Should state primary be doing more? And what should we do as parents?

[Wildwild]

DD has just finished year 1 at our local primary school. There’s loads we love about it, it’s at the top of our road and the catchment is really small so all her friends live within a five minute walk. This means it has a really great community feel. Her teachers have been lovely, she’s got a nice group of friends and seems happy there. For what it’s worth, the school received an outstanding Ofsted rating a few years ago which was maintained just before Christmas when they were inspected.

Whenever I have got any feedback (usually at parents evening) the teachers have said that she is performing well above average. Her year 1 teacher said she was so far ahead she could in theory skip Y2 and just go into key stage 2 but they’re not allowed to do that (and I’d hate her to be singled out from her peers). Apparently their main concern is that she’ll be bored and become disengaged.

But nobody is telling me how I can resolve this. They give the odd bit of homework sporadically on Google classroom but she does it in 30 seconds and asks for more. They never send home spellings or times tables. My mum (ex primary teacher) just keeps telling me I should move her to private but I can’t afford it.

I was wondering whether I should go to see the new class teacher at the beginning of term and ask her about how the school differentiate brighter children so they’re being challenged and what we as parents can do to support her. But I’m really conscious of being “that” parent!

Any teachers around who can advise? Am I over thinking and should just go with the flow or should I be doing something more? Should I get her a private tutor to give her new challenges or will she end up further ahead? Should I turn up at the local prep school and get her to read a copy of the Sunday Times to them and see if they can help with the fees?! (This last one is light hearted)

In theory, all children should be stretched. In reality, a state primary will focus on bringing the poorest performing up to average and anyone who is already beyond that is just left to their own devices.

Interesting. I guess then my question is - does that matter? Will she get bored and disengaged or will she actually just have a lovely primary school experience finding everything easy and be a happy non anxious child? Because that would obviously be a win!

You’ve got a parent who is an ex primary teacher - what more support to ‘challenge’ her do you need? Although how good a teacher she was is debatable if her best advice is go private! School is about so much more than just academics and racing ahead in the curriculum.

Just let her enjoy being 6/7 and don't worry about it. Seriously.

I hear this a lot as well, about children being bored at school. I don’t believe that it’s inevitable. My child is fairly able academically and hasn’t found school to be boring at all. I asked him about it once and he said that if the teacher is going over material that he knows, he tries to apply it to more challenging situations/problems in his own mind.

Children who are fairly able are not necessarily bored at school.

if you do want to broaden and deepen then things like learning an instrument, taking up a sport and joining things like brownies/beavers/cubs is the way to go.

at this stage there’s no real need to push ahead of she’s happy.

i’m presuming you do regular reading with her.

Why does she need homework at all? She is in year 1. It sounds like she is at a good school where she is happy and settled. By all means ask how they can support her but I wouldn't worry at this stage if she is happy and achieving well

You should find as they move up through the years they will naturally be pushed a bit more, this has been the case for both of mine. I bought the Collins workbooks for them to do at home, I have a twinkl account and they do odd bits and pieces off there when they want something.

Library to extend their reading, team reading you read a page they read a page of tougher books, follow their interests, play board games with logic involved, strategy. Play - lots of play will benefit them, not forced but you will notice them changing how they play and it helped them with the development.

Get them interested in things outside the classroom, my daughter started a musical instrument in Yr 2, my son in Yr 3.

@Wildwild as a parent and a teacher who has taught in both state and private primary schools I would do the following (I'll keep it short):

1. Do speak to the new Y2 teacher. No pupils should tread water. All pupils in a class must make progress from where ever their starting point is.
2. Try to do some things at home to stretch and challenge her.
3. Ensure at any parent meeting, you are asking 'how is she being challenged?'

Lessons are always differentiated 3 ways (top, middle, bottom) but sometimes you need to factor in pupils that lie out of this because they are higher or lower.

It is true, primary school is more than academia alone. There is so much that goes in to building well rounded pupils and citizens for the future at this age. You certainly don't want her to become despondent, bored or disruptive. You, and her teacher, need to be fostering her love for learning now, as she has many years of being student ahead of her.

I think this is a 'cross that bridge when you come to it' situation. They haven't said she IS bored or disengaged, just they're concerned that she might be. Crack on as you are as all is well. IF she becomes bored or disengaged down the line then you can go in and speak to the teacher about how they're going to deal with it.

