How can state school parents try & bridge the educational gap that's rapidly forming?

[Kenthighst]

Following on from the excellent thread regarding the shambles of state education. What can us parents do to bridge the gap? Our state school children are being failed & we are being kept in the dark.
What can be done outside school to bridge the gap that has formed between state & private?

Schools are too poorly resourced to support the high numbers in every school of kids with particular challenges.

Trained support staff are spread too thinly. Teachers in the state sector with 32 in an often too small classroom are trying to conduct productive crowd management.

We do not value education or teachers enough in this country to fund schools adequately.

We expect schools to address failings we should expect to be addressing at home.

Those in the Conservative Party establishment do not use the state system- this in itself is a significant factor in poor funding models.

If every community got behind its schools and supported the leadership and teachers, held local & national government accountable, taught our kids to respect authority for everyone's sake - that would help. Idealistic of course. But when anyone moans about schools - I ask what did you last do in your own time for your school? There are Full time workers who do contribute.

We also need a system of taxation which is not designed to suit the needs of billionaires.

Has anyone watched School Swap on YouTube?
It's a couple of years old on BBC. It's eye opening. They swap 3 kids from Warminster primary school with a state school Bremrose in Derby.
It really is insightful & I would imagine things have deteriorated much more since.

If you read my post at no point did I say that ‘state schools are therefore fine’ ?
At no point did I say all kids were doing fine?

I simply replied to the OP post that ‘state school children are being failed’ and the implication that anyone doing well is being tutored. That is simply not the case.

youre trying to debate a different issue to the one stated for your own agenda. I maintain that it is not the case that there are no children going to state schools and doing well without tutoring. That is simply not the case and it is totally disingenuous to suggest otherwise.

It is, however, totally unhelpful to those whose state school children are being failed, just as it would be unhelpful to say ‘well I’ve got an NHS dentist who could do it’ to someone asking how to pull out their own teeth.

The other thing that is happening under the radar is that all schools but especially small primary schools are slowly but surely losing all support staff as they simply cannot afford to pay them. This means the loss of the staff who support in class.

Those children who struggle but not to the extent that they have an EHCP stating they need individual support and indeed those who do need that support but are still stuck waiting endlessly for the cogs to turn or even just for an EP appointment will simply flounder. Class teachers, already under intense workload pressure, simply cannot give those children the nurture and support they need.

It also means that the already intense workload of the teacher now needs to make room for all the admin jobs once done by the TA such as photocopying, filing, cutting and sticking and getting resources ready. Not to mention the extra pair of hands for science and DT lessons. A friend who is a primary deputy head told me that they’re simply no longer doing those lessons that involve tools or other equipment that would require 2 adults in the room. Long term, this will mean that state primary school kids are not only being taught by more frazzled teachers but that they’ll miss out on the fabulous DT and science projects that my own children have participated in.

The rot will get deeper and start earlier and the gap will continue to widen.

Yep, good advice here.

Do you know what I expect the schools to provide as a minimum? A set of notes that set out the limits of what my DC have to learn for a particular subject that year (aka knowledge organisers and used when no exam syllabus for that year), this is one of the disparities that I can see as parent looking at different schools locally. The difference in quality of what is provided between the schools is ridiculous. Just sending a load of links to random websites is not good enough imo. I have never understood why when someone does something better, schools seem reluctant to steal the good ideas.

Knowledge organisers are an immense workload for teachers and another thing now expected of us that is causing teachers to leave…

Schools used to have textbooks. Now teachers are expected to write textbooks.

We had textbooks but also each of our teachers dictated or made us copy out notes ( or something copy from our textbook) so that by the end of the year we had a beautiful folder for each subject that we could revise from.

Now... The Ofsted report for the school with the best reputation in our area states that 60% of pupils couldn't read sufficiently at the start of year 7. This school has very few none native English speakers and low rates of SEN( though undiagnosed sen will be higher).
This mirrors my experience of being in mixed ability lessons on year 9 over 20 years ago, at which point I was moved elsewhere. So clearly they're not going to be able to produce work of suitable quality to revise from.

@NotAPsycho ,

I guess it depends how old your child is, but I don’t understand why you expect the school to provide this to you, except in the broadest terms.

As long as there is something on the school website, and the teacher gives your child notes, it is up to the child to manage their own learning (in secondary at least).

Text books are also good, and nearly all schools follow a text book of some sort.

As @noblegiraffe says above, these take ages for teachers to produce and are a form of spoon feeding which doesn’t encourage good habits of independent learning.

You can use the specification to tell you what your child needs to learn. Or any of the many websites out there. Teachers usually provide plenty of links, QR codes, names of websites for this. Many pay into apps that shall not be named. I'm sure if you contact your child's school they'll be happy to send you a number of links.

