Shout and scream or Coffee and Tea??

[leightonupman]

Hi there all

I could use your worldly wisdom re my 12 year old little girl.

She’s just started secondary school and has landed in the lowest band.

She’s getting on ok but I’m unhappy about her staying there. The longer she stays there the more comfortable she’s becoming, and the harder I can see it will be to get her to move up a band. Being a Dad I’m terrified she’ll end up in a sht job - hey you gotta think long term right? To my mind we need to intervene now in year 7 whilst she’s doing Key Stage 3, so she’s got a fighting chance of getting some decent GCSEs post KS4.

We are providing a maths tutor to help her once a week, Maths being her weakest area. We are also giving her homework in the absence of homework coming from the school. They don’t seem to give it much at the moment, which is annoying the hell out of me.

Long and short is I am having real trouble putting faith in the school to help her improve - my gut feeling is that they are happy for her to just amble along as she is instead of making extra effort to help her improve and move up, which I can’t accept. I’m not convinced that moving up a band is entirely based on merit or hard results. I think they sometimes move a kid just to move a problem from one place to another. This is my little girl’s future right?

All this angst is taking its toll on me and my wife. My girl is out of earshot when we’re rowing about it. It’s a cause of arguments at home with my wife. I’ve had the initial meeting with the head of KS which didn’t fill me with confidence. Early on in primary school I pressed for extra help but got told to back off and let them do their job, which I accepted at the time. But guess what? My girl didn’t improve and ends up in the lower band in secondary. This time I’m determined not to make the same mistake. I’m taking full control to make sure she’s improving, in loads of time before GCSEs.

We can only do so much at home with the tutor and homework we give her but the kid has to have a life as well right?

When we’ve spoken to her a few times about moving up, she’s not a fan of change and so the move is daunting, but I think she would be glad really - a move up is an affirming thing right?

I’m now treating her lack of progress like a complaint basically. I’m pulling together whatever data I can and getting ready to hurl it at the school and the board in the (likely) event she still hasn’t improved by end of the second term. I’m worried they will try to b sht us again and still do nothing to help.

Should I back off? If so how much? Leave her to it? Or do I go full out and put in a formal complaint that the school isn’t doing enough to help her improve . Where is the middle line? And do I need to stop worrying so much about her future and let things be what will be? And what’s the right approach with the school? A series of calm measured discussions over the coming months to work out what needs to change (not working so far btw), or do I go old school and give the teachers a boll**cking? Sadly this approach seems to have worked for at least one parent I know. Sometimes in big businesses when complaining as a consumer, he who shouts loudest gets heard, and it’s worked for me before, but is this the right approach now?? I can't see an approach to take with teachers that will give me the outcomes we want? What approach works best with teachers to get results from them? Sounds cold I know but please cut me some slack - I'm a stupid bloke. It's the reason I'm asking you guys

I know these teachers are under incredible strain as it is and I am the last one to make someone’s life worse. But again this is my kid’s future. Bottom line is we need my girl to be ready to do well when she gets to KS4 and beyond.

And if there’s any doubt here, we both love this little girl beyond measure - she’s the centre of our lives and just want to do right by her and I will do whatever it takes.

Help me sensible ones, could really use some different perspectives and strategies etc.

FennyBridges that's some great advise and insight. Been talking this whole thing over with my misses and i get it. The band she's in is clearly the right place for her. I guess when I started out I was labouring under the apparently mistaken believe that a higher band was a measure of improvement in her ability we could shoot for. Having read some great posts here I get how the band in itself keys the delivery of learning to an appropriate pace.

Having said that, is it a fair goal then that she simply aims for better performance in the band she's in?? I need to establish a direction that's best for her, and that we can then support her in.

Does she know her times tables and number bonds?
Can she read fluently and expressively and with understanding?
Did she achive 100 plus in her ks2 sats?

leightonupman
Not a problem. I understand why you want to know more about her progress, I just dispute the idea that schools should do multiple data drops etc as a way of reporting to parents and if parents have specific concerns then having a chat with the school about the whole picture and specific concerns is a much better (and proportionate) way to do it than lots of pointless data entries.

I'll answer each question bit by bit if that's ok.

How often do you independently improve how you teach each individual student may I ask?
Every lesson. Throughout the lesson I'm constantly observing learning, answers, listening to group work and then will adapt the support/challenge/task structure/ timings/nature of instructions etc to suit the children.
After pieces of work have been completed, I'll look for patterns ( E.g. is X a misunderstanding for one student or half a class). Next lesson' s teaching is adapted accordingly.
I presume your measures will inform this improvement?
Do you proactively ask whether or not each kid is learning at least to an acceptable standard for the band and if they’re not, are you changing and correcting what you are doing until they are performing correctly?
I don't judge students based on what band they are in. That's mainly because I think that can set low expectations subconsciously.
I look at where the child is, any prior information I have on them, the skill or knowledge we are looking at & then sequence teaching and learning so they gradually make progress, always remembering thay progress doesn't mean doing something once. Progress is being able to reproduce that standard consistently and independently.

