To think parents expect too much of schools?

[Arbel]

We all know state schools are desperately underfunded, with big class sizes and kids with English as a second language and unmet SEN needs lumped into mainstream.

I have a son in year 2 and a daughter in year 5. Last night on the year 2 WhatsApp, several mums were bemoaning the fact that their kids don’t know the days of the week in order, can’t spell their own middle names and have illegible handwriting. Surely as parents, you care enough to educate your own kids on such basic matters?!

children with severe Sen were excluded from education in the 60s.

the movement that established education as the right of every child wasn’t really accepted until the 70s.

so kids who couldn’t do x y and z didn’t go to school.

this is separate from an erosion of expectations which I agree there has been.

I remember when I started teaching in 1997 the nursery teacher coming into the staff room aghast because a child had started and they didn’t know any colours. I can remember her standing at the sink talking about how surprising it was. Now, we are more surprised if they do know anything. Parents just seem to think everything is the responsibility of the school. Including toilet training. That alone has damaged EYFS education immeasurably as one member of staff is dealing with toileting for almost the whole day instead of playing.

Fair point about SEN, although there most definitely was a girl with SEN (or however it was termed then) in my primary class, who really couldn't do much for herself. She lived round the corner from us, and we knew her well.

I work in a secondary school now, and I blush to think of all the "why don't they just" statements I made about the school in relation to my little darlings before I worked there. I had no idea what/how much the school does! But I do approach parents' requests with understanding!

I discovered to my consternation last year that the fact there are 52 weeks in a year was not something some of my year 13s knew!

They do weave learning maths, english , history and science into all that play. The activities all have learning objectives and then the teachers ask lots of questions and help the children think about the whats, whys wheres and hows of it all. I think they have explained the delivery to you, but not the aims or how it works.

The reason they do all that play is to make sure there are solid foundations to build on for the next steps. If you try skipping these steps, they never really get a chance to do those things again. So before fine motor comes gross motor, so you want waving a paint brush and riding a bike, before you get to handwriting etc. Stuff like forest school is a chance to broaden vocabulary, problem solve.

A lot of other countries in europe do this play based learning for a bit longer than the uk.

I agree, usually done through playing games such as those produced by Orchard games.
i would not be happy with a nursery, child minder or Nanny who did not incorporate this to a pre school child’s education.

Yes, I can quite believe it. I was recently teaching A level Maths. In an exam question on probability you needed to use the number of days in January, for example, and my student didn’t know how many that was.

Although English is his first language he spent his primary school years in a different EU country, but that’s something that’s the same all over the world. I think.

My guys in their second year of school had a monthly calendar page - and they had to decorate it, populate important dates, class birthdays etc. they also ticked off each day, and did Mid-term and Christmas countdowns. I thought it was sweet. I've just copped it was the foundation for learning the concept of time and planning and all that good stuff.

I think a lot of it comes from changes in parenting.

Go back 30 years (pre-screens and only 5 TV channels) and kids just wouldn't sit in front of screens for a large chunk of the day. Parents would talk to them, teach them things, play with them, baking, walks, parks, books etc... You spent quality time with your child.

It is recommended that children under 2 have NO screen time at all (including TV), yet I frequently see toddlers in pushchairs with a tablet to stare at.

Children aged 2 to 4 should have NO MORE than 1 hour a day (including TV) but some parents seem to let their kids have hours on screens.

5 to 17 year olds should spend no more than 2 hours a day in front of a screen.

I think some kids are missing out on a huge amount of parental interaction which has replaced with time in front of a screen. This is creating a massive divide between children in terms of their learning, so it is no wonder primary schools are struggling and having to fill in gaps that they shouldn't have to.

I work in a secondary school, and we discovered one Y7 pupil had managed to watch almost 40 hours of TikTok in one week.

I think a lot of parents need to go back to basics, and start spending time with their child and remembering why they actually had kids in the first place.

Most of our "naughtiest" children in school are actually attention starved and play up to get attention from a grown up as that's the easiest way to get it.

I am not questioning the value of all those activities at school, and how they can support learning.
I was purely answering in the context of the thread: if my kids get to do all those things at school but cannot read, spell or write, or know the months and seasons, then there is a serious issue with what school prioritises in their curriculum.

