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

@LickEmbysmiling

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

Describing words, enriching language - yes.

Ha. We were talking about prepositions last night

Friends 6 yr old had to write a story using them

I’ve asked 16 adults and only 1 knew what a preposition was

I don't find it too advanced, but I find it very rushed.

Flitting from subject to subject. Nothing getting covered in any depth. I'd rather fewer subjects per day but a real opportunity to get to grips with something interesting.

@Fimofriend - that’s just not factually accurate. There is lots of evidence to suggest that primary homework serves little academic purpose and that starting formal education so early in terms of reading and writing is counter productive. The English curriculum in primary has become obsessed with grammar and is very restrictive and none if this feeds through to improved writing at secondary as they don’t really understand it fully and can only apply it in exam situations. If I had a reception child now I wouldn’t bother with homeschooling beyond reading.

@donewithitalltodayandxmas

Languages we are possibly behind not other things , but then we speak a language that is spoken by a lot of the world Germany / netherlands learn english as it is so widely used around the world , not too many places that speak german/ dutch.

Language learning is awful in this country - partly due to not having anywhere near enough qualified teachers and partly because not enough time is given to it. On the other hand, I know eg 2 women one from Greece and one from Rumania who arrived in England at 18 to do a degree and managed very well.

It is just not good enough to have 2 lessons a week ( even in Secondary) and expect any meaningful level to be reached.

Many primary schools give teachers who passed their GCSE decades ago a week's course and expect that will be adequate training! When my children were learning French at Secondary they barely did any oral work and the work sheets they bought home often had mistakes in them. Both symptomatic of teachers who have poor oral skills themselves ( often because they have never spent any meaningful length of time in France) and teachers who have only reached a low level of French (grade E at A level eg in the case of my children's teacher). Many parents would be horrified if they knew just how underqualified were some of the teachers. I know of few schools who are prepared to publicise their teachers' exact qualifications.

My children both got top marks at GCSE in French and I flatter them when I say they probably knew a tenth of what I knew when I took O level.

The problem is not just that you can't speak to foreigners ( important though that is in the world of business etc.) it's that learning a language gives you a different outlook on the world and enables you to view your own country and culture from another perspective.

I'm an EYFS/KS1 teacher and I've noticed over the past 15 years a steady decline in what children are able to do when starting reception, in all areas. I remember particular children who didn't actually know what to do with a crayon. They had very limited speech, didn't have any books at home and had never seen a jigsaw puzzle. Expecting children like that to be able to read and write in sentences by the July was completely unreasonable. I believe that some things in the EY and KS1 curricula appear too early. Some children (an increasing number) just are not developmentally ready for it. One example is money. Fewer children have pocket money to spend at the sweet shop (I probably sound very old!) so money has little relevance to them. They don't put coins in their piggy banks or hand it over to the shopkeeper, etc. We teach children to count using one to one correspondence at first. Moving counters and counting each one, etc. Then it comes to money and suddenly that one 'counter' (coin) is now 2 or 5. Yes, many children get it, but so many just don't. Give it a year and they'll be ready but not yet. That's just one tiny example of course but it shows that some concepts just aren't appropriate for very small children to comprehend. I don't know that there is an advantage to trying to drum concepts into children at younger and younger ages. Fractions are always an arse. I think more focus on the absolute basics early on would provide a better foundation for learning the trickier concepts slightly later rather than having five and six year olds feeling they can't do school and all the joy of learning, making links and discovering things being sucked out of them by such a formal curriculum at such a young age.
I had two boys in my class one year. One was born 31st August and the other on the 3rd September. One was still a month off five when he finished reception whereas the other had been five for the whole first year of school, yet they were expected to achieve the same. Sorry for going off on a tangent. I just feel they try to introduce too much too soon and that early misconceptions can then lead to complete stumbling blocks further up the school.

I think we are way behind in the UK.
I have friends from Eastern countries, they are much further ahead from a younger age. Their way of learning is different. A lot of learning by rote which isnt always the best way however that is changing too.

But they are generally more advanced than children here. The expectations and standards are too low here.

@Musmerian
none if this feeds through to improved writing at secondary as they don’t really understand it fully and can only apply it in exam situations.

In my experience, the kids understand it well enough in Year 6 and can apply it in their writing (as they have to in order to reach or exceed the age-related expectations). The drop in secondary comes largely from the changing expectations and lack of a grammar curriculum there. I've had secondary English department heads and various members of SLT come and observe my English lessons and they were shocked by the quality of what the children produce, stating that they don't see the same standard of writing until Year 9.

There's no need to know what on earth a noun, adverb, adverbial is to create a grammatically sound sentence.