For example, I teach a weaker student this year who is great at X and poor at Y and Z. I can't say they're grade 7 (for example) because they might be a 7 in X but be a 5 in Y and Z. Their parent might say 'they've gone backwards', but they haven't. They just achieved a 7 in a novel, but found poetry and narrative writing difficult.

Obviously I'm just saying what I do, but this is fairly standard teaching stuff and nothing exceptional.

This isn’t a teaching decision I’m talking about. I want confidence from my kid’s teachers that they are clear about how she is performing today and where she’s not up to standard, that they are taking proactive steps to change how they are teaching her so she is
I understand. You'll get that by talking to the teachers either on the phone or in person.
That sort of detailed overview isn't manageable to give for all students, even though the information is in staff's head, which is why short update reports are done instead. Much as you clearly don't like the reports in this situation, they are a reasonable way of communicating progress. Some members of staff teach 200-400 students in my shool, each with 3 reports a year. Some situations require more partnership (and this would be one), but you can't design a system around the exceptions when there's a viable alternative.

I think arranging to talk to the school with an open mind is the way forward. If it's a specific subject then contact the subject teacher. If it's a number of subjects, ask the form tutor to put a round robin out for information and then you can get an overview.

Maisypops

Ok great I get why it’s not practical to give out multiple data drops. But the thing is, if my kid isn’t performing well enough today, and 1 year down the road she’s still not performing well, I have to ask the teacher(s) why they didn’t look at their own data, identity the reasons why and act accordingly to fetch her up earlier in the year. I get that poor performance is in part due to how the kid is working, but to my mind it is the teacher who’s at fault primarily. I’m asking this question now so that if worse case is she hasn’t improved in a year say, that I can reasonable ask why and frankly hold the teacher or teachers accountable for not doing something earlier to change that outcome. Like I said I asked for help a few years ago in primary. To be fair they did give it and I backed off and let them get on. 3 years later my girl’s performance hadn’t improved though. So not taking any chances now.

Why are you apportioning blame? If your child isn’t making progress then you ask why not? What could they improve on?
You’ve asked her if she’s distracted? What do teachers say?
You seem to have both unrealistic expectations and zero idea of how schools work.

Wolfiefan it's not about apportioning blame here. It's about asking who is accountable so that I can then ask them directly what's not working and agree steps going forward to correct from there.

“The teacher who’s at fault primarily”
How hard does your child actually work? How good is behaviour?
How well is HW completed?

Thanks Wolfiefan. All I'm able to say here is that she's doing her best in class, after school and there's nothing I'm aware of that's causing her to be distracted from her work. It's all I can ask of her.

How do you know? Effort grades in class?

You seem to be wilfully ignoring my question...
I have to assume (bottom band) they were low scores, although they may not reflect her true potential, as you think she underachieved at primary, but you haven't provided any evidence or indication of her ability.

What were the Progress 8 scores for the school for the last two years?
If they were around 0, and your DD entered with 100 in Reading and maths, you can expect a clutch of 4s and 5s at GCSE. If she scored below 90, I'm guessing she will come out with 2s and 3s. If the school has a Prog8 score of +0.5, maybe mostly 3s with some 4s.

What helps children most is having parents that have realistic expectations- for them, and of what schools actually provide. You are not the customer here!
One term is not long enough for most underachieving children to settle into secondary. You and your wife arguing about her progress is going to make your DD anxious, and she is going to feel that she isn't good enough for you. Constantly trying to live up to unrealistic aspirations is going to damage her emotional and mental health.

You need to check with the maths department what topics are being covered this year, so that the tutor is consolidating the learning happening in school, as well as filling in the gaps. (If she got below 100 in KS2, then she hasn't mastered the KS2 curriculum yet, but you're stressing about KS4? It's crucial to get the foundations right in maths, as every thing is built upon those)

Check (either with DD, or with her form tutor) that she is managing the organisational side of things (right classroom, at right time, with correct books and equipment). Many children struggle with the expectations of secondary school, and lots get flustered if they're late to class, or don't have their book etc, and that has an impact on what they can take in of the lesson.

