To think Gove does not know what happens in a primary school

[enimmead]

So we've had:

All KS2 children to learn a foreign language (announced in Rose report 2009, abandoned by coalition but happens anyway - sort of)

All children to learn tables to 12 x 12 by age 9 (which most schools try to do anyway despite the fact some children still struggle - but schools do try to do this)

I think Gove just makes these announcements because they sound good without actually checking to see what schools actually do.

insancerre that's not new, that's always been done. Everything in education is cyclical. Teach for long enough and you'll end up doing the stuff you started doing, which you then had to stop doing because someone told you that was a crap way to do it and here's the new, better way to do it....and repeat ad nauseum.

In fact, the first 2 parts of the Framework for Primary Languages was published in 2005, with the final part published in 2007! I'm so angry, I can't tell you.

My 4 year old has stood up with the rest of his class and recited 2 (very childish, age appropriate) poems at the 2 open afternoons I've been to. He is at the local state school and I would imagine most schools do similar things.

I can't bear the man either, but think most of these announcements will simply formalise what already happens. The day he starts saying that it should be the classics is when I would get cross (but no sign yet of that, thankfully)

He's telling us we have to teach tables up to 12 x 12 by the age of 9.

Most schools do that anyway.

What else will he be telling us to do that we already do?
I wish he would actually speak to some real teachers.

As an aside, on the TES forum, the word idiot is filtered out as it was getting associated with the word Gove too much :)

not all schools do these things AT ALL.

My son has not been taught a single poem in his first year at school, and he is in a grade 1 ofsted primary.

How is teaching languages a bad thing? Heaven forbid we teach children a foreign language.

I can never get over the way in which some people seem happy to limit the opportunities of children, in the name of political partisanship. Edith Wharton pointed out earlier, this was all in the Rose report.

All schools I have worked in as a supply teacher teach (or try to teach ) a MFL. Nothing wrong with that.

When you are in teaching, it seems like you hear the same announcements regularly - and never see the funding for it. I've lost count of all the announcements Gove has made since being in office - and I don't think any funding has followed his announcements.

You also see the latest must do or else initiatives being given lots of funding only to be trashed a few years later and replaced by the latest must do or else initiative.

You get very cynical after a while.

enimmead: your school may teach times tables up to 12x12 by the age of 9, but I bet a lot of schools don't. It's not in the National Curriculum, so they don't have to do it. Now it's in the NC, they will have to do it. Unless they're an academy or free school, of course.

Whether this is a good idea or not is a whole other debate...

I don't think mine learned any poems in EY or year 1, but I know she knew things like The Highwayman and The Jabberwocky by heart last year.

I don't think teaching languages is a bad thing, I think it's a very good thing and it happens more than Gove seems to think!

humphrey teaching languages is a wonderful thing- I am furious because we were trying to do it already, but with the change of government everything was put on hold, or even cut, while we waited to see what they wanted us to do. I am cross that it is being put forward as new idea, when we had been working towards this for years.

I hear that kids have to learn tables up to 12x12 as well (which btw DD2 is currently doing)

But can I ask a question? Why the 12 times table? Surely that's just a throw back to imperial measurements and currency?

"He's telling us we have to teach tables up to 12 x 12 by the age of 9. Most schools do that anyway"

At least it's a little bit more ambitious than up to 10 x10 by age 11 that is the current standard. Most schools do that too, presumably following the meddlesome edicts of a previous set of Education Secretaries, who must have been yet more idiotic.

Teaching languages is only a bad thing if it is done so badly (poorly qualified staff, unsuitable methods, low expectations) that the children spend years on not learning very much and draw the conclusion that it is almost impossible to learn foreign languages at all.

In this sense, being taught French in primary school has been a bad thing for my dc: having had a year's worth of lessons without effectively learning anything at all has given them a skewed idea of the time it would take them to learn enough French to be able to use it one day. And the less they believe they will, the less it is likely to happen.

If French had been taught with the same verve and skill and level of expectation as maths or English or history, that would be a different thing altogether.

Rapid recall of tables is essential if you are going to do multiplication and division.

I have worked in a lot of schools and tables practise is viewed as essential in every school I have worked at. A level 4 requires a pupil to "recall multiplication facts up to 10 × 10 and quickly derive corresponding division facts"

Of course - rapid recall does not mean you understand them. I can ask a child what is 12 x 12? 144

Follow up: What is 13 x 12? Eh. I don't get it :(

Despite best efforts to ensure the child understands what the tables are.

