If your child won a place at a competitive secondary….

[LeopardPJS]

… was it obvious from the start of primary school that they were academically gifted?
I’m just curious because in year two, my daughter is sort of middle of the pack/ not great on reading / definitely not one of the top kids in her class (though she is lovely and creative and we wouldn’t have her any other way obviously!)
She is an enthusiastic learner who loves school, and clearly takes a lot of the learning in, but is only ‘at expectation’ for most subjects and is ‘at the lower end of expectation’ for reading (though not actually ‘behind’ according to the teacher just lacking a bit of fluency and confidence)
I think this all probably means she isn’t going to be super academic, but my mum thinks it’s too early to tell and academic talents can make a later showing.
Who is right?!

My DS's Y1 teacher told me he was Oxbridge material. I laughed and asked how she could possibly tell at such a young age (tho I knew he was bright). She had the last laugh...he's in his second year reading Engineering at Cambridge currently!

I could tell Prince George was destined for Eton from before his birth.

We don't have super selective or even selective in our area. Ds1 was bright from the beginning and got exceeding for all but 2 subjects in reception. He was in the top set for everything they streamed for in secondary school and left with good grades (2 4's but the rest were 6-9's). He is now in his 2nd year of college doing a btec and is on track to get a distinction. Ds2, Ds3 and Ds5 are academically bright but they struggle with a lot of things due to autism/adhd. Ds4 has learning disabilities so he isn't academic at all but he tries hard and loves learning.

Thanks for all these amazing replies. Really good to hear that so much can change between y2 and y5/6 especially for august born kids which DD is. We will redouble efforts on reading and hope for the best!

You see the interesting thing is lots of people focus on learning support v.s. chances of going into top school. But looking back at our journey of 11+ prep, the biggest gain (school offer or not we don't know until March) is the learning experience:

1. What he learned - enhanced his confidence and enjoyment at school for learning

1. Hard working ethics - however tough and reluctant he felt at some point, he was able to go through it and he saw the benefit of every single steps. He was able to take responsibility in the end for his own efforts.

1. He knows from his own experience (with results charts at the tutor centre), each time when he put his heart in a subject, he saw progress, however hard it was.

People tend to talk about inherent intelligence to warrant a place in grammar school or super selective. But that's not all what life is about.

Like some previous posters said, if a bright child takes it for granted and never learns to put efforts in what they do, his talent would be wasted and those who work hard might well exceed.

DH worked hard all his life and achieved more than anyone could imagine from where he's from. He believes in hardworking more than intelligence (though he does have it himself). He works with lots of people graduated from Oxbridge but quite often he saw lack of motivation and lack of continuous learning. Learning is a lifelong process. Someone who's born bright only has the advantage of being fast and learning easier. But there's no guarantee of achievement if they failed to put efforts in and use their gifted nature.

I do worry about if my DC could keep up in secondary (he's quirky and sort of bright not in the conventional way, and with ADHD), as I supported him extensively along the way. But ultimately, in Y7, regardless which school he goes, the goal is to help him learn to establish a good learning habits and self manage from earlier on. The 11+ process helps to show him what's possible.

OP, maybe worth asking yourself what the ultimate goal is. The focus might be more worthwhile if it's about learning and gaining confidence in learning instead of purely for exam result. That way, the process becomes meaningful in its own without the outward comparison.

@Return2thebasic thanks very much for your thoughtful reply and I agree with what you’ve said.
I agree that people who are down on tutoring can miss the point a bit - having been through the battle for a place at a very selective London school myself aged 10 I know that the idea of passing those exams without some preparatory tutoring is fairly unrealistic even if you are bright - I mean how would you know what on earth the non-verbal reasoning papers are even asking you to do?!
For me the tutoring was invaluable, definitely expanded my learning horizons and taught me about hard work paying off. It may be different outside London in actual grammar areas but for the schools we are looking at, I don’t think you pass without both a but of tutoring prep and a degree of innate intelligence, as it’s just so competitive- probably far more now than in the 90s when I managed to pass because the population of London and therefore pressure on best schools has increased so much as well

@LeopardPJS im in London & you defo need tuition these days. It’s so competitive, I know people with bright dc who start from yr 4 & have them doing 4 hours a week etc

How academic are you and how academic is her dad?
Often that is an indicator of how academic the child will be.

