To think that a pupil premium should be paid for children who live in home where none of the parents have qualifications

[ReallyTired]

I think that the education of the parents has a more significant outcome on a child's attainment than income. (Especially as many working poor don't have much more money than those on benefits.)

I feel that children who live in households where no adult has five GCSEs or equivalent should get extra support at school. Often these families aren't entitled to benefits because the parents do work so currently don't get the pupil premium.

It is harder for uneducated parents to support their children with homework than someone with a degree. Better eduated mothers are better at getting their children's needs met as they are often more articulate. For example making sure that statemented child gets what they are legally entitled to. (Getting a child assesed by an ed pych so that the child's dyslexia is spotted.)

Unskilled people often do physically hard work for very long hours for very little money. I believe that a child with unskilled working parents is at a major disadvantage as their parents are time poor as well as cash poor.

CarolynKnappSheppey middle classes are horrified by the thought of their children getting extra free benefits.

Maybe it's less altruistic than that if you do it on FSM, the pupil premium could be allocated to people who wouldn't get it on the hypothetical policy of targeting families with historic educational disadvantage. If we did try to target educational disadvantage, our government would probably restrict pupil premium to pupils from educationally disadvantaged families, rather than extending the criteria to qualify.

Meanwhile, O-levels were phased out in 1988. I don't think educational policy should be built on the assumption there will continue to be loads of primary school children from highly intelligent, educated, parents who have less than five O-levels/CSE grade 1s indefinitely.

At some point, there was a change from "they're poor, therefore thick, therefore not worth teaching" to "oh my god, push their predicted D grades up to Cs even if they're scruffy looking" and that should be taken account of

I don't know when the shift from one to the other happened exactly, but it did happen.

Anyway, O-levels were phased out in 1988. That means the youngest

"I think it's quite rude to assume that just because someone didn't get a certain number of GCSEs (which can be for any reason) it means they aren't able or knowledgable enough to help their children with their schoolwork."

Why don't you read the thread and then come back? Several people have explained this point in different ways.

So if the school decided there was a homework club everyday30mins (primary) and up to 3 hours (secondary) after school for everybody with uneducated parents....

Would schools want to do this? This is what would be required to fully support a child in their homework, which is what educated parents are assumed to have the advantage in.

thumbnuts definitely no funding! Also, can you imagine how MN or the daily mail would react once word got out why support workers or whatever were turning up with this form and staying to watch the parents fill it in?

*With the best will in the world, now as parents, many of these forgotten pupils have a great deal of difficulty respecting and interacting with schools.

Their children are at a disadvantage regardless of household income.*

Yes and one of the reasons for this is because many schools and LEA’s still feel it their place to publically fail to respect those parents beyond at most patronising lip service, while manipulating the shit out of them, and interact with them in a vile and totally negative way, claiming it's all for the sake of their poor disadvantaged by being born to us, kids.

Tell me why, really why, the only place my LEA could hold an education meeting with me was in an interview room of the benefits office, with screaming desperate people bouncing off the partition wall and security interrupting?

Capsium I've already had that lie served.
Your child doesn't understand in lessons, so they need to go the homework club to get help.

We turn up and it's a bloody latchkey kids riot zone overseen by a member of pastoral staff!
Nothing to do with homework or learning at all, except kids can choose to do their homework while they wait for the time they're released to go home, but they wrote it into his statement as provision.

Unless you're planning to ban parents from owning books, going to the theatre or answering questions using their own knowledge, children in households with a high level of formal education will arrive at

So now those of us who don't have degrees also don't read for our own pleasure, don't have any sort of knowledge (other than the price of Special Brew one assumes) and don't engage in cultural experiences as well as being crappy parents whose children as pre-destined to fail?

I almost wish I was illiterate- then I wouldn't have to read this kind of shite.

Just I would not want homework club either...I would surprised if a school actually had one that could provide what was needed.

I think a lot of the extra funding serves individual school's agendas. Sadly it does not seem to be about providing targeted, appropriate, effective support but rather paying lip service to support, in the most cost effective, but in real terms ineffective, manner. In addition, just to add insult to injury, then syphoning off any surplus for whatever an individual school sees fit....

Getting the funding is high on the agenda, providing support is not...

I can see your point.

DH came to the UK aged 22, as a refugee. He had gone to school for six months, aged 14, but both before and after that, he'd been working like an adult. No reading, no writing. He spoke good-ish English.

So a lower bar should be set imo. But althoigh his income is now good, it is for a manual job where a qualification isn't necessary. I've slowly been able to get him up to roughly GCSE B or so maths (Im not a good teacher) over years, and he can read and write English (previously he couldn't read or write in their native language).

I am very lucky to be equipped with degree level skills. After the death of his first wife, he was struggling with a kid (and a toddler who'd need the help later) to help them. Reading or writing at home, even being able to say certain words, recognise certain things. Before he met me, he wasn't computer literate. That was massively disadvantaging for my DSDs and I think PP would be good. He had a good income, technically (the current national mean average) but that didn't mean a thing when helping his kids.

My parents have no qualifications, except for apprenticeships.

I always did all my homework myself and now have good qualifications and a career.

Not every child needs help to do their homework.

Not every child needs help to do their homework.

No, they don't. But it helps.

