To think droves of teachers will make the decision by husband made today- to leave

Absolutely. I am just refuting the assumption I have only experienced schools in affluent areas.

She has a point, as do you. Sometimes it's the area, sometimes it's not.

The phonics check has issues as well. Some of the better readers actually perform less well because their brain is leaping ahead to make sense of what they are reading.

https://www.sciencealert.com/word-jumble-meme-first-last-letters-cambridge-typoglycaemia

I’m 42 and learned about nouns, verbs and adjectives in last few years of primary school. But I don’t remember learning about tenses until secondary school and those we did learn were for French, not English!

I went to a state primary but moved to a really good prep school for the final year, as my parents wanted to send me to a selective secondary.

In that year I learned more than I had in the whole of the rest of my primary education including grammar.

Having done only one year of grammar, the rest of my grammar came from French and Latin at secondary school.

Everyone who learns a foreign language has to learn grammar - so why do English speakers studying English make such a fuss about it?

Adjectives, nouns, adverbs are useful to know yes. That's year 2 stuff though! What they need to know in year 6 goes well beyond that and it's problematic. Michael Rosen does a good breakdown of the issues with it if you're interested in why.

We used the colums method of addition and it worked particularly well with the children who struggled with maths. Then, that was all out the window and we had to teach them horizontal addition. I was banging my head against a wall arguing that the children couldn't see the value of each digit therfore it was hard to understand.

You have never found algebra etc useful. But should we only teach children what will be useful? How do we know what will be useful? Why bother with Shakespeare for working-class children? They will never go to see any of the plays - I have heard this one in school, referring esp to children from other cultures as well as w/c children, and was appalled and pointed out why it was so wrong and patronising (and racist, I think). Our education is supposed to make us a rounded human being, not just fit us to work at a job. This is why I am furious at the almost total removal of the arts from state school curricula (the people wanting them removed make bloody sure their kids get this education, which is vital in order to progress in society as well as being illuminating and beautiful).

As to the phonics check I approve of it hugely. It shows whether a child can actually decode (by use of phonically legal nonsense words) rather than that they have just learned words by sight. Because it is words in isolation it also makes sure that when reading they are using phonics rather than relying on picture and context clues - which is how poor readers manage to scramble through a text.

It would help a great deal if children were taught maths explicitly rather than by discovery methods. There is one efficient way of addition, it uses columns and place value. Once you can do it you understand place value. There is no 'understanding' a mathematical concept without knowing how to do it.
As to grammar, I have suffered all my life (and I am a writer) because my school decided teaching grammar was old-fashioned. I envied my late DH his ability to shift round sentences because he knew the grammar and use of syntax that let him know he was still making sense. Definitely teach grammar and as soon as possible.
I thank Heaven fasting that Grove (otherwise a creep, I think) forced schools to abandon 'whole word' methods of teaching reading and made them use systematic synthetic phonics. I have four step-grandchildren who have problems reading because of whole word. That my own DCs learnt to read is certainly because their RC primary used phonics (not SSP, but something similar - much the way children were taught when I was a child - though my DM taught me to read and I read well, using implicit phonics).

For lack of explicit phonics teaching, I was unable to spell English at all well (3/10 for spelling tests) until I learnt French phonics, it clicked and I began using this new knowledge to spell and also decode unknown words e.g. Aristophanes, Ariadne (Greek phonics, I know), which I had not been able to do before despite having a very wide vocabulary. Had basic grammar at primary school, but little to nothing about subject/object, anaphoric and cataphoric reference etc.

We weren't taught grammar in the 70s and I never had any desire to find out about it.

There are a lot of children from shit homes who don't misbehave. I taught in a school like this and it was a lovely place. My most recent school was full of entitled children who had never been told no in their lives.

Lostboys16 · Today 13:39
I'm guessing all these highly successful English graduates who've never bothered with all that 'grammar stuff' don't speak any foreign languages or have ever tried to teach foreign languages.

This is so true. I’m learning another language at the moment and my teacher says she has to spend half the lesson explaining in English what are adjectives and adverbs.

Almost 25 years ago I was training to work in a nursery. I was doing a placement in a school nursery and when older pupils acted out in class they were sent to the nursery to complete their work. Meaning that the nursery staff had to supervise primary age children whilst ensuring the nursery was running smoothly. If the primary aged children misbehaved in the nursery the parents were asked to collect them. A lot of the parents never wanted to collect their children as if the school fed the children the parents decided it meant they didn’t have to. A lot of the children also had social workers. Sometimes the children are acting out because something in their lives is very wrong and they don’t know how to express it.

