Is primary school more demanding than in the 80/90s??

[RessicaJabbit]

My child is 6 and is UTTERLY EXHAUSTED from school since starting Reception.
My mum says she doesn't remember us 3 being like this after school... hungry, tired overwhelmed etc
Is it because school is more intense? Or maybe life around it is the cause, kids doing too many clubs etc?

My does football, swimming and rainbows.

I was a child in the 1960s and did no after school activities at all.

I think sleep quality is poorer now because of screen time, exercise is less now because kids don’t play out / spend too much time on screens so their physical health is often quite poor, and children eat far too much ultra processed food and don’t get the right nutrition. Those things combined will absolutely make a child feel exhausted.

I have lots of memories from infants school of my 'tin' in my book bag with the phonics letters in, so I think I must have been using them for quite a while. DD has just finished the first half term of reception and is expected to know all of the letters and is sent home reading books with full sentences.

I think there is a mixture of doing more after school or DC needing to be in wrap around care for parent to afford life and the demands of the curriculum. When I was little my DM was one of very few parents that worked full time, but my Grandma was always on hand to collect me or take me to school. Most of my friends had either SAHMs or Mums that worked part time around school hours. We got rest time during the holidays, there weren't really holiday clubs and we could afford to go away during the holidays too.

I think it's the curriculum but also after school care. All kids around us are in wrap around care till ar least 4.30 or 6 and then do the clubs. So kids are in fixed activities from 8.40 till 6 or 7 every day. In the holidays, they are in clubs for at least half to two thirds of the time. Of course they are tired.

I was at primary school in the 70s, we did lots of after school clubs. I did choir and orchestra clubs after school, my sister did gymnastics.

Outside of school I did violin lessons, brownies and drama. My sister did ballet lessons.

My mum worked FT as a primary school teacher and I think tried to keep us occupied so she could catch up with prep work for her pupils!

ETA I don't remember being exhausted by it all though

When my dc started in Reception, we attended a talk by the staff. The HT mentioned that the Government were set to make the expectations for children higher than they were and the HT and teacher in charge of the foundation years felt that they were too high already.

I don't agree with that sort of pressure on such tiny kids, they've years ahead of them to grasp the fundamentals.

The difference in schools now that they have to adhere to the national curriculum is rather sad. There's just no time or space to learn about other stuff, it's too strict on the teachers and the learning, and too many kids are falling through the gaps that are still there. It shouldn't be possible with the amount of testing and assessments that children are still getting to secondary stage without being able to read competently or a decent level of numeracy, but they are.

Yes it's very intense now.

Very large classes.

Huge amounts of written work with targets and learning outcomes to be set, met, and evidenced every 10 minutes.

My son came back from yr5 one year with over 30 A4 exercise books filled in!

It's insanity.

Me too, I did dancing, horse-riding, badminton, Brownies, music lessons, pottery - something literally every evening! But no wrap around care.

I think the difference, looking at my own child, is:

a) an over-packed curriculum with stupid things like difficult grammar concepts taught to tiny children. I remember having loads of time for art, sewing, crafting, daily assembly etc.

b) declining classroom behaviour. My child is often complaining about how noisy and overwhelming the school environment is. I don't remember feeling that.

Brownies and swimming was common amongst the people I knew as well - also late 70s born.

I also did cello, choir, recorder group and orchestra. Friends did music, dance (ballet and modern) or gymnastics.

Don’t know anyone who went to Sunday school though. That seems more unusual.

What time do they go to bed? Do they go to sleep or play on their phones?

I did clubs at primary age back in the 70s, Brownies, dance, violin, piano, church/Sunday school. No wraparound care but we had to go to the neighbour whose son was in my class till Mum got home from work. My two were in late primary when Michael Gove's changes came in (one did the old Y6 SATS and one did the new ones) and it was a massive shift harder. I remember DD's year 5 teacher at parent's evening saying "sorry, you know she was ahead in reading last year, now she's behind, but it's not her, it's the same for all of them".

I was born in the 50s, and went to school in the 60s and 70s. The only after school activity I did was Guides. My parents put me down for swimming lessons on a Saturday, but I refused to go after the first lesson. (My secondary school had a swimming pool, and I learnt how to swim there)

My DC were at primary school in the 90. All of them came home from primary school, hungry, tired and in a daze. They needed a snack and an hour of watching tv to come to.

DD1 was in an additionally resourced unit at primary. Her specialist teacher said even then, the national curriculum was so fast, if a child missed a key concept, there was no time to go back and teach them again - whereas in the unit, they could and did.

Depends on the child, mine is early Sept born and really far ahead in reading so she finds it really easy at the moment. She completes the weekly learning challenges they have in 1 or 2 days and then does “own learning” eg playing for most of the rest of the week.
Comes home and reads and practices writing for fun.

She also goes to wraparound daily so does long days. But it’s a tiny school, class of Y1 and EYFS combined of 10.

But all of that is driven by her reading - she’s already an independent reader. I don’t mean that in any bragging way, I was an early reader too. She’s reading at Y4+ level in Y1 and it’s not my doing. I imagine for children that are still learning the basics it’s quite intense.

