To question the way English is taught/learnt in primary schools?

[Blowfishmalibu]

I've been homeschooling my DC - years 3 and 4 - and going through the worksheets sent by school. So far, the maths/topic work is generally engaging, fun and seems to be conveyed in the most interesting way possible (considering homeschool limitations).

On the other hand the English/SPAG is really dull and formulaic, and often seems to make little sense to the children! Often long grammatical concepts, lots of re-writing texts. I think it's a shame that things that could be picked up naturally through a love of reading/writing are drilled in this narrow way.

I'm not blaming the teachers for this in any way - I'm aware it's the national curriculum that must be followed, but AIBU to think that this curriculum could be (much) more creative and stimulating?

So many points I want to respond to...

There is no real consistency or follow on between primary and secondary - they completely overhauled the primary curriculum and then got bored and left the rest as it was. - @Pinkblueberry - also agree that grammar etc could be left until later! Really frustrating...

@Devlesko I am actually considering Home ed - or at least doing more creative stuff during the homeschooling that will be necessary in the coming months... do you home ed?

@ohlookthisisjustdaftnow same with one of my DC!
I hate to see a child who loved writing now complain about it/fly into a huff when asked to write yet another boring paragraph with all the right grammatical tick boxes

That's such a shame about the boring tick-box paragraphs.

@Saoirse7 Excellent points. That's the trouble with a one-size-fits-all system, there's always someone it doesn't work for. For all I know, phonics might have a better success rate than the Peter and Jane books my contemporaries struggled with (at least, those whose mums hadn't thought to buy fridge magnets struggled). I suspect it's individual attention rather than this or that system which gets results, but schools can't achieve that directly - hence the pressure on parents.

For all I know, phonics might have a better success rate than the Peter and Jane books my contemporaries struggled with (at least, those whose mums hadn't thought to buy fridge magnets struggled).

That's a little bit harsh.

My mother worked incredibly hard to teach us to read. Fridge magnets, you name it. My older brother was reading at three. She couldn't understand why I didn't seem to get it, and my little brother struggled even more. I was 7 and he was 8 before we could read anything; he was 10 before he could manage more than a three-word sentence.

We're dyslexic, and we were taught with 'look and say'. My mum turned herself into literacy research central and figured out that, even in the 1980s, people were suggesting dyslexics need phonics, and she tried to teach us with those. And eventually she got there (and it didn't help that school consistently told her we were just thick).

Phonics is not a cure-all, but for some people, and sensibly taught, it can be genuinely useful.

It's pointless and never used at secondary.

Far older than the 'look and say' method you (and I) probably had. And it works pretty well when it's not taken as the be-all and end-all. Luckily I was already reading fluently before I ever knew that "reading books" (and the attendant performance anxiety) were a thing. It was interesting watching others learn to read from a standing start, when I had no clear memory of not being able to read but knew that my experience had been very different from what went on in a classroom. Ideally children should be able to pick from a smorgasbord of different teaching methods as well as having one-on-one teaching, although that's obviously a pipe dream unless you homeschool pretty obsessively.

My brother's like that, yes.

I agree with you, in general small children learn most things best with loads of intensive one-on-one.

But even intensive one-on-one may well not manage for a child who truly struggles, and who is being taught with a method that is unsuited to them, or just pedagogically pretty shit.

It's not fair to have a pop at mothers who don't buy fridge magnets. Plenty of parents do the best they can. And plenty of parents (like my mum) could buy all the fridge magnets in the world, and still their children will struggle.

@SarahAndQuack Sorry if I was harsh. I was being flippant about the magnets - it was a bloody long time ago and that was the one aspect of learning at home that I remember. I always got the impression that the other infant school mums weren't into early learning like mine was, but of course I couldn't know for sure that was the case. I certainly remember when late readers were considered thick! I was just deemed extremely lazy, insolent etc, because I was/am utterly innumerate. Why teachers (and my dad) all thought this was a deliberate act of defiance, I have no clue!

