To think education wasn’t actually any better in the past?

[educationnow]

I keep saying this, but no one seems to believe me so it might well just be my perceptions!

I started school in 1985, so I did start in the glory days (apparently) when there was no national curriculum.

Teaching was TERRIBLE! We learned nothing about SPAG, Maths was ‘work through a textbook’, teachers were sarcastic and cutting, bullying was rife. I’m sure there were many decent ones, but safeguarding wasn’t a thing and some of the things the teachers said and did in primary school were awful.

I started secondary in 1992, and bullying was still a huge issue, as was behaviour. We had SATs in Year 9 and a lot of our GCSEs had a heavy coursework weighting, so there was a lot of cheating.

I then started teaching myself in 2003. Behaviour was dire and I joined the TES forums where teachers kept commenting how much better behaviour had been ten/twenty years ago. My subject had coursework - cheating went on.

Then controlled assessments came in in 2010/11 (I think!) endless stress getting them in and up to standard and marking the things.

Now … very content heavy curriculum. Behaviour still an issue. Endless systems relating to technology - show my homework, Frog, ClassCharts. I wish we just used one.

I don’t think there’s ever been a golden age. I think every age has had problems, some unique to that time but some like poor behaviour has just always been an issue.

There is one thing that was much, much better at both primary and secondary and that was the Music provision. We could choose an instrument at 8 via the LEA scheme and parents could buy the instrument or rent one cheaply. By the time I left secondary the music provision had been cut to the bone and began to resemble the crap state it’s still in today.
Even before 8 we had recorders, hand bells etc and they weren’t just used to make a racket for 40 minutes. We performed properly. But then again, if you couldn’t stop overblowing or couldn’t keep time in a hand bell round then you had to sit at the back with no instrument, so of course it was going to sound nice

Was privately educated in the 80s/90s at secondary level, state before that.

State was in a deprived areas and looking back there was an element of underacheivment prevalent at the school and as others have said SEND and neglect brushed under the carpet.

Secondary was OK but definitely a subliminal elitist vibe with humour being directed at the working class in a pretty immature and demanding fashion. Corporal punishment still used but rarely and in some ways teacher relationships to pupils could be a little too close.

a bit of bitterness from parents that their kids weren't going to Oxbridge (it was private after all). A lot of medics' families expecting their kids to family tradition. S strong sporting ethos (rugby and cricket) and focus on traditi on.

many to what would be now RG universities especially the more traditional ones; Oxbridge, Durham etc. School downplayed MY issue s, bullying (rife) and low level anti social behaviour(cannabis, underage drinking)

Oh yes! I agree whole-heartedly with this.

At primary we just had recorders and percussion.

But at secondary the opportunities for making music were excellent and free. Our school (local comprehensive) had a wide selection of instruments and if you wanted to play one, and there was one available, you could borrow it indefinitely and take it home.

The instrument tuition was provided by peripatetic teachers who came around once a week and this was also all completely free. We had two school bands, a brass band and an orchestra, not to mention a choir. Again all free. The only thing I can remember having to pay for was the entry fee for grade exams.

I went to a village primary school in the SE of E on the 70s and compared to the education my own DC got at that level it was much better. I found a lot of my old exercise books when we were clearing out my parents house and thought I was looking at work from the upper primary - but there were from ages 5/6/7. I’ve got friends who have taught STEM subjects in high schools for 30-plus years and they agree - things are being taught at much later stage.

I agree OP, comparing my primary school experience in the 1980s with my children’s current primary school I think the teaching in particular now is much better.

In the 80s we had one teacher for 35 kids, no TAs at all. The teacher would put some eg maths questions on the board and everyone would do the same sums, possibly with a few trickier sums at the bottom of the board for the cleverer kids who got that far. Compared with my kids class now which has 30 kids max and has different levels of worksheets for differing abilities. Plus one or two TAs on hand to help the kids who need it. So much more tailored teaching for everybody.

Plus the number of kids - especially boys - in my primary school who were essentially written off as ‘naughty kids’ was astounding. Looking back it’s blindingly obviously most of them had ADHD or similar, but back then this wasn’t even considered I don’t think.

Actually the secondary school I went to in the 1970s did have a dedicated special education department with its own specialist teachers and head of department. Children with SEN/LD were bussed in from outside the area to go there.

I think there was a wide range of abilities. Some children spent pretty much all of their time there and were only with the rest of their year group for form time or PE. Others just needed a bit of extra support and were gradually re-integrated with their year group later on.

I wonder if this is something that was phased out of schools at some point? In the town where I live now I remember years ago one of the secondaries was closed. This was the school which also had the equivalent Special Education Department for the town. I seem to remember that the view then was that the children with SEN would be given whatever support was necessary in whichever main stream school they attended, i.e. no specialist provision.

