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)

There are always one or two early readers in reception/year 1. It’s not unusual and puts those children at a massive advantage. You will get exactly the same spread of abilities in a prep school. Find things for her to fail or at least struggle at and access to lots of books.

You should email the current teacher, next year's teacher and the head teacher with your concerns. I think if you're open and create a partnership with them all things would work better. Every child should be challenged. I wonder if the remark about moving her up was flippant and made under pressure? There's so much more involved than the academics, especially in a small school, and even the brightest children need to learn and build confidence in some areas. I can't see whybthey wouldn't give her differentiated work in her strongest areas? Good luck!

I love this post! I’ve been really interested reading this thread as my eldest was like a sponge - just soaked up everything and had a very enquiring mind. The things my children always loved at school were when you were picked as register monitor and took the register back to the office - you got to answer the phone while the receptionist had a tea break! I can’t put things any better than a lot of posts on here but do cherish the friendship groups at your daughter’s school. Once I turned up for sports day and couldn’t find my child, then I noticed a table with two pupils, heads down, concentrating on writing. They were doing the scoring!
One of the best things I found quite by chance was a local archeology group for children run by a museum - they went mudlarking and on coach trips.

‘under pressure’? I don’t really understand what you mean. I was asking where her development areas were at a parents evening and the teacher was laughing and trying to explain to me just how ridiculously far ahead she is.

This thread is enormously helpful. Not being in education myself I have no idea what questions to ask at school and my husband and I tend to feel like because state schooling is free we shouldn’t ask for anything and add to their already ridiculous workload with our first world problems!

You don’t have a problem though. What you have is a child who can read and do the maths she has been taught. From what you have said she isn’t massively ahead and most teachers in early primary have one or two children like this a year. It’s extraordinarily easy to enrich an academically able child of this age and ability. She’s not even working at secondary level yet (I’m not trying to say it’s not brilliant that she’s so able it’s just problematic jumps ahead of your peers aren’t this level). You can easily keep her engaged at school and add martial arts, competitive sport, language, or musical instrument if needed. My advice would be to find other things to praise her for as well as her academic accomplishments.

I know a lot of teachers and every one of them has had children who excel in certain areas in every class they've had. I don't know any who have told a parent that their child should skip a year. I do know teachers who have felt uncomfortable under the glare of a parent who thinks their child should skip a year and has said something to diffuse the situation and build a good rapport. I don't know you, I certainly don't want to offend you - I'm just saying that it would be very unusual for a teacher to genuinly think a child should skip year and do nothing about it. As I said, I think you should speak to everyone involved in your childs education and form a plan because she should be being challenged and the school should be happy to do so. All the best.

I think the best way to stretch an able dc is to get them learning a musical instrument.

my thoughts are -

1. be that parent. My ds’s state primary school put in a weekly extension maths class for his year in years 5 and 6, 6 of them with a retired maths professor. Could have been earlier. All of that group have just graduated from STEM degrees. If you don’t ask you don’t get. If nobody else, would your mum volunteer to lead something like that?
2. It’s a good age to play an instrument and join a playing group. Music turbocharges maths and all cognitive ability, plus of course is a joy in its own right. If instruments don’t seem to be her thing, try a choir, or tbh both. At a choir school she’d be learning at least 2 instruments.

My mother a bit silly in a great number of ways 🤣 She’s very much of the old school of teaching and thinks the state sector has gone to pieces in the last decade and is failing everyone including the most able who get overlooked whilst the teachers worry about the myriad of real problems.

Thank you this is so reassuring to hear. I’ve always been of the mindset that we don’t do classroom type learning outside of school, we do all that wider life learning stuff.

A school which did this would not be Outstandibg.

My school is outstanding. They do do this.

Thank you, I appreciate you input. My main worry tbh is that we’re quite reserved and tend not to be demanding of the school whereas potentially other parents are much more pushy. I don’t want to be pushy but equally I don’t want my kid to get overlooked because I didn’t ask the right questions (which I really haven't to date!)

As well as the wonderful cultural enrichment suggested, I would do natural history - identifying wild flowers, trees and birds. It's noticeable on University Challenge that the teams always struggle with these things that I learned from my parents at an early age. Use ID guides not apps as you have to look properly, compare what's in front of you with a picture and so you remember it better. Then farm animal breeds, if you have any in your area.

