Why schools do this!!?

[FedUpOfYetAnotherCold]

AIBU to wonder why children in primary school are taught 'head, shoulders, knees and toes' in French, can tell the difference between metamorphic, sedimentary and ignious rocks, can trace a stone age picture, can create great models of the tower of London, and learn (and promptly forget) all about the Victorians, Romans etc... but...

Quite a few can't swim 25m by end of primary (a skill which could save their life), many barely know what the term 'mental health' means - let alone know how to manage their own or support others with MH difficulties. Most state primary kids are not given access to decent sports provision to support future athletic dreams, better manage in-school behaviour, and promote healthy lifestyle and reduce obesity, and very few kids are supported to learn key life skills. (I'm focussing on primary here - but we also need more life skills like MH and budgeting and cooking etc... taught in secondary)..

Surely we need more teaching in schools on mental health, life skills and better access to sports and teaching which will lead to physically and mentally healthy adults of the future.

When my children finish primary I'd like them to be able to read, write and do basic maths. But in terms of the rest of the teaching - surely we now need to re-evaluate how much emphasis we place on teaching less vital skills such as French (if a language is deemed important why not Chinese, Spanish or Arabic, or something more useful in this current global village) which could be learnt later if desired?

AIBU?

Absolutely do not agree with your assumptions on this. We are a primary school on a deprived area. We have MH covered during PSHC lessons and in general; we also have cooking and eating healthily covered and comprehensive pe and a dedicated Sports teacher. We also have a dedicated music and french teacher, who teach ‘proper’ music and french lessons, during PPA. (The French teacher does teach Head , shoulders , knees and toes, when she is teaching parts of the body, and has a variety of other songs in her repertoire for learning other topics eg numbers , Christmas, weather etc.) Our children have good conversational and written skills in French. French is a good springboard to learning other languages .
I don’t quite see how , at primary age, we can do much more.
The adults you come in contact with maybe weren’t taught this at school 15 to 20 years ago, but I would totally disagree that these things aren’t covered in the curriculum at Primary level. Certainly not in my area (East Yorkshire) .

Because parents are supposed to teach their kids things too...

@FedUpOfYetAnotherCold actually what is your service doing?

Is it diagnosing these people with mental health conditions and SEN? Offer therapy and CBT and DBT? Comping mechanisms and teaching them how to manage their conditions?

Does it teach them to read/write? Does it teach them a trade or whatever they need for a future career?

Does it teach them how to budget , make loans, take a mortgage,rent ?

Does it help them with job applications?

Does it teach them how to swim?

If yes, well done! That's amazing.

If not, why not? After all you seem to think it's entirely doable.

I don't think it should be up to the school to teach children to swim, its a parents responsibility. However I think lessons should be subsidised and made more widely available. I do think the school should teach water safety, so children learn not to swim in lakes, ponds etc which have lots of hazards. It's tragic to see people drowning due to outdoor swimming which with proper education could be prevented. As a previous Brownie Guider we always taught this to our brownies as I felt it was an important life skill and we lived near parks with lakes and ponds.

You're definitely making lots of assumptions there.

My dd goes to a primary school in one of the most deprived areas in the country.

They take swimming lessons in year 4, which I believe is on the curriculum.

They do lots of PHSE, or as they call it "life" where they talk about MH in child friendly, appropriate terms.

They have PE twice a week, and after school sports clubs, FOC, at least 3 nights out of 5.

They've moved primary school too, and the same provisions were at their other one.

Also, learning an Mfl is a vital skill and the employment opportunities it opens in the future is immense. It's embarrassing how little we teach of other languages in our education system so this is fantastic they've started even this