You can easily move her reading forwards with something like Reading Chest - I did this when my kids were young.
Reading Chest

I don’t know about gifted but yes he was very academically able and had exceeding expectations on every section on every report all the way through primary. He’s at a super selective grammar.

was it obvious from the start of primary school that they were academically gifted?
No. She was 'bright' and curious, but if anything rather behind others on reading and writing, and had some support lessons (this teacher did say she seemed to have natural maths ability). This discomfited me as I'd been a precocious reader, but DH had been a 'late developer' ... we have identical degree qualifications but he was the one who won all the prizes. Anyway, dd didn't really catch up with reading till the start of ks2, but she was one of the few who got a place at the grammar (out of catchment so pretty high selection criterion). She was the only one of her primary cohort to go to oxbridge.

So... sometimes doubtless you can tell but they simply don't all kick in at the same age.

2

DS, well ahead academically always.
Me couldn’t read at 9 but won a scholarship at 11.

My eldest was clearly extremely bright from day 1. Even at nursery they told me they thought i was making a mistake sending him to our local very good state school and right through people were encouraging me to sit him for highly academic schools. I had him assessed at about 9 and CAT scores were about 130 across the board. However, whilst he like maths he absolutely hated anything to do with English and i reached the point where I simply couldn’t face the battle with him to get his English up to scratch for the highly academic private schools. We are not in a grammar area. He went to our local outstanding comprehensive where he thrived as a big fish amongst other smart kids.

To be fair he didn’t have the self motivation to care enough about his academics until about the end of year 9 when suddenly he flew. His GCSE’s were brilliant, A levels were 2 x a* and an A and he’s at a RG university currently on a placement year doing some incredible things and i have no doubt he’s going to be extremely successful.

We are an educated professional family but i had to let him go at his own pace.

My middle one who I always felt was solidly above average, nothing special and certainly not super selective material has found themself flying at A level and my youngest who is defiantly the brightest has also not really knuckled down until year 9.

What they all have though is insane curiosity for history, politics, music and the solar system and we’ve just embraced it and they’ve come to it in their own time

My 4 were always in the top 3 in their class. They could all read before starting school, just picked it up quickly. They all read loads in primary school, loved the library. They also loved Maths websites so we just signed them up and they extended themselves. DD1 taught herself all the timestables in Reception on some app. DD2 was obsessed with languages, still is. We have a DuoLingo subscription and she is always on their teaching herself stuff like Russians. DSs both obsessed with Maths from an early age. They played a lot of strategic board games when they were little. All 4 naturally good at Music too.

There is no way I personally would have sent a child to a superselective grammar who does not process information quickly and loves Academics. The workload is just too much.

Yes, it was with DS1. School didn't tend to gush about anyone, but other parents were telling me from Reception that he would definitely go to the grammar school. We didn't tutor, but we did do past papers, which he was happy to do and enjoyed, and I spent a few hours talking to him about the creative writing paper which was his weakest point - for example he thought that if the question was "write a description of a holiday" everything had to be true, and we talked about using all the senses when describing things etc. No non-verbal reasoning here.

DS2 is bright but nobody ever said "oh he's definitely grammar material" and as it turned out he didn't go to the grammar, but is in top stream in his comprehensive. He wasn't so keen on doing past papers and I didn't push him, although we did a few. Would he have gone to the grammar if we had tutored or if I had made him sit down every week and do past papers? Possibly, but it would have been hellish for everyone.

One of mine was meeting expectations in reception and didn't really learn to read properly until year 1. By the end of year 2 he was exceeding in all subjects and had read all of the Harry Potter books. My middle child has always been exceeding but didn't do as well in her KS2 sats and despite picking up reading quicker, she isn't as proficient as her older brother was at her age. It's too early to tell with my youngest.

DS1 - his year 1 teacher told me he was Grammar material . She was correct . I hadn’t really twigged . He was my first and I just thought it was normal . I was more worried about DS2 who is above average but inconsistent and didn’t get into Grammar. I thought he was struggling 🤦🏻‍♀️.

thanks @jlpth - we are both pretty academic yes. Both went to Cambridge. State schools before that ( me selective, him a comp) and have pretty good careers etc now. When I was in the 11+ position I got into latymer, DAOS, Henrietta Barnet etc plus won scholarships for some of the selective London private schools.

