Going for better school...

[user789653241]

I had a thread here before and had great advice from a lot of posters regarding going for scholarship and bursary.

DS is exceptional at maths, and also doing better than average in English, and he is in YR5.
I had a talk with my ds in depth, and he doesn't seems to want it at all, like preparing for entrance exam etc. He is very strong willed and wouldn't do anything he doesn't want to. So preparing for the entrance exam will be unlikely.
He says he is happy to go to local sinking school with his friends. Destination isn't great, I am not sure if they do actually accommodate his needs or not and only goes up to 16.
What I really wonder is, can he be able to go further is he wanted to, even after attending sinking secondary school?
I really don't want to send him to where he doesn't want to. But worried his outcome maybe restricted. I don't think many will go to further education at this school, many end up leaving school as fast as they can.

I will let him try one of papers this weekend.

As you are looking to research schools it would be worth researching practice material for the entrance tests. I think your DC may enjoy some of the practice papers etc. that are currently available. I don't think he will struggle with the content at all but he will need to be able to work quickly and accurately. You can find information on the schools, entrance exams and practice material here:

www.elevenplusexams.co.uk/forum/11plus/index.php?sid=a0864ebd9edcda7ef1c0f6c028aba125

Thank you, Mum, I will have a look.

It sounds like your ds is very much like my ds was exceptionally able at maths (his junior school had a teacher from secondary school come in a couple of times a term to teach him and oversee his work between those times) and able across the board.
Rightly or wrongly I allowed ds to go to the local comp, against my better judgement I suppose, because he had strong friendships and didn't feel he would be happy going to a school where he would be without his friendship group.
In the first few weeks of year seven ds won the whole school maths challenge beating those five years older than him and acquired his nickname "Dexter boy genius"
Suffice to say ds realised at this point that school wasn't going to be much of a challenge for the next five years when it took no effort on his part to get exceptional results.
Ds would say he had the time of his life, his teachers would shudder at the memories and I gained a crop of grey hairs as he used his talents to run rings around the rules and the systems.
He achieved the predicted As and A*s with no effort and no revision and in fact left school three months before GCSEs because school couldn't rein him in. He was bored doing lessons when he was being taught something new, revision was a whole new level of boredom for someone with an eidetic memory with perfect recall.
He went onto six form at a different school. Again he found it easy,he had a fantastic social life that was rarely impeded by studying and put in the bare minimum effort.
His best friend died and ds lost his way a bit. He got A,A,A,B and then decided he wasn't going to uni. I was gutted,he should have been going to Cambridge to study Maths but instead went to work in Local Government.
Fortunately they spotted his potential pretty quickly and funded his degree and his Masters and whilst studying never fulfilled him work does immensely and he's happy with lots of responsibility (tipped to be a future chief exec), a very good salary (he earns more than all of his peers who went the conventional route) and no student debt.
He found his own path I suppose and whilst it wasn't the path I envisaged or hoped for for him it is his life and his happiness is what is most important to me.
So OP in answer to your question in your shoes there is not a cat in hell's chance I would allow ds to attend the sinking school if there were any other alternatives .

Thank you, fleshmarket
Your post reminded me of my other worry, he is happy child now, but because of his skewed interest and the way he sees the world , he had very difficult start of school life. He was very isolated and sad inside, up until about yr3, friendship wise. He still is a quirky, different child, but over the years, he has developed friendships with children who accepts him as he is.
That's another reason I think he wants to stay with his close friends he got now....

Ds was and still is a social butterfly. He was hugely popular from the minute he entered school with both the children and the staff. He is a person who draws people to him.
Looking back I was stupid to think he needed to be with his friendship group because he had proved consistently from his earliest days that he could establish good social relationships anywhere.
He has friends across the country to this day from past schools,past clubs, past work roles, current work roles, university attendance etc etc.
Ds has no regrets and to be fair neither do I. Going to uni soon after his friend died would,I think,have been a disaster. He was drinking and partying too much and he needed his family near him. That coupled with how little work and studying he needed to do to get his degree and his Masters would have left him too much free time to get wrecked.
As it is he is highly respected in his role and he is flying high and happy and that is what counts.
Coincidentally his role used to involve advising schools on policy and three years after leaving the local comp he was giving presentations advice to his old HT and others to say the HT was surprised was an understatement but it didn't stop him claiming ds as one of his old boys

What you will read on many threads is that after the initial settling into secondary school there is usually a 'shake-down' of friendships as they all get to know each other, are put into sets, choose extra-curricular activities etc. There is no guarantee his good friends will still be a group by year 8.

If you can get him into a robustly academic school in either sector AS A GENERALISATION he will find a wider circle of potential friends who are also 'bright with quirk', maybe not with his maths prowess but also outliers.