To say primary dc are more clever now

[BrandNewAndImproved]

My dc absolutely amaze me with the math they know, grammar they use and general knowledge.

I can't remember knowing any of this and I was considered bright at primary. End sats results were two 4s and a 5. The schools were aiming for 4s when I was in year 6 but my dd (not a stealth boast) was level 4 in most things and a 5 in English in year 4.

Or maybe the schools are ten times better then what they were.

Maybe all the testing and inspections has made schools be better instead of coasting.

[AnyoneButAndre]

I agree that children are genuinely more intelligent by any standardised measure than they were forty years ago. Possibly this is partly to do with the fact that we're not systematically pumping lead into their central nervous system like they were when I was a child.

[velourvoyageur]

I think broadly everything's the same as it was, at any level. Anyway, to adapt the saying about people with autism, if you know 30 kids, you do only know 30 kids. Not an impressive sample.

I also think if you find reading and deciphering easy, school is easier for you for several reasons. You're a good blagger, you come across as articulate when you're not yet expected to be, you've come across ideas that your peers might not have. My parents read a lot, I inherited whatever facilitates that tendency and was able to coast through secondary school & sixth form and first two years of uni. It's not a boast, my marks aren't super genius brilliant or anything, but I know if I hadn't read as a kid I'd have had to work harder starting much earlier. Which might have actually been a good thing.

[Bimblywibble]

I went to state school then private school. My DC at their state school probably fall between the extremes of my 2 schools. At the end of Y3 we had exams, and I remember one of the questions being to write an essay about sheep farming containing 13 facts. I don't think my DD could physically write that much at the end of Y3, and I'd hate her to be doing formal exams already.

But I am generally v impressed by their school. The school are genuinely trying to build capable children with high self esteem, not just exam passers. It's weird, growing up I genuinely thought the point of school was to prove that you can get the most A grades and come top in the most exams. Now, with my children, I can finally see that the point is each child acquiring skills and knowledge, not actually who can get the most answers down at a given age (well, duh!).

I agree with PP, both my children get bored of writing stories. My 8 year old would much rather learn some new information. Her ability to get stuff down on paper is light years behind what she can communicate verbally. I honestly don't know if that is just normal for very chatty 8 year olds with scarily good memories, or a problem.

[BrandNewAndImproved]

Lijkk agree schools take bullying a lot more serious now. That has to have a positive effect. They also take concerns about dc being unhappy in school with friendship problems seriously now.

Schools now have to show they have something to offer. Imo this means the teachers that went into teaching for an easy life have left and the ones that have a vocation to teach now come up with innovative lessons and have to be a very good standard.

[lljkk]

I reckon DC are as creative as they want to be in school, no end of opportunities.
Anecdotal... as a young child I had a lot of mental health problems because nobody recognised that I was being severely damaged by bullying at school in the 1970s.

[ArmchairTraveller]

Interesting to correlate the changes in primary education with the increase in mental illnesses, stress and low self-esteem amongst children too.
news.sky.com/story/1513107/exam-stress-rife-in-primary-schools-report
I'd like to see an independent mass study carried out.

[LumpySpacedPrincess]

How nice to see something positive for once, although I notice the 'lack of creativity' tribe are in full flow

A lot of that tribe seem to have direct experience, maybe they know what they are talking about.

[AnthonyBlanche]

I'm not sure that I se the value in primary school children learning lots of facts about eg the Romans. Personally, I think there should be much more emphasis on the three Rs. Once you've given children a good grounding in the basics they can be encouraged to find out about stuff like Mayan history for themselves.

Basic grammar and sentence construction skills are really lacking in many otherwise bright and educated university leavers. Sadly, this is more noticeable in those educated at state schools, which to me indicates that state education has failed many young people.

[lljkk]

DC were younger when they were taught stuff I didn't learn until 3-12 yrs later. Their science education especially has been amazing.

Also not taught certain skills at all because better methods taught for same tasks, chunking vs. long division for instance. That is utterly fantastic.

DC learnt to use a sewing machine & a lathe at (high) school, also had basic tuition in cookery. I had no idea that geography was a proper subject to study in its own right. All examples of things not/rarely taught at any school I attended.

