School work being ripped out of books?

[M0nstersinthecl0set]

AIBU to think this is weird and possibly unethical. How can a child improve by not reviewing/ correcting their work? How can a marking policy be solely based on handwriting and presentation (all subjects).

This school is faking schoolwork surely by removing the honest account of what goes on in lessons?

I also think it is a discipline method purposefully intended to humiliate rather than improve standards. But I'm leaving that out as I want to know any facts over feelings on this.

They're not looking for work to be ripped out of books though.

They'll be looking for the school to be developing children's handwriting into a fluent and legible style that makes writing easier and faster, that teachers are sticking to that and evidence of this in books. Alongside extra support e.g equipment or motor skills interventions for children that are struggling.

You might think it's silly but a ridiculous number of students drop under a grade boundary at GCSE every year because answers can't be read so marks can't be given.

I had this happen to me when I was 6. I still remember it now.

I'd done little tails on my 'a's when we weren't supposed to be doing that yet, and the teacher just ripped out the whole page.

I hated that teacher for that, I was as angry as a 6 year old can be, I can honestly say that it was the first brick in the wall of not not respecting the school, and which further down, with other incidents, led me to becoming a school refuser.

you might think it's silly but a ridiculous number of students drop under a grade boundary at GCSE every year because answers can't be read so marks can't be given.

Ds is never going to pass anything because no one can read his answers.

This sounds very much like style over substance on the schools part.

I would be totally against this. As pp's have said, how can development be monitored, if there is no evidence to compare.
And how will the child feel when it sees that work they have painstakingly created is destroyed. How does that teacher know just how that child is feeling the day they produce work 'not up to the mark'? They may be ill/distressed/etc.

Complain - and loudly.

I suspect it's a shame that you didn't query it in the meeting because they'll now be able to fob you off that 'everybody else agrees it's a brilliant idea' whenever you say something to them about it. But I know it's not always easy to do!

I would definitely be talking to the teacher and the head - maybe raising the queries in writing or following up the meetings so there's something in writing raising your concerns and querying their methods. I'd also be double checking exactly how they are planning on going about doing this - raising the NSPCC example as we've seen on this thread that there are ways of doing this nicely and not. And finding out what they are doing about books falling apart, keeping old work to compare against, lack of evidence for OFSTED and so on. And most importantly are they doing against a set standard of what is good enough or on an individual child basis?

ds1 (11) has beautiful handwriting and always has - DS2(8) on the other hand has completely illegible handwriting (to me, his teacher managed to read it last year) that looks like a spider has crawled across the page. I blame his infant school - they jumped straight into teaching them to do joined up cursive writing without printing first in his year (unlike his brother's year!) and he has really struggled. He's not dyspraxic but is somewhat hypermobile so really struggles with pen control.

Luckily his last couple of teachers have been really lovely and have both said that he's a bright boy and that they'd much rather have a messy but interesting homework than a neat one that shows no thought or care. His teacher last year used to get him to do handwriting practice when the rest of the class were doing sums or spellings or whatever at the start of the day because he knew he could do them with no problems, so hoping that his teacher this year will do something similar with him.

He loves working hard and gets really upset when others in the class misbehave - so if he had a misery guts teacher who relished ripping pages out for bad presentation, he would have a horrid year.

Interestingly I know a ta at the junior school that lots of the infant school kids went to - she says that since the infant school changed its handwriting policy (to be fair to them, think it is a government initiative rather than one of their own) about 2/3 of the joiners have beautiful handwriting, the policy worked for them and that's grand. However, the other third really really struggle and have really bad writing - a much higher proportion than previously... So for those that are good at handwriting, the policy seems to have improved their handwriting further so you can see why somebody thought it would be good to roll out the scheme further... But for those that struggled before - now they're really struggling. And for such a basic but important skill, and for such a significant number within the cohort, it really is appalling that so many are being failed by the rigidity of having to stick to guidelines that are not working for them.

I am still slightly confused about this so let me ask.

Are you saying that all kids do their work in an exercise book and then those who do badly have to9 rip it out of the book and do it again in the book?

I would hate this as it would make the books look like a complete mess also there is no way of comparing the old and new work.

To me this whole system sounds stupid.

Joined handwriting from the start isn't a government policy. There seem to be a number of schools telling parents that it is though.

IIRC the requirements at the end of ks1 are that children are beginning to join some letters and even then they can get the expected standard without that.

As a school governor, we expect to be able to go into school, look at the children's books, and be able to identify improvement in a child's use of vocabulary, grammar, punctuation and other evidence. Without seeing the original work, how can a school identify the improvement?

Eesh. I have known several people who had dysgraphia who would have been utterly destroyed by a policy like this. Surely it's not used even against children with SN, right?!

Ooh interesting that joined up handwriting isn't actually a government requirement as it was very much sold to us as though it was.

They even used a cursive font to label all the dc's books, trays, pegs, work on the walls and so on. It was one of the most illegible fonts I have ever had the misfortune to attempt to read. And I'm saying that as a professional who gets to evaluate readability and legibility of designs as part of her work (amongst other things) so I'm saying that with my professional hat on rather than just as an interested bystander.

Thank goodness ds2's new school is giving him extra catch up lessons and they're starting over again, this time learning to print first. At the moment he has taken the lesson about not taking his pen off the page for each word to heart - but as he knows that there are joining flicks on the start and end of each letter, rather than them being an integrated part of the letter formation, he will write the letter and then go back around the loop to put the flicks etc on - which means he'll go around some letter bodies two or three times. eek. fingers crossed that this time works out better!

I've just looked it up. The relevant year 1 statutory requirement is that children should begin to form letters in the correct direction, starting and finishing in the correct place. There's no mention of joining in the notes and guidance either.

For Yr2 - 'start using some of the horizontal and diagonal strokes needed to join letters and understand which letters, when adjacent to one another are best left unjoined'. The non-statutory guidance for year 2 says that children should be taught to write with a joined style as soon as they can form letters securely with the correct orientation.

I can't think of anything less likely to put 4-5 year old children off writing than expecting them to write in a script that they don't yet have the co-ordination to master.

Ds and dd could not read in year 1 so writing anything would have been a long shot. What do they do with those children who are behind.