It's fine with me if DD1 isn't able to do any of that or if it turns out it's not right for her- it's too early to tell really in year two I guess! - I suppose I just want to be sure we're giving her the best chance, and supporting her as much as we can, as I guess I do sometimes see a disconnect between how bright I believe her to be and how she is currently performing at school relative to her peers especially her progress in reading (this might be her being august born, it might be that she's flying under the radar a bit in her state primary, or it also might be my extreme bias of course!)

Thanks so much for the helpful reading chest suggestion, I'll definitely look into that for my DD.

@ErrolTheDragon this sounds so similar to my DD, she is really bright and curious, and I think because of that and because me and DH were both early readers, I guess we sort of thought she’d be the same and are slightly surprised and perturbed that her progress on it seems a tiny bit slow! I very much hope she will be like your DD, fingers crossed!

@LeopardPJS all the pedagogical evidence indicates that children develop at different rates and experience peaks and troughs in their educational achievements. Children who get top marks throughout, from primary through to university, are reckoned to be <2%. Some peak at a younger age than others - for example, research shows that there is no direct correlation between 11+ scores and GCSE grades (grammar schools have this information but obviously aren't over-keen to share it).

Some children may not achieve well at school - there are a myriad reasons for this, too many to detail here, but can be economic, social and cultural as well as purely educational - but thrive on the different style of teaching and learning at university where access to resources, libraries, tutors etc tend to be more equitable than in schools.

So in short, return to this thread in 10-12 years' time and see how your DD is doing then.

DS goes to a grammar school and his year 1 teacher told me he was “average” at maths in year 1. They did eventually change their tune when he only lost 3 marks in his year 2 maths SATs paper. Conversely, he was a precocious reader and has a ridiculous vocabulary but now has a diagnosis of dyslexia. He’s pretty much consistently been terrible at spelling but that’s the dyslexia and he there’s not much that can be done, it just doesn’t go in. He mostly liked to tick along under the radar and no one bothered to stretch him but he passed the 11+ with no tutoring. He was exceptionally good at verbal reasoning which I think is also due to the dyslexia.

He certainly had plenty of screen time but we’ve always had great discussions and read together every night until he was about 10.

When I said no one bothered to stretch him, I mean at school, I’ve always worked hard with him.

I still don’t know if you can tell or not. The pp who said that language at 5 is a predictor of later academic success is interesting. I have heard this before.

Both of mine were severely language delayed - DS’s speech was unintelligible to anyone other than us until he was 7. He then became very articulate overnight. He caught up with his peers and has remained average in our local primary and now high school. He’s Y8. Predictions are that he is bright, but lazy. He works at the subjects he loves and does the minimum in the others. He is on the ASD pathway.

DD’s speech was understandable and she had excellent vocabulary but her diction was poor, and to an extent remains so. She is much more naturally diligent than her brother but wasn’t learning to read and was clearly struggling and was subsequently diagnosed with dyslexia. She is now also diagnosed with dyspraxia, ADHD and autism. She is currently 11 and her reading and mathematics are at Y3/4 stage. We work a great deal with her and she has private coaching with a dyslexia specialist and ongoing speech therapy.

Both children are curious and interested in the world and knowledge about current affairs, politics, ethics, religion - we talk a lot as a family. DD loves building, design, the natural world, geography, science and DS loves reading, writing, drama, film, gaming, computers. They are both lower high school and at this point, i will be chuffed if they both get 5 GCSE passes under their belts, just to give them the greatest number of options for the next stage they choose.

But who knows, I could have an Oxbridge graduate on my hands - but I doubt it. I am incredibly proud of them both.

I’m not surprised @FatCatatPaddingtonStation . They sound like fab kids

Interested in what people on this (now rather intimidating!) thread did at home that they think made the most positive difference to their kids’ progress at primary school?

We obviously do plenty of reading, but between that, spellings, swimming lessons etc and the (slightly ridiculous amounts of) homework set by the school there never seems time for all that much else. We talk a lot about the world and about art, science, history etc and things she is curious about. DD1 doesn’t have much iPad time but is allowed to do Numbots which she likes and which is definitely helping her along in maths.

Anything else people particularly recommend?

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