Aibu to hate Michael Gove?

I dont like Gove.
Phonics is a highly effective system to teach children to read words. It isn't a complete English curriculum, it is just a strategy to teach a crucial foundational skill. It is evidence based. A minority of children still dont progess with reading with phonics based strategies. Apropriate tier 2 & 3 support then needs to be planned for these children. There are less children who require this support when you start with effective phonics teaching.
Different curriculum aporoaches post Year 9 dont need different schools. All children at my DD's school do English, Maths, Science + one MFL or history/geography. Students then choose options that can be or BTECs or all traditional academic subjects including triple science & further maths. Or a mixture of both. The core subjects could be shrunk if thst was considered gelpful.
I agree with many of the suggestions to enrich the curriculum, personalise pathways and offer more SEND support. However, we need to be upfront that this costs and requires more tax revenue/the diversion of funds from other areas. A minority of children at my DD's school used to access alternative provision alongside core English & Maths. They don't any more.
Why?
Money.

I was educated in the 70s and 80s, as was my husband. My parents sent me to private school but my husband went to state.

To this day I’m shocked at how little he learned at school about spelling and grammar. I had to teach him about colons and semicolons and the difference between adjectives and adverbs. He is a bright man but said it was just not taught properly at school. I can remember the exact homeworks I had different differentiating between colons and semicolons, and exercises on metaphors and similes. He had nothing.

Disagree. The most educated nations are also the happiest and often healthiest, it isn’t a coincidence. Blair wasn’t wrong with this and I detest the notion of working class kids being told not to go to university because they don’t belong there and should get in their boxes and do an apprenticeship. There’s also no such thing as a ‘worthless’ degree. All education is valuable.

Fees shouldn’t have been tripled. Arts and humanities also need to be valued again. We need more critical thinking, not less. There’s one thing AI can’t currently recreate and that’s the feeling art gives you - be that a painting, book, piece of music, theatrical production, film. It can solve complex mathematical equations and engineer bridges.

Describe the aspects of your children’s school that broke them? I’m interested.

I wasn't suggesting this thread was AI generated, just that so many obviously are.

I feel like 50% of the remotely interesting threads likely to lead to interesting debate on MN are AI generated these days. The question is, who is doing it and why? Well I have my suspicions, in spite of what MNHQ says.

Here are the links.

The way they are trying to portray it as for the benefit of children is Kafkaesque.

https://consult.education.gov.uk/send-strategy-division/send-reform-putting-children-and-young-people-firs/

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/school-send-reforms-sheets

Genuine question - does the 'National Curriculum' still exist? This feels like a very 90s thing.

Even though we had SATs in year 9 in the 90s , teaching was genuinely more fun. Better when the SATs went for a few halcyon years until that was replaced by 'make years 7-9 just like GCSE'. It really does feel like the English can't cope without a test.

I really hope all teachers/ ex teachers/ parents/ anybody else who cares about children will respond to it and make the strength of feeling known about how the Education Secretary’s proposals will quite obviously make an awful situation worse.

Doubling down on the failed “one size fits all” approach and dumping all children in mainstream schools and calling it “inclusivity”, removing disabled children’s legal right to access an appropriate education and claiming school staff can assess the impact of medical issues, is quite clearly going to make things far, far worse for all children.

The disingenuousness of claiming that this is for thr benefit of children is digusting when it is very obvious that the whole thing has been shaped around how to cut already inadequate budgets further. They could at least have the decency to admit that out of all public expenditure what they have decided is a good thing to cut is the education budget which is woefully underfunded already and even without these proposed “reforms” has a further 4% real-terms cut already built in before the end of this Parliament based on Rachel Reeves’ departmental spending plans.

Everything Phillipson is proposing is the opposite of what needs to happen: dump even more children in mainstream schools who should not be there, remove the minimal specialist support children with disabilities can access in mainstream schools when dumped there currently (after a long legal battle) by removing their legal right to have any support or for the parents to appeal, have overworked SENCOs who have no medical knowledge design support for them and actually CUT the funding for them to do so, and cut the education budget even further.

This Government does not care about children and anybody who does must speak up now or things will get far, far worse.

This will affect all children in mainstream state schools and make already disrupted classrooms completely unmanageable because children who need support to cope will have the minimal amount they receive now removed, leading to total chaos.

