To think other cultures are far more invested in their DCs education than UK parents?

[Commentqueen]

Just an observation from our area... We live in a really diverse area & it's amazing. My dc go to state school with children with Eastern European, Chinese, German, Scandinavian, Bangladeshi, Nigerian & Japanese parents... The work ethic is unbelievable & the parents don't seem to trust the school to educate their kids, they do alot themselves outside school with the dc.. The UK parents in the class are alot more relaxed when it comes to education...
Aibu to think the UK just isn't as invested in education as other cultures?
The Ukranian refugee crisis also highlighted that the ukranian children joining British & Irish schools were away ahead in maths in comparison to their new counterparts & many also had excellent English... The UK really lag behind in foreign languages.. In years to come my dc who only speak English so far will be competing for jobs with dc who speak 4 or 5 languages fluently... I know come September I'll be doing my best to prepare my dc better!

There is a lot of pressure now to drop these kinds of texts, especially if you are reading them as part of immersion in the British literary tradition. Which as far as I know is not something you see in non-English speaking places, though maybe that has changed now.

There is at the moment a kind of leveling down in state education, which isn't coming from parents but from educational authorities.

Education in Canada sucks.

Not according to international data.

There is no pressure whatsoever to drop Shakespeare or Dickens.

YANBU.
i am also surprised at how limited my DC vocabulary is given English is the only language they know. I can’t afford private so have put them in with tutors but it really annoys me, the level of teaching and we are considering going back to our home country.
the school has a real problem with teacher retention and also disruption from students during classes.

Why was i bemused? Because any uk child in the state system learning a foreign language would not arrive in that country and be placed in the top set and have a better level of that language than the majority of those brought up there.

Im bemused the uk system cant teach my son english, a language he speaks every day and is immersed in as well as his new friends country taught it.

Could he give you some punctuation tips? 😆

and the most studious child in the class who is Indian is regularly bullied by other children called a bragger and nerd when he does well so that tells me a lot about the value of education and intelligence in the school.

Yes I agree OP and it aligns to my own observations. I’m mixed race/first generation. It was drummed into me that education was my ticket to a better life. It worked out for me and thus I still believe this, so although I’m not a tiger parent, I push my children to do well.

Its not like back in the day where you could leave school with next to no qualifications and work your way up. It’s an arms race. I’m not going to disadvantage my kids by refusing to get them to do homework so they can play a bit more. They have many hours and days out of school to play.

I think the UK educations system is set up do that all children achieve something. It doesn't necessarily extend children that are more capable or support those that are achieving below standard. I'm a third generation immigrant according to several posters description (although at what point can I just describe myself as British?) and I had parents that supported me lots. My mum was a sahm and dad worked, neither attended school past 16 and couldn't help me with homework, I had to be motivated to get ahead and their encouragement always helped. It was always emphasised that an education would give me choices and that was something to aspire to, that it would open doors.

I'm not sure if my own children will achieve as I and their dad have. They have lots of oppurtunities as we both work but wonder whether they will have the same drive or work ethic. I hope so. Both of us work so there is more money should they need tutoring for example but we are time poor, I do try to carve out 15 minutes a day a few times a week to do some numbers practice or practice handwriting but it can be a struggle on top of everything else. I know that it's easier for less motivated students to fall through the gaps at school or for more able kids not too be stretched and that makes me more determined to help support them as the teachers can only do so much. Also think that some schools are great at communicating when it's to tell you there is a fundraiser for so and so but not to tell you how kids are getting on throughout the year and not just at the end. For example if I knew my dd was struggling with maths, I'd find the time to help her with it. When you raise this you come across as a pushy parent, I'm not but I don't want her to struggle and lose interest in learning.

I don't think British parents are less interested but there is a belief that exam grades aren't the be all and end all and you can achieve success in other ways. Unfortunately though this is only true for some and the vast majority of people working full time in low paid jobs will struggle to make ends meet.

I don't think it is a cultural difference, as I am from the same culture. I think, to a large extent, it is explained by economic / structural reasons. Let's be honest, for a child to be able to be at the rink at 5am every day, one of his parents must be a SAHM/SAHD.

