Current Situation

Matthew was placed in set4 for humanities and Set 3 for Science/Maths. So he's in set 8Y 4.3

The old A/B streams of Yr7 contained ~180 children, ~90 in each, are now split into 3 sets X1,Y1, X2,Y2 and X3,Y3 of ~30 each. There is an Humanities set and a Science set. The Humanities are geography, history, welsh, spanish, and english. The Sciences are Biology,Chemistry,Physics and Maths. The other subjects are not set.

So your all thinking we're happy that Matthew has moved into a B stream equivalent for Sciences! Well we would be if he hadn't out performed his friends in A stream in Science. His class C1 was allowed to do the same end of year exam paper as all the others in Science, had 84% with a comment from his teacher that the mark was "outstanding as expected and reflects his undoubted ability and commitment to the subject" (as he'd performed brilliantly all year). However the Maths exam was the C1 exam, Matthew was so dissappointed after doing it, he did it in 40mins (an hour and half paper) and got 93% (left 2 questions out as usual! got 1 wrong). We phoned the school to complain that it was not challenging enough, as he had gone to the ceiling of the test. This paper although he had top mark in the C1 class, put him 170th out of 210 in Maths, which made the Chemistry dept think his maths was poor and he would "sink under the pressure of a higher set".

Move on to Nov 2010, Matthew's first test in Maths at half term was 81% 3rd, coming a close to joint 1st mark of 83% (class average 65), great we thought, not merely holding his own in this class of ~27, but floating pretty much near the top. Move on to Dec, next test, this time he gets 98% 1st position, but not only that, the 2nd place was 72% and class average 51% (not if you take out Matthew's 98% it's not). He was so excited after taking the test he asked me if he could have a game if he got 100%, I of course thought "no chance" and agreed.
So here we have the dilema, do the "pushy parents" go in once more and complain. Every time I speak to the school they make me feel that he's going to fall at the next hurdle, but they claim "they have an eye on things and he will be moved if he shows he is capable". What are they waiting for, guess I'll just have to go in and ask.