I'm guessing all these highly successful English graduates who've never bothered with all that 'grammar stuff' don't speak any foreign languages or have ever tried to teach foreign languages?

It's so much easier if you actually understand the terminology used to identify language components and how language is constructed. It's certainly taught in many other European countries where they are much better language learners... but, hey, who needs foreign languages when everyone else bothers to learn English, eh?

Oh and just to illustrate further, I was once banned from a family trip to Italy because my grades had slipped due to my own laziness and for talking back. :)

Parents left me with my grandmother with strict instructions not to let me go on the PC and to ensure I’m studying, and off they went. It was a harsh but valuable lesson - grades never slipped again after that.

Exactly what I was thinking. Have 3 DS who are or were in state schools in a leafy area. All reported regular disruption to the school day because of pupil behavioural issues. Yet there’s constant bashing on here of parents going with private education.

We should be berating those who don’t give a shit about their kids not those investing in them.

With the lack of funding and downright vileness of some children, kudos to those teachers who stay in and stay motivated 🙏

And yes the majority of the pupils at the sixth forms are BAME

My dcs are almost at the end of their schooling. All went to selective sixth form free schools in the inner city after comprehensive secondary schools. They confirm the behaviour in the sixth forms were fine everyone wanted to be there and there was no bad behaviour. The pupils were competitive with each other but in a nice way and it really helped motivate them all. There are very little turn over of teachers and they have no problems with recruitment even for specialist maths , physics and chemistry teachers who often also have phds. Almost all the pupils went onto RG universities and 1/4 got into Oxbridge. In contrast, at their secondary schools it you didn’t get into the top 2-3 classes behaviour was dire. One of my dcs is thinking of going into teaching but they will only consider doing so in a selective school.

This sounds very stressful. Has he thought about private tutoring? Our daughter is home educated and we use private tutors once a week for maths and english. We pay approx £40 an hour.

I'm pretty sure almost all the fellow teachers I know would take a workload cut over a pay rise. So, same pay, less contact time (i.e. for secondary teachers fewer classes). Happier teachers, better quality teaching. Unfortunately that can't be achieved unless you can recruit more teachers to teach the other classes...

Yup. My parents are Central European, but yes, you’re so correct.

I went to a state school. School and homework weren’t optional at all. I ended up with 13 GCSEs and 4 A-Levels. Parents had high expectations and anything less than excellent behaviour at school (and at home) had me going without any privileges.

That’s no tv, no outings, not allowed to see friends, no treats, nothing. Just schoolbooks. For as long as it took for the message to sink in.

If I struggled with a subject, I would sit and revise until I got it. If I didn’t get it, parents would seek additional help - father would do overtime at work if he needed to pay for additional tutoring. If I did well, I was showered with praise and gifts. But I had to earn them.
My family was far from rich (manual workers), but valued education enough to do anything to give me the opportunities they themselves didn’t have. I think it speaks volumes that when I was born, the first gift my grandfather bought was a stack of encyclopaedias.

My own son is also being raised ‘the immigrant way’ and so far, it’s working very well.

It’s not a matter of being true or not everything you said as ‘fact’ is a lot more nuanced than that and less black and white.

Not all families who get help are the same, circumstances and parents/children differ greatly; yet you have generalised a lot in your post.

It’s like reading a column in a Tory/benefit Britain type newspaper.

So if it's bilge tell me what's not true in what I wrote?

Oh you can't because what I have is true and the facts don't suit the narrative you want to present so you dismiss facts as propaganda and bilge.

FYI I am not voting tory and not voting at all.

It's all down to how children are being brought up these days. They show no respect for anything and there is little or no discipline used at home. I also think unfettered access to the internet has a big impact on these young minds together with peer pressure.

Without parents support, teachers face an uphill battle to teach as most of the time is spent crowd controlling unruly children.

I'm truly sorry to read your post and your husband has done the best thing for his own sanity and your lives together.

I worked in a few primary schools and thought it was bad when I left 5 years ago and often shuddered to think how difficult it would be to work in Secondary schools.

I just hope your husband makes a full recovery and can find a more fulfilling job.

I’m going to sound like my mother but people take no responsibility these days, everything is everyone else’s fault.

So if kids are naughty - teachers fault. If they’re failing -teachers fault.

Not once did I say people should be paying more towards anything, but reading that load of bilge you wrote I can see you drank the Tory propaganda koolaid.