In the case of our guest, he was attending an (affordable) private school back home, more for the convenience of having all extracurriculars as after-school clubs in the same place, as mum is a single parent working full-time and could not take him herself. Does two musical instruments, programming, minecraft coding, two different sports, chess, robotics with lego, English and Mandarin. Most were running remotely (apart from sports, obviously), and the level of tuition (where I could form an opinion) is just unbelievable. But, a similar schedule here would probably be in the region of a four-digit sum per month, well out of reach for majority.

@User6784097 get your child to read more and encourage them to read a variety of things e.g. books, newspapers, adverts. Then discuss some of those things with them. Unfortunately it tends to be more difficult to get boys to read, so their dad and any other men around them need to do this as well.

As someone who has lived in many European countries, I can tell you you are wrong. I remember once teaching in a grammar school in Germany and the class I was observing during my induction didn't even know the author of the book they were studying. The kids were just as obsessed with Instagram and tiktok as the kids here and all they wanted to talk about was tv, music, hanging out and going to parties. When me and my (very well educated) friends met up, the conversations we had were no different to what I'd talk about with my UK, or my Greek, or my Italian or my French friends. I also faced a lot of racism living in Italy and I remember being told by my housemate in Germany not to leave the flat that weekend because the neo-nazis were having a rally and it was too dangerous for me. Not everyone is the UK is a poorly educated bigot and not everyone in Europe is swanning around spouting philosophy.

Also, where I come from (also a European country) outside of the tourist areas, not a lot of people speak English. The younger generation do, because our parents pushed it, but the difference is, we had about 2 to 3 hours of English per day and then homework on top. Schools in England are lucky to get 3 hours per week of foreign languages and parents moan if their kid has to learn a list of vocab.

I’ve put my eldest into a private secondary (the primary one will follow). This is partly because I found in their state primary, that many parents had low expectations for their kids and seemed more concerned about how much playtime they had than whether they could read.

Of course how they want to bring up their kids isn’t my concern. However, a few of them were quite vocal on WhatsApp and were arranging meetings with the head to cut down what little homework they had etc for the whole class, trying to badger other parents to support. A couple of the kids were parroting things about tests etc not mattering and I didn’t want this attitude to rub off on my kids. I felt that I should try to avoid parents like this by placing DC in a more competitive school.

its a simple thing - immigrants know that they have to work harder than locals if they want to get anywhere, plus they don't have the same safety net in case they fail.

In their home countries - on earth as it is in heaven practically. Overall attitudes are pretty much like here.

I'm not saying they don't have a better grasp of English (again, this is context dependent) but it's a massive sweep to say that everyone is going around quoting literature and talking about psychology and philosophy.

They really aren't. The kids in my home country get tutored more and spend way more time on homework. A lot of UK based parents from my home country say that one of the reasons they came to the UK was because they didn't want to subject their child to the stressful education system back home.

The Singapore maths method is becoming quite popular in countries like the USA. I am a 90s kid and the math bar model method was devised when I was a kid. The school forced our parents to attend tutoring so that they could teach us at home. They didn't really take 'no' for an answer. My mum worked from 9 am to 10 pm daily but she managed to find time to learn this so she could teach me. This was when we were at primary school.

I am not sure she got much sleep when I was growing up. My cousin is a teacher and she says her students complain if they are given too little homework; they want more!

I’m in NZ too and I agree with you that it is very noticeable how anxious many new migrants are about their children’s progress in early childhood settings and in primary. It goes against everything in our culture which is the freedom of being a child and learning through play. On the whole, our EC and primary settings are highly successful. Obviously there are exceptions but for the most part, they deliver very well to their communities.

Beyond primary it gets more tricky as for decades now schools have had to “market” to parents which they have done by prioritising elitism over the delivering to the needs of every student.

There is also the huge issue of colonisation which has negatively impacted great swathes of the population.

Thankfully, change is afoot as will become evident when the new curriculum kicks in next year. It is in the trial stages and the results thus far are phenomenal. It is grounded in delivering to every learner and promoting belonging as of key importance with every child’s heritage being treasured and drawn upon as a tool for learning.