Now... The Ofsted report for the school with the best reputation in our area states that 60% of pupils couldn't read sufficiently at the start of year 7

That's a sad statement.

It's almost as if primaries are too focused on teaching youngsters in depth about coordinating conjunctions, relative clauses, frontial adverbials, expanded noun phrases and prepositions - rather than allowing them to enjoy developing their reading skills and absorb all the wonderful language that exists.

@ILiveInSalemsLot.. If you can inspire a love of learning first and stories including films all your points are moot.
Because you don't need them to do anything because they simply will want too...

@TidydeskTidymind..

Also unfortunately apparently due to "gove" they keep pushing only phonics.

Phonics is actually a barrier to many students who can't understand it. We should have flexible reading approaches.

@CarrieCardigan.. I went to a council meeting recently, they provided skewed data stating that support actually makes children dependent in learning.

That support isn't the be all and end all and that one teacher is should be providing everything in every way that each child needs in one class.

It starts in early childhood. Lots of time with them, engaging with them, noticing what they like doing, taking them places, involving them in all aspects of family life.

Sorry, I'm a bit confused. Are you saying that doing this bridges the educational gap that is rapidly developing?

Perhaps writing to your local MP and explaining how Education is suffering as a result of chronic underfunding by government would be a first step.

You could sit with your child whilst you do it, and ask them how their school could be improved. Get them involved in the wider discussion about inequality and also teach them about politics and democracy.

Read the election manifestos of political parties and consider which align with your views on what state education could look like.

I hope that for all the threads on Mumsnet complaining about the education system there are equal amounts of parents complaining to their MPs. Otherwise, these complaints are pointless.

I see the teachers are out defending themselves again. Knowledge organisers are what parents need to know what your child should take from that terms work. Saying as a teacher that they are a lot of work I don't believe. The syllabus doesn't change that much year on year and if you wish parents to reinforce and support learning then you have to provide decent resources that are specific to your school on the equivalent of about an A4/A5 sheet of paper per term. I find it ridiculous that teachers are crying that parents need to support but not providing any useful info in order to do that. Links to oak academy or bitesize.or watch a YouTube saying 'study this' without a context of the breadth and depth that the child needs to learn is disjointed and without sitting and watching all the resources to see how they meet what the child needs to learn for each subject is exceptionally time consuming and I already have a full-time job whereas a sme who is teaching this (and is their job) can provide a synopsis of what key facts will be covered very much more easily. Better schools who want parents to engage do this.

My son didn't get phonics. He was a 'late reader' and very much followed his own trajectory as I don't think he believed he was reading until he was 8, nearly 9 and reading fluently. So he seemingly went from not reading at all to fluent overnight once he could read enough to know that he knew the words and wasn't just somehow guessing. (I assume)
He wouldn't even let on that he knew how to read even a little bit until he could do it all but I could see that he knew longer words with shapes much more easily than CVC words.

I see the teachers are out defending themselves again. Knowledge organisers are what parents need to know what your child should take from that terms work. Saying as a teacher that they are a lot of work I don't believe

But they are a lot of work. You can believe it or not, I personally try not to tell people their own job.

I find it ridiculous that teachers are crying that parents need to support but not providing any useful info

Except Oak Academy lessons which were specifically funded by the government for this purpose plus YouTube and other links...

Why do you think education is in such a mess and teachers are leaving and we can't replace them? Ever increasing workload demands is part of the problem. Saying that you need teachers to type up the entire syllabus for you to make up for the lack of teachers is part of the problem.

The lack of teachers is putting an increasing workload burden on the remaining teachers causing them to leave. Vicious circle.

The government funded Oak Academy to make up for a lack of teachers and to try to alleviate the workload of teachers. The government also made a commitment to try to reduce teacher workload by 5 hours a week. Since they made that commitment, average teacher working hours have increased.

The problem isn't going to be solved by asking teachers to do more.

Im not asking teachers to do more and I have years of seeing what different schools produce in their knowledge organisers and once there are a decent set, they don't change much year on year so fobbing off with 'they're a lot of work' is rubbish, I can see what is on them and who do you think is best placed to create them? Children that don't have good notes? Parents that are not smes and have their own jobs but want to support the teachers/child? So because it may take a teacher an hour to produce one, every child/parent has to go off and work it out for themselves??? This is what I am saying about schools not taking good examples from other schools and modifying or sending them out if it covers everything the same as your school. Work smart, not hard.

Oh dear god you have no idea.

Of course I dont

If you were saying this 5 years ago, quite possibly yes. But most of my colleagues haven't even got the capacity to do their current work load. It's not about 'working smart'. It's that it is physically impossible to do any more than is already expected.

On the 'leave teaching and thrive' fb group, there is at least 1 suicidal post a week and 10+ a day about being off sick with stress. It's just not possible whilst so badly understaffed and underfunded.