There's also no need to frontload Early Years (R-Y2) with place values, times tables and what nots. I came from another country and we didn't start formal education till 7. I started to school being able to read (non-picture books), write and do mental arithmetic... simply by attending kindergarten at age 5 and 6. Kindergarten is a bit like preschool, lots of reading, song and dance and circle times about alphabets and counting, but there is ZERO homework, you may do some handwriting practice in class that's it. Once you have the mental maturity, you will be able to grasp all concepts like fractions and decimals, memorise the times tables and thus long division, algebra etc manipulate larger 4, 5 digit numbers easily. So I'd say compared to UK, once we start, we go very fast and deep into every area.

Funny enough, I also ended school at a more advanced level than DH who is English. It was obvious in university, we did the same course and many things were first concepts to him whereas I'd covered several first year uni courses (e.g. advanced statistics/calculus) 2 years ago... for example, we did differentiation/integration of sine x etc, and permutations etc in probability at the age of 15 whereas he did it at A level only to a pretty basic level. This might all have changed now.

@Bitbusyattheminute

I wish they'd stop trying to teach kids to label parts of sentences and to write in formulas. I teach language A level and it's not as simple as 'x is a z'. Because once you start on grammar, you need to explain it fully, otherwise you have to start explaining why something 's a verb there but the same word is an adjective there. Kids come to high school able to label, sort of, but not able to write imaginatively or to take a risk. Some have never even written a poem or played around with words. I want kids to be able to write in coherent, well punctuated sentences. Not overly arsed about handwriting, as long as it's legible.

But I have been trying to learn German starting at 35, one of the things that really held me back was not know how the sentence is structured in English, due to being taught by "modern" methods when I was at school.

Personally I think teaching kids the grammatic structure of a sentence is better, and not wanting to structure the sentence formally shows low expectations of the children. (I am not a teacher, just a foreign language learner)

Woollypulley Tue 19-Jan-21 15:27:22
There's no need to know what on earth a noun, adverb, adverbial is to create a grammatically sound sentence.
..
That was taught routinely at school in my day. It was basic grammar .

@LizFlowers

Woollypulley Tue 19-Jan-21 15:27:22 There's no need to know what on earth a noun, adverb, adverbial is to create a grammatically sound sentence. .. That was taught routinely at school in my day. It was basic grammar .

I think it depends on when your day was, certainly in the 80s/90s in more "progressive" schools basic rules were forgot, due to "modern" teaching methods.

@Mumski45

Each person will look at this from their own perspective. Personally I think my DC were not stretched enough most of the way through primary school but I could see that others struggled.

Some teachers are better at differentiating than others and it depends on the resources available.

I would have hated the expectations to have been even lower but how do we then cater for a wide range of ability in each class.
I'm not a teacher so may be coming at this from a naive perspective but I think there is an argument to say that children should be taught in ability levels and not age groups. No idea how this could be managed but would be interested to hear a teachers view.

I understand that children may be on different tables to learn at their level in a given subject but in the same class?

This is better than teaching children in different classes according to their 'ability' (streaming) so A, B C classes) because they can more easily catch up and be exposed to a higher level of learning in different subjects as children often spend up their learning at different times.

Many years ago streaming was the norm from year 3 and it wasn't until a Birmingham Head Teacher happened to examine the birth dates of the children he was allocating to the different streams, that it was realised that all that was happening largely, was putting them in age order. For example a September born child would have had 3 full years in Infant school whereas an August born child would only have had 2 years.

Class sizes are a problem. You’re never going to get an education catered to your level if the teacher has 30 children to teach.

The British education system isn’t about teaching you anything useful that you can use in your adult life. The only thing you’re taught in British schools is how to pass exams.

I hated school because I learned to read before I started school and the first 3 years of school were learning the alphabet and finger painting. School was boring.

Perhaps it's best to introduce a child to a concept at an earlier age and then expand the knowledge in later years.

Absolutely. I had to learn English irregular verbs at 10 (a bit like a parrot because we didn't really get them at that age). Verbs like I forgive - I forgave - I have forgiven. As opposed to I play - I played - I have played. There were about 80 of them. In secondary school we would cover them again each year and I slowly learnt to add them to my writing.
My brother's class learnt them at 15 after a curriculum change. Needless to say, the 15 year olds had absolutely no idea what it was and didn't know how to conjugate them correctly. Nor do they have an interest in it.

I think like a PP said, the curriculum is too much for some children and too little for others. That happens everywhere.

I used to spend a few weeks each year in a UK secondary school. This was a private boarding school with a fairly decent reputation locally. Their maths were 2 years behind ours. Science was more advanced in terms of experiments in chemistry and actual case studies in physics, we knew lots of theory but didn't know how to apply it. Languages weren't great. Art was amazing.

Language provision in the UK is dreadful. It's sad some people think there is no point in learning a foreign language because most of the world speaks English. Learning another language has so many benefits from children.