All this talk of poetry and Gove reminded me that this poem is now on the GCSE syllabus, by one of the iconic punk poets of the 1970s- John Cooper Clarke
It reminds me of someone, his name escapes me..........

Like a Night Club in the morning, you?re the bitter end.
Like a recently disinfected shit-house, you?re clean round the bend.
You give me the horrors
too bad to be true
All of my tomorrow?s
are lousy coz of you.

You put the Shat in Shatter
Put the Pain in Spain
Your germs are splattered about
Your face is just a stain

You?re certainly no raver, commonly known as a drag.
Do us all a favour, here... wear this polythene bag.

You?re like a dose of scabies,
I?ve got you under my skin.
You make life a fairy tale... Grimm!

People mention murder, the moment you arrive.
I?d consider killing you if I thought you were alive.
You?ve got this slippery quality,
it makes me think of phlegm,
and a dual personality
I hate both of them.

Your bad breath, vamps disease, destruction, and decay.
Please, please, please, please, take yourself away.
Like a death a birthday party,
you ruin all the fun.
Like a sucked and spat our smartie,
you?re no use to anyone.
Like the shadow of the guillotine
on a dead consumptive?s face.
Speaking as an outsider,
what do you think of the human race

You went to a progressive psychiatrist.
He recommended suicide...
before scratching your bad name off his list,
and pointing the way outside.

You hear laughter breaking through, it makes you want to fart.
You?re heading for a breakdown,
better pull yourself apart.

Your dirty name gets passed about when something goes amiss.
Your attitudes are platitudes,
just make me wanna piss.

What kind of creature bore you
Was is some kind of bat
They can?t find a good word for you,
but I can...
TWAT.

LYRICS © JOHN COOPER CLARKE

Is he upping the budgets so schools can afford a MFL teacher or will he expect a teacher with a GCE in French taken some years ago to oblige?

Hackmum makes a really good point about the diametrically opposed principles of increased prescription (often on quite minor things) and increased 'freedom' through privatisation.
We're seeing this in lots of other places too, universities policies for example. It's a clear case of wanting to have their cake and eat it.

insancerre I was a student in Manchester in the 80s and saw JCC many times :o

I love this line:

"Speaking as an outsider,
what do you think of the human race?"

I wonder if you're thinking of who I'm thinking of? :o

I love JCC, I have seen him live too. He is a legend. He is still doing gigs.

I have two children. Their primary was outstanding. It didn't stop a fully qualified teacher from misusing apostrophe's and writing "ds1 read allowed beautifully today"; neither did it stop a fully qualified teacher from teaching in Year 4, that the x axis was vertical and the y axis horizontal or that 5/8th was the same as 9/16ths on a piece of homework.

I think Gove is wrong and that the first port of call needs to be to ensure that all primary schools have specialist English teachers and specialist maths teachers teaching the basics even if that requires differentiated pay scales. The problem with primary education in this country is that the poor teachers are Jacks (or Jills) of all trades and masters of none. Introducing an MFL at primary is a lovely idea but I think those in charge of education need to stick to their knitting and get the basis plain and purl correct before moving on to more complex patterns.

Without wanting to enter into an argument about state/independent when we moved DS to an independent prep school he received specialist tuition in all subjects. He was regarded as g&t for literacy at his primary - when he moved aged 9 his command of English grammar was very far behind his peers from the independent sector.

marriedinwhite I'm going to be kind and assume that your mis-placed apostrophe in your opening paragraph was meant in an ironic way.

Ditto enimmead's spelling of 'practice.'

His children are at primary school at present, and he's as much as possible a hands on dad, so I think he probably has some idea.

Just sloppy clam. Many apologies, but I'm not a teacher and I agree that apostrophe was wrong. You must agree with me about the x and y axes though - that was shocking. Am I right to say axes and not axis's? Bit tricky - all that free learning in the 60s and 70s. If he were here, I would get DH to check the 60s and 70s for me - do they need apostrophes or not?

Not!

He really really doesn't.

I have shared my Gove story on here before so at a risk of repeating myself.... When I met him and I asked him specifically about his research and reasoning his response was 'I don't know, but I am sure other people do'

He is not fit to hold public office. His ideas are poorly researched, often in opposition to his other ideas and usually archaic.

The plural of axis is axes, yes - and would never have an apostrophe as a plural anyway.

A 8 yo child in my class came up with a great way of memorising which one was which: y stands for yo-yo, which goes up and down vertically! Brilliant.