To think the British education system attempts to totally disempowers parents...

[ArcUp]

I write this as a mother whose DC1 has just started school. I was expecting some feeling of handing my child over a to a 'system' but have been shocked by the force of that. It is as if the parent suddenly becomes the second fiddle in the child's life. These tests and decisions made by schools and professionals are somewhat overwhelming and there has been an influx of advice on how to parent, on how to teach my child to spell, what I should and should not read to him, what I should and should not feed him, how I should discipline etc. And then he has all day, 5 days a week where I have no say or no input into what or how he learns, suddenly this 'system' knows what is best for my child, apparently over me. And very little about this day is shared with me, apart from snippets at the school gate or small bits of information from dc. I find the whole thing very over-powering and disempowering. And I say all of this from a view point where my son is going to a very good village school. I don't think it is the school at all, just the general approach of education as majority of my friends with similar aged children seem to feel the same way. Parents (or main care givers) are, and will always be, the biggest influence in a child's life, I would expect the education system to embrace that rather than try to replace it.

YANBU and I'm really considering HE. I worked as a TA for a short while and even though the teacher was fantastic, the sheer size of class it meant that the actual bums on seat heads down learning was very little. Add in the rest of the crap school brings then I'd rather do it myself!

YANBU and I say that from the opposite end of the school experience as DC3 has just entered her GCSE year.

We also lived abroad and had experience of a different system.

The British system is a long way from perfect. The level of intrusion into what I would consider to be parental decisions does seem to be far greater than we experienced abroad.

When we were abroad we were not told what to feed our children at lunch time or how to dress our children for school.

I am not sure why schools have so much influence here.

This won't be popular but I loved the first 12 or so years of my teaching career way back in the 80's . Unless there was a huge problem I met my 8 year old pupils parents twice. Once at the beginning of the year and once at the end. By the time my own children went to school times were a changing and I got so fed up with how involved I had to be. I liked school and home being reasonably separate. Schools wear parents down now with all our endless demands for their input. I was not uninterested in my children's education but I didn't need to know every single thing they did. It is exhausting for parents , children and teachers.

It simply wouldn't work if parents interfered in every decision!
Time to take a step back- he is at home far more than at school.

Sounds like you went into it reluctantly and didn't want your child at a school. We had no such interventions although this years intake are getting a parent phonics session. Local schools in more deprived areas do much more than ours and it has huge positive impact. Homeschool?

Love your post teatowel. My ideal was seeing the teacher twice a year - in the late 90's. We did have an Open School night and assemblies at Infant School but parents were very much pushed away at Junior school. No nutritional info, behaviour info or anything when they started in YR either.

However you will find plenty of children are given a very poor start in life and Social Services have never been so busy with child neglect referrals. Why on earth would anyone object to the health of a child being monitored at school? They may pick up on child abuse!

You seem to be utterly focussed on you and your child OP without, seemingly, understanding the ugly issues some children have to face. None of what is given to you is obligatory. It is merely helpful advice. For all you know, other parents might like the advice, even down to suggestions for reading material. Who on earth could take offence at this? Oh, I know: the parents who cannot read. Or maybe the ones who do not have a book in the house and don't know where the library is? Or cannot afford books. Or are too busy/lazy to spend any time with their children so the children have poor language skills and are already significantly behind when they start school.
Please recognise that not all parents are like you. You may, of course, think that these parents and children should just be left alone to get on with it as best they can - as in previous generations.

Given your background, I would have thought you would have had a greater understanding of the very poor and chaotic parenting some children have to put up with and realise the advice given is not controlling you or even for you. It is far better that schools try and help all children, who may otherwise have poor outcomes, without being attacked for it. Your utopia would be continued misery for others.

YABU.
I don't recognise your first post, from any of my dcs' year in Reception at all.

I do recognise that the teacher has 30 pupils. Yes, they will differentiate, but they can't 'consult' parents about how they want things done every which way.
I do recognise that an awful lot of parents don't know how to help their child learn to read or spell or do mathematics, and are very, very grateful to the teachers who put the time in to try to help parents know how to help their dc.

OP, if you think that's bad, try Scotland with it's Named Person system.
The NP is usually a 'professional' at School.
It can, in theory, be anyone other than the parents.

There are SO many PPs on here where I'm bouncing up and down and nodding and saying "yes, yes"!!!!!

I see SO many children on the borderline of neglect (some TOTALLY their fault - parents are crap, some totally NOT their fault - they are doing the best they can!). I totally blame fucking David Cameron and his entitled cronies, who have no idea of what it means to actually be poor or not speak English, etc.

There are also a GAZILLION threads on here (go search them out - I dare you!) saying things along the lines of
What are school doing?
Why aren't school being involved
This is the school's problem

(and repeat, repeat, repeat).

EVERY new thing that comes along, schools are expected to absorb, learn about, deal with, make better. Erm... where are the parents?