Where I come from in Spain we have two co-official languages (like Wales for example). From age 6, you do 4h a week of each, and 3h a week of English. Most schools split the other subjects 50/50 between the co-official languages. When you start secondary at 12, most schools will also add French or German. University entrance exams that you take at 18 include the 2 co-official languages and one free choice foreign language. They're all compulsory, otherwise you don't have access to uni. Simple as that.

My industry is very international and I have many UK colleagues who only decided to train in it at 16/18. They really suffer not knowing anything apart from English. You never know where your child will work or live. Giving them access to a world of different possibilities should be the nation's priority.

@Fimofriend

No. I find it to be behind the curriculum in the Scandinavian countries, the Netherlands and Germany. Honestly: One lesson of foreign language a week? They will forget everything from one week to the next. I think part of the issue is that many parents don't believe the children ought to have homework until secondary school, so they don't help their kids when they do have homework. Fact of the matter is that if you only read the things you need for homework, then after ten years of schooling, you'll read like the average 8 years old. This will make everything difficult. When I worked part-time, I spent an hour a day helping my kids with homework and making them do extra. When I worked full-time it was still around five hours a week. Now they are in secondary and sixth form and are in the habit of doing homework so I hardly need to help at all.

It's definitely not behind Germany, it's far more advanced.

ttigrass: think it depends on when your day was, certainly in the 80s/90s in more "progressive" schools basic rules were forgot, due to "modern" teaching methods.

Right. I'm 61 later this year so was at school before then. However my son is 31, was at school in the 90s and learned it all, what's more he remembers many of the complex intricacies (which I don't), and I wouldn't have said grammar was his strongest subject; he was more a maths and science person.

I suppose it depended very much on the school. I'm glad I learned grammatical rules (though have become slapdash in later life).

I don't find this at all. Apart from all the stupid English terminology and the utter boredom of Maths Mastery my Year 3 child is doing work they absolutely could have done in year 1.

My experience as a secondary teacher & a parent is that children who are struggling don't get enough support/intervention and are allowed to fall too far behind and top set children aren't pushed enough and come into secondary having been bored for years and achieving nowhere near their potential.

Maybe it works well around the middle but still, not that impressed with it, especially Maths.

I'm currently home schooling a yr3 and yr 5. I find the maths is really easy and the English is very hard. I don't know it that's because i have a maths/engineering background. My 7 year old is studying a book called Cogheart, I think its way too hard. He can't do any of the English set work without a lot of input from me. He's an end of August birthday so this might be part of it.

@ArosAdraDrosDolig

I don’t think it’s too advanced, I think it’s too rigid, too jam packed with little time for free play and self directed learning, and too much focus on preparing children for tests rather than teaching them how to learn. I think we start school too early.

A teacher above said it is too advanced for 50% of children and not advanced enough for the other 50% - doesn’t that mean it suits nobody and isn’t fit for purpose? It should be differentiated (properly, not in a token way) to a child’s stage not age, and with a more flexible progression through the curriculum. It also doesn’t recognise that a prescriptive curriculum isn’t right for every child. Or that things take a long time to learn when a child isn’t ready (and risk destroying their love of learning) but are learnt quickly when the child is ready. The focus should be in motivating and enabling the child to learn what they need to know when they need it.

Agree with this totally.

Its behind, in my opinion, in maths but better in english.

Streaming at too young does more damage than good.
I’m still unpicking the streaming at infants that’s given my dd a mental block about maths. She firmly believes she’s no good
Despite being in gifted and talented at juniors and now in the top set in year 7.

It’s there niggling away that she’s no good. I know of three other children who feel the same

This is better than teaching children in different classes according to their 'ability' (streaming) so A, B C classes) because they can more easily catch up and be exposed to a higher level of learning in different subjects as children often spend up their learning at different times.

But who are the more able children 'catching up' with? Streaming according to ability may well lead to dividing by age for the majority (which makes particular sense in early years and KS1 when the age and ability differences can be so stark!), but it would hugely benefit the outliers at either end to learn in a group that can match their pace more effectively.

For me, who finished school in the 90s, yes, ai wish I had the opportunity to learn what my kids are learning now.
For my dd, no, she needs the option of going beyond the curriculum which her school doesn't offer.

@EvilPea

What was it about the streaming process that you think made things so hard for your daughter? We home ed by choice so I'm coming at it from the perspective of what I think would have made school more productive for my kids, but it sounds as though my view may be simplistic!

@Dowermouse

For me, who finished school in the 90s, yes, ai wish I had the opportunity to learn what my kids are learning now. For my dd, no, she needs the option of going beyond the curriculum which her school doesn't offer.

I bet your education was more rounded though with more geography, science, history, home education, CDT. Giving people more chance to find their “thing”