOLUTELY get it. I work in social care and we are in same position. I don't want to be that parent who is pushy and makes it worse. We get 2 parents evenings a year and literally no other feedback; but is there any way I can try and get more support for her without being a pain to the school or the staff, who are under enough pressure?

When we realised last year she was struggling with maths we got a maths tutor for an hour a week and that has helped but I feel like she is getting so little support at school that she won't progress at all. Do I just have to put all my time into helping her (I also work full time) and accept that this is now state education? Please be kind I genuinely do not want to be a pain, I feel for the school, but I do want the best for her

Unfortunately I think you will have to provide the support yourself. I had a DD who was similar to yours and was largely forgotten in an intake of 3x30 at Reception.
R teachers have a lot to deal with, some DC will not even be toilet trained or able to sit on the carpet quietly for 5 minutes and sadly encouraging quiet children who don't cause an issue may be well down their list of priorities.
The good news is she has engaged parents who are willing and able to help (and again lots of the DC in her class won't ) so she will ultimately be ok.
As long as she is generally happy and doing ok I wouldn't worry about it, I did some extra work to stretch DD but she still scored very highly in SATs and got a Grammar place and also a Private school Scholarship at 11 while being largely ignored at her Primary school.

What support would you be looking for op? It sounds like she’s doing well anyway.

Do you mean more stretch? You could ask the class teacher about extension activities. Otherwise I agree with pp you’ll likely need to provide the extra input at home.

You aren’t going to get any more from school, unfortunately. Help her at home, show her that you are paying attention even if school isn’t always able to and find other opportunities via extracurriculars for her to find challenge and validation.

This isn't the main point of your post, but it's really common to not mark homework or give feedback on it. Even my sons secondary didn't give feedback on homework. So on that front you need to give some ticks, stickers or feedback at home. I think (teachers will probably correct this if wrong) there isn't much evidence that feedback after the event helps and its not even clear if the pupil did it. Teachers would give live feedback in class more than marking these days.

On the rest, yes it's likely that you will have to support your daughter best you can.

Thanks - really appreciate the feedback. That has confirmed what I thought. Better to know! Just to confirm sorry she is year 4 (aged 8) not in reception. Thanks all - appreciate time to reply.

You are responsible for her education.

You might subcontract out some elements to school but you still retain responsibility.

Talk to her, provide her with interesting experiences, books and materials to work with /play with. Involve her in family life and activities.

If you want more than school, that's for you to create.

She is progressing though if she's 8 and where she should be? You've identified maths is an issue, you could ask for support with that? I know you've got a tutor but there may well be some extra help she can get in school too.

I don't think there's anything wrong with raising issues with the school - however busy they are - but you need to be explicitly clear about what the issue is and what support you would like.

Sorry my mistake
Most of what I wrote still applies though.
I always took the attitude that if they were happy, well behaved and socialising well at school I could help with the rest of it myself

Absolutely get that - thanks very much

She’ll make greater progress far quicker at home with a 1:1 approach so it probably won’t take as much time as you’d think.

My son is in a class of just three other children (SEN school) so gets far more attention but I find that about ten minutes every evening of maths, plus reading with him every night, makes a huge difference. I then do a bit of handwriting practice, spellings etc on alternate nights. Twinkl is great for resources.

Thanks ever so - we do exactly that, helps to know I'm on the right lines. Glad it's going well for your son

@Meltedcheese2 I feel for you, and also acknowledge your understanding of the school situation! My DD (now in Y9) was a bit more fortunate in that her class wasn't full of challenging children, but she was a bit forgotten at times as she was ahead of most of the pack, and we were planning for her to sit the 11 plus so wanted to make sure she was covering all bases in the early years.

It sounds as though your DD's school is doing a good job, considering the challenges, but of course it would be better for your DD to have a bit more attention and for you to feel confident she is being nurtured and challenged appropriately at school.

I agree with the majority that say that a little bit of support at home will make a big difference. I appreciate time is at a premium as you work full time, but it is quite easy to add value at primary level if your DD is receptive.

