2023-10-16 05:08:00
Unlike grade repetition, it is a phenomenon that we talk little regarding. Every year, several hundred students “skip a grade”. A decision that is often difficult to make and sometimes poorly understood in schools.
First, what are we talking regarding? At the request of his parents, a student can be “advanced”. “Advancement” (that’s the official name) is a jump in year of study in one’s career path. It is concluded through three administrative formalities: a certificate of opinion from the management of the school attended by the student before their jump, an opinion of the same type from the PMS center, and an official declaration from the parents, to whom the decision belongs. final decision to advance their child or not.
Obviously, the opinion certificates must be justified. A management must consult all members of the teaching team before making a decision. As for the PMS center, it is required to provide a summary of the findings concerning the needs and characteristics specific to the student concerned.
About 0.2% of students
Let’s look at the numbers. The data provided by the administration covers class jumps made between 2020-2021 and 2021-2022, as well as the previous four years. They only take into account students in full-time ordinary education.
What do we notice? First, that advancement remains a rare practice. From the first kindergarten to the fourth secondary school, it only concerned, on average, each year, between 0.20 and 0.22% of students.
There were 1,478 of them skipping a grade between 2020-2021 and 2021-2022, an overall proportion which hides different realities depending on the time of schooling.
The most frequent jump takes place between fifth primary and first secondary, despite the administrative difficulties linked to registration rules and passing the CEB. At the start of the 2021-2022 school year, this was the reality for 550 children (1.04% of the total number of children in fifth primary school). The second most followed scenario concerns the transition from second kindergarten to first year of primary school (287 students two years ago, or 0.60%). The top trio closes with the 166 children who moved from first to third primary (0.32%).
Children with high potential
Who is concerned ? Children with high potential (detected using a precocity test called WISC), for whom a traditional course is sometimes not suitable at all. If the school context seems too unstimulating to them, they can react in different ways to the point of, sometimes, completely disinvesting in what is happening at school out of boredom. Even if specific teaching methods are possible in certain schools, class skipping may be a solution for some of them.
If the statistics show that such advancement is less rare when moving to another cycle (from nursery to primary or from primary to secondary), it is also because specialists advise it because they see it as a way to facilitate this transition.
“Demonstrate sufficient maturity”
“Such a measure forces the child to adapt to a group of older students,” we read on the site. enseignement.be. He must then demonstrate sufficient maturity to cope with new intellectual and social demands. There may be a large gap in physical, emotional and emotional development between the advanced student and the other students in his class. For integration to go well, we can imagine two facilitating conditions. On the one hand, several children can sometimes perform their accelerating gait at the same time and end up together in a class of older students. On the other hand, it can be advantageous to take advantage of the child’s transition to the next cycle of education, especially when this involves a change of school and the formation of a new group of friends anyway: the socio-emotional impact of the acceleration might then be attenuated.”
The testimonies we have collected confirm in any case that it is not always fun and that, for the process to really benefit the student, it is better to prepare it carefully with all the stakeholders. concerned.
Budget 2024: at the start of the next school year, school supplies will be free until third primary schoolAround 1,500 students skip a grade ©IPM Graphics
“She was very quickly singled out”
Valentine (1) has two daughters. The eldest, Justine (1), was born at the end of 2002. “She tended to get bored in class,” remembers her mother. When she arrived in third grade, we asked the school once more if there was a way to do something: give her something to read while others finished the exercises she was doing more quickly, ask her to prepare a presentation or allow him to help his comrades. In short, she doesn’t spend her time looking at the ceiling. We were told it was too complicated.”
Justine was a very anxious little girl, Valentine reports. She thought a lot regarding death. Besides that, she read very early and very easily. “To understand his unique behavior, the pediatrician had already advised us to take a test when he started primary school. This had certified his precocity. At the start, we didn’t want to do anything differently than the others. But at one point we had to act, we no longer had a choice. Justine was not doing well. So we opted to skip him a grade.”
At the next school year, the little girl therefore advances from third to fifth primary school. But things are not going well. “Nothing had been prepared, neither with her nor with her new teacher and her new classmates. She was quickly singled out. Physically too, there was a big difference between her and the others.” If everything is going well academically, socially things are not going well. The little girl will hang on until the end of sixth grade. “It was the change of school when we moved to secondary school that fixed everything. There, she was no longer the little girl who skipped a grade, no one knew her, she might finally flourish as she was.” Today, Justine is twenty years old and she is finishing her last year at Solvay.
– > (1) Borrowed first names.
”I prefer not to talk regarding this difference to avoid problems”
Juliette (1) was born in mid-2005. She is the youngest daughter of Valentine (1). With a very different character from her big sister Justine (1), she also had the experience of academic advancement. “For Juliette, it was the school that called us when she was in second kindergarten. According to the teacher, she was in the wrong class. So we had her do tests which confirmed that she might move on to primary one.”
For Juliette, this transition was gradual and well prepared. “She went to spend half a day in her future class, then a day here and there. A first grade student was designated as responsible to help her integrate. The teachers also got involved when she took the plunge, mid-year.”
After primary and secondary education without a hitch, the young girl prepared to take her international baccalaureate in Italy where she went to study for two years. When she thinks back on the journey of Juliette and her sister, Valentine adds that we should not believe that everything was simple. It evokes in particular tensions, criticism, a form of competition. “What: your daughter skipped a grade and she doesn’t even know how to do this or that? These are things we have heard.” But the family has learned to put things into perspective. “I prefer not to talk regarding this difference to avoid problems.”
– > (1) Assumed first name.
”He’s a boy who doesn’t want to bother. At home he sometimes cried”
Constance (1) has four sons. It was with the third of the siblings, Maxime (1), born in 2007, that she experimented with class skipping. “He was in fourth grade when he started to get bored. He’s a boy who doesn’t want to bother. At school, he didn’t talk regarding it. But it eventually came out at home where he sometimes cried regarding it.”
The family has the experience of an elder with high potential, who moved from French-speaking education to Flemish education to re-stimulate himself. She therefore contacts the teacher to discuss the possibility that Maxime is also precocious. “’No, no’, this lady told us, very kind indeed, ‘I have had other HP students but Maxime doesn’t disrupt the class’.” He does not disturb but hides his discomfort.
The mother makes an appointment with the PMS center. Finally received three months later, Maxime was referred to a screening center which concluded that he was precocious. “We then thought regarding moving him to fifth grade during the year, but he has all his friends in fourth grade. So we give up.”
When the child reaches fifth grade, the next school year, he no longer complains regarding anything. We think the problem has been resolved. “It was his teacher who alerted us: things weren’t going well at all, he was too bored.” No way to get him to work more: we therefore come back to the idea of moving up a class.
“After the All Saints holidays, my son moved to sixth grade. But the story doesn’t end there… Maxime, who was apparently still bored, arrived with another request: to go to sixth grade in Dutch!” A school in Leuven welcomed him and did everything in place to teach him the language of which he did not know a word. “Frankly, we didn’t think it might work and yet it did. Maxime made new friends and continued his education in Flanders.”
At sixteen, he was in Rheto “strong math-sciences” in Dutch. His main challenge remains emotional. And his mother, who wishes to remain as discreet as possible regarding her son’s potential, always speaks, even in hindsight, of an “obstacle course”.
– > (1) Assumed first name.
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