State education Is it up to standard?

[Educationguru]

Has anyone got any opinions on this one?

Nibs, I completely agree about education being beyond test results and what else you and HG said. However I'm just pointing out that the self motivated child in the type of school that teaches just to get the best A level results would have to explore outside the curriculum with very little help. If the student manages that they definitely have a head start for further education and would stand out at an Oxbridge style interview.

I have some experience of both sectors at primary level with different sorts of children, all in pretty high achieving schools, so I think comparing fairly...

At primary level my observations are these:

1 - your child will not fall behind at a decent primary (state or independent) IF you are on top of their education all the time. By this I don't just mean ensuring they complete their homework, but I mean ensuring they are following the curriculum, that there are no gaps, extending them where the class is slowing down, topping them up in areas they are struggling, and doing plenty of extracurricular, including museums, etc...do not underestimate the effect of a bad year with a bad teacher or lots of supplies, this will be a huge commitment in terms of catching up and do not rely on a teacher saying "your child is fine" because it might be true but it might be meaningless in the context of their progress. Follow your gut feeling.This is true in any sector you choose.

In a same vein do not rely on NC levels to determine whether a child is bright or has made progress, but rely on your own instinct. Often children will be not taught at the next NC level for lots of reasons, for example because they are at quite a high level already or they have one single gap which needs filling, or they are not clicking with a particular teacher, or there is some other problem lurking which has not been identified.

2 - a lot of the success stories will also depend on the cohort your child will be in, at the same state primary one of my children was in a very low achieving cohort and one in a relatively high achieving one, this meant that the latter was taught a lot more and was much less of a worry. Although most schools do differentiate, most of the teaching is still done as a class in both sectors, so the median level of the class is very important.

We found that for example, in Y4 my DS1's class (state) was being taught at L4, the prep was teaching at L4 (so very similar), BUT my other child's cohort was being taught at L3 still, because most of the class still hadn't mastered L3. It was much harder to top up the latter and my child was very unhappy, so we had no choice but to move her.

Also depending on the child, motivation can become low if the teacher doesn't recognise that they need to be kept stimulated. This is very child dependent but in most cases a very bright child is not a good match for a low achieving cohort, especially if it is coupled with disruption in the class or mediocre teaching.

Finally, for me the sign of a really good teacher/school is when a child comes home fired up about their learning, opening books, revising timetables and really getting stuck in their homework. I have had this in both sectors with different teachers and same children, so although I would have loved to believe that it is all down to the individual child, it is often a sign of how inspiring that teacher is to your child.

Hope these considerations help a bit.

statsgeek
school food / another thread : not sure to what you refer, other than that 1/3 of schools no longer have kitchens.

My kids take packed lunch because 1500 kids hitting the deli does not fit with their lunchtime music and sports activities

Happygardening
One of your kids is at Winchester College and the other at a Grammar school : you are not representative

• geographically
• financially
• academically

of any other family in the UK frankly (and if he was the scruffy oik crossing the road at 9am yesterday morning he's effing lucky I did not hit him as he had headphones in as he wafted in the 'I own this' way - next time I'll aim straight : but I do wish they would tuck their shirts in. )

Talking, teenagers do seem to be completely oblivious to the fact that the traffic is not just there for decoration when they cross the road, highly irritating although not enough yet for me to want to run them over.
I quite like children to be carefree enough to be a bit scruffy, they will spend enough time in later life tucking their shirts in.

Talkin one is at Win Coll but the other was at a comp not a grammar admittedly in Smalltownsville which is a real life living breathing Hot Fuzz town. You've seen the film we live the life.
If he was the boy you nearly run over yesterday at 9 am I won't be very pleased because I believe he was meant to be in a lesson!

And he's currently going through a smart non scruffy phase we've done the scruffy phase [smug smiley].

I'm delighted to be "not representative .... of any other family in the UK" the best compliment I've had for weeks. I've become increasingly concerned that I'm becoming so conventional and middle class as opposed to eccentric weird and an unknown class that I was beginning to frighten myself.

