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

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

I went to.primary school in the 80s and early 90s.

One thing I've seen argued now is that primary school.kids need homework so ots not such a shock when they move up to secondary.

But when I went to school all there was was reading and maybe a little by the last yr or 2. Not only did we cope with the homework just fine , we also were immediately alot more organised with it.

This is a skill i believe is lost with alot of kids now.

We couldn't just Google on iPhone and do our homework in bed.

We really had to plan it. I have swimming Friday so I better do it before then.i have hockey after school on Wednesday ajd I need to go to the library to do my homework so I better go Tuesday. We had to work it round our commitments. We had to work it round other homework.

We had to check.bus times and book availability etc.

Homework theoretically should be so.much easier now. Instead but rhe time they eveb reach secondary school they are so sick of it ams its lost all meaning and they really have no self organisational.skills because they expect ot to be right there at the touch of a button excepts it's not because you now have to wade through multiple sources and check the validity and authenticity and make sure its not a wiki page etc and uts too overwhelming at times. Frankly homework falls at the first hurdle now. It's hard to understand what it achieves now.

I am helping my grandson with English to help parents who are both working . I must admit I was shocked at the depth of the teaching . One minute he is just learning to write and spell and the next it is pronouns , adverbs and conjunctions? I am sure I did not learn those at that age . Plus my husband was feeling the same about the maths .

I always wanted to volunteer to help at a primary school and it sort of put me off to be honest .

Looking at it as an outsider (I teach primary in Ireland), the English curriculum seems crazy to me. All this useless shite about fronted adverbials etc. The pace of it all, the SATs, the data tracking, the workload expected...and for what? Seems to me like it causes a lot of stress for little or no benefit.

Not saying that we're perfect here either but my God, I wouldn't want my child schooled in that system.

[quote BoyTree]@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![/quote]
It’s the rhetoric that your not very good, as much as it’s not told, kids know. Especially in infant years they try so hard to be the best and to have it reminded they are not over and over is hard. She would sit in the class and compare where she was and who else was in there.
She absolutely flew at her next school though, suddenly her teachers “got” her.
There was no streaming either. They used a different type of maths model where there’s different questions on the same paper at Different levels and they were encouraged to have a go at the harder questions. If you needed additional support you got it by being taken out in smaller groups. But everyone was taken out at some point for either pushing or more support.

I think actually what I was trying to say is not that children don’t need to be stretched in English . But do they need to know all the technical terms at age 6 .

Yes , say extend a sentence using these words .....

But do they need to know it’s a conjunction ? I think you can still teach and extend knowledge but it could be a bit more relaxed?

One of the strangest aspects of education is how funded places for over 3s is done by age and not school year. The summer borns start school with 1 term, spring borns 2 terms and autumn borns 3 terms when perhaps it should be the opposite since autumn borns will tend to have a natural advantage as they are older. I think they should at least all get the same but I wonder what would happen if it was the summer rather than autumn borns who got the 3 terms ?

I'm guessing you have children who are struggling to keep up? Hence the sweeping generalisation that it's the curriculum at fault?

@fucket Just to jump in about the maths method comment as the ‘modern’ methods are fairly misunderstood. Partitioning, chunking, using a number line to jump on etc are all mental methods. The curriculum teaches the standard written methods later. The idea is that pupils are given a chance to develop the skills needed to answer the questions mentally first. When the Numeracy strategy initially came out in the late 90s there were far too many of them and they became confusing but streamlined they have value. Most children pick up column addition easily for eg but if they learn it too soon they will try to rely on it mentally rather then counting on or partitioning the numbers in their head. It’s not that schools don’t think that your kids can learn those methods, they just want them to understand first. That being said if you are home schooling and it worked I think anything goes at the moment.

@Unsure33

I think actually what I was trying to say is not that children don’t need to be stretched in English . But do they need to know all the technical terms at age 6 .

Yes , say extend a sentence using these words .....

But do they need to know it’s a conjunction ? I think you can still teach and extend knowledge but it could be a bit more relaxed?

