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.

A comp that is full of high achievers does not by default make it 'better' than a school with fewer higher achievers on entry.
A lot depends on cohort choosing to go to that school.
People play fast and loose with the word 'better' schools including of course our wondrous government.
As you were!

Noble is a state school math teacher. I think the OP is better off listening to her than random posters with bright kids who are against private schools.

I removed my Ds from a private school as it wasn't the right environment for him but he is about a year ahead in maths at his new school.

At the private school he used to attend a child such as the OP would be given the chance to sit GCSE maths & Further maths in Year 9/10 & would be able to sit A level maths early if appropriate.

A school with no A level teaching & no experience of further maths would not be able to push him in this way. I suspect he would become bored & unhappy & possibly disruptive.

Of course it doesn’t but if you have a good number of high achievers then they play off each other. Working hard and doing your best is the default. When you have a good number of children who are high achievers and are expecting high grades then other children are pushed to think that they want to try and achieve that too. They no longer see a 5 or an old C as the aspiration but think, well of they can get 8’s or 9’s then I can too and then expectation increases. Where there is a core of high achievers the school makes sure they are preparing children for top universities, they realise that Oxford, Cambridge and Russell Group are absolutely where they want to be and they don’t settle for less than that and therefore those aspirations become the norm.

Of course it doesn’t make it automatically a good school and as a comprehensive there will be lower achievers too and the school has the challenge of supporting them to do the best they can and that might be a 3,4 or 5 which is absolutely right but I simply can’t see why it would be beneficial to put a highly academic child in a school where only a handful of children are working at the highest level and one would have to question if the teachers are actually following enough of the curriculum to deliver those results.

There was the school on tv a few months ago, a very challenging school in Manchester I think. It was a wonderful school with an inspiring head who was doing amazing things with a very deprived and difficult cohort. It had a very good ofsted and was clearly a wonderful school but they had less than 20% of children getting 5 GCSE’s and literally none getting the highest grades, their top sets were still getting D’s and E’s. I can’t see how they would get the best out of a super academic child who would have virtually no academic peers to work alongside.

Hey who are you calling random?
I do have a role in education as it happens not that not having one would make me random...
Mumsnet is a funny community sometimes...

We shall have to see how my academic child does in a few years time at his school with low high ability intake.

The difference is, in a place the size of Manchester there will be a large number of schools - which means that there is at least the illusion of parental choice (aka middle class parents playing the system). In contrast the OP says this is the only school. Which means that parental choice isn't even an illusion. And if this is the case, inevitably there will be parents (including parents of the pushy MN variety) who simply have no choice, as private really isn't an option for the majority. Therefore there will be other high achievers, even if there is nobody at the OP's son's level.

Are you a maths teacher?

I have an academic child at a school with a low ability intake. However there is no way in hell I'd have sent him to the other local school where children do not progress.

The OP does not have an academic child. She has an exceptional mathematical genius. My friend has a similar child (in English based subjects). She'd have been destroyed at our local schools.

Private is not always better - it certainly wasn't for my Ds. But the OP is in a unique situation.

My son is excelling in maths and continues to do so at his school. He is making progress and being offered enrichment activities in and out of school, through the school.
We all have our own take on our own children and I for one am not taking everything at face value with any poster....

You are doIng what you feel is right for your son. The same as I was when I removed mine from his selective private school & put him in a state comp. he's doing brilliantly in maths (no so in English, he thinks he's done my great but is now heading towards Grade 3)

The same as I did what i thought was best for dd by not sending her to the private school but accepting a bursary to a specialist dance school.

The OP does not have a bright, academic child. Noble says she's been in conversation with her. Noble has been on heare long enough for me to trust her opinion.

Sometimes I wish I didn't change my user name so much!
School choices can be contentious and whatever choice we make there will, for most people, be wobbles.
I include myself in that! [The wobbling on occasion that is].

I've seen an exceptionally gifted mathematician once in over a decade of teaching, and I've taught some really able children. For that child, even in my school with loads of high achievers, a really good maths department and a special curriculum,, their secondary maths experience was marking time till uni.

A poor school with no sixth form is highly unlikely to have a maths department staffed by specialists and wouldn't have the resources for A-level, further or STEP.

If the OP's DS ended up at that school then advice could be given as to how to make the best of it, but that doesnt mean that alternative options shouldn't be explored and pursued first.

I will be controversial and might sound a bit rude here but I think most people will have no idea how to deal with an outlier because by definition, these cases are really rare.

What does he want to do with Maths? Do A Level Maths/FM early then go to university early?

If he wants to stay at school with people of the same age then what he is going to do for the rest of the time in term of Maths. Have you let him take the Intermediate/Senior Maths challenge so he can qualifies for the Olympiad and gets noticed by the UKMT. If he has the desire and determination to compete in the IMO then he needs guidance, not only from the UKMT but also from his school as well.

I am coaching some kids with good potential at the moment. We went through an A Level topic in 20 minutes last week. It normally takes my A Level classes a good 4 x 1 hour lessons to get closer to that level of understanding. In one hour session, we went through the A Level content, applied it to do some problems and ended up with a BMO question.

Does your DS need something similar like that to simulate and challenge him? If the answer is yes then take him somewhere like Westminster or SPS if you live in London

Maybe start by taking him to open days?

