Moving from state primary to prep school in year 5

[stressedmama174]

Our child has just moved from a state primary to a prep school in year 5. They've just done some start of year assessments and my child said they could barely answer any of the maths questions as they've never been taught the concepts. Child was at greater depth for most things in state school.

Has anyone else's child moved at this point in the primary years and did they catch up? I think the school teaches way ahead of the National Curriculum to ensure the children are ready for the 11+.

Not done this, but I've done London 11+ from a state school with poor maths teaching. Our daughter took a mock exam in April of Y5 and came close to the bottom of the maths cohort despite always having been greater depth/near the top of her class. Two terms of Sunday morning 'school'.(Group tutoring) later and she did very well in 11+. She just needed to be explicitly taught a load of material. So if the prep school knows what they're doing and your child is bright (which is suggested by the greater depth thing), you should be completely fine...

Thank you so much. This is actually really reassuring and well done to your daughter. We are in London too, so know how crazy it all gets here!
I'll speak to school next week, but hopefully they have experiencing in closing the gap.

We moved our DC in year 3 and 5 from state to private. The headteacher of the private school said they would request information from their previous school but would do their own assessments as the information would unlikely be an accurate picture.

The private school we went to is very use to getting children from state schools and plugging the gaps. Especially in maths they split children by ability. It is not uncommon for 5 levels of work in 1 class and for children to change groups depending on what area they are working on.

They identified that DD in year 5 was not quite 11+ level but her other scores on the assessments suggested it was more due to not being taught specific areas and she would likely pick them up quickly. Maths is definitely her strongest area going into the exam.

Thank you @corallemur. Did you find that maths was initially where you found the biggest gap? Did you daughter catch up quickly?

English especially writing was the biggest gap. It is now where it should be for 11+ but not great. DD caught up quickly in maths and within a month or 2 doing the same as the others taking the 11+.

DS in year 3 the gap was in also in writing and to a bigger extent. They managed to get him up to where he should be as well although not working above.

My DD2 moved from state to private at Christmas of Year 5. She’s just moved into Year 7 at the same private school.

I teach in a state primary with friends who teach in private. In private they tend to cover the curriculum, particularly in maths, by the end of Year 5 ready for private and grammar school entrance exams at the start of Y6. In the state sector, we are still teaching new content all the way through Y6 so I’d say it’s normal that your child may not have covered all the content in their state school.

We moved DD for yr6, similar story that she felt ‘behind’ in maths because she’d never encountered the concepts. She was caught up by Xmas and here SAS scores at the end of the year were in the top third.
School should be more than used to catching up new joiners, so please don’t worry too much

Thank you all so much. I feel much more relaxed about it now. I was starting to doubt last night whether we'd done the right thing in moving DC, but hopefully, this term they'll catch up quickly.

No experience of moving my child from state to private as always been private, however, did have a 'taster' at a different private prep for several days at the same age. The two private preps were working a good year or so apart. When I viewed the work my DC had done in the taster week that the class were just learning, my DC had learned it all in yr 4. So literally every school varies. Now at a different school all together with peers who had come from state schools, both primary and secondary and the biggest comment I hear from my DC is how those children behave/conduct themselves.