With the DCs I was a bit like your mum, only less dogged. DS knew all his letters and could sound out syllables before he was two, and at first I thought he would be reading fluently in no time and that we were both geniuses. Unfortunately he seemed to lose interest in the Letterland books and reading in general, and didn't make any more progress until he was four, when one day he picked up a (highly unsuitable) book and began reading from it perfectly. Both DDs taught themselves to read aged 9 and 10 respectively, long after I had given up on teaching them. They still suck at spelling, whereas DS is one of those people who remembers everything effortlessly. All three are largely "unschooled" and follow their own interests.

@SarahAndQuack Come to think of it, not all of my sibling group did well with my mum's method. Maybe after me she stopped bothering. DB1 learned to read at school with the rest of his age cohort, and only became very high achieving at GCSE. Oddly enough considering his lack of precocity, he's a brilliant writer, though that's not what he does for a living. DB2 wasn't reading well until secondary school, has always seen anything academic as a painful chore, and failed all his exams. Now he's super-successful whereas us two "clever" ones are slackers and underachievers. Oops, I'm rambling, must be dinner time :)

I started school in 1974. We learned to read using phonics (although it wasn't called that then). We learned grammar, but I remember most of our English work was creative writing in both primary and secondary school. My children in year 6 and 8 haven't done that much creative writing at school. I found grammar quite dull to learn but it was necessary and doing creative writing helped you to put it into practice. - Off topic but I'm quite shocked by the number of teacher and head teacher posts which have been shared on social media this week where they have misused "less" rather than "fewer".

It's fine! Probably my fault - hard to read 'tone' on the internet.

It's strange what sticks in memory and what doesn't. I remember so much of being taught to read because I was desperate to learn. I loved stories and, because my big brother could read, I understood very well that if I could read, I could have them whenever I wanted.

It feels very strange to me, now, seeing how different my DD is. She has no speck of dyslexia and so she's doing all the things my mum was expecting me to do, that I didn't! I had been carefully trying to give her all the opportunities and all the support, and fully expected it'd take years.

At some point DP had to point out, gently, that I really needed to stop presuming it was a fluke she could recognise this word or that work, and accept she is actually learning to read without much perceptible struggle!

(And you weren't rambling - or, if you were, it's interesting rambling!)

The National Curriculum doesn't have to be followrd by all schools, so it isn't right to say that's what this is or that it 'hasn' t moved on'. It has.

It's really likely that English isn't actually taught this way at all when the teacher can actually interact and communicate with the children. It's possible the school isn't as good as others.

But there's some irony in your opening statement about 'homeschooling' your children as you go through what the school sends. The school are still providing a version of the teaching and the learning is being done at home.

I bought the Peter and Jane books for DS when he was 3 and struggling with his speech development. The simple sentences repeated in different ways were quite useful for modelling simple grammatical sentences to a child struggling to combine words.

It turns out that he is dyslexic, dyspraxic and autistic, a very difficult combination for a post-Gove curriculum.

The writing by ticklist approach is horrendous for a child who has to conciously remember which way round the first letter of his name goes. By the time he's concentrated on remembering to start with a capital letter, any combination of points of grammar let alone content are rapidly fading and on top of a low writing speed (and hand pain) he just can't process so many different strands. Plus the autism can lead to him struggling with other character's perspectives.

He is a book lover really, generally non-fiction, but he loves being read to if you find the right story (currently on Artemis Fowl)

My experience of grammar through an 80s/90s education was quite functional. Creative writing was fairly open, and my impression these days is that there is little space for personal expression in school writing. (I volunteer in school) The finer points of grammar were developed more through MFL (although I always did struggle to grasp the subjunctive). The MFL arguement for a strong grammatical approach is somewhat undermined by the majority of pupils only experiencing MFL at 11-14. I'd rather see a stronger presence at KS2.