If your thread leads to teachers and parents who do actually care about children being educated answering the consultation then it will be worthwhile.

I do hope at least a few people will speak up for the autistic but very well-behaved children like mine who are being deliberately traumatised by these callous people who pretend that they do not exist.

No…you’ve proved yourself wrong. You’ve said the rigid , traditional education system introduced by Gove, has led to some children being unable to cope with the pressure of school leading to an over-diagnosis of SEN.

The Scottish system, which has been around for more than a decade now- is child needs focused. So the opposite of the Gove system if you like….yet more kids in Scotland have a diagnosis!

So it isn’t school that’s causes this is it?

Your hypothesis was completely wrong. Also, there’s no such thing as a ‘British’ education. All countries have different systems….and yet the outcome for kids is still the same. So there’s no need to try and hang everything in one man is there?

Again:

“School distress and the school attendance crisis: a story dominated by neurodivergence and unmet need

In 94.3% of cases, school attendance problems were underpinned by significant emotional distress, with often harrowing accounts of this distress provided by parents.

While not a story of exclusivity relating solely to autism, School Distress is a story dominated by complex neurodivergence and a seemingly systemic failure to meet the needs of these children and young people (CYP). Given the disproportionate number of disabled CYP impacted, we ask whether the United Kingdom is upholding its responsibility to ensure the "right to an education" for all CYP (Human Rights Act 1998).”

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37810599/

92.1% of CYP currently experiencing School Distress were neurodivergent (ND) and 83.4% were autistic.

Absolutely appalling and deliberate, systemic disability discrimination that the Government, LAs and schools are fully aware of and refuse to acknowledge.

If you want change you have to do something. Not whine on mumsnet. Responding to the consultation is the very minimum you should be doing if you really feel that strongly.

Please do reply, for the sake of my children and thousands like them.

Of course they won’t want to hear it. But everyone needs to speak up otherwise they will railroad through their proposals that will make everything even worse for children and claim that the lack of response indicates support.

Every teacher who cares about children at all should be responding to this consultation and pointing out how catastrophic for children these proposals would be if implemented and how they do not address any of the problems in schools at all and are simply unworkable and demonstrate an astonishingly lack of understanding of the problems that need fixing.

I also agree that entirely the wrong people are being appointed as Head Teachers, in many cases. Incompetent, arrogant, not very intelligent people who seem to actively dislike children and view schools as their “little kingdom”, trying to withhold information from parents and bully staff into keeping quiet and avoid any oversight.

OFSTED needs replacing with a proper regulator that will take legal action and remove qualifications, issue personal and organisational fines and prosecute Head Teachers and LAs that break the law, like would happen in any other profession (law, medicine, finance). It’s absurd that currently the parents rather than the regulator have to enforce the law and each case of unlawful behaviour is treated in isolation rather than the clear systemic issue that it is (evidenced by the fact that 98% of SEN tribunals are won by parents). The Education Secretary’s proposed solution? Remove the right for parents to take cases to tribunal! That’ll fix it. 🙄😡

This behaviour continues because there are no consequences and therefore it is actually in the financial interests of schools and LAs to continue breaking the law on purpose, the welfare and education of children be damned.

We need to end the triple lock and use the money to double the education budget, set up appropriate schools for different children’s needs and put a proper regulator in place that prosecutes and strikes off staff from SLTs and LAs for all unlawful behaviour. With appropriate funding there will be no excuse not to comply. Teachers also need far more protection for whistleblowing.

How children are being treated in this country is a disgrace and there is no hope of future prosperity or rising living standards unless this changes.

Not counting the fact that a seemingly academically able child still struggled without the 121 personalised input of a tutor...

So because your (clearly very able) child did ok there’s no issue? How self centred can an opinion get?

And have you replied to the consultation? Will you make the points in my post or do you not care about the children I am referring to?

Here is some of the research on it, again:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37810599/

Sorry, what?

You think Scotland bases its education system on what England does or doesn't do?

You realise we have ALWAYS have a separate system from England, just like a separate legal system etc.

Someone is in need of an education!

Your point about Gove causing an over diagnosis is nonsense! Scotland has a child centred approach to education and a focus on additional needs …..and yet we actually have a higher rate of kids in school with an autism diagnosis.