To think the primary school curriculum in the UK is too advance

[Kerry987]

I think the primary school curriculum in the UK is too advance for the majority of children. I think it it is OK for kids who are very academic and self learners, bright, but I think at least half of the kids struggle to keep up with it and need lots of support at school and home.

What do other parents and teachers think?

I had a meeting with the special needs person at my daughter's school a couple of years ago and she told me that I would be surprised to find out how many kids need help and support. This got me to think there is something wrong with the curriculum if so many kids need extra support.

Why are we overloading with so much information? We have been home schooling and there are things that my husband and I didn't see until secondary school

@Unsure33 yes sure. I wasn't looking at it from a homeschooling perspective at all, more from a curriculum and expectations point of view. I'm a former English teacher and current primary school governor at an inner city primary. In all honesty I think that the biggest issues in terms of schooling in this country (well actually in my area, I can't speak for the whole of the UK!) are a desperate lack of funding, and a widespread disrespect for education. If teachers weren't under pressure to be social workers, counsellors, accountants, family support workers, IT support etc etc - then things would be very different. But the constant cuts to funding for other support services, and the attitude many parents have that teachers are there to teach children how to do everything mean that schools are so squeezed to fit things in. I don't think the curriculum is too advanced, I just think there are too many other pressures on schools and families. I also think there is a slightly snobby superior view that education should be about how and not what (ie creativity, analytical skills versus facts), and that the British system excels at this so its all fine. And I think it needs to be more balanced. In my current work (language & cultural work) I see a lot of very well educated British adults (mostly those in their early 40s or younger) do badly because they don't have good skills in learning & memorising. They need everything to be constantly engaging and often lack discipline. In a purely British context it doesn't matter - everyone is in the same boat. But it makes it difficult to compete in a more global setting.

@LickEmbysmiling

what is education, why does an 8 year old need to learn about prepositions and frontal adverbials?

Describing words, enriching language - yes.

So they can construct interesting and varied sentences when writing

I was at a very traditional school for a brief time in the 80s. I don’t remember learning about fronted adverbials.

We did learn about transitive/non transitive verbs though. Whatever the fuck they are!

The fronted adverbial is apparently something snatched out of the air by Michael Gove's advisors when they needed something that sounded academic or serious- it's certainly not something linguists or writers think about.

As someone who marks undergraduate essays and has done so for nearly 30 years, I find the current government-imposed teaching of grammar as a tickbox exercise absolutely disastrous in terms of developing style or even teaching students to make sense. I have never seen so many malapropisms before- and I know perfectly well it derives from the idea that you have to use unusual words in a sentence even if they don't fit the shade of meaning required.

Yes, I think grammar should be taught. But it should be taught as an exercise in thinking about languages and making pupils aware that they can then go off and learn other languages. Not as something you need to tick off on a chart to get a certain grade.That is the Gradgrind approach: it was wrong in Dickens' day and it is wrong now.

Lol at the first response. When I was in school in the Netherlands (in the 90s) we didn't start learning English until P5. We had about 1-2 hrs of English lessons a week in primary school, and 2-3 hours a week in secondary school. That's still the standard curriculum today - though some primary schools do start earlier or have more frequent lessons. English in most secondaries is still no more than 2-3hrs a week. Not sure where the impression comes from that children in the Netherlands all have a gazillion hours of English classes from P1 upward.

@screamingchild

I think we are in a strange way agreeing .

Yes English and writing and language of course is important . All I was saying is at 6 do they need to know the technical terms .

Expand language , learn grammar , encourage description and detail . But do they need to know what those terms are ? It should be more fun at age 6 . IMO .

And I think some parents homeschooling will not know what conjunctions and suffixes are ? So they may give up .

By the way I found a mistake in the lesson today and it made the lesson more difficult.

I guess it could go one way or another, it could put me off volunteering in a primary school to help , or it could brush up my skills 🙂

I agree. I guess the curriculum is actually too difficult for the kids and they have to read broadly as well in order to succeed. But some kids do have outstanding results even without any help or support. So I guess it varies. But pushing all the kids to be on the same level? I think that it is not a good idea. Some are just not meant to be academias...

I am not sure if a single DC could remember things like what is a 'frontal adverbial'. My gut feeling was with OP in that DC have learned a lot of advanced things compared to what I was taught at school. Since they have coped & enjoyed the learning, maybe not to advanced, though.

Rather than recurring frontal "adverbial" type learning, I would love more MF language lessons.

I disagree, my 4 year old sails through pretty much all her work, especially maths and reading.f
I think per a PP it’s a happy medium

I don't think it's too hard, but some of it is pointless.
I too would rather they spent less time on English grammar and more on MFL.

I went to primary school early 90s and I have fond memories. I loved learning about topics/history etc. I don't remember doing the work they do today especially English until I went to high school.
Pre covid I didn't give much thought to what my kids were actually being taught day to day. But since having to homeschool for basically a whole school year I have been shocked at the expectations placed upon them and the level of complexity.
I have a much greater respect for my children knowing what they are having to learn every day, I'm amazed at them. But I'm also amazed at how irrelevant most of it seems to be. And I'm not going to nag at them or force them to do extra work at home. I am also very anti homework.

As a non-English teacher I agree. From what I've seen of the curriculum I wouldn't want to teach it myself and wouldn't in a million years have my own child in that school system.

I have a PhD in English Lit and I’ve never heard of a fronted adverbial until this year.

I have a six year old and we moved back to Ireland when he was a baby, partly because we felt the education system here is more relaxed, child focused and better for everyone. The focus on SATs and such early testing in the UK didn’t sit right with me.