I left teaching during the post-Gove changes in 2016. The GCSE syllabus was changing but the whole process of spec development and release was a shambles. The narrowing of the curriculum meant that I suddenly had large GCSE classes filled with uninterested pupils, rather than it being a genuine choice, and utterly unrealistic targets for pupils to meet. A few years earlier and they would have been happily engaged on vocational courses more relevant to their strengths and interests.
It was time to put my own struggling child first, and I have no regrets.

@WillAshton yes I take your point but actually that’s why I used the word homeschooling - we are undoubtedly at home, and doing school work (set by school).

If I was doing my own thing I would probably call it home education, as is standard UK terminology I think for parent (and/or child) directed learning.

Blame the Tory voters. Bloody Gove

OP, you are not being unreasonable. English was always my favourite subject at school, and DH and I have both talked about how we used to write stories, including in our GCSE English exam. We were given a scenario and then just had to write, but reading was approached differently then too. I have no memory of having formal grammar lessons until I did A-Level English Language.

I work in a school and I find the English lessons tedious. There's no imagination, no creativity. It's writing to tick a box, and so you end up with 32 versions of the same thing. Whatever type of text they're doing, the children start with a plan, which has all of the same key points put in. I really hate it, and granted that's one experience but I know of other schools that do it completely differently. It also doesn't help when the reading material the children are exposed to is awful. Our book band books are terrible and I don't enjoy listening to them, and some children end up on this same series of books for 2 or 3 years so they lose any sort of engagement with reading.

Ultimately though, I do blame the government. Gove had no business messing with the curriculum (and education as a whole) in the way that he did.

@Charlottejbt, thinking through what you have suggested I really think there might be something in that. In degree-level Literature, criticality and analytical capability is key, as is the ability to assimilate materials and craft an independent response using a variety of assessment tasks. I don’t think, and this is only a personal view here, that the current A’ level curriculum is adequate preparation for that.

I’m not knocking A’ level teachers (I was one once). But they as well as the students are hampered by the sort of curriculum they are expected to teach. It’s a generalization, but a description of A’ Level study I commonly hear recounted by new first years goes something like this: Take a poem. The poem you are reading doesn’t really mean what the words on the page suggest it means. There is, apparently, one secret, underlying meaning (ignoring the fact that all written text is ambiguous by default). That underlying meaning is driven by the intention of the author. Nothing else. Once you’ve hammered out what that intention was, bingo! You’ve hit on the secret of literary interpretation.

This is anecdotal, but IME this scenario is too commonly borne out – including in first-year written work – for it not to have some grounding in the way this stuff is taught. I don’t like to hear my own opinions/readings parroted back at me, especially when it comes to political contexts. That surprises new students, who often start off by telling me what they think I want to hear. But I encourage them to argue against me, or at least to find other alternatives to what I suggest. Some are intimidated at first but by year 3 they tend to thrive on it, and like having their independent views encouraged and respected by their lecturers.

Returning the syllabus to examination only, as is the Tories’ wont, will do nothing to elevate standards or address these particular problems. But this is the result when the education system becomes a political football and is driven by ideology, rather than led by those who might have a clue what they’re talking about. Witness the way we’re now driven by metrics, because they can’t interfere with the syllabus – set and validated by PhD qualified researchers - the way they have in schools. Seems they were determined to find some way to mess it up, and as far as I can see they’re succeeding admirably. It’s very depressing.

@SettyBuarez 32 versions of the same thing! Yes!

@MarieIVanArkleStinks so interesting to read your perspective

The problem is, though, students who have been genuinely well taught (by teachers who had the opportunity to do that and get their students through exams, which is something a lot of excellent teachers aren't given the chance to do), still have advantages.

It is true that someone who can think for themselves, and who hasn't been drilled in a particular type of wrong answer, will do better at university. But that doesn't mean the absence of teaching is actively helpful.

Often, it just produces a student who feels nervous and ill-equipped. Often, university teachers marking essays will judge them quite harshly and won't even recognise that they were really trying to think through a problem.