This kind of thing can be tricky, so I asked my DS10 about it. He says it'd be important for him to know what the maximum amount of his summer this 1-1 could take up would be (and this is a kid who does, in fact, spend quite a lot of his time voluntarily doing maths - the spectre is of the commitment, not of the maths). It's not so much that he wouldn't want to do it as that he would want a guarantee that he wouldn't be losing an unacceptable-to-him amount of downtime over it. I don't think you'd necessarily need to ask the school about this; you could decide a generous limit and tell them, provided your DS was on board with it. Then if the limit weren't enough, 7th/8th it would be.
If it were me, I'd present it as straight as I could: if I thought Alg1 the best thing for him I'd say so, and if I wasn't sure he was ready to commit to the work to get there, I'd say that too. I would be happy to offer sweeteners if it would help him to commit to doing the work, and I'd be happy to negotiate with him what those would be (for us it's gaming time, and asking DS10 how much gaming time entitlement he requires to be willing to do X works much better than you might think!): but I would not decide for him that he was going to do the summer work, because of the impossibility of doing the work for him!
ETA DS10 also said "I think I'd like to meet this boy some day", and was sad to hear that like almost everyone else on this forum he doesn't live in Scotland. Sigh.
Last edited by ColinsMum; 05/14/14 12:42 PM.
