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Extra-curricular activities

Find advice on the best extra curricular activities in secondary schools and primary schools here.

Schools not teaching the right stuff for the 21st century

56 replies

sammymum1 · 04/04/2020 22:30

I've often wondered whether school would teach DS (age 10) and DD (age 7) the right skills for the world they'll enter as adults. Being under lockdown recently and seeing their school work has got my thinking...

School is great for the social side and core subjects, I just feel a there are some basic skills (like good diet, exercise, money management etc) that are only ever going to be taught in the home and valuable skills for the 21st century (entrepreneurship, creative thinking, coding, Chinese etc) that aren't the focus of our education system

Anyone else feel that way or just me? Perhaps I'm overthinking it?!

Anyway, I'm wondering if anyone has come across any good resources online on the best ways to introduce some of these extra-curriculars without being overbearing?!

OP posts:
mnahmnah · 05/04/2020 15:46

All of the things you have enlisted are taught in schools. Not sure why you have the impression a they aren’t.

ChloeDecker · 05/04/2020 15:46

It is probably because of your children’s ages that you may not yet know that they have and will come across all that you have listed, before they hit 18 (yes, even Mandarin in a lot of schools!)

Health and well-being can be covered using this site
www.a-life.co.uk/information-for-teachers/lesson-plans-and-resources/

For money management and ‘life skills’, this is a good site

barclayslifeskills.com/educators/?campaign=Google_RS-2018_LifeSkills_Teachers_Generic_Broad&chnnl=PSG&gclsrc=aw.ds&&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIsZyNl8LR6AIVV_lRCh3zTQz-EAAYASAAEgKFpPD_BwE

For coding, you can try www.smallbasic.com or www.code.org (although they will have or will come across this particular site in their schooling, guaranteed!

Look at Memrise or Duolingo for languages (although again, they will use these sites, in Secondary school, absolutely)

GreenTulips · 05/04/2020 15:41

Schools don’t set the curriculum

They are told what to teach

Parents need to stop assuming school covers every educational aspect and do somethings themselves

You know those kids that can’t tie shoes laces or hold a knife and fork? Schools job apparently.

Russell19 · 05/04/2020 15:37

Agree with @pinkblueberry coding is heavily covered even in primary school, so is diet and exercise. Entrepreneurship starts to br covered by work experience and business weeks etc that schools have.
Money management needs to have more focus I agree.

Not sure chinese is essential.

Pinkblueberry · 05/04/2020 15:24

Diet and exercise are pretty well covered. So is coding, it’s a key element of the computing curriculum and they start very young with this using bee bots and programs like scratch. I agree with money management though. You can start throwing Chinese into the mix but that would be very time consuming so what do you suggest they take out? The curriculum is jam packed already and everyone has their own ideas about what should be in it - every time something is going wrong in society someone shouts ‘this should be solved by making children learn x y z at school’. I suggest parenting classes, perhaps then future parents can take more responsibility for teaching children stuff that should really come from the home anyway.

morecoffeerequired · 05/04/2020 14:35

You need to add 'general knowledge' to that list.

My dc are young adults and I'm frequently amazed by their complete lack of general knowledge about fundamental stuff that everyone should know.

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