She is studying many more subjects now, so you cannot expect amazing amounts of progress in the core subjects in Y7 as there is so much for her to take on board atm. New subjects will have a far steeper learning curve, so progress may be more evident.

Your child will be making progress and improving all the time. The teachers will continue to proactively respond to that and increase expectations.

Say she gets 5 out of 10 in a spelling test earlier in the year. Then at the end of the year she is still getting 5 out of 10. You might say she has made no progress, but she has. The spellings by the end of the year are a lot harder.

The thing is that you are measuring her progress by looking at still being in the bottom set. But all the other children will be progressing too. In order for her to move up a set, she will not only have to progress faster than the others in her set, she will also need to overtake some in the set above, so that they move down and she goes up.

Why are you assuming that it is the teacher who is at fault here? Sorry to say this, but if she isn't as bright as some of the others, then all the teachers in the world can't change that. It's nobody's fault, you can't blame the school, she is who she is.

When you talk about someone being accountable, it strikes me like you are dealing with this in the same way as you would with an issue at work - ie the teaching is wrong and has to be corrected, and once they have corrected their teaching methods, your child will suddenly become more intelligent and start to learn much faster than everyone else.

You need to accept that the school is working hard to ensure that she progresses to the best of her ability.

You also need to accept that the best of her ability might not be as good as you would like it to be.

leightonupman
Your approach is still wrong and you're in danger of falling into the trap I mentioned earlier of parents who see a grade 5 in term 1 and a grade 5 in term 2 and decide no progress has been made. The only difference is that you've decided this is an accountability and competency issue and are already (essentially 16 weeks into year 7) getting ready to launch complaints.

You're already saying in a year's time you'd be asking why the teacher didn't look at their data, identify reasons and fetch a student up to the same level and therefore the teacher is responsible if a student is working at a lower level than their peers. It's not as simple as 'get data + wave an educational magic wand = child working at least to the average level of the year group'.

Your entire approach is still 'if my child doesn't get what I want them to then the teacher is to blame'.

Now staff can work hard, they can do everything they can to help, they'll often have intervention lists coming out their ears, but there is no magic education wand that will turn a student who appears to be weaker into an student of average or higher ability across the board.
It's totally reasonable if you're concerned to talk with the teachers and I would suggest it's a chat worth having, but if you go in with some of the attitudes and approaches here then there is a high likelihood you're going to starr running people up the wrong way.

I wonder too how open you are to being told and accepting that she will and should make progress but has limited ability in maths and is likely to remain in the bottom set and in the end, achieve at a low level.

Various things determine progress and outcomes. Natural ability will be one, teacher input another, parental support another and student effort and application another. With all of the 3 latter working well,there will still be a limit to what each child can achieve. What you want is for them to achieve the best they can - that will require the other 3 to be work really well.

I still think you just don't have enough information. I think you need to make an appointment to go to school and find out about their perceptions of her ability, her work ethic and what plans they have in place for her and can put in place for her. Until you have that conversation you will remain in the dark.

When you have that conversation, you need to accept that it's possible they will say that they think she is low ability in maths. That doesn't mean she can't and shouldn't make progress - of course all children should. You need to accept they might say she is trundling along and not pushing herself or being lazy. These are options to explain what is happening, along with the school not doing enough. You need to be willing to hear that.

Having the conversation will improve your knowledge of the situation and it will also push the school to think anew about her and their plan for her.

In the end though,nsimply saying that she must achieve more and you expect X outcome at the end isn't going to mean that X outcome occurs - it's not just a case of wanting it and demanding it from wither the kiddos the school. Some will achieve at a high level and others won't, even with fantastic input from the school.

i think that you need to bear in mind, that a teacher can be the best teacher in the world, can put every single intervention under the sun in place, can data drop to order but they cannot make a child without ability...achieve.

You can't make a silk purse etc

very often setting is done based on the sats results
my son achieved a 4 in his ks2 sats [back in the day] and so was not in the top set at high school[this was the bog standard average]
he made rapid progress and was achieving gcse grade A in year 8 but he still wasn't put in top set because he hadn't got good enough sats result

he went on to achieve well at GCSE and is now doing A levels

you don't seem to want to answer questions about where she is at .... and i suspect it's because you know where her weaknesses are and are looking for someone to blame

Great posts chocolate and merry.

The other thing you can look at in the DfE performance tables is how well the school does with low, middle, and high prior attainers, that will give you some idea of where she's going to get to. Some schools do extremely well with lower prior attainers.

I have read all of your posts OP but have skimmed through the suggestions so apologies if I am repeating.