I note your DD is already GD at reading, but nevertheless, IMO reading is the easiest thing to do with her. You may already be doing this already, but reading together for a few minutes every day makes such a difference. Take it in turns to read passages so you can model good reading to her - using appropriate expressions, using different voices for the different characters etc. Stop and discuss new words, and look them up in the dictionary (ideally a paper one!) and discuss alternative word options and discuss why the author may have chosen that word. Ask her questions - how does that passage make her feel? What does she think might happen next, and why? Try to use a range of authors and include some non-fiction. Even if she is already a capable reader, it will add so much value if you can develop her vocabulary and inference skills, and it can be fun too!

Also, be grammar police when you're out and about. My DD can spot a missing or misplaced apostrophe anywhere - café menus or posters etc.

We found maths a bit harder to enhance, but only because DD is more literary minded and enjoyed the word games but could spot a sly maths question a mile off! Yours might be more open to this though! We found some good ideas and games on Maths Playground an Nrich, and we had a subscription to IXL for a while, but you can do 10 questions per day for free. You can find out the National Curriculum maths requirements for Y4 and could consider resorting to workbooks if you feel these might help. We favoured GCP books when we started 11 plus workbooks in Y5 so the maths/English ones for Y4 may be worth a look. If your DD still has maths tutoring, you may not need this.

If your DD is bored in lessons, or she is not understanding some of the content but isn't able to ask questions, you could approach the school as @DUsername has suggested (ie making it specific.)

Also, on the subject of your DD getting the message that it doesn't matter if you work hard or not, she's at a good age to start understanding that that's not the case. You can explain to her that she is not working hard to please a teacher - she is working hard to develop her skills so she can do well at school and in her future career. It's her journey and her opportunity in life and she needs to make the most of it.

You might want to encourage her to start asking the teacher for help, or asking for harder work. My DD started doing this in Y1 and if it is done politely, it does get them noticed eventually - and it is an important life skill.

Thanks SO MUCH . Really helpful. We do alot of that so I think I am on right lines. Really really helpful thankyou. Hope all continues well for your family

I teach Y4 and mark homework every week. Even fewer would do it if they knew no one ever looked at it. I think it's part and parcel of teaching KS2 so find that aspect quite poor.

@Saltandvin it is not an uncommon approach these days in primary schools, for both classwork and homework. A teacher friend explained it to me recently.

It's not that they don't look at the work - of course they do - but they don't nitpick everything but instead spot trends eg where many of the students are making the same sort of error, and tailor future lessons to cover those issues in more depth. It obviously saves time for the teachers, and I'm sure there are other benefits such as more time for teachers to plan tailored lessons.

I'm not a teacher and can't explain it very well, but it is a 'thing.'

The fact that your school's policy is to mark everything doesn't necessarily make this school's approach wrong.

You've given a clear explanation. I'm aware others schools do it differently. It's not my school's policy either way - I work in a very small school where we have a lot of autonomy - and I mark homework because I think it is the right thing to do. I don't mark work where there is no value in the marking. I just don't think you can set homework and expect children to try their best with it if you're not willing to show them you've looked at it properly.

I think you could be me. Also have a well behaved bright child in y4 who is being totally overlooked due to a challenging class. They seem to mark each other’s work which would be great if any of them could spell and use punctuation properly…

It has hit be this year that in a challenging class so much is about crowd control and it is all a bit rubbish sadly.

So sorry - it's miserable isn't it. I have every sympathy with the teachers but so sad that it feels to me you can lose whole chunks of education

I’m afraid this is the reality in many schools these days and sadly the undemanding, relatively well attaining, well behaved children will get limited attention.
I think as long as you are offering her lots of stimulation outside school- educational games, outings to different places of interest, encouraging independent reading and writing, using skills like math in natural settings (adding up costs in shops, working out how long till dinner etc…), exposing her to music, arts and science and she’s involved in clubs and stuff, she’ll be fine.

