to want my dd's school to be forcibly turned into an academy

[ReallyTired]

Dd's school is offically inadequate. All fun including school plays, sports days, end of term parties and her class outing have been cancelled. It is vital that these four/five year old reception children have their nose to the grind stone and learn their phonics and numeracy. Improvement is slow. Bullying is rife and most parents are unhappy.

I have seen another local school really improved by academisation. With the right sponsor academisation can work. I would like parents to be allowed to vote on an academy sponsor so that we could avoid Harris or Barnfield or some religious weirdo taking over dd's school.

Dd is trapped at her school because of lack of places in the area. Othewise I would take her out in a heartbeat. I don't want to do home education as I think the social isolation is bad for chidlren.

Home education offers the opportunity to use the full range of available pedagogies and families range from those using far more structured teaching methods than schools do such as ABA, precision teaching or direct instruction right through to fully autonomous.

Most families I've met at groups whose children do not have specific SN's that dictate the teaching style needed seem to spend mornings on fairly structured traditional academic activities and then afternoons doing unstructured and social activities, so fall somewhere in the middle of the two extremes.

This seems utterly moderate and reasonable as common sense tells you that 1:1 or very small group teaching is always going to be more efficient than the poor school teacher can achieve with 30 kids in terms of time management.

My anecdotal sample does not include traveller children, child actors or many with serious physical health problems, or those with major SN's as these children fall into specialist categories for schooled education too, so perhaps shouldn't be compared.

"Home education offers the opportunity to use the full range of available pedagogies and families range from those using far more structured teaching methods than schools do such as ABA, precision teaching or direct instruction right through to fully autonomous. "

Only if you have the training to know how to deliver these methods. Most parents aren't trained as teachers.

"This seems utterly moderate and reasonable as common sense tells you that 1:1 or very small group teaching is always going to be more efficient than the poor school teacher can achieve with 30 kids in terms of time management. "

There is usually some attempt at quality assurance to weed out weak teachers. There is evidence that children with special needs do worse if they are taken out of lessons for one to one time with an unqualified TA. Research does not back up your common sense.

How depressing that the government's 'academy' propaganda seems to be working. :(

So naieve to say you must have the appropriate qualifications to teach your child to read. Who tells you that, the people who say you must put your child in education. A loving parent will always want their child to succeed much more than a teacher does. Your will to see them read, a childs natural ability to learn and just some understanding of phonics and your away. Not enough trust in their child to want to learn.

www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6022071

Evidence show that teaching assistants are ineffective compared to being part of a large class with the teacher. Most TAs have had more training than parents as schools do include them in insets.

It takes more than love to teach a child to read. It takes skill. With the best will in the world most parents do not understand how to teach phonics well or how to develop good comprehension skills. This is why teachers go to uni and parents send their kids to school.

In ten years time the education system will be entirely funded by private businesses and no new of them will want schoolt in shite areas and the LEA won't exist. Come back to me when the schools have Becky even more polarized and poor children Havre zero chance of a quality education and then say you wanted academies.

Privatization is working so well for everything else, after all.

My phone garbled that post.

Actually research outcomes in American studies show that home schooled children tend to outperform their schooled peers across the ability range. I refer you to the US because in the UK we haven't done enough studies with a large enough cohort of children to say for sure from an objective standpoint imho.

As parents we look at the situation from what's best for our own individual child. Critics of home ed seem to assume that a good quality state education is available in all areas to all children. That is not the case by any measure. There are some schools I wouldn't leave my dog in, and others that are superb on any level you can imagine. The numbers of home educated children across the country does tend to reflect the quality of the state schooling available to them in their area for good reason sadly.

With the advent of the internet, home education is easier than it ever was for parents from previous generations. The impact of internet schools, online tutors and social media so parents can meet up, pool resources etc should not be underestimated. There is no way I could personally teach science to the level my son needs (he's gifted in this area only), but his online school can and does this far more effectively than mainstream school ever could.