I would disagree with the comment that kumon is rubbish. Its actually excellent in maths (if a little boring). DS2 is at a selective independent where the standards are extremely high. He did kumon for a year to cement the basics and it was astonishing how quickly his mental maths improved. He went from struggling to keep up to being incredibly fast (which then helped him with more complex maths). He was in year 6 and I have A level maths and he was much faster than me. It is a routine though. They have to do the booklet every single day. No excuses. However if you are happy with her tutor then I think a tutor and kumon would be overkill.

I would also suggest an online maths programme. There are various ones. My DC have used athletics, conquer maths and my maths. IMO Conquer maths is by far the best since it actually talks through the lessons online. You can replay the lessons over and over and you can print off a summary sheet too to help form their revision notes. DCs school relies very heavily on them for maths homework and they cover the whole curriculum. We get them for 'free' as part of the school fees but I think the cost is about £10 a month. I would sit with her every night and work through a lesson and the practice questions.

I also think she needs to read more and that is one of the biggest differences between those who improve quickly and those who struggle more (in all subjects since it aids their comprehension, spelling, reasoning and inference skills, imagination and vocabulary). There are literally hundreds of fantastic books for her age group.

OP. What you and I want for our DC is for them to make better than average progress. This is a tough ask for the teachers given our DC made less than average progress in primary. (I'm making assumptions here about your DC, but it seems fair enough).

Using the state system, the schools only have so much funding and so much time. They also have whole classes (lower sets) who need to make better than average progress in order to pass their maths/English. Of course the school will be trying its best to achieve this - it is why teachers go into teaching, and what schools are measured on. But my DD is 14 and still doesn't put capitals at the start of sentences consistently. It's not for want of being told, reminded, cajoled, praised.
Sometimes there are just limits as to what a DC can manage at any point of time.

As I said upthread, we have an outside tutor for DD for English. I have to have faith that the 1-1 time will help her. But it is a 'long game'. After a year I think her understanding has improved, but it still isn't showing in class assessments.

If you can't cope with the limitations of school, then you'll need to pull your DC out and home-school. Then you can drop anything you think is less important to cover core skills. But you can't expect a school to perform miracles overnight.

(And actually, the way GCSEs are now graded, the bottom ~1/3rd will fail as they are now marked on a curve not to an absolute standard).

Other than doing what you’re doing re the tutoring etc I don’t see what else you can do. If they move her up will she not struggle?

Not everyone can be good at maths, or as strange at it might seem on this website where people seem to boast constantly about their genius children ;)

I’d just keep supporting her and hope that she at least grasps the basics well enough to do the minimum she’ll need to get to not hold her back.

Everyone wants their child to do well, and some of the ideas given on the thread are great. But ultimately you may have to accept it's possible that the reason your dd is in the bottom band is that that's where her ability level places her. And possibly the reason the school aren't intervening is that they are pretty sure that she is making appropriate progress for her own personal targets (based on her ability).

Leighton

another source of information that you may not have fully investigated: the school website and/or homework app. Many schools will have pages on either their website and/or the site/app they use for setting homework for each year within the school on subject pages which will set out what is to be studied during that year, often with links to helpful resources. Have a rummage!

I would also echo what others have said - I know you want your DD to achieve, but she can only achieve what she is capable of, no matter how much effort teachers put in. This is why every student doesn't achieve a string of 8/9s at GCSE. The majority will have done their best, but many are not capable of reaching that standard.
Think about your own abilities - not necessarily the academic areas. Can you sing, draw etc. If you had the best teacher in the world do you really think you would become a Pavarotti or Da Vinci? Also consider the range of topics and skills required in each subject. You may be quite capable of eg algebra, but probability or trigonometry might be completely incomprehensible to you.
All teachers will be wanting your DD to achieve her best. All schools rely on getting the best results they can.

What information have you had from the school so far? I am guessing on report before Christmas? What information did that contain - achievement levels, effort grades, target grades, written report from each teacher? Could you see any patterns - eg higher grades for certain subjects

If you want to see your DDs books, ask her to bring them home!

W00t - she’s in the bottom band yes. I’m not willing to share detail on scores in a public forum sorry but the info you gave is taken and acknowledged thanks. I’m simply asking if a kid’s progress is such that they’re not making any improvement over the year, how does a parent effectively address that? It’s not an unreasonable ask to want your kid to be improving and not just staying at the same level. I’m not saying I’m expecting to see a marked improvement inside of the first term at secondary. Just to be clear, I am expecting to see that the school has a clear plan of how it’s going to improve her ability at school for the coming two terms. The disagreements at home were not about how she was performing pe say, rather that I could not see a school plan or that school are demonstrating they know how they are going to proceed. I’m not looking for miracles here tbh just an gentle upward trend in her scores. Of course when I get to connect with the maths teacher I will ask for a topics list (thanks Teentimestwo) that I can pass to the maths tutor who can consolidate as you say. Organisation wise she’s fine as far as I know but I’ll check on it on or after parents evening as you suggest. She will always be good enough for me and us and I don’t see anything to suggest she’s thinks otherwise. That said, I’m willing to concede that point and be more conscious that we’re not creating that kind of problem - thank you.