Following on from PP, we took DS to the local https://www.wildlifewatch.org.uk/join-watch-group from age 5 on the recommendation of friends who also went. They do all sorts of interesting things from making bug houses to pond dipping to visiting a heronry! That lead to an interest in all the Steve Backshall Deadly 60 stuff.

I also think sport/dance or similar is important for the balance of healthy mind, healthy body and being a team player.

I've got to say the first time we knew DS had been labelled as gifted by school was when he came home age 6 and said he was having a weekly session with the deputy head. My immediate thought was, what has he done? But it turned out to be one to one maths. We knew he was reasonably bright but has an Aug birthday so just never seemed as clued up as the tall girls of reception.

If you join Scouting or Guiding then the badges can be a fun way to try a lot of different activities at home, some academic but most not. It is also good to have a different friendship group outside school as it reduces the peer pressure of having all your eggs in one basket socially which can encourage bright students to hide their abilities in class.

@MyTwoDadslessons are always differentiated three ways? This isn't the 2000s, we use adaptive teaching now!

OP- here’s a few other ideas.

To further support my DC with his Maths, I spend time daily teaching him new mathematical board games at home after school. He loves the scoring process in Yahtzee, Battleships, various card games, Uno, Triominoes, Rummikub, draughts, chess (teaching myself when he’s in bed 😂). He picks them up quickly, but they are great for extending his mathematical strategic skills- I am teaching him how to plan moves ahead and think carefully about what other players are doing.

I also provide loads of independent bits, eg Shut the Box, Rubix cube, calculator and notebooks (he loves writing down equations, number patterns, playing about with them, etc), a Sudoku set and you can buy amazing IQ puzzles on Amazon where you have to follow patterns with coloured pieces- they increase in difficulty and some are really hard! These give him bits to do when I can’t play the games with him.

Just be careful teaching maths without a curriculum guide. Homeschooling during lockdowns taught me that maths is all kinds of different now. Dh and I were constantly saying "but that's not how we were taught to do it!"

So you can potentially confuse them by 'meddling' if you go 90s style.

How are you teaching maths, they use different methods in school?

I’m not teaching her maths, or anything else tbh. She reads to me and to herself and I bought her some workbooks but that’s it.

The only reason I showed her long addition was because she wanted a way to add up big numbers then it escalated from there into subtraction, multiplication and division just because she was interested. A teacher up thread has suggested this isn’t something she should be doing but I didn’t know that when I showed it. Hopefully it won’t cause any issues at school. It’s a shame because she really lit up tackling those sums.

Everyone is giving me good advice. A lot of it we already do - dance, sport, nature, museums etc. We also both work full time and she didn’t get into any afterschool ex curricular activities for next term so it’s tricky to fit everything in. She’s starting Brownies next term though which she’s excited about.

Actually Thats not quite true. I did teach her to tell the time in reception because I couldn’t believe the school hadn’t!

Please don’t ever apologise for teaching your own bright, interested children anything. Children learn at different rates, school is constraining in that way. Parents are their child’s first teachers in life. How lovely to have you, someone so caring and interested, to sit down and show her things like multiplication, division and telling the time. I do the same with mine- he’s so disappointed not to do more of that in Year 1, so we do loads together at home.

I’ve also been holding his school fully to account as a parent governor, and I have personally put challenging those who are greater depth and exceeding firmly on our committee’s regular agenda. It has been reassuring, and I have learnt loads.

@Wildwild telling the time comes later in the curriculum. Remember some children are just grasping what numbers are by end of reception, no point trying to teach them telling the time. Schools ensure different maths concepts are mastered becire moving into new ones. Children will be challenged if they are able but it will be within each concept

In an earlier post you said you were showing her long addition, division etc

I don't think it's a problem at all for bright children to learn different methods for tackling maths problems. If they are bright they will understand and appreciate that there are different ways to tackle maths problems and will understand how these different methods work. We always did a lot of maths at home because that is the sort of thing that comes up in our conversations over dinner and our dc were always interested to try to solve problems.