I'd second this - so important to get a "feel" for the school and more importantly the teachers. The school that our son was attracted to after the open days was the one where the teachers were most friendly and engaging - the one where the teachers came over and introduced themselves and started talking with our son straight away or showing them/explaining things, even the head of maths who started playing a board game with him. That contrasted massively with other schools where the teachers basically stood around in huddles talking to eachother and left the pupils/sixth formers to do the tours, answering questions, etc. For him, it was the right choice as he's had a wonderful five years so far of brilliant relationships with most teachers which has been far more important to him than shiny new buildings, etc.

irvineoneohone - But worried his outcome maybe restricted.

I think this will very much depend on the 6th form provision available to your DS and your DCs academic performance at the point of applying:

To give an example, my nearest secondary school states: Students likely to achieve on average 4 grade 8s and 4 grade 7s may opt to study FOUR subjects (for A Level). Students wishing to study Further Mathematics should list FOUR subjects.

In light of this, it would be wise to identify schools that show high achievement and progress for students across a range of subject areas, not just maths.

Sorry to hijack thread. We are in a similar position with our 12 year old son in Scotland in a state school who is exceptionally good at maths. His Midyis score for maths was 150, which I understand is the highest possible.

The school is uninterested in doing anything specific to help. They justify this by saying they don't want to enter him early for exams. In the meantime, he is getting bored......any advice? Private school may be a possibility, but we would have to seriously cut back.

Aurea - In the meantime, he is getting bored......any advice?

Visit the schools you are considering and ask them how they would support your DS in light of the Midyis score for maths.

I think some people are missing the point. Ops son is far beyond the point that a grade 9 in maths will be progress. I'm nowhere near as exceptional as he is, and I coasted to top grades at GCSE and A-level. All it taught me was that education was boring, and that I never needed to try.

I think socially he'd find it easier at the private too. No disrespect to teachers but at a school where many will have far bigger issues, a high achieving, well behaved dc with asd isn't going to be much of a priority. Academic independents aren't exactly known for taking disruptive dc or those with difficult sens, so far more support available for someone like ops ds.

Fact is even if you say a teacher like noble will teach him at the state option, with all the will in the world, what she could offer educationally and pastoral wise is going to be very limited by all the other pressures a school like that would have. Same teacher in a good state school with a cohort of high achievers, let alone a private with all the extra resources, is able to offer a lot more.

Plus being realistic, I find it doubtful that the top set in an undesirable school would get a great teacher. Highly unlikely they have a maths dept where all staff are equally great, so chances are as top set he would be last in line for the best teachers they have.

"In the meantime, he is getting bored......any advice?"
If he was mine he'd be focussing on all the other subjects. I'd tell him he was lucky that maths came easily to him and how about putting some effort into French or Games or History or whatever he doesn't find so easy.

My advice to @Aurea is don't let perfectionism take hold (and mastery is ideal for encouraging perfectionism). DH and I have been dealing with the consequences of that for the last few hours and it's a royal pain!

Seriously, my advice is don't listen to anyone who thinks your DC should be stuffed into a school that is a bad for for him because it pleases their views about how society or education should be organised. Find a school that is as good a for for him as you possibly can.
If anyone says "a clever child will do well anywhere" then just disregard the rest because they have no relevant experience

If anyone says "a clever child will do well anywhere" then just disregard the rest because they have no relevant experience

Unless, of course, they have "a clever child", in which case they do have experience, albeit limited ;-)

I’m not a big fan of private education but the fact is that the state system isn’t set up for extreme outliers (and nor should it be given how rare), and this is the point where the private sector should be expected to step in and earn their charitable status.

As general advice, if your DC is very able in maths and you are considering early entry for exams, make sure you have a long-term plan that covers their whole school career. No point in doing GCSE early if the school doesn’t then offer A-level to fill the time. No point in doing A-level early if the school then runs out of maths to teach them by Y10 and the DC has nothing to do till uni application time when they’ll be disadvantaged by not having studied maths properly for years. Better that the DC either has access to a suitable curriculum throughout their schooling (e.g. privately taught by an expert, or the exams spread out carefully) or they do the age-appropriate exams and challenge themselves with stuff like UKMT challenges (who can assign mentors to exceptional students).

A lot of people think they have a clever child, but they often fail to distinguish between clever and exceptionally clever and as result give advice that is only relevant for normal-clever not exceptionally clever.

Agree re the presumption their experience of what constitutes 'clever' is the template, with the only other variety being 'doing a PhD at 11' and completely ignoring the huge range between those levels. Along with the presumption that any curriculum based exam result taken at the normal age could demonstrate progress, or lack of.

if you have a good number of high achievers then they play off each other

This is so true. My son has been swept along by his high achieving class mates and is doing better than we'd have ever imagined. We really can't see that he'd be doing so well if he was the brightest in the class. It's done him the world of good to try to emulate his class mates and he's really challenged himself to rise to their level.

I don’t know if private is always set up for the outliers either. It’s a case of finding the right school. A good state comp with a sixth form and a good uptake at maths/ further maths at Alevel might be a better choice than a less academic independent for example.

Now is the right time to be looking at your options.