Wayward fruit

Fair point well made. You are right of course - and believe it or not I do accept her ability for what it is, every day. As a parent though I have to look at what I can change, and I have to be 100% sure I’ve done all I can to make sure she’s being helped from every angle to achieve her potential. We are doing what we can at home, but I have to proactively attend to the school side as well. I’m looking for the best approach on this thread and so far the word is partnership which I fully accept. What I don’t accept though is that I’m to simply accept the school is doing their best without some demonstrable idea of what they’ve done to help her. I’m challenging here how the teachers are evaluating her progress and correcting what they are doing to help her. You know if she hasn’t improved at the end of the year and the school could demonstrate they knew that early on she was struggling and they could show they had a plan to help her which they executed, I’d be ok with that because then at least everyone had done everything they could.

Maisypops

Thanks again for the feedback. I think I’ve clarified my point of view on this with wayward fruit above. Hopefully I won’t have to have a conversation with school about why they didn’t act when they could see her struggling. We are talking about worse case scenario here. I’m not talking about a magic wand or anything of the sort. I’m talking about trying new or different things with her until they can see she’s getting it and getting better. I think it’s actually a bit unfair to say my entire approach is student not working right = teacher to blame. As I said earlier, I’m absolutely not seeking to lay blame. I’m looking to understand where things are going wrong if they are going wring and effect appropriate changes. I don’t want to show up in a years time and find my girl has slipped or not made decent progress, only to have the teachers say.”oh well sorry..” and nothing more. Again we are talking worst case scenario. I want to have a constructive and productive conversation that allows us to learn something from the previous year, make some positive changes and move forward again with some agreed outcomes. I don’t think there is anything wrong with any parent doing a bit of forward planning to head off a challenge further down the line - surely you agree?

You’ve said my approach to helping my kid with underperformance is wrong. How do you say I should approach an end of year conversation if she’s slipping or not improving? I get there is no magic wand, but there’s also no reason the school shouldn’t help her improve along the year and demonstrate at least to some degree how they’ve done that even if it isn’t with hard numbers or excess data?

Be assured though I do intend, after having been through this thread, to approach the whole thing in the spirit of a solid partnership. The whole idea of starting this thread was to test and explore these ideas (however distasteful they may seem) and come up with some viable alternative approaches before I move forwards. I think it’s been a success so far because of you guys, so thank you.

It’s not an unreasonable ask to want your kid to be improving and not just staying at the same level. I’m not saying I’m expecting to see a marked improvement inside of the first term at secondary. Just to be clear, I am expecting to see that the school has a clear plan of how it’s going to improve her ability at school for the coming two terms.

But she will progressed in that she has learnt a whole year of information in the 10-14 subjects she studies. If she does not have the academic ability she will not go from a grade 4 to a grade 8, regardless of plans etc. Things may improve nearer to GCSEs as she will learn the correct way to answer GSCE questions - the mark schemes are very prescriptive. This will be addressed by the school nearer the time when the students will do countless past papers etc. They would be bored out of their minds if they started that in Y7.

I have not read the whole thread in detail, so apologise too if I am repeating some things.

You mentioned Kahn Academy and so I just wanted to say I think it is very good.

I would also keep on with the tutor if you think they are helping her. Ask your dd what she thinks.

Basically you get better at maths by doing maths. I think you do have a realistic idea of her capabilities and realise she may not be picking it as a degree subject, but do not want her career chances limited by no qualifications in it.

Kahn Academy also has computing and science I think.

From what I have heard of Kumon, it does not sound very good.

Oh dear, you have absolutely no idea about how the State system works here do you?
The schools are large and under resourced in most cases with staff doing their best to differentiate for different student needs while struggling with a huge workload and in many cases awful discipline problems.
I saw an interesting cartoon recently. 2 pictures of a parent evening titled previously and now
On one the parents were saying “ theses results are awful what are you going to do about it?” To their child but on the “now” picture they were saying the same but to the teacher.
If teachers can they generally will help a pupil achieve their best and improve but it has to come from the child not the pushy parents
If your daughter is happy where is is and doing ok then that’s not terrible. Of course encourage her to do her best but her best might be in the bottom set and that’s fine