to think that "literacy" and "numeracy" as school subjects sounds utterly naff, ignorant and illiterate?

I would quite like to see a split between Maths and numeracy. There are some children who would benefit from a focus on basic numeracy rather than Maths and all it's disciplines.

When I did my O Levels in Scotland we had O level arithmetic and O Level Maths as separate subjects - hence I believe I am NUMERATE but algebra is anathema to me.

And when I came to England was totally flummoxed by English Literature and English Grammar being separate subjects

To be honest I am happy they are using longer words like numeracy and literacy to describe a subject area - it could be one cock of a lot worse - they could go all American and describe it as MATH (shudder)

I like 100times' "Pointless but Enjoyable or With No Specific Purpose or An Entirely Undirected Exercise with No Goals" ...sounds fun to teach as well

I agree - "literacy" and "numeracy" ought to be directed at the teachers, not the pupils

Comprehension; therefore the aim of the lesson was that we should understand something we'd read; could have been taught in a wonderfully exciting way; was taught in this way:

'Now turn to page 12 of New Worlds to Conquer and when you have finished that page put your hand up.'

And we would plough our way through a very, very dull passage, and 10 questions like 'Was Mr Smith angry or happy when his car wouldn't start?'

Literacy to me expresses a wider aim - that the child's literacy should be improved. I would think that a good teacher could do more with that. (Although I do understand that there seem to be lots of rules preventing much freedom in teaching that either. No doubt I will find out more as ds gets older).

I'm guessing that in using the terms "literacy" and "numeracy" the government was seeking to remind teachers what they should be aiming towards with these two mainstays of primary education.

Oh God, "learning outcomes" is truly horrendous jargon .

Try teaching Literacy and Numeracy to 5/6 year olds -it feels all wrong. Especially when children are told what the 'Learning Outcomes' for the sesson will be. I had to escape, it went against all my instincts. What happened to the fun and enjoyment of a story, rather than phonics and attainment levels???

I think "reading comprehension" (which is what it was called in my small, private prep school) is more descriptive than "literacy"

Yes... but what about a lesson where reading and writing were taught in a natural way, such as 'read this passage and then write a story in response to it...' to me, calling that literacy is perfectly reasonable. In my day that would have been called Comprehension and it would have been titanically, appallingly dull (but that's another issue).

choosy - thanks for the synopsis

Surely the issue is that when subjects are given names that are not plain English, the contents end up getting distorted and away from the point also?

Personally, I would like my daughter to be taught:

• reading
• writing
• spelling
• grammar
• story writing
• nutrition
• cooking
• hygiene

and a hell of a lot of other things where the name of the subject has an application to real life. The more jargon-like the subject name the more wary I become about the contents

Anna, the book had several main points:

1. Home Economics in itself was the creation of an artificial sphere - 'the home' - and placing everything that could take place in the home arbitrarily as part of this subject.

2. Domestic Science was the further creation of a subject that could be assessed in an academic form by exams - usually very badly and again arbitrarily, e.g. an example was given of a marking scheme where children were marked down for serving a Victoria Sponge as a pudding rather than a cake.

3. Many children who wanted to learn cooking skills were prevented from doing so by the syllabus and the demands made of teachers.

I would COMPLETELY agree that cookery, nutrition and hygiene are good subjects to learn at school. In my view and in my limited experience of being taught Home Economics 20 years ago, there was very little of any of these in the subject as it was taught then.

choosyfloosy - do you think that it is a waste of time (girls' or boys') to teach nutrition and cooking skills in schools?

In France, hygiene was taught in schools until the 1960s, when the widespread use of antibiotics was thought to render the instruction of good practice in hygiene superfluous. A recent book (On s'en lave les mains) has raised the debate as to whether hygiene should not be reintroduced as a school subject.

I think 'dove' is the past tense of 'dive' though isn't it? (Prob'ly I'm wrong - I forgot to make the dc's packed lunches today so don't take too much notice of me)

talking of mangling the language, one of dd's spellings last week in a list of words with their past tenses, was "dove" as the past of dive. sweet teacher but she genuinely didn't know it was wrong.

Read an excellent (IMO) book about Domestic Science in schools which was called Wasting Girls' Time.

Now that was a book that didn't pussyfoot about.

Cookery - HE - Domestic Science, now Food Technolgy. Good God.

*being not begin

Agree with OP

Literacy and numeracy are not 'subjects' surely?

The words don't desribe an activity or a lesson, as Greeny says. They are abstract terms. It's ironic that children are implicitly begin taught to mangle the English language IN SCHOOL

Ah this was way back when I was at school.

I hated cookery lessons. I like cooking now and I liked doing it at home with my mum...but at school it was awful.

don't really care what there called tbh as long as the teachers inspire the children in what there doing

I thought it was called Food Technology now.

GS my dsis was told at her intro-to-reception evening lately that they've changed the names because children didn't see the relevance of maths for everyday life, the aim is to make it seem relevant to what they do.

not saying that's a good idea but that was what she was told.

TinyGang, haven't they stopped 'cooking' in alot of schools. Isn't that what Pru Leith is campaigning for ?

Not at all unreasonable - and I have no doubt the usage was dumped on schools from on high.

Saw in yesterday's paper that "Research undertaken during the second phase of the trial indicated that candidates with GCSEs at grade C or above did less well than might be expected in trial assessments for functional skills" but the QCA refused to release details.

Time to start counting the spoons, IMHO.