Is this going back the other way now?

Different I think, some aspects better some worse.
Less pressure than today's kids get but less expectations of the majority. I was invisible at secondary school, slipped from being very able at middle school to mediocre at best.
We didn't have the explosion of anxiety that kids seem to suffer today.

SEN wasn't even a discussion, I guess obvious students weeded out to 'the unit' attached to the school. I once read 'dyslexia is middle class for thick' , I imagine there was an element of that attitude involved. Today those kids are fully involved in the classroom not hidden. or caned into compliance

When my DD started school I was amazed at how much better it was than my day. We had an awful headteacher who was aggressive and violent to pupils. Maths was working through a workbook, no SPAG (although that has gone too far in the other direction), I left Primary not knowing my times tables (and I was bright - went to Grammar school), we learned very little Science.

In comparison, the pastoral care at my DD's school is excellent, they have specialist teachers for P.E (she has learnt so many sports including 'boys' ones), swimming, music and French. Free flow in Infants. High expectations of behaviour and work, but very nurturing. Equipment to play on/with at break times, the food is so much better, a woodland area and allotment. Musical instrument lessons available, a large range of after school clubs, wraparound care. Lots of opportunities like Young Voices at the O2 and trips, residentials, sleepovers and parties. Targeted interventions when needed. Just a lovely, friendly atmosphere and excellent teachers. Just a different world to when I was at Primary.

Interesting thread. So many responses (naturally) depending on our own experience.

My mother was a primary school teacher from the early 50s to the mid 80s. She was a good, conscientious teacher, but from remarks she made about her colleagues not all were, and there was no way for this to be addressed. No Ofsted, no SATs, no National Curriculum, no performance management. The only way a teacher could be sacked was for gross professional misconduct, and given how widespread bullying of, and casual violence against, children was, you have to wonder how bad a teacher's behaviour had to be to warrant dismissal. We've all heard the stories of secondary teachers having sexual relationships with pupils. That was probably always against the law (for under 16s, anyway) but there was no widespread crackdown against it until remarkably recently.

One colleague of Mum's I always think of was probably in the profession because there weren't as many options for girls when she left school as there would be now (she'd have been born in the 1930s). She married and had a child, then returned to full-time teaching. She and her husband were nuts about cricket and in the summer her priority was keeping up with the cricket news. She arrived at school shortly before the children did, often managed to leave in the afternoon before they were all out of the playground and had wangled a responsibility allowance for looking after the school plants. It was a 2-form entry school, both classes mixed ability (no streaming) and she always taught what would now be called Year 3, i.e. first year of Juniors (KS1), 7-8yos. Year after year when her class moved up to Year 4 their teacher had to work very hard to try to get them up to the same standard as the parallel class, because they would have covered very little ground with Mrs X. Everybody knew this was how it was. Nobody did anything about it. Parents must have known, but had no way of applying pressure.

Things have swung far too much the other way now, in my view, in terms of how closely teachers are controlled and monitored, but that kind of thing did need to be tackled.

My experience is the opposite - DD was doing diagrams of cell biology, the nitrate cycle, plate tectonics, and the Fibonacci sequence in year 1 and 2! This was stuff I didn’t cover until secondary. They get a much better grounding in the basics in English and Maths, but IMO the difference is really noticeable in subjects which were not really taught at primary at all in my day.

I estimate from my governor visits that the maths and English curriculum is at least a couple of years ahead, but the work covered in the sciences, history and geography is light years ahead of my primary days. The national curriculum really has dramatically broadened the range of education children are getting.

I went to a very traditional primary school in Scotland where we were very well drilled in the 3 Rs but not much else. Science was limited to a bit of nature study. Geography and history were taught through occasional projects, not as a regular part of the curriculum.

I have never heard that either. Maybe it's just teachers who have this view?

It's difficult to compare, as it's rarely like with like. I went to secondary school in the 80s and have been a teacher for 25 years. I went to a girls' grammar school, where behaviour was not a problem and there didn't seem to be much of a bullying problem.

I've taught in a wide range of schools - boys', girls', mixed, inner city and rural comps, high-ranking private schools. And I have teen dc in a supposedly good comprehensive. Behaviour in my local state schools is worse than I've ever seen it, including in inner comps years ago. So many kids just think they can behave however they like, and their parents back them up. My dc are doing fine because they are very bright, well-motivated and pretty blasé about the shocking behaviour (which is kind if depressing, because they're just used to it).

It's true that teachers go above and beyond these days and slog their guts out to produce all-singing all-dancing lessons, compared with the more pedestrian teaching when I was at school. But... that's partly because of the brutal scrutiny and unreasonable expectations, partly because fewer kids can be relied upon to pay attention and do their work out of either genuine motivation or respect for the rules (without needing to be constantly entertained), and partly because the kidscknow only too well that the teachers are more worried about their exam results than they are.

