Meet the Other Phone. Flexible and made to last.

Meet the Other Phone.
Flexible and made to last.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

To ask how many 'fun' subjects your state primary kids do? Do they often go on trips?

25 replies

InkyPinkyP0nky · 08/04/2021 12:52

(Pre-pandemic if the pandemic has influenced it)

I'm thinking things like art, crafts, music, history, geography, RE... etc.

My three children (19, 14, 10) all went to the same primary. DC1 learnt how to fish, had visitors weekly from different cultures and religions, was endlessly making assorted clay figurines, pots and paintings right through to year 6. She also went swimming from years 3-6, went on (free or cheap) trips often inc. a residential in every year of KS3.

DC2 has never been on a residential, sometimes went on day trips. From year 5 they mostly prepared for SATS and had an occasional one off lesson of other things (PE was still weekly of course).

DC3 has had 1 very expensive weekend residential, no day trips since year 2. It's been almost entirely Maths and English focused since year 4. No music lessons since early KS1, minimal PE because apparently they mostly spend their time getting changed and then being told to line up quietly. Other subjects are also one-offs that are mostly not finished.

Speaking to friends with children in the other 2 primary schools in town they basically agree that their experience is similar. Is this normal? Why is primary school so dull now? At the time I thought even DC1 had very little 'fun' compared to my own primary experience!

OP posts:
joysexreno · 08/04/2021 12:53

Following

InkyPinkyP0nky · 08/04/2021 12:58

^Also want to say I meant residential in every year of KS2

OP posts:
Wowcherarestalkingme · 08/04/2021 13:00

Curriculum demands. My school still does trips and fun activities but there is a such a push on English, maths and science that the other subjects have taken a hit and are very much in the background.

Beseigedbykillersquirrels · 08/04/2021 13:02

I'd be surprised if they weren't covering all the subjects in the National Curriculum as they would get absolutely ruined by Ofsted for not delivering a broad and balanced curriculum.
As for arts and crafts/design and technology - funding has been reduced to such an extent that things like clay just cannot be funded by many schools. There is barely enough money for bare bones things like pencils and white board pens. This is what years of Tory governments has reduced schools to.
The pressure from headteachers for all children to perform well in sats has sucked any joy from the upper KS2 curriculum for many classes of children. It's like that's all that matters. It's desperately sad, not at least for children who aren't 'academic' but excel at other non-core subjects. Schools can be pretty shit places to be for everyone, pupils and staff alike, at the moment, thanks to Mr Boshambles and his gang of fucking incompetents.

Clymene · 08/04/2021 13:02

Primary schools are judged on SATS scores. To achieve good SATS scores, children need to focus on boring rote learning on the subjects they are tested on rather than being given an educational experience that will make them into a confident, productive and happy member of society which is what our education system should do.

The education system is broken.

Sbk28 · 08/04/2021 13:04

2014 curriculum reforms have a lot to answer for here...
Sadly, I suspect covid will have a long-term negative effect too. No residential for two to years, worried that they will decide to keep it that way in future too

Littlebluebird123 · 08/04/2021 13:04

The government slowly suck the life out of the curriculum as all that counts is English and maths and must be proven via tests, endless paperwork and reduced funding. Not just this government, each one who gets to be in charge wants to make 'reforms' as it makes great headlines.
Cynical? Just a little.

Aroundtheworldin80moves · 08/04/2021 13:11

My Yr5 had history or geography, art or DT, music, indoor pe, outdoor pe and French every week last term (either at school or at home). Trips a bit hard to comment on currently.

Maths and English daily, but plenty of fun lessons too.

midnightstar66 · 08/04/2021 13:12

Pre covid - swimming, gardening/animal care, Prince someone or other award which is an outdoors confidence building thing. Yearly school shows, sculpture workshop, skiing, bikeability, outdoor residential, a few trips a year plus a whole school trip once a year, . Lots of outdoor learning as a rule even for the oldest year groups, many classrooms don't have any regular desks including primary 6 and 7, a whole school topic each term focusing on learning about it through music, art, drama and dance as well as their own topic both of which usually covers the topics you've listed. We're in Scotland though so don't have sats, ofsted ratings and an inflexible curriculum to focus on. It's way more fun than we ever had in school.