I have one in year 5, parents evenings are always super positive and he is working above expected in all areas. During the last parents evening when I asked about the possibility of him getting harder work to stretch him, the teacher explained that in maths for his class he has children working at levels spanning a 4-5 year gap and I was a little taken aback at the disparity in abilities (and I have worked within schools) He said that he has children working at a year 2/3 level, ones that are working at year 4/5 and a group of children who could be working at year 6/7 level. He has no TA support as the TA is shared between the classes of that year group and also supporting a 1:1.
Homework is not marked and there aren’t consequences for not practicing spellings etc there is also a lot of poor/disruptive behaviour that the teacher also said they were trying to get a handle on as it was effecting the students trying to learn.
My son is now undertaking 11 plus tutoring as he is adamant he wants to try for a grammar school place.
My other son struggled more academically and I was told that he had fallen behind significantly in maths, the school
didn't have the support available to catch him up/assist in lessons so we paid for a tutor which helped massively.
For some reason we have found secondary school a lot more proactive about interventions to help rather than primary school, I assume as bigger schools they have more available budget.
We encourage a lot of reading at home, times tables rockstars etc.
It sounds like you are doing all you can and as long as she’s happy, has nice friends and has support at home, I think that’s most important.

This. Not marking homework is very poor and show lazy teaching. I will bring it to the school, it is not acceptable.
if you can afford I would suggest getting her a tutor once or twice a week to provide stretch.
she will benefit in secondary especially if she goes to a good secondary where they stream the top kids to prep for oxbridge (plenty in London and kids get heavily tutored in primary and over the holidays to be in the top cohort and get all the attentions in secondary..) if you have a good secondary that streams top performer you don’t want her to be in the middle as again these are the forgotten kids who receive no attention.
this is one of the key reasons parents opt for private educations in secondary schools if they can afford it - if the kid is super brights it does not matter actually state is better as they are advantaged over private schools as the bar to entry to uni is lower, if they are at the bottom they won’t enter in private schools, if they are in the middle state schools won’t care while private would stretch them.

I somewhat agree with this (I teach secondary), but even going through 30 sets of homework and writing a comment and giving a praise sticker where appropriate takes a good chunk of time (probably about 45 mins at the bare minimum)- and I do think classes get more out of whole class feedback! I give detailed feedback where I think it will be useful, and some things I literally do just acknowledge it has been handed in.

Increasingly, I know a lot of secondary schools are using online programs for homework to minimise this workload, and I do think this is the way forward- if I can quickly scan to see who's done it and give out praise to the top 3 scores/most improved etc, that gives me another 30 minutes to plan or deal with whatever crisis has come up.

Obviously all schools have different policies, but as class sizes are getting bigger and bigger, I think there has to be some acknowledgement that time needs to be spent where it is most valuable.

I'm a former AHT and you have really outlined the reality in state schools right now. Lots of good advice here already OP.

I would just add trying to give as much enrichment as you can with your DD is crucial. History books and historical TV programmes, general knowledge quizzes at home, geography, look at maps (real ones!) Also visit galleries and museums and go out bird watching and wildlife hunting at weekends and school holidays. Talk about everything!

I found that the children in my schools who were the brightest and certainly those who have gone on to do very well at uni and as young adults now were (largely) those who had the privilege of a family that gave them these wonderful and rich experiences.

I’m afraid that being that parent won’t get you anywhere. The teachers are doing their best in an impossible situation? I’m ashamed to say that we pulled ours out and they went private for precisely this reason.
It is absolute wrong that we should have need to do this, is unfair on those who can’t but until there is a better state offering those that can (like us) do and so we paid twice.
Sadly this probably means that it will never change. For those in areas with good state schools, house prices can be higher. For those of us in areas with mediocre (or worse) state schools, private can end up being the only option but that’s only if you can afford to pay.
If we all “paid” something towards state education (and the NHS) would people take more notice and make better use of facilities, as it were?

I think you doing stuff at home is a start but I’d seriously be looking around other schools to see if somewhere else gives you a better feeling .