Yes there are high standards. I remember a bit of counting, basic maths, reading and painting at my school.

I loved my children’s primary school, they worked them hard and they learnt so much (they have a really strong grasp on maths and geography that I certainly didn’t get from primary school) but they were great with active learning - working outdoors/cooking/local trips etc to bring learning to life. What is very tiring is asking young children to sit at a desk all day - my children’s first primary school was like this and is was exhausting and very boring for them.

You sound very middle class! We were working class.

i started primary in 1986 and it was a breeze from what I could remember. Every half term we had a topic and the work was fun and related to that. Lots of PE, art and fun stuff.

I did 3 after school activities as well which is more than my kids.

Standards have gone up academically, but a lot of the creativity and fun have gone. English is no longer very creative, but is more about grammar concepts that can be marked as right or wrong and assessed. Writing is done without giving much thought to how the writing feels and what it expresses in a creative way, but rather in terms of whether it meets a set of criteria like using enough adverbs etc. Sadly it turns lots of children off English.

There’s also very little art, junk modelling or singing now. These are things that help with self expression and support good mental health and I hope priorities will be reassessed in the not too distant future. It’s not surprising that it’s exhausting for a lot of children.

Yes definitely agree it's more exhausting. I was talking to DS (8) about when I was at primary school in the 1990s and he was amazed that on Fridays we got all afternoon to do 'free choice'. We could get out anything from the cupboards to do or play with. Teachers just got on with marking in the background. I used to come home on Fridays with picture books and collages I'd spent all afternoon on in my own little world. It was a nice way to wind down for the weekend.
I remember coming home feeling tired but physically tired, from walking to and from school, running around in the playground and then if weather was nice playing out.
By contrast my kids come home mentally exhausted and frazzled but hyperactive from sitting down all day in crowded classrooms. Their school was only built in the 1990s but it's already bursting at the seams as class sizes have gone up. Even when they are in the playground there's not enough physical room for them all to properly run about letting off steam.

I have a DC in Y1 too OP. There was a talk for parents at the end of reception where they said it was a big leap, but not to worry as the children would still have some time at break and lunch to run around. They are five. I felt a bit sad hearing that, although when I was in the equivalent of Y1, it was the same. I have a memory of being asked to read from the newspaper when an inspector came to the class, we had to write what we had done over the weekend every Monday morning etc. However, I don’t think the curriculum was as packed, it was ok to take holidays in term time, there was less illness in the classroom - it was frowned upon rather than encouraged to make classmates ill. There are some pretty nasty viruses that children are expected to catch regularly now which do have longer term implications for them and their families (e.g. covid).

The teacher had some flexibility - nice, sunny day - let’s read under the willow tree. If there was a topic that people were interested in, the teacher could answer some questions on it, rather than stressing that there’s no spare time to do so. We had no homework - school was school and home was home. Mine came home with loads of homework for Y1 for half term.

Children used to run around the playground before school started, but now it’s straight into the classroom for early morning work. There is little decompression time within the day. We didn’t have behaviour charts or have children regularly sent to Y5 and Y6 classrooms. Missing break was for a major issue such as fighting or bullying. However, there also seemed less disruptive behaviour.

Schools had money for textbooks, crafts and soap etc. There are also children who need more support to be in mainstream school - support that isn’t there.

Schools/curriculum also seems focussed on a million ways to skin a cat, rather than if method a doesn’t work, try method b, c, d etc. There seems a lot of superfluous stuff that doesn’t add value esp in maths. However, if you are a child that doesn’t learn easily with phonics - and some don’t - it seems crackers to keep persisting down that route.

Both my parents worked and I did piano, brownies and swimming. I came home with a letter two or three times a term and that was it for parental admin.

There was 40 children in my Yr5/6 class (one of three Yr5/6 classes). It was supposed to be 30 but they couldn't afgord an extra teacher. My children's experience was definitely calmer.

Children are also less resilient and far more pandered to. Not al of course. But 'back in the day', tantrums and overwhelm form primary aged children was seen as bad behaviour and dealt with. Nowadays, it's 'expressing themselves'. We make our children's lives all so comfortable rather than have them seen and not heard so naturally they become boundary pushers at home. They are more spoilt at home so can't cope with the demands of school, therefore act up when they decompress at home.

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/729440

"Make Play and Continuous Provision statutory in England's Key Stage 1 Curriculum"

Just signposting this here in case anyone else recognises the importance of play!

Absolutely. My DCs seem to be learning things around 3 years before I did, but maybe I just went to a terrible school.

I have a master's in English literature and couldn't tell you what an expanded noun phrase is now!

Dd remembers far more of her Primary years than I ever did. I didn't have the most engaged parents, not sure anyone did in the 80/90's tbh, but the details she remembers is intense. I barely ever remembered kids names from Reception to age 7. I moved at that point and do have more memory from then on as it was a better, smaller school.

I think parental involvement has a lot to do with it - they are challenged and supported more in general these days.