School have asked year 4 children to switch from Cursive

[Rp735]

This is causing me stress so worth getting the opinion of MN. DD went to first day of year 4 today and her teacher has told the class that they are not to use cursive or joined handwriting anymore and need to practice broken. I have checked with other children too who have confirmed. They have been in the school from reception and are quite competent in writing cursive by now. The class as a whole has been struggling due to lack of learning during covid and many teachers leaving in the years following that. I was really hoping this would be the year the would finally be able to catch up. However, this new change will set them back considerably, in my opinion. Also annoying that there was no communication regarding this. AIBU to be angry and to complain?

That’s ridiculous. Let them write how they’ve learned and just don’t teach cursive anymore to the younger ones

Talk to the teacher and ask why, before getting angry with them.

All handwriting needs to be is legible and quick for exams. I've explained this repeatedly to my 8 year old and stand by it. She has always had top marks across the board and they picked on handwriting as "her something to improve" last year. We're talking about the angle of ds, ps and bs and uniformity across the height ts were crossed at.

I work in a profession where handwriting is consistently messy. Legible with content is the rule here.

It's tricky as you need to pick your battles with school but that sounds batshit.

Handwriting needs to be joined and legible to be at year 6 standard, annoyingly. So this is odd.

@bridgetreilly yes planning to ask tomorrow but I am really struggling to see a possible good reason for it.
This isn't the first time school have made odd changes without consulting parents which impact the children.

That does sound ridiculous, I would speak to the school. Our school have stopped cursive too, but with a phased out approach. I have one Yr2 DC doing cursive and one Reception DC learning print.

No one needs to write in cursive. Cursive is actually different to basic joined up writing. If cursive is neat it looks pretty - if messy you can't read it.
My daughter's primary insisted on it for a while. It was ridiculous. I literally couldn't read half the children's work (I helped out at the school and her classmates had work displayed and I liked to look and admire it).
My daughter could write loads quickly and legible when doing non joined up writing. When she was forced to do cursive she could only managed a couple of sentences when normally she would write loads.
Neat and legible is important. Cursive really isn't.
Edit : although if the children can already write perfectly fine with cursive then they should be allowed to carry on. Whatever is easiest and neat should be the priority.

Cursive is a requirement of the national curriculum. A Y6 child would be marked as not meeting expectations without using it. Therefore, it’s odd but necessary to a point. Then secondary don’t care.

Not in my school they wouldn’t. We assess written work by the content, not by what it looks like. That doesn’t mean we don’t care, it just means we don’t pressurise children who haven’t yet mastered a comfortable, legible form of writing.

Has that changed then?

I remember a few years ago being told they had to have joined up for Yr 6 to meet/exceed expectations!

Both my girls I reassured could un-join after Yr 6 and their writing is so much neater. But it was drilled as necessary for sats..

In year 6 you only need to have evidence they can join, so not all their writing needs to be joined. So they can do some handwriting practice and that will count. But I've been through two moderations by LA moderators in recent years and none have ever mentioned the children's handwriting.

If an external moderator came in they would say a non joining child does not meet the standard. You could have the odd child with a “specific weakness” such as dyspraxia but that’s it.
Not saying it’s right or fair but them’s the rules.
They don’t have to join all the time, just prove they can by writing a paragraph or so in joined.

Not true anymore.

Why do people get annoyed before they've even spoken to an adult ? Check first.

Being able to print is essential in day to day life, you can't only write in cursive

It cannot meet Y6 standard if unjoined. Our writing was moderated and children got working towards standard even for a few unjoined words. Even by Y3, writing should only meet the expected standard if there is decent evidence of joining.

OP, I'd guess they're going back to print then reteaching joining. Maybe ask, rather than going in angry? Incidentally, this is not a subject I'd expect school to consult on if they have a plan to raise standards. Schools would get nothing done if they constantly consulted parents, nor do many parents know the expectations of the curriculum (understandably) so aren't in an ideal position to make decisions about teaching.

Our Year 6 writing was moderated this year. One boy was about to be downgraded to 'Towards' for failing to join, when my brilliant TA remembered that for some bizarre reason he always joins in his Science conclusions and pulled that book out for them to see.

Indeed @Onelifeonly but there is such a huge discrepancy in what moderators want to see.
Definitely in line for moderation this year…sigh.

OP is saying about cursive, not joined. OP have your school recently joined an academy chain? Maybe they have introduced a new handwriting policy.

Unjoined writing is a skill they need to learn for labelling diagrams or data and form filling etc. It’s in the curriculum guidance for year 5/6. My daughters school taught unjoined writing in year 4 and it was helpful to have that skill before year 5 where they are expected to write at a much faster pace

You can’t be in England then. It is literally in the teacher assessment framework,

Yes it is. It is in the teacher assessment framework for England. Go and have a look. WTS for non cursive at Y6. You are either not in England or you’re talking about pre cursive before stat assessment in Y6. Totally different.

Cursive just means joined if you look it up in a dictionary. Some people take it to mean the more American style of joining when letter all start on the line with lead ins, but that's just a style of joining. I've never seen a British primary school that actually teaches the American style if you look at how many of their letters are formed.

I find this interesting as I wonder if it’s a new thing. My kids were both made to start joining up their writing in year 1, when they’d barely learned how to form letters. Both are now teens with dreadful handwriting, and I’m sure that it’s partly due to forcing joining up too early. Maybe this has finally been acknowledged and the teaching pattern has changed. DS1 was actually told at age 13 to stop joining up, as his writing was illegible!

Exactly this. It’s annoying but true and throughout the year groups there are formative assessment statements linked to handwriting and letter formation.

If may be that the children, as a whole, are still not forming letters correctly and they are stopping to re-teach.

DD2 was Y3 last year and they were told to stop with the joined up writing - they hadn't learned how to form the letters correctly first and it was unreadable. I'm assuming that after a year of that, they'll reintroduce cursive this year (Y4).

Honestly if the only impact of COVID is they can't do cursive (spoiler, it isn't the only impact!) then they'll have got off quite lightly.