does anyone else feel that some schools are putting too much pressure on parents to teach their children?

[juicychops]

my ds's school is awful and just seems to be getting worse. i am lucky that i have a ds (year 2) who loves learning and is one of the top in his class as it makes it easier for me to do extra work with him at home, which i have always done, but i feel his school is relying more and more on us parents to teach where they are failing to do so.

i have taught my ds to read. Im sure the school have played their part, but i feel comfortable saying that in the main i have taught him how to read. i have also always done a lot of maths with him as it has always been an interest of mine and i feel the school dont push him hard enough. He is left behind whilst the less able children have most of the attention.

I have no problem teaching my ds as i want him to fulfil his potential, but the pressure is now on ME to make sure he does fulfil his potential because left to the school, he wont do half as well as he could.

I feel like my ds's school is failing him. Even some of the parents of children at other levels in ds's class are sending their kids to outside classes and tutors because they feel the school arn't doing enough.

Am i alone in feeling this way? maybe ds's school is a particularly bad one

What I mean is don't think that a pushy school which sets regular meaningful homework is any less demanding in terms of parental commitment and superivison and time. I would argue it's much more so.

Five candles and wordfactory, I think the difference is that you are supporting what goes on in school, not filling in gaps on essential learning which a parent might fairly assume went on in school. Our school doesn't believe in teaching times tables by rote. They think it doesn't allow the child to grasp the full meaning of quantities and how to manipulate them in multiples. Which is a grand theory. or an excuse not to teach them. No one learns them at all, except if parents choose to teach them from home, by rote of course, as they were taught themselves. They are, however, expected to suddenly 'know' them in yr 5.

I do a lot of tutoring at home with my kids. And we all enjoy it, mostly. We make it fun. But I am teaching them things they'd not otherwise know. Or correcting teachers' mistakes on where apostrophes go. that's different from a school having a work hard play hard philosophy which they demonstrate at school and expect to be carried over into home life.

racing that is a fair point actually.

I feel that both DC are most definitely being taught the essentials in school. And more actually. If I did nothing whatsoever on top, they would be having a very good education indeed.

But like fivecandles a lot is expectd of me to keep the show on the road so to speak. The acadmeic standards are high and topics move swiftly so I have to ensure that homework is done and catch up sorted. The school won't wait. It is a very rare evening that I am not doing someghting to facilitate their education be it testing them for a chemistry quiz, helping them find things on the iternet, trawling through drawers to find jazz shoes. And there is a heavy commitment in getting them from A to B.

That said, I do enjoy it and don't feel remotely resentful (though I do grind my teeth when school give me 24 hours notice to locate a new mouth guard/running spikes/copy of A Turn of the Screw).

I sgould also say that I'm lucky that I work very flexibly and from home.
I don't know how families with two WOHPs could manage it.

In parts of Asia you send you child to school for the basics but the real learning happens at tuition centres or with a tutor after hours. School then tests you and if you do well you get the best resources allocated to you (you might be chosen for a gifted programme). School also takes the glory for having taught you well. Schools are almost branded - higher status attached to some. Teaching not really any better but expectations higher at some schools, and still the real learning happens outside. I wonder if this is what will happen here in time/what we are moving towards?

Racing, I'm starting to think our children are at the same schoo. My ds was suddenly expected to know his number bonds to 20. He hadn't been taught them at school, apparently, and he certainly hadn't received them as homework either, or I would have taught it. Nevertheless, he was suddenly expected to know them. Same with numberbonds to 10/ I'm wise to this now.

I think part of the problem with some schools and some children is that certain basic things like number bonds, timestables are learnt best in 1:1 or small groups. Obviously resources don't often allow for this which is why the children whose parents reinforce this at home are at an advantage.

My 7 year old was lucky enough to be chosen for the Numbers Counts programme last year which meant he got 30mins 1:1 for a whole term working specifically on number bonds and other stuff that would be classed as essential maths foundation. At the beginning of that year he was on the P scale at the end when he sat his KS1 Sats he was almost at a level 3.

This programme made a huge difference. He does have some SEN (ADHD/ASD) which is why whole classroom learning wasn't very good for him but once he had that input it turns out he is rather good at maths. It's given him a fantastic start to year 3 and I am very grateful he got the opportunity to do it but sadly it is all about funding.

Schools expect a lot from parents nowadays. I managed to help my dd2 caught up with her reading as she was behind. Now I am expected by dd2?s teacher to help her with her writing. I also help her with maths a lot. It is not easy as I told dds?s teacher in parents meeting. I didn?t learn things in the same way as the children do nowadays. I always worried that I will confuse dds. I didn?t help my dd1 much with her school learning while in infant school and as a result she didn?t do well at SAT only then I realised. In addition I still had a little toddler to look after at that time. So I overlooked a lot dd1?s learning needs. When dd1 went into year 3 I start paying for extra help. I really don?t know how else to help her by this stage. That?s why now I put a lot of time and effort on helping dd2 and hope dd2 will have a better result.

Yes, this is the issue I am grappling with: being told by the teacher that DD is "behind" because she doesn't know how to do something. However, that something required work that (a) she hasn't been taught at school (b) she hasn't been set as homework (c) the school didn't ask me to do with her.

And I am up there on the 99.99th centile of the world's most attentive parents! If it slipped through my fingers, it damn well slipped through everyone else's!

I also told dds?s teachers that I really wish the school would send home some structural homework on a regular basis. Surely this will help parents to know what the children are learning and how. But it never gets anywhere! I sometimes feel like the blind leading the blind.

Bonsoir I've also experienced similar. My thoughts are for the most part school believes if you're child is bright they'll just grasp concepts without help, to tell parents exactly what's covered & when is to cheat and may skew things by making a naturally slower child appear cleverer.

Some parents have got hold of what happens when/exact curriculum & prime children in advance but you need to either have a child that's been in that year before or be on the inside track.

Why not complete transparency?

'Your' child I mean.

I honestly think that children learn much more at home until about age 8 (1:1) than they ever do formally in school. That includes the formal learning and basic concepts that are supposedly covered in school. Most parents who leave it all to the school will find their child has simply not learned. After age 8 I think children are emotionally ready to feel at home in school and can learn there, formally, but still with a lot of interest and input from home.

Back when I was casting around for a school to send DD1 to I investigated the local Montessori outfit. They wanted parents to back up the curriculum and approach and commit to evening training and lectures so that we could do just that -- it would have been impossible for us to do at the time. Plus it was extremely expensive. What I took from that experience was the lesson that parents must be prepared to do a huge amount of the nuts and bolts teaching, and also reinforce what the children are exposed to in the school in order for it to work.

mathanxiety - I agree that children learn more at home than at school; it is particularly evident that this is so in my DD's case since her fluency and skills in English are so much greater than in French, despite going to school in French for the greater part of the day and doing nearly all her formal learning at school in French. She can only have learned so much in English from me and from what I have provided for her.

But I would still like school to be, as Cortina says, "transparent" about what it will teach and what it won't.