As a specific example, I've just updated a school's safeguarding policy (this is the one that ensures no one fiddles with your child at school),. It now has to include: Prevent (ensuring a child isn't radicalised - i.e. that they don't go off and fight for IS), FGM, CSE, etc. SCHOOL is now responsible for all of that. On top of the curriculum. And don't forget cyber-bullying (another current thread on here)

But I'm sorry you're not being given enough feedback on a day-to-day basis. That must be tough for you.

I disagree largely with a system driven mass consumerism and capitalism

Maybe lots of (most) other people like consumerism & capitalism? And would resent you for imposing another value system on them.

Look around, electricity, Internet, well-insulated houses, Cars that talk to you with high safety standards, evidence-based medicine, high standard of comfortable safe living: this stuff came/comes out of the capitalist system. We could tweak a lot of it for the better, but doesn't mean whole thing is rotten.

which builds an ideal of conformity and success judged by wage or financial output.

Yet our culture celebrates the different. Ellen MacArthur, Bob Geldoff, Eddie Izzard, Claire Short, Donald Trump, Danny Boyle, Bill Gates. They all have done quite well out of being mavericks in the capitalist and consumerist system.

children not starting school until 6 or 7

The countries that do this well tend to be culturally homogenous (e.g. Scandanavia) with high social conformity AND free preschool /nursery from 1yo. Not so individualistic.

and a curriculum led by teachers...

I mostly agree with you there!! With some kind of checks, though.

Yet Our democratic process came up with something rather different. I know people who get really depressed about the rest of society holding values they despise, or patronise the electorate as stupid or deceived sheep who didn't know what they were voting for. I don't know how folk get thru each day with such a negative outlook.

Sounds like OP would love HE.

Arcup it's early days yet to make a judgement - and it's understandable that you are anxious given your dc1's previous health issues - give it time.

But if after a couple of months, you still feel seriously concerned that you aren't getting enough information and that communication between school and home is poor, then make an appointment to talk to the teacher about it.

And agree with what Osolea posted - the system has to cater for dc from a wide variety of backgrounds

All I would add is, if you think the UK educational system is 'one size fits all' then don't come here to mainland Europe!

There's such a mix of different issues in the OP that it's impossible to have much of a coherent discussion.

But in general, yes, it is difficult dealing with the lack of information, but there's not a lot you can do about that. The teacher can't chat to every parent after school. Even in smaller classes they wouldn't be able to do that. And school is about developing some independence. We really don't need to know the ins and outs of everything they're up to. We have a parents evening once a term where we can go in and look through their books so that gives a fair idea, but it's not a constant stream of information. I think the balance is about right - if you do know what they're doing every day then it's harder to just let them get on with it and could lead to more worrying and stressing.

Our school is very keen on emphasising the role of parents in education. They have provided (optional) evening workshops to help with things like how to encourage reading, checking they actually understand what they're reading and so on. I personally don't find that disempowering at all, but very useful. We don't do everything as they say, but it's not presented in a "You must do it all like this or your child will fail" way.

I do think there should be more freedom over curriculum, but that does have its issues too. (I remember doing A-level Maths and my teacher spending a week on polar coordinates even though it wasn't in the syllabus because he thought it was something we should know about).

I agree OP. If l were British I'd be embarrassed that generally the government thinks l can't mind my own dc well enough. No where else in the world is quite such a nanny state as here.

The curriculum used to be completely led by teachers. This ended up in children not being taught subjects like science.

We taught Science well before the National Curriculum came along derxa - what an odd thing to say

I don't remember being taught much that could be called 'science' at primary. Secondary, yes, for the first 3 years - but then an awful lot of girls dropped everything except maybe biology.

OP - there is definitely a current of thought that parents are vacuous idiots who cannot possibly know anything about educating their own DC, let alone have a relevant or valid opinion about educational issues. Dare to criticise a teacher or school or system at your peril.

Trust yourself and, if school won't talk, scrutinise it with your eyes and ears. Don't overestimate it or be hoodwinked by its own self-satisfaction.

Yabu. Dh attended 2 meetings at school with ds this week (secondary) to tell parents how to support children in maths and English. He said it was all obvious information. I usually go to these meetings so know what he is saying however, I pointed out that many have parents who don't find it obvious. Some through laziness some because thy just don't understand and that I am happy to sit through these things, take away any information if it helps other parents and children. Usually there is the odd bit of info that helps.

The school can't give you info in detail about every child everyday. Surely that's to be expected when your child is in a class of 30.

You have the choice to home school. You say it won't fit your family. I have home schooled because dd was bullied very badly. You make it fit if school really isn't the best option for your child.

I think your problem is that school isn't really for you. This is not about your child, it's about you not being able to deal with it.

Have you ever volunteered at school?
You seem.to be making many assumptions.