aibu to think this is bad for my dc's school to put this in their newsletter?

[whatmatenamechange]

it was all lovely until the end bit, not numbers and letters! that's their grades they're talking about!!! and the head wrote that.

aibu?

Yabu. What a bloody lovely way to put it, thats a school i want my kids in. One that encourages kids to do their best and be proud of what they achieve.

I wish others shared your HT's way of thinking OP. There might be far less anxiety filled children and guilt & worry ridden parents.

YABU.

What do you say to your kids? What OTHER MESSAGE IS THERE??

Maybe you are a tiger parent.

What a lovely thing to say!

I can't see what your problem is. If you read that and read your grades don't matter, then with all due respect I think it says more about you than the school.

What i get from that is:

1. People achieve qualifications
2. Success looks different for esch student
3. Working hard, being resilient, doing your best and achiving your potential is more important than thr letters/numbers on your piece of paper.

Only people who would have an issue with such a lovely rounded view of education are people with self-declared academic kids who have been destined for greatness since 2. Probably the types who compare counting and reading ability from 18 months.

Brilliant head - great to hear that someone is standing up for real values in education in the context of stringent testing. Hooray for him/her! I feel very heartened to hear this.

As a mum to the youngest child in year 8, this is awesome!! I want to get this head and kiss them, that is how much I love this!!

My DD has been so pressured to get to their goals but she is a year younger than some in her year. If their head was brave enough to say this I would love it!

You have clearly got high achieving DC OP, for which I congratulate you, but you need to go to the empathy shop and buy some of their goods, so you can maybe understand what others go through!

How lovely

I wish our headteacher did the same. What a lovely thing to say and so true. yabu.

Off topic, but unless I missed it in the OP, why the assumption that the headteacher is male?

I think it's complicated.

There are some kids who due to SEN will always perform at a low level for their chronological age and schools need to be understanding about this.

On the other hand, there are also a lot of kids from deprived backgrounds who almost certainly could be performing better if schools and parents and society were more ambitious on their behalf.

In the real world, we'll be assessed on what we know and can do; there is a danger of schools dropping the ball on academics.

Sometimes it seems like the UK education system consists of... wildly swinging backwards and forwards between two poles. So much time in primary schools is spent on non-academic stuff (as HeadOfTheHive said), and then SATS loom on the horizon and suddenly everyone is frantically cramming to an incredibly narrow curriculum.

The problem with this soft and fluffy bullshit is we end up with whole generations of children who've been told all their lives that everyone's special, not had to take part in competitive sports etc. This leaves them ill equipped to deal with the reality of life.

OP how old are they?
What would like as an alternative?
"We don't care how hard they ""try"", all we care about is the SATS results. If you child can't out perform the child next to them, they need to work harder. ""Kindness"", and ""generosity of spirit"" are things they can learn on their own time. Please don't tell them that anything is more important than their grades!"

Haha OP has ran for the hills 😂

I think it's a lovely message. I don't have any evidence to back it up but I imagine that positive encouragement with focus on the child, as opposed to the pressure of having to get a certain grade, is going to lead to better results both for the child's self esteem AND their school work. There is so much pressure on kids and I just feel like we should let them be little and let them learn, but whilst learning be building their self esteem and other qualities that aren't just about grades.

I don't disagree that grades can be important and of course it does depend what level they are in at school, but this sounds like it is aimed at primary school children and I think I'd be really chuffed if that was my son's school's attitude.