Going Back Into School

Give it a term

The first term back is not a fair test of anything. Children who have been out of a system need time to relearn its rules, and those rules are mostly social and procedural rather than academic.

Judge it in month four, not month one.

What they will actually be behind on

Rarely the content. Usually the format.

Answering in the expected way. Working at the pace of a group. Timed tests. Putting a hand up. Not talking to the teacher as an equal, which travelling children do and which some teachers find difficult.

Those are learnable and they take weeks, not years.

What they may be ahead on

Confidence with adults. Real world reasoning. Independence. Perspective. Often reading, often not writing.

Maths is the usual gap and it is worth assessing honestly before you enrol so nobody is surprised.

Do the maths check first

Find the level, quietly, before term starts. If there is a gap, fill it over the summer rather than letting a child discover it in front of a class.

Warn them about the boredom

A child who has been learning one to one will find a classroom slow. Say so in advance and give them something to do with that feeling, or it becomes a behaviour problem within a fortnight.

Tell the school something, not everything

Schools respond well to a short factual note. Where they have been, roughly what was covered, what they are strong at, where the gaps probably are.

They respond badly to a philosophy of education.

And if it does not work

Going back out is allowed. It is not a failure and children survive both transitions better than the parents do.