You don't need her up a year to extend her. You read more books at home with nore sophisticated grammar and complicated plots. You work with maths at home. Crucially you do all the fun stuff that has been stamped out of the national curriculum like art (pottery, painting, drawing, sculpture), dance, music, drama. You can do science experiments, cooking, museum visits etc. You won't get any of that by moving her up a year or complaining to teachers.

Sadly as a primary school teacher of 12 years, this often happens. I'm not saying it's right, but in my experience it's the results of the poorest performing we get pulled up on.

At the end of the day the teacher has to teach an often large class with a wide variety of needs, they can only do so much.

Based on what you've said, I perhaps wouldn't worry about it yet. Your child is still very young and I'm not sure homework is even appropriate until KS2 anyway. If you want to stretch her, get her involved in some out of school clubs or learning new skills.

You’ll find some teachers are better at giving stretch than others. This year for my older child our teacher didn’t really do any obvious differentiation and some homework was a waste of time as it was so easy- there was nothing to push on the brightest but equally no support for those who needed more help. It was very much teach to the average and cram for the MCT (y4). Last year, the teacher did provide extra stretch or simpler tasks all the time. We’ve got a child in my daughter’s class who is genuinely exceptional academically. He wasn’t bored last year but was this year.

My other daughter is in year 1 and they have a bright class which has made a lot of progress. The teacher has said she’s been trying to find the right balance between pushing them further and letting them be children and just play and focusing on social skills. There has been no homework other than reading which I agree with wholeheartedly. They’re still tiny. You can do things at home re tables but they end up spending year 4 drilling them for the MCT test anyway. I think the best thing is to extend curiosity and interest in random topics. I really like the national geographic series of books or the little people big dreams for this or museum visits particularly for geography or history topics.

One of the other things I’m quite conscious about is that a lot of the primary curriculum is going to be made defunct by AI. Quite frankly being amazing at spelling or spotting a fronted adverbial isn’t going to really matter when you can proof read using copilot at the touch of a button in the workplace. What will really matter will be curiosity, ability to question, social skills- the stuff that is often being pushed out too early to focus on the other stuff.

Thanks all, really appreciate all the ideas above.

Me and DH have never been pushy academically and would much rather have a rounded child who is happy. We’ve focused on non academic learning out of school other than reading with her regularly. Equally I don’t want us to not be supportive enough, when I speak to other parents they seem to be in and out of the school a lot speaking to the teacher. We’ve never had cause to do that.

Also interestingly I have found something that challenges her just in the last few days.

she loves adding up numbers and was frustrated that as she got into the hundreds it was hard to do in her head. So I showed her long addition which then escalated to long substraction and long multiplication. All fine. Then we got to long division and she was chewing her pencil in concentration and got a few wrong. It was really interesting seeing her having to be resilient and really think hard for a change. She got a bit frustrated initially because I don’t think she’s used to things not being completely easy but she got it after a few tries and I think enjoyed the satisfaction that came from that.

I’ve got no idea whether that’s on the curriculum for year two, but it has made me think that there will be things that will challenge her next year and keep her interest. She’s been complaining that phonics is boring and the teacher says she doesn’t really listen in the carpet phonic sessions. But presumably phonics is finished by year 2 anyway?

Maths is easy to extend because there are other ways of doing most maths. So maths is not just 8x5 but also how many squares in a rectangle made up of 8 squares by 5. It’s also you buy 5 books each costing £8.
and then when you get to 22x5 how many different ways can you solve that? 20x5 and 2x5 but also 11x5x2 and so on.
Have fun playing with physical objects. And guessing the answer before working it out.

With reading keep reading to her, but also encourage her to challenge herself in reading (even trying the old classics for more challenging language). And with unfamiliar words looking them up in a dictionary. And let her follow her passions and interests, whether dinosaurs or castle dungeons or Captain Cook.

Check out examninja.co.uk, they have books for the year group bundle that would stretch your DC and in case you going to do 11+ grammar route.

Once our DS could read he stretched himself really - he didn’t really like novels but read books about history/facts/Greek myths.
He liked playing strategy board games and played sports.
We did move him reluctantly to a private school for year 4 upwards because there seemed to be a lack of interest in the junior school to challenge him at all.

This. They’ll challenge a bit (extension activities), but in reality it’s e.g. getting a kid that can already count to 100 count to 20, rather than than the 10 required by curriculum. The issue for kids comes when they do finally come across something they don’t know in school as they’ve spent most of their time coasting. Of course it’s not called ‘coasting’, it’s called consolidating knowledge (because a kid that can already read for example, needs to keep rehashing phonics sounds…..).