I taught theoretically less 'entertaining' lessons when I taught at an excellent private girls' school. That wasn't me being a worse teacher, and I didn't work less hard. The students were more engaged by my lessons than students in other schools were by my more 'entertaining' lessons.

One of the huge changes in education since I was a child is that most parents were kept well out of schools and accepted that. Parents' evenings and short written reports were all you could expect in the way of communication from the school. (Having said that, the reports were short, blunt and informative, which was an improvement on the long screeds of National Curriculum levels and bland comments we got from our children's schools.)

Also, if a child got into trouble at school and the parents found out, the child would usually be in trouble at home too. It wasn't invariable, though. My husband, who's in his late 60s now, remembers a father coming into his primary school class and punching the teacher over something he'd done to a child.

I am quite puzzled by primary school homework and curriculum. For instance, I have never, even while doing a degree in English literature, needed to know what a fronted adverbial was. On the other hand, at 9 years old, we were expected to learn and recite standard poems e.g. Wordsworth. That doesn't seem to happen now. The work looks very dry. I also notice on primary homework there are no written, individualised comments, only a sticker saying if targets were met. Is this general practice in primary now? It seems rather dull and impersonal.

I started primary age 4 in 1960, so probably remember further back than most PPs . We had an excellent education in a state suburban (outer London) primary. We knew up to our 12x table by age 7, and were doing algebra and geometry by age 10. Because of imperial measures, we could work in different bases (eg base 12 for pennies/shillings).
We were taught basic grammar, and encouraged to write stories and poems. The teacher read us stories, and we all had library tickets. There was a good spread of cultural activities, from music to drama, art and sport.
I went to the local state grammar school at 11, in 1967, and as it was before calculators or computers, we were all good at mental arithmetic, and using slide rules and log tables etc.
Our teachers were strict disciplinarians, and the head was still legally allowed to cane pupils, so there was v little misbehaviour.
In those days, only about 10% of pupils went on to university or polytechnics, but the school got good results for both O and A levels.
There was a wide range of subjects available- everyone took nine O levels, then 3 As if they stayed to sixth form.
My own DDs went to school in Scotland 30 years later, in a state comprehensive, and the behaviour was considerably worse. The teachers did their best, and some of them were excellent, but the Scottish syllabus seemed v dumbed down compared to my own English education.

I completely agree with this.

Personally I’m really happy my kids are going to school nowadays instead of the 80s and 90s when I was in school. Bullying by teachers as well as students was rife back then and there was a lot less rigour than there is now.

I think there was less of children being raised by the state. A lot of what they do in schools now I feel is the parents place. They spend so much time there too.

There were harsher consequences for poor behavior, so much time in the classroom is spent dealing with the naughty children.

My grandmother had much better grammar and mathematical skills than I did. I remember her being a little disappointed and surprised when she asked me to 'perform' the last poem I learnt, the concept seemed very alien to me. Would be nearly 90 now. Both of us grew up in poor families, so certainly wouldn't have been a 'top' education. I think it was 13 she left school to get a job.
I have no idea when it was first implemented, but dropping the requirement for teachers to pass grammar exams was a grave error. I think the quality of education is declining.
Exams are being dumbed down seemingly each year because of this decline. As far as the government are concerned, that is the solution. Getting Cs or above is what is important, not the education. Once upon a time, it was the education.

The whole system needs an overhaul. A new teaching qualification that would mean only a competent teacher could pass. I think 3 or 4 days a week, mornings focused on reading, writing and arithmetic, perhaps a foreign language and afternoons history, science, art, music and PE would result in a far more effective education. Especially at primary level.

In your OP you ask whether education is better, but in your second post, you ask whether teaching is better.

I think there's two different answers there. I've been teaching since the 90s, and in many ways, teaching was better back then. There was far less admin, tick boxing exercises, teachers were trusted a lot more to just teach, and there was much greater choice over what we taught (certainly in my subject). Now, there's a lot more regulation, admin and unnecessary tasks. But I don't think education was better when I started teaching. The greater freedom teachers had meant the quality of teaching depended on the teacher you had.

So the answer depends on what you're actually asking.

I remember looking at my mums old gcse (whatever the equivalent was then) maths textbooks from the 70’s. It was substantially more challenging than what I did. We both went to reasonable grammar schools.

When I left primary in 1981 to go to high school, there had been a mad flurry during the last year to get us all to learn the recorder. We had zero music provision prior to that. I was really upset when I went to high school to discover other children from different schools had learnt the piano, violin etc. I was desperate for piano lessons as a child and my parents bought me a stylophone. (Still bitter.)