Noone will ever be more motivated to see an individual child succeed than their parents.

There are training resources out there that parents can access to show parents how to teach phonics. Not every child can learn to read using phonics though, and where are the alternative strategies within the state system to teach these children?

In the UK we have an intransigent political establishment who are actively blocking scientifically proven educational advances in favour of political dogma. Gove's actions are not about raising educational standards for the masses but about lining the back pockets of various corporate interests with taxpayers money.

If academies do not have to employ qualified teachers then the argument over home ed is dead in the water imho. This is NOT a good thing.

OP, the assumptions you have made about families with children in Richmond schools are wide of the mark in so many respects, and it's fascinating that you are so determined to try to find a reason to claim, incorrectly, that the quality of primary schools in the area has nothing to do with the fact that they are state schools.

The plain fact is that in Richmond and all over the country there are excellent state schools, and that there is absolutely no need for schools in need of improvement to become academies. In fact, as experience is proving every day, it can be positively counter productive.

I am working as a cleaner and my husband in a warehouse. My dd is in the top group for maths and English (the parent of her best friend are teachers and this girl is not in the top group), my son is in year 7 and he is in the top group for math and second for English and science. ( in year 6 he got the level 6 in math)
I don't like when people assumed that children of poorer families aren't so intelligent as the children of richer families.
My first cousin is a doctor, her sister studied economics, their parents don't have any studies ( only primary), one of my neighbour is a engineer the parents where very poor( not even a toilet in the house).
Another of my relatives a math degree.
From my point of view I think in this country they are 2 classes of education one for the working class and one for the middle class.

bochead

An excellently put together argument. Can I just reiterate that there is not enough trust in children wanting to learn from parents. A childs urge to learn can be so much better than the best teachers.

Tobysmum77 "peeking if you are in sm then you do not have the luxury to 'watch and wait'.

And no one gets to a category for nothing, that is denial, sorry. It is easier to get into than before but there are issues whether you like it or not."

What actually I said was nothing to do with being in Special Measures:

"Academies, even those that converted as "Outstanding" schools, are relatively new. Watch and wait is what I say. We're already starting to see that academy conversion is no guarantee that a school will be excellent. A lot of the original convertors haven't been through Ofsted since."

I am saying that a school becoming an academy is no guarantee of excellence, as we are starting to see. Watch and wait - because I think the academies that are getting into trouble are the visible part of the iceberg.

Earlier on I stated very clearly that when a school goes into category there is a flurry of activity to turn it around. This happens BEFORE academy conversion. There is no watching and waiting involved. Public perception is that academy conversion has turned the school around, very often it's the LA activity in advance of that.

I was laughing at "IQ" and "genes" being part of the argument. Coupled with "hard work and intelligence gets these people where they are" style thinking, it's like the latter half of the 20th Century never happened.

I have a good degree from a Russell Group uni in a difficult subject. My IQ tests at well below 100. I have been assessed for learning difficulties and although I have a difficulty, it is very mild (minor coordination and attention problems) and has not significantly affected my work at university or in the workforce.

Dunno about genetics, my dad failed the 11+ but he is pretty smart. My mum was a mature student at uni and you would have to get up very early in the morning to catch her out at anything. I am significantly less bright than either my dad or my mum.

However, I do find it creepy when people start advocating IQ as a method of sifting kids (and this is happening a lot more lately). Or "good genes" which is "the elephant in the room". They don't realise how many kids they would be dooming by using either of these methods.

peeking we do not have the luxury of watch and wait, believe me on that.

and it's a largely middle class school btw its not all about deprivation/IQ which is one of the more amusing pearl-clutching assumptions.

The simple fact is that LAs have been scaled back they cannot provide enough support. Yes it's the government agenda but one school in sm can't do anything individually.

Academies are not a solution. Lots of primary academies, previously excellent, are now failing after recent inspections.