TheTurn0fTheScrew · 08/04/2021 13:13

day trips are much less frequent than I remember from my own school days in the 1980-90s.

music provision is woeful at both the primary and secondary my DC attend. not even a choir at primary, no orchestra/band at secondary. some local schools do have better provision but we are in a position to pay for individual and ensemble music, and have chosen the schools we did for other reasons.

primary school still does lots and lots of outdoor play, gardening, bug-hunting etc. we are very lucky that the school has extensive fields, allotment and woodland. Also lots of art and craft activities, and baking. the head does not seems as SATs driven as some, and TBH that's a reason I like it.

WeeWillyWanky · 08/04/2021 13:14

I used to teach in an inner city Primary where the Head made sure that each class had at least one trip per term and we also had themed weeks where specialists ( art/ music/ drama/ dance) would come in and do workshops with the children. We would also have an annual theatre trip and have theatre groups put on productions in school. I don't know how it was funded but the children had a great, all round experience. This was before Gove got his hands on the curriculum, though. I teach in a different school now and pre Covid we would have at least two class trips a year and Y6 would have a residential. We also had visitors coming in about once a term e.g. birds of prey/ musician/ theatre group etc

IndecentFeminist · 08/04/2021 13:14

We would normally have a couple of school trips a year, local for the younger ones, mainland/London for the olders. Plus a residential in yr 5 and yr 6. Both mine have missed out so far due to Covid.

We have forest school, music, pe, geography...all the usual. The teachers make it lots of fun.

As an ex secondary teacher I do think that the way the govt want English taught is soul destroying...too much focus on making sure you use one of each type of xyz clause in a sentence etc.

trilbydoll · 08/04/2021 13:18

DD1 had 2x day trips a year in infant school, plus swimming in the summer term.

Not sure if she would have done anything in Y3 in pre COVID times but there is a 3 day residential trip planned for Y4.

GintyMcGinty · 08/04/2021 13:19

Pre Pandemic:

They get a Monday to Friday residential in P6 (age 10) and P7 (age 11). Apart from that neither of mine have ever had any school trips.

Art, crafts, music, history, geography integrated in to every part of the curriculum.

RE - its a catholic school so very imersed in all things religious.
PE - twice a week

School concert once per term.
Class party once per term.

Lots of clubs: Glee, Fencing, Badminton, Football, Drama, Dancing, Cheer, Coding - these all take place before or after school but are organised by school.

Since March 2020 - diddly squat apart from RE, geography and history.

stayingaliveisawayoflife · 08/04/2021 13:29

Typical year 2 in my class. All curriculum subjects are taught all year.

Visits to a Buddhist temple, local walks and a summer trip to the seaside. Large summer DT project involving tie dyeing and sewing. Spring project of bulb planting and gardening.

This is even with the pressure of SATs. It can be done but it has to be paid for and fought for!

wanderbug · 08/04/2021 13:36

I work in a primary school.

They use topics to teach the various areas of the curriculum. The smaller topics are covered in half a term. The longer ones will take almost the whole term. Topics will usually include crafts, science experiments and a visitor or two.

Trips usually have to be subsidised by the school as the catchment is in a deprived area. Each year group gets one subsidised trip per year, usually involving a coach trip and the entrance fees to somewhere within a 2-hour drive.

Staff might be allowed a second trip if they can raise the hundreds of pounds in subsidies and persuade enough parents to also pay the cost of the rest of the trip. As you can probably imagine, that's quite a rare thing to happen.

There is one residential trip that takes place in Yr6. We try to keep costs as low as possible and use all available funding to pay for those who receive PP, but there are still children who are unable to go.

They also do free local visits that can be accessed on foot eg local parks, libraries, churches etc. However, as we're not in a big city there isn't all that much available locally.

Even local trips will require extra staff/helpers to come along. Budget cuts mean that there aren't as many TAs as there used to be that could be 'borrowed' from other classes. Most parents are either working or have younger children that they have no childcare for.

It's cheaper to pay visitors to come into school, so that's something that happens more regularly. Sometimes a member of staff will have relatives or friends who will do this for free.

Music is part of the curriculum but it tends to be quite basic. There used to be funding for specialist teachers and workshop providers to come in, but this has now gone. A lot now depends on the skills of individual teachers and whether or not they can play/read music.

PE is usually twice a week for everyone. We're fortunate that we can use specialist sports coaches for a relatively low cost.