[GoblinLittleOwl]

Maybe all the testing and inspections has made schools be better instead of coasting.
You may just be right.
How nice to see something positive for once, although I notice the 'lack of creativity' tribe are in full flow.

[BrandNewAndImproved]

Maybe for secondary there is more coaching for tests but I don't feel it's like that in primary.

My dc have a really good grasp of the basics plus really good IT skills, general knowledge and are not held back having to read the same old biff and chip book reading out loud one page at a time going through the whole class.

They do interesting things and as for history they know far more then I ever did at their age. I hadn't even heard of the mayans or any Chinese history apart from Hong Kong when at primary. We did the tudors, romans, ww2 and Egyptians at primary in the 90s and that was it. My dc can talk about loads of historical events and different cultures histories. They really are more educated then I was at their age.

For example when doing the romantic topic the detail was amazing of what they learnt. Dress, food, superstition, traditions, gods, Christianity and then they got to dress up as romans and live a day in the life as one.

Their school isn't even an outstanding school it's a bog standard primary and when they started the school had been put in special measures and the head sacked. The knowledge my dc have is astounding to me.

[kesstrel]

Foxyloxy you are right about knowledge being devalued. The 2007 curriculum specifically focused on skills as being more important. The argument is that in an Internet age you can always look things up. But to be able to use skills properly, or to think deeply about an issue, you need to have subject knowledge as well.

Reading comprehension, in particular, suffers if the reader hasn't got enough general knowledge. You can coach for SATS and GCSE English Language reading comprehension skills all you like, but if the subject of a piece of writing is unfamiliar due to lack of general knowledge, or a child's level of vocabulary knowledge is low, they will struggle to comprehend.

[kesstrel]

AnthonyBlanche Not only were they not taught basic skills, many of them also had almost no exposure to reading actual models of essay-type non-fiction, because of the wholesale abolition of textbooks. Someone with a good ear can pick up the conventions of non-fiction prose writing through reading plenty of it (although some children will also need more explicit instruction), but the decision that textbooks were too old-fashioned deprived many children of that avenue of learning writing skills. (I speak as one who would never willingly have read any non-fiction at all as a child!)

[Foxyloxy1plus1]

Each generation is different. There was more rote learning years ago, but sometimes that's not necessarily a bad thing. I think that general knowledge is regarded as less important these days and I agree that children know things they need to know for the tests they take. They are coached for the particular test. Years ago, when the 11plus was more widespread, there was little or no coaching for the test- there was no difference to the general syllabus, so there was more emphasis on innate ability, rather than teaching to the test.

[ChazsBrilliantAttitude]

I think it depends on the school. When I was in primary school in the 70's some of my teachers were very rigorous e.g. stand in front of the class and recite your 12x table in yr4 and others less so. If you wanted to learn then there were opportunities to do so and materials available, if you didn't want to then teachers were less bothered because there were no external tests.

[AnthonyBlanche]

I don't think people leaving school now are either more or less intelligent than they were 30 years ago. However, I do think that more people now come out of university with very poor writing skills. This is very noticeable in my profession where an ability to write well is extremely important. A lot of the new graduates I supervise these days have real trouble writing in a clear and comprehensible manner. Can only assume that the fact they weren't taught basic skills in school is largely to blame.

[Ricardian]

*Passing a test that is all you've ever studied is not hard"

Which is why everyone passes their driving test first time, presumably.

[Chattymummyhere]

The children are not smarter they are just taught what they needs to pass tests. Passing a test that is all you've ever studied is not hard.

Children won't learn taxes/managing bank account/sewing/house maintaince/cooking like what my grandparents did at school.

School don't tech some of the most basic but needed things like they used too, sure they do cooking but how much of that is now bring in a premade sauce/pre made pasta etc my grandad built bookcases etc in his wood work, I got to make a wooden stick man

[Ricardian]

If infant school is spent doing absolutely nothing but playing, then all that will happen is that the gap between kids from middle-class, educated families (who get taught by their parents at home) and children from low-income, low-education families (who generally do not) will just get bigger and bigger over time.

