To expect school teachers to actually educate my child?

[ICancelledTheCheque]

Maybe I'm being a bit PFB but this has really irked me.

DD is Y7 in a big academy secondary school. She showed me some work she had done - in three paragraphs there were six spelling errors and five grammatical errors. The teacher didn't mark up a single thing and just put big green ticks and irritating smiley faces on her work and wrote "excellent work" at the end.

But it wasn't excellent work. How is she going to learn if they don't flag this stuff up? Is this the norm these days? Doesn't bode well for GCSEs if so!!

Indeed, shefeeds completely agree

They teach times tables in Scottish schools and I thought the targets for learning them were more stringent in England? My DC1 was taking ages to pick up times tables and I knew they were going over them at school, it just wasn't sinking. I made her go over them for 10 minutes every night and every time we were in the car or walking somewhere we go over a few lines. After 4 months she mastered them. DD2 is picking them up a lot quicker and will probably manage with just what she gets in class.

At work spelling and grammar does matter. And spellcheckers are not infallible.

I'd be livid.

Why can't teachers state that the context or creative writing (or whatever the exercise was) is good however there are mistakes evident and just circle them. I absolutely hate seeing multiple instances of incorrect spelling and grammar on job applications, letters or emails when at work and I can't help but judge them negatively. I would think that if the parent has to pick these up and the teacher has marked work as "excellent" then the child is going to question why their parent is contradicting their teacher, wouldn't they?

herethereandeverywhere: I would LOVE that! And when a parent complains about the choice of book and we have to change it, will the government write those lesson plans too? When the class doesn't get a concept straight away, will the government re-write the lesson plan for me? When OFSTED decide they want less peer assessment or a four part lesson structure or more/less kinaesthetic learning or more teacher instruction, will we employ a team to rewrite everything? Will they produce content that can be adapted so I can differentiate for four ability groups and the eight children with SEND in my Y9 class?

Lack of resources isn't the issue. Lesson 'tweaking' takes time.

Livid, Wooly? Why?

Have you read some of the reasoning here?

I will be checking dds work from now on to see if this is the case with her school! They do have a big thing about spelling and get tested in every subject for spelling of subject specific words.

I remember teachers just used to write "sp?" above our spelling mistakes. It might encourage children to look up spellings in a dictionary. I still struggle to spell some words, as I think most of us do, but I can always check my spellings on Google or in a dictionary if I need to. I often do this.

I am a teacher and we mark according to objective where I work. If the point of the exercise was to develop creative writing skills, we would maybe flag up spelling mistakes verbally but not take off marks for them as that was not the objective. Otherwise you can end up with an excellent well written story getting a C instead of an A because of spelling mistakes. I would say to the child "keep and eye on your spelling" in this circumstance however. I might even write it as a note. But this case sounds to me like the teacher has been encouraging about the quality of the work submitted in the context of the aim of the exercise and has overlooked spelling mistakes so as to motivate the child. I would just keep an eye on future marking and you might notice differences dependent on the original task.

We still do write "sp" and "gr" itsall - just not on every single piece of work.

By the way.....before we go all "UK teachers softly softly kid gloves approach" I work in Spain, in a Spanish school.

i'd be livid

Livid!

It is interesting to see the shift happening in primary in response to the Y6 'interim' writing assessment framework, and I wonder whether the same will seep into secondary with time.

Essentially, the assessment in writing at the end of primary has shifted from being weighted towards 'composition and effect' (ie Is this interesting / exciting / atmospheric? Is it appropriate to the genre?) towards rewarding 'technical features and accuracy' (punctuation, spelling and grammar).

As a result, in primary our marking guidelines and what we are looking for is shifting too. Rather than setting and marking against objectives based on 'features of the genre' or 'effect on the reader', we are setting and marking against objectives related to technical aspects of writing, including spelling.

As with all things in education, the balance may well swing too far one way before it reaches a reasonably happy medium, but certainly if you looked in our books at daily marking, you would notice a change in emphasis and much more response to incorrect spellings or grammatical errors.

And this is exactly why young adults' spelling and grammar is so bad then. I notice it all the time. I'm not perfect by any means but I see and read so many things with poor spelling and grammar. It's annoying and not correcting these things does the child no favours. How will they learn. The amount of people I hear who say writ instead of wrote or written is ridiculous. When did writ become normal!

There is certainly an increasing element of that in the secondary language curriculum, not so much (at the moment) in literature, where the AOs are largely focused on responding to and analysing the "writer's craft".

Wooly do you spend a lot of time being livid?

Harry low levels of written literacy are by no means a new thing.

I don't understand this at all. Surely spelling and grammar mistakes should be circled in red pen wherever seen by the teacher? You can still comment on the great content if that's the case.

What's the point in raising a generation of snowflakes who think they are wonderful but didn't ever master the basics at school? When they turn up in the workplace they will probably be judged for poor spelling/grammar, so treating them as snowflakes at school isn't helpful to them in the long term.

As a primary teacher, I am frequently astounded by secondary marking, though. If I teach 5 subjects in a day, I am expected to mark all 5 for the next time i teach them - so English + maths all overnight, other subjects i may have between overnight and the following week: an average of 96 books per day, overall. Anything other than the most trivial of work requires a formative comment.

I do appreciate that secondary marking will also include lengthy GCSE / A-level essays that come in large batches, but I do sometimes sigh when I see Y7-10 books just 'flicked and ticked' every 4-5 weeks.

if the parent has to pick these up and the teacher has marked work as "excellent" then the child is going to question why their parent is contradicting their teacher, wouldn't they?

No, because as various pp have explained, the work can be excellent even if it does have six spelling errors, so the parent isn't contradicting the teacher, merely pointing out something different.

Plenty of people in their 40s and older (my age, before I get accused of being ageist as always happens on MN if you mention any age demographic except the young) make exactly those mistakes though Harry - they are largely regional / colloquial anyway.

Plenty of "young people" use "incorrect" grammar as part of adjusting to their audience despite being capable of writing in accurate standard English where circumstances demand.

What really, really annoys me is my peers (British men and women in their 40s who are perfectly capable of using correct grammar) who have for some inexplicable reason adopted American and text speak spelling and grammar recently - you are not excited for your sister's wedding ffs, you are excited about your sister's wedding - possibly you are excited for your sister, if you feel excited on her behalf, but you can't feel something on behalf of an event

I wonder whether "excited for" would be corrected as a technical error...

cantkeep DH teaches 5 different classes most days, I think 22 groups a week. He has to mark books once a fortnight plus any assessments on top - comment, target - not tick and flick. The quantity of work is huge, especially as they get older.

I don't think that primary or secondary have much more or less workload tbh having lived with both. Both teachers were at work until 5/6 then home for dinner and work from 7-10 Monday to Thursday plus the odd Sunday thrown in.

can't I think both primary and secondary teachers face challenges re marking.

SeahorsesSwim: You wouldn't believe the number of parents who complain about 'negativity' when I do this, you really wouldn't. If a piece of work is - for want of a better word - shit, as many parents will phone up to complain about me 'knocking their child's confidence' as might phone to complain about it not being picked up on!