Recently, the boy’s mother and I finalised the top three school picks for September.

The number one slot went to a Scandi-utopian dreamschool that has child lead lessons and classes so small that he would get more focussed attention than he could possibly crave.

The gap between this and the second school is quite significant, considering that last year it failed it’s Ofsted Report when on the day of inspection an unqualified principal was standing-in whilst bullying was apparently omnipresent, one child even pushed down the stairs that day. So this is the fun choice, one to keep the boy on his toes like, which might give you some idea of our third pick…

That’s a little unfair. Since the incidents of above, the school was taken over by an academy and so there is a lot of funding being pumped in along with new personnel and close attention being paid to problems of the past.

Still, nothing on the nirvana of numer one.

Considering the criteria: that priority goes to children with relatives at the school, or if they have a challenging home setting, or proximity within the catchment area – it looks improbable that our boy genius will get to swan about reading poetry with his cohorts in option one.

This realisation was a little hard to take, and when Jman’s mother started to worry, I offered consolation by saying that it’s down to what we do with him anyway, the amount of information, attention and stimulation we can give him.

Within the week she had devised a plan, to make a theme for each month in which he would learn about a certain subject at home – theming activities, trips and even food to involve and educate. Learning about the north and South pole over Christmas, he will proudly list different species of penguins and their behaviours. Smarts that, paired with some training in basic gracie jujitsu, will at least make him Lord of the Flies in option two if it comes to it.