Indeed. And that gap is already vast.

[kesstrel]

Chrome100's mention of maths workbooks is interesting: "We had 35 kids in our class and just did workbooks which were dull. I remember finishing my maths book and just not telling the teacher because I didn't want to do another."

This method of "individualised" teaching of primary maths via workbooks was widespread in the 90s. It was dreamt up by education academics who were opposed to whole class teaching, having the teacher standing at the front and talking, and learning maths facts by heart, because they wanted children to be "in control of their own learning" and "learn at their own pace". There was never any proper evidence base to show that these new ideas would work well.

That's why the labour government brought in the National Numeracy Strategy in the late 90s, to counter this trend and force schools to use methods that had more of an evidence base. (And yet many schools still use dubious methods for maths teaching that don't take account of working memory issues, for example.) Just as many schools still use "mixed methods" for teaching reading, in spite of evidence that they are at best a waste of time, and at worst positively damaging to the most vulnerable children.

[AuntieStella]

"I remember being bored all the time in primary. I used to watch the clock going slower and slower everyday. My dc actually have fun in school."

When you were at school, there were probably DC in other schools who weren't bored. But parents didn't really know what was going on in schools then (the 'secret garden'), so couldn't really compare.

But I think most of the change to primary level education came from the 1980s reforms. Before that (and to some extent on the first years of roll out whilst they bedded in) there was no way of knowing how your DC was doing, ditto in the following comprehensive. So the first time that a parent might realise that their DC was not doing fine was at 16+ exams.

The better time your DC are having is the intended effect of what started in the 1980s and continued by every administration since. An expectation that schools will be good, and accountability that they are.

[TheNewStatesman]

Exactly, Kesstrel.

I loved writing stories and poems as a child, but a lot of children couldn't care less or just aren't the creative types. But those kids will still need to be able to do practical, formal writing. It's important that kids are taught how to compose proper English for all kinds of purposes, not just stories.

[kesstrel]

"Just stories and poems". I don't think anyone is disparaging stories and poems, or thinking they aren't important. But there are other forms of writing that are important too. There are plenty of adults out there who wouldn't be able to post a coherent argument on a forum like this, because they simply never had enough exposure to any form of writing except stories and poems, and never learned how to construct a coherent sentence, because grammar was believed to be something people just "picked up", and so wasn't taught.

Also, not all children are keen on writing or reading just stories and poems. Boys in particular sometimes prefer non-fiction. Some children aren't neurotypical. And anyone who is interested in academic work, or in getting good GCSEs, or even in writing a letter applying for a job needs to know how to do essay style writing. I had to teach both my daughters how to do that when they reached GCSEs, because the curriculum doesn't cover it. That worked out fine for them, but what about children whose parents don't know enough to teach them themselves, and who can't afford or don't understand the need to hire tutors to teach them?

[kesstrel]

Yes, my 16 year old daughter is now old enough to be embarrassed by the huge gaps in her knowledge of history and the countries of the world and their peoples. She asked me the other day how the Roman Empire turned into the British Empire! (This is after getting an a* in GCSE history).

I can remember being taught about the sweep of world history at the age of 10/11, starting with Mesopotamia and Phoenicians. I still remember what I learned then. It was an excellent basis for more detailed exploration of historical periods.

What worries me is that I believe that memories are more retentive at a younger age - I seem to have forgotten much more of what I learned at a later age. If this is true, then I wonder if my daughter will ever "catch up" with all that knowledge that she missed out on learning at a younger age.

[SummerNights1986]

My ds1 (aged 7) amazes me with his general knowledge. He's a bright kid but not a genius and the things he knows often outstrips dh and me.

We did a pub quiz on holiday a couple of weeks back and he answered the most random stuff correctly - song artists from the 70's, A Prime Minister from yonks ago, the name of the first hospital in the UK (or something like that).

Is it bugger to do with school. His favourite thing to watch on TV has been game shows for nearly the past two years (he grew out of cartoons pretty early). I attribute his general knowledge to The Chase and Pointless, not teachers.

People in general seem to have a horror of TV for kids, but used appropriately, it's one of the best educating tools available IMO.