But that's exactly what they do. Use and to extend their sentence. At 6 Some schools might call it a conjunction,some might not. Learning the name of the word does no harm. It builds a base to add on so at 8 or 9 they don't hear the word conjunction for the first time,and they had a few years to hear it,get used to it and use it themselves in their writing.

It's like complaining we call column addition , column instead of just addition and arranging the numbers for them. Or complaining they learn the correct name for body parts/bones in Science.

And it always starts small and child friendly, describing words(adjectives), doing/action words (verbs) , thing ,name or place(noun) etc. and then that knowledge is built on. Bossy words/verbs become imperative verbs in ks2.

Try doing grammar analysis at 8/9. What the word is,is it feminine,masculine or neutral, singular or plural and so on.

[quote Shouldhavedoneitsooner]@fucket Just to jump in about the maths method comment as the ‘modern’ methods are fairly misunderstood. Partitioning, chunking, using a number line to jump on etc are all mental methods. The curriculum teaches the standard written methods later. The idea is that pupils are given a chance to develop the skills needed to answer the questions mentally first. When the Numeracy strategy initially came out in the late 90s there were far too many of them and they became confusing but streamlined they have value. Most children pick up column addition easily for eg but if they learn it too soon they will try to rely on it mentally rather then counting on or partitioning the numbers in their head. It’s not that schools don’t think that your kids can learn those methods, they just want them to understand first. That being said if you are home schooling and it worked I think anything goes at the moment.[/quote]
It's not just that. It's reinforcement of place value ,and what each number means. A lot of children struggle because they don't understand place value and what the number is . For example they might have 35+ 7 and they'll put the 7 under the 3 , and get 105 . Also, different methods work for different children . Ideally every child should find one easier to use , then future work is to get them fluent in the others and increase speed.

I still have children in y5 that count on their fingers. As long as they're confident and accurate I'm not taking that away from them. I'm not giving up on all the other methods either because understanding does change, and other things might click.

I have worked in schools in the UK and on the continent - I also did Erasmus and met a lot of university students from all over Europe. From
Those experiences I honestly think it’s mainly different rather than necessarily better/worse. Some countries prefer one thing over others. I’d be very interested in visiting eg. Finland which is generally held up as a having a great school system but I can’t imagine there’s a school system I would think is perfect anywhere in the world.

Apart from all the pointless English grammar and then the ironic lack of other languages, I think the primary curriculum is pretty good in the UK. On the other hand I think the amount of content in some of the content in the GCSEs is insane.

No. I only have one DC and he's bright but not excessively so. By year 6, he was bored stupid, miserable and angry.

Moving up has been a huge relief.

No, I disagree. I think the curriculum is too easy. I am constantly astounded by how little some kids know and how passive the parents are. Some kids from my daughters Year 3 class are incapable of adding and subtracting money and working out change. And that is in a private where you might expect the parents to support their children.

I don't necessarily think it's too advanced but I think it focuses on the wrong things. I have an English degree and, years ago, used to be an English teacher and I have absolutely no bloody idea what a fronted adverbial is. Why do 8 year olds need to know it? Would like to see more science, more IT, more stuff on thinking skills and emotional intelligence tbh.

Interesting we are talking about lagging behind continental schools - we score consistently higher on the Timms test (assess maths globally for rankings) and we come in 6th far above France and Germany - about level with Northern Ireland and only Norway is above us apart from high achieving Asian countries (Japan, Singapore etc) we are too ready to be negative about our education system and those who deliver it. We do fantastically well on an international stage - especially when we take into account how poorly we pay and treat our teachers in comparison.

Dear god yes. My 6 year old is doing things (or trying to) that I wasn't doing until i was 9 or 10. He doesn't have SEN but he is the youngest in his year group. He is struggling so much and tbh so am I. I don't know what half the stuff is and the methods are weird to me.
Fortunately it has been noted and the school is setting him some different work from the year below and other children in the year who are also struggling.