Teaching was terrible when I was at school (late 70's through to early 90's) teachers ranged in ability but many taught their pet topics rather than a rounded education

some things are better some worse

safeguarding and bullying are generally better though my primary in 1970's was good with bullying, but mostly it was suck it up or fight back. I had good teachers at primary and was ahead when got to secondary, I think I learnt a lot of stuff that was interesting but not on exam syllabus more rounded maybe A level general studies was a good thing, I was the last year to do O levels before GCSE's
personally I do not think today's children are more intelligent than previous generation or indeed people 100, 200, 400, 2000 years ago there are just better opportunities for more people , my grandfather was super bright and passed school leaving exam at 12 ( you could leave at 12 if you passed otherwise 13), he was bright enough for grammar school but his parents too poor to not have him working, I got a degree in dentistry but I am not more intelligent than him I just got a better education ( though he did do night school )
it depended on where you went to school and it still does, schools in wealthier areas generally better still
it is better that the standards and testing and teaching are more or less the same everywhere, there is more pastoral support and better SEN provision and career advice

Sport is better than it was though has a long way to go as there is still a tendency to just coach the good kids and ignore the rest

I think it was better that children were more independent in terms of walking to and from school alone at a younger age that we got a lot more swimming lessons ( once a week for 2 years at primary) and learning a musical instrument was generally possible without financial outlay from parents. I think teachers were more honest with parents about how their child was doing they would say John is badly behaved, Stephen doesn't pay attention and so misses out on explanations which is why he makes so many mistakes, Nicola chatters too much and her work suffers, Susan is lazy so she won't get the results she could, David is behind in Maths, Jane is top of the class in French and 14th in Maths and 3rd in English and 20th in Science they would not say John behaves well when he chooses to instead or that Stephen and Nicola are easily distracted and David and Jane are reaching their goals ( with no word as to what the goals are or that goals differ or how they compare with everyone else of his age)

I do not think exams are easier though I do think think when 40% get an A it becomes rather meaningless

This doesn’t sound much different to my DD’s school curriculum tbh. Eg. the kids were supposed to master their full times tables in yr 2, but they keep drilling them for the following two years plus the new national Multiplication Check in yr 4. The order of different topics has changed: DD was doing geometry in yr 1 (including learning the full vocabulary - vertices, etc.) and has already been doing some basic algebra in yrs 3 and 4 (they just don’t necessarily call it that, but it is algebra). They do a lot more “modern” maths earlier on, eg. sequences and sets.

What has definitely changed is that they do cover a lot more of the conceptual basics from different angles and methods. I initially thought this was annoying, as DD was capable of learning the “old-fashioned methods” v quickly and I saw methods like “chunking”, numberlining and “bridging ten” as annoying fads.

However, seeng it in action in the classroom in context (as part of governor visits) made me realise that the average child gets a much better grounding in maths - and a much better conceptual understanding- than just using the methods we were taught (especially kids who struggle). It’s much rarer for them to end up with huge gaps in their knowledge because they just “didn’t get” a topic or happened to be off when it was taught. I was ill myself with flu the week long division was taught in primary, and I never learned to do it or understand it as a result, despite later getting an A in A-level maths. That’s much less likely to happen in this curriculum because there is a lot of emphasis on understand and consolidation using different methods to visualise what is going on at a foundational level, and on small group and mentoring work with struggling students.

I also gather that a lot of the new curriculum maths is based on East Asian maths programmes and designed to replicate those. It’s pretty decent, I think.

In English DD is also doing a lot of writing - they do fictional and non-fictional report writing, comprehension, spelling tests every day — they work them pretty hard. And they are pretty hot on reading practice. I remember being absolutely miserable, stuck on boring reading scheme books that I could easily read but I was made to follow the group schedule I’d been put in. They’re much more responsive to the specific child these days and the books are better and more interesting. There’s much greater emphasis on conceptual understanding and creativity than just getting things correct.

DD seems to have got past the fronted adverbial stage because they don’t seem to be doing that any more, but they did do some poetry learning by heart, and they also seem to do a lot of writing poetry - she’s always coming home with haikus or similar - and writing book critiques, eg of the Narnia books or the Wizard of Oz. All in all I really can’t complain about what they’re doing - it’s a fair jump ahead of my (decent state) primary in the mid-80s just in the core subjects. The current fashion is also to teach them to write in cursive from the start, so they all seem to have rather nice handwriting from about year 1 onwards, too!

I realise that what I’m saying will not be news to any teachers on the thread, but I have to say I was really v impressed and surprised on seeing the current curriculum and how advanced it is compared to my 1980s generation.

Really, we still were making spaceships out of washing-up bottles and collecting conkers for the nature table at the same age my DD was drawing a diagram of a cell nucleus, learning about apex predators and predation chains and the role of carbon in climate crisis and the Fibonacci sequence!