Art and crafts materials are very thin on the ground in our school due to budget constraints. Teachers will often spend their own money on this to give the children a better experience.

Staff give up their time to offer free clubs after school and sometimes at lunchtimes. These include sports clubs, art clubs, choir, dance, and drama clubs.

Local primary schools seem to be in the same position. Many of the 'extras' depend on the individual members of staff giving up their time/money or having the right contacts to get something at a lower cost.

crosspelican · 08/04/2021 13:37

They do practically nothing of any interest.

Maths, Reading, SpaG and Topic. Semi-exercise twice a week - once with their teacher, once with an outside organisation that ignores the girls and just does things with the boys. No decent outdoor space and zero equipment.

No art (no money for supplies). Some IT. 30 minutes weekly of a language that one of the teachers happens to speak, but has no experience or training in TEACHING as a foreign language.

Very occasional school trips pre-pandemic (local museum, for instance).

And then when it switched to online.. well.

And this is in a school with under 7% on FSM. There's NOTHING.

It's gutting because I see what the children of friends are getting from their indies and it makes me so cross that school funding has been stripped back to such a low standard.

We're encouraged to think that private education fosters inequality, which is utter bullshit.

The defunding of STATE education fosters inequality.

OwlBeThere · 08/04/2021 13:44

Perhaps if parents didn’t spend so much time trying to get their kids into the good schools snd go along with archaic shit like the 11+ we wouldn’t be here. People are very quick to say it’s schools fault, but the schools that don’t have amazing sats results are labelled ‘sink schools’ and the nonsense is perpetuated.

wanderbug · 08/04/2021 13:50

@OwlBeThere

Perhaps if parents didn’t spend so much time trying to get their kids into the good schools snd go along with archaic shit like the 11+ we wouldn’t be here. People are very quick to say it’s schools fault, but the schools that don’t have amazing sats results are labelled ‘sink schools’ and the nonsense is perpetuated.
Very true.

So many parents look at SATs results when choosing their child's primary school - and then complain when the one with top results makes their child spend a great deal of time doing endless SATs work and old SATs papers.

Troublewaters2021 · 08/04/2021 13:52

My DD8 school do “ outdoor learning “ once a week where they go to woods / parks / rivers etc

They then have around 4 I would say trips through the year normally range from sports to church visits.

Residential in year 5 and 6 and skiing in year 6
And swimming once a week in year 5

Troublewaters2021 · 08/04/2021 13:53

Oh and they have a outside art teacher who comes in and PE once a week and music once a week.

InkyPinkyP0nky · 08/04/2021 13:55

It seems that the schools here are unusually bad Sad We’re in a deprived Midlands town so we seem to get the worst of things in that there’s no money, but also initiatives for deprived areas always end up missing us.

Owlbe we’re not in a county (or even near a county) with grammar schools. All of the secondaries in the area are... not good, however well children do in SATS they go to the same mediocre at best secondaries. So I’m not sure that applies here.

OP posts:
InkyPinkyP0nky · 08/04/2021 13:57

Troubledwaters I could see our primary doing outdoor learning, we have plenty of big nature parks and woods nearby. I don’t really understand why they don’t apart from potentially struggling to find extra people to supervise on trips.

OP posts:
AryaStarkWolf · 08/04/2021 14:01

I'm in Ireland, my kids did mostly English, Irish, Maths, Religion, History, Geography, arts and crafts (a bit list as they got older)Then they did a couple of months of swimming classes a year and they did stuff like beach clean ups (we live by the sea) In their last year of primary school they did a bit of German oh and they did PE as well regularly

Subordinateclause · 08/04/2021 14:02

I teach in quite an old-fashioned little school that has lots of outdoor learning etc but now that I have my own children I just don't have the time to organise the more exciting lessons or trips I might have done in the past. It's crap but I work 40hrs a week on a part-time contract as it is and that's way before I start trying to plan a trip with risk assessments etc. I'd love to do more but I spend too much time having to plan maths and English, in which I teach children working between pre-reception and Y6+ levels with no TA support... In my old school, parents couldn't afford trips because coach costs are so high nowadays and being in a deprived area the PTA couldn't raise the vast sums they do in more affluent areas.

New posts on this thread. Refresh page
Swipe left for the next trending thread