As a teacher, I wouldn’t say it’s too difficult, but it is too full! Having said that, I am always amazed when I get to the end of a school year and can clearly see the huge amount of progress each child has made, including those who ‘struggle’.

If you set high expectations from the start, it’s incredible what the children can achieve. In my experience, most children of a young age want to impress their teacher, so will strive to live up to the expectations and challenges that you set for them. Obviously a good teacher will make sure that the expectations are appropriately differentiated so that each child can achieve something.

As for the different methods and vocabulary being too advanced/complicated, children in my current Year 2 class don’t think twice about using adjectives, verbs, nouns etc because they have been used to using that vocabulary to describe words since they started learning to write. Children pick up new vocabulary surprisingly easily if you repeat it often enough.

@LNSL

No, I disagree. I think the curriculum is too easy. I am constantly astounded by how little some kids know and how passive the parents are. Some kids from my daughters Year 3 class are incapable of adding and subtracting money and working out change. And that is in a private where you might expect the parents to support their children.

You often find more affluent children are not as good at working out money because they haven’t had to do it in a shop or see their parents budget and a small amount of money but they are more likely to be able to use watch.

My child is in Y4 and completes Year 6 maths extension work every day. She’s also at least a year ahead in most of the other subjects. We’ve always spent an hour working every Saturday, Sunday and every day of every holiday. 1 hour a day is nothing but it really gets them ahead. Now she’s used to working at home and we have no problems with homeschool. It’s a good habit to get them into.

From what I can see.... DS has just gone into year 7.... is that there's an easier syllabus but for some reason it's been overcomplicated..... DS was still learning tables in year 5 and 6, they are learning grammar rules in the mist complicated way, so that when he asks me about things, I've no idea what he's talking about....
There seems to be less memorising of things and time put into learning complicated routines to do simple things.

The work set for my reception aged child is too easy for him

But they can't cater for everyone. We mostly do our own thing at home.

@titchy

Given that the majority of children reach the expected level of attainment in KS2 SATS, clearly it isn't too advanced for the majority.

I do think the UK suffers hugely from a lack of expectation of our kids though - education (and educators) just isn't valued. I think we do a disservice to a lot of kids.

I'm sorry your child is struggling though.

This is so true!! People have pretty low expectations. Of course there are some children who have SEN and face additional challenges but in general most children could achieve a lot more than they are achieving.

@BatleyTownswomensGuild

I don't necessarily think it's too advanced but I think it focuses on the wrong things. I have an English degree and, years ago, used to be an English teacher and I have absolutely no bloody idea what a fronted adverbial is. Why do 8 year olds need to know it? Would like to see more science, more IT, more stuff on thinking skills and emotional intelligence tbh.

Do you know what an adverb is? Put it at the front of a sentence. Voila! Fronted adverbial. Fronted because it's at the front of the sentence.

This wilful ignorance and taking pride in it isn't cute or charming. It's ridiculous. Fortunately , I expect more than that from the children I work with and they deliver.

Do you know what an adverb is? Put it at the front of a sentence. Voila! Fronted adverbial. Fronted because it's at the front of the sentence.

Didn't know what it was called. Have a first in English 🤷‍♀️

Don't take pride in it, just wasn't taught it.

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

Maybe if children didn’t go to school till much later it might work.
Hasn't it been proved that homework in primary school is worthless.

Only 1 hour of a foreign language per week. Why do they need any.
I didn’t have any foreign language lessons at primary and I left school and went to France for 6 weeks and was able to join in conversations and get by. My son has taught himself Spanish. Yet he was totally put off language lessons on primary maybe because he struggled with reading and writing English.

I don’t think being dyslexic, for example, would be helpful by a less advanced curriculum

My son couldn’t read or write in primary school. When he started school he was more interested in break times and playing out than what was going on in the classroom. When he understood he was at school to learn to read and write, they had stopped teaching that sort of thing so he missed out and spent primary not having a clue what was going on.
I can see why an advanced curriculum wouldn’t make much difference to someone with dyslexia if they struggle with literacy anyway