As a parent, I think it's my responsibility to expose my children to all type of learnings. I'm more than happy to teach now to ride a bike, to take them to museums or the woods to explore nature.

But there are professionals whose job it is to teach the academic basics that OP is describing, and I would absolutely rely on school to lead on teaching those skills.

Oh I see. I misunderstood. It sounded like you saw the school and didnt get whether they taught academics at all.

I just meant that that is how professionals teach the academic basics like reading, writing and maths skills in the early years and at the start of ks1. Its not a seperate thing.

I see children learn to tell the time in year 2 fo instance. I witness them being able to do it confidently and well. Then i hear secondary teachers say the chikdren cant tell the time. I think they forget what they learn if its not used again.

I’d like to get rid of multi academy trusts. They have created a massive tier of highly paid leadership, admin and CPD management roles that we don’t need. The money is there. It’s just not reaching the classroom. We could have smaller classes and more resources if they didn’t exist.

I remember being at parents evening and overhearing:
teacher : he doesn’t know his colours
paeent: they told us that last year

But it doesn't need a professionally produced and designed game that has to be made time for. Colours, shapes and counting can all be done while having the child with you through the normal daily tasks instead of shoving a phone in their hands. I bloody hate seeing this in the supermarket.

Yes. Parents need to focus less on “days out” and spend weekends teaching the basics.

I could read and write in reception; my parents read to us every night from infancy onward. And talked to us a lot every day. No screens at all.

A horrifyingly large percentage of parents NEVER even sit down with their children to do the daily 10 minute read with their primary age child.

So many of their reading records are left unsigned, unused.

10 minutes looking at a book with your kid. Is it really too much to ask?

I care enough to work with my daughter at home but I also care enough about her and other children that I do expect the schools to have some basic standards. The entire class should not be working to the maths level of the least able child, for example. The whole point of schools is structured education and parents generally aren't qualified or equipped in the way teachers are quite literally trained to be.

I do appreciate that they're under-resourced and only contact them when there's a need to advocate for my daughter's education. I don't think my expectations are too high, I do however think there's a large element of 'bigotry of low expectations' running through that particular school. I know a teacher that works in it and she concurs.

Re the lack of general knowledge and 'dunno' answers, I don't think it's actually a lack of knowledge but a lack of knowing how to think sometimes. My daughter does it too sometimes and one of the problems is being spoonfed information that she doesn't really know what to do with. I don't know how to combat that, not being a teacher or educational psychology or other qualified person, so I just try to pull it out of her or get her to look up what she says 'dunno' to.

Dats of the week and middle names they should know (parents have to teach their kids how to spell their names especially these days).

handwriting really does need working on at school, and many schools skimp on it.

I would love if my daughter came home with a 'daily read'. She's had nothing home from school for over two years and wasn't doing homework prior to that due to difficulties using the app. I've ended up giving her 'homework' myself (on paper) and am about to get in touch with the school yet again to find out how I can do that in line with what they're learning in school as there's actually no communication between the school and us on it. I think in the younger years no homework is fine but as they get older there's a big gap in consolidation of learning, and trying to help them yourself without knowing what they're working on (unreliable child narrator not withstanding) is hard. I don't think my expectations are too high with her school, I think they're pretty fundamental, but their standards are low. I wonder about the future of children in a school like this and parents who don't do any work with them. Neither will be picking up on the other.

I used to volunteer to hear primary aged children read and I agree, it’s so sad. I’d say a third of the class read 4+ times a week (which was the school’s suggestion) at home, a third once or twice and a third never at all.

The difference between those groups of children was very obvious.

Don't they have to write the date on each new piece of work?

I invigilate Y6 SATs every year.

Each year, there are three or four children who don't know their date of birth, and an equal number that don't know or can't differentiate their middle name. These children are aged 11!

I think that Chinese parents are really involved with their children which leads to high achievement, but these children often have voluntary have chosen English names, which don't appear on any school records. They really have a hard time learning that their name is Siwei rather than Gordon.

"I think part of it is parents who are time-poor"

We all have the same 24 hours in the day.

We all have 24 hours in the day but we don't all have the same demands on those 24 hours. Utterly trite saying.