I think off all the little hurdles you have to jump if your parents are for whatever reason unable or unwilling to be supportive as just that: little hurdles. None of them are insurmountable, and in isolation each of them almost appears trivial. But if you arrive at an intereview having had to walk ten miles stepping over a low barrier every ten metres, while the applicant stood next to you arrived in a limo, you're going to be more out of breath than they are. None of the barriers were individually a major disadvantage, but taken together the effect is more substantial.

The issue isn't that the very best of people from disadvantaged circumstances end up at top universities and qualify as barristers. It's that the perfectly ordinary kids from advantaged backgrounds do that, not the very best. The advantage they have is that they don't have to be the very best in order to get the same outcome.

friday but where would you like to see the money go?

Homework clubs, are they really that effective? Or more pertinently do any schools actually run homework clubs in a way which can provide the same support as a parent can, if they are able?

Maybe relying less on homework to fill in the gaps of educational provision is a better aim?

Late to the thread, but I don't actually think it would be a bad idea to allocate funding based on parental qualification, although only in addition to there being other qualifying criteria as well. It's got to be better than the bollocks way it's allocated at the moment.

The ring fenced pupil premium money needs to be spent on children that need it, regardless of their parents income or level of education. There are too many exceptions to the rule that is currently used for it to be a good idea for the pp to only be used on children that get FSMs.

At least if it were based on parents education schools would recieve direct funding to help bridge the gap that exists between traveller families and everyone else, because they currently get nothing, and they are far more in need as a group than those who have a low income.

Homework clubs, are they really that effective?

Probably not. They are, as someone upthread points out, a euphemism for after-school childminding. However, that's an argument for making them better, perhaps.

Maybe relying less on homework to fill in the gaps of educational provision is a better aim?

You can abolish homework as much as you like, but the advantage that children have from having potential tutors on hand is pretty hard to eliminate. The best we can hope to do is match some of that.

I asked this upthread but nobody answered.

Does anyone know how the Pupil Premium Funding will work when all KS1 children will receive FSM?

friday do you think schools would be prepared to match private tutoring which is additional to a child's education received at school?

I understand that taller men do better in life than smaller men.

My children are small. Can we have pupil premium too?

however I would suggest that it isn't parental education that is the issue, its parental attitude to education

This is my belief too.

I work as a Pupil Support Assistant in a High School in a working class community. I spend my days working with kids of 12-15 who can't tell the time or read basic sentences. In almost all cases I get the distinct impression that their parents place little value on their education and certainly don't spend any time helping them. The split is about 90% white boys / 10% white girls and behaviour problems are the norm. I don't know the educational background of their parents, but certainly the parenting skills appear to be lacking.

These (predominantly) boys seem to have never developed any listening skills, or moved past the concentration level of a toddler. I am so sorry for some of them when they enrol at school aged 12 so poorly equipped to benefit from the system. After the first couple of days, many of them are never seen with a pencil of their own or a clean uniform. Most could, however, pass and advanced oral examination on 'Minecraft -Theory and practice'. Go figure.

In the school I work in, most of the bottom set classes have at least one of us in it, if not two in some classes (English and Maths). We do individual work, small groups and general support and still it isn't enough to compensate and many of the pupils are opposed to accepting support. I fervently hope that some of them have the character and opportunity to return to education later in life and fulfill their potential, despite the lack of encouragement at home.

I don't think that many parents would expect to help with the content of homework at secondary level - mine certainly couldn't. Even if they'd done the same subjects as I did the content would have changed over the 30+ years since they'd been studying. What they did do was provide a quiet environment and encourage me to do my homework and to ask for help from the teachers if I needed to. By then the pattern is set.

I think the difference starts to show at early primary level though. When one set of parents (regardless of income) reads with their child every night and another set doesn't because they can't read themselves or they think it's the school's job to do the teaching then you're bound to get children left behind who are never going to catch up.

Prefer I think what is lacking is a remotely adequate education at school! State education exists to teach reading and writing, numeracy and literacy is at the core of the National Curriculum!

These children have been failed by the education system. You simply cannot lay the blame at the parent's door.

Btw my child could read before school. I did not purposely make an effort to teach this. Go figure....

Only on MN.

What a load of rude and dismissive bollocks.

I don't think there's too much wrong with the system! my DC both learned sufficiently well at primary and are now working towards a university education. The system does rely on the parents/carers having an input though, and why shouldn't it? Why should the blame be laid at the the door of the school?

When people choose to have children, they should also accept that part (a huge part!) of their role is to be an educator. I honestly don't know how that can be argued! When a class of 5yr olds start at school the difference in their development can be enormous. Some can dress and undress for gym, some don't have a clue how to put their shoes on. Some can hold a knife and fork, many just eat with their fingers or a spoon.

I would like to see Parentcraft as a compulsory subject in school, that is most definitely a failing in the National Curriculum!

do you think schools would be prepared to match private tutoring which is additional to a child's education received at school?

That's not what I meant. I just meant the tutoring that parents can do themselves.

I've got three gcse's. I worked during my exams and didn't take them seriously. I then left home at 17 and couldn't afford to stay in education even if I'd wanted to.

Until recently I had a well paid career which I spent 15 years working towards. I am not unskilled my any means.

I think you're definitely unreasonable and also full of shit