Can she ride a bike? Can she swim? Can she occupy herself for a period of time? How does she find making friends?

You have every right to ask OP- the teaching standards make it clear that the needs of all children must be met, including those who are more able. As an ex-teacher, schools are often complacent about the most able. I purposefully picked a school which streams from the off for this reason, and it is allowing my bright child to fly.

Your DC sounds exactly like my eldest (same age). He is gifted mathematically (working at least 2 years ahead). He is also greater depth across all academic areas. His Year 1 teacher was outstanding and ensured the following:

• He was seated with other very able children (all already within the top stream) and given additional ‘stretch’ activities, opportunities to apply skills to a different context and extra ‘Power Maths’ workbooks and mathematical app problems to work through independently due to finishing work at a quicker pace.
• For writing, extra resources to prompt using more complicated vocabulary, etc. Greater focus on editing skills.
• Reading- books match exactly to his level and changed as often as needed. Very individualised. Books of a high quality with varied subject matter, eg geographical, scientific, historical- these have further extended his vocabulary at home.
• Log-ins for Numbots- he raced through all of that, so now accessing TT Rockstars (usually for Year 3 up). Check the school website for other recommendations.

I was also identified as gifted from a young age, and achieved very high grades throughout school and won numerous academic awards. I loved doing harder work, children like this crave it and are easily bored. I always preferred working in top sets at secondary, and found the pace of mixed ability and behaviour issues extremely frustrating, as I wanted to learn and get on with my work. I often re-visited and taught myself things at home when certain subjects were very disrupted. Keep an eye on the for yours at secondary- I wish I had attended a better one! This was not such an issue at primary, and sixth form/university will be incredible for your DC.

We get judged on ALL children's results each and every term - whether they are working below, at expected level for their age or at greater depth.
The very limited support that we are given as a department in terms of an additional adult can often be directed to the lowest abilities, but please believe that we are expected to improve the performance of ALL children in the 11 curriculum subjects.

Yes. She can do all of these things and will occupy herself with writing her journal, make believe play, drawing, colouring, crafts and reading. She’s less naturally inclined to kick a ball around outside or climb a tree so I try to encourage outdoorsy things and at sports days she seemed about average for physical ability compared to her peers.

No issues socially. Teachers remark on how kind she is to others and she’s established a friendship group that seems to plod along fine.

I think you need to ask about challenge and then also keep an eye on it. Being bored for 5 hours a day and then challenged at home would be miserable, so you can't just fill in the gaps at home. It is a good sign that the school is aware she might get bored and disengage, I've definitely met teachers who wouldn't acknowledge that.

Different children respond differently to boredom. I've got one super conscious child who engaged with everything, despite being bored by quite a lot of it and one day-dreamer, who barely engaged.

We had various issues with our DDs and lack of challenge/low expectations. We often skipped homework or bits of homework when they weren't at all differentiated. Maths has been a significant issue. In year 1, DD2 used to get me to type in the answers to her maths homework, but would tell me the answers in roman numerals because 17-3 was just too boring for her to engage with on its own. The spiral curriculum in maths has frustrated both of my DDs as it has sometimes seemed too tightly spiralled to them, so they just felt they were repeating things they'd done before. A capable child doesn't see much difference between place value to 10s and 1000s, because they have fundamentally got it when first taught. And what seem to be the standard "mastery" worksheets can be really dull, though there are much better resources out there.

I was a governor at their primary school and they honestly did focus on the weakest children. I get that, it really makes a difference if those weakest children can read when they get to secondary school. Everyone else was fine as long as they made expected progress. So an underachieving able child was fine, as long as they consistently underachieved. And there's no measurement beyond greater depth for that year group. So a child who was effective at the greater depth level for the year above could do nothing for a year, dropped down to 'only' greater depth for their year group and be recorded as having made expected progress. This was particularly obvious for DD1 as she swapped from being in the younger half of mixed aged classes to being just in her year group a couple of times, so really had been working alongside the year above and then felt to be repeating the year.

There was also quite a lot of variability in teachers. DD1 had a great teacher who put together interesting maths resources for her to do when she'd done what she needed to do of the classwork. But then the next year she had an out-of-her-depth NQT and everything but the bare minimum disappeared.