LOL
tell him to dodge the mad lady in the yellow convertible in future!

and to get back to the point

the difference between Winchester College and Hampshire Collegiate (both private, same county) is as much as that between Kigns Winchester and Toynbee (both state, same county)

it is NOT possible to generalise even in naice leafy areas

I wonder how somebody with no experience of teaching or school management could possibly be expected to set up and run a school. A parent group or business consortium have no experience of the' red tape', curriculum, exam criteria etc. How therefore can Free Schools work? I have links with a small private school which spends a lot of time on the 'paperwork' etc but where the pupils are happy and learning. It is not a selective school but the management side is still a nightmare with all the changes and ministerial interference. When will the powers that be get the idea that making school larger and shoving more pupils into the one area just does not lean towards improving standards or a good experience of school for the children?

I wonder how somebody with no experience of teaching or school management could possibly have been appointed Secretary of State for Education and meddle in exam grades, drafting of the national curriculum, teacher training and the best way of teaching children how to read?

Some are great, some are not.

Provision is patchy and you, the parent, get no control over whether you'll be given the good, the bad or the downright ugly.

Ditto Straggle

And I agree with Word too - some are fantastic, some are not. Just like people, I suppose.

I think it depends on where you live and your standards.

Where I live none of the state primary schools were up to my standards at all so DD goes to private school. However my little sister is at a fantastic state school 20 miles away where she lives.

I live in Kent, the state grammar schools are good and some of the faith schools are but IMO very few of the other state secondary schools are anywhere near good enough

Bluberrypots: I agree with every word you say but could never have put it so well. Th other thing I have learnt is that good leadership is absolutely fundamental and a poor leader can bring down a good school very quickly even when virtually all children are from educated aspirational families.

thanks Totallyunited, I absolutely agree with the leadership point too....

As long as schools are chasing targets and exam tables, the quality and breadth of the education given to our children will continue to fall; just look at the PISA results again this year.

Topics I was taught in Primary school 40 years ago are now either High School topics, or dropped entirely in the rush to "improve" exam results, but with the exam questions being nearly identical* each year, the High schools are basically teaching only the answers and not the subject.

• Three years worth of exam papers for "practice" will give you about 80% of the questions encountered in your exam.

There also needs to be a major shake-up in the EXAM setting process to make the questions more varied and challenging across the whole breadth of each subject.

OBitchery...but why why why aren't you hanging your head in shame and sacrificing your first born on the altar of "no-one should be able to have any choice at all.....if it's better than anyone else's choice". ..though to be honest, as for socio-economics i wonder if some leafy comps in affluent areas may be more middle class than some (the more mediocre ones) grammars in less affluent areas...

Blueberry I agree with you a lot but "being on top of your dcs' education ........... ensuring they are following the curriculum........ and .....no gaps........". It sounds like a fulltime teaching job how can every ordinary parent manage that. I regret so much that I trusted the school too much during my dc1 was in infant school as the teachers kept telling me my dc was doing fine until I got dc's ks1sat only then did I realise she was not at all doing fine.

Am I the only one feeling that why the state schools are so reluctant to communicate and work with parents on their individual dcs' learning? So many parents have to find their own way to support their dcs to cover as many gaps as possible and then schools can pretend they did all the teaching.

I kind of feel that there seems to be some sort of cultural / attitude issues in our state school education.

I think there are good and bad examples of schools in both the private and state sectors.
I do think it would be interesting to compare a school where the vast majority of parents and uninvolved in their child's education with a school where the vast majority of parents take responsibility for supporting their child's education and ensuring that any gaps in learning are covered. Obviously it's not practical to do that in real life terms, but it would give a clearer picture of how effective the schools are and how many results are flawed due to parents doing a significant amount of the teaching themselves.

I don't think you can ever fully separate out parental vs teacher input. I would argue that parental input is usually vital for success whatever the school and the child's 'natural ability'. At my indie school there is a lot of communication between parents and teachers and a huge expectation of parental involvement (probably more necessary than most teachers at the school are aware but I also have kids at the school) not to 'fill in the gaps' but to be on the case, help organise, make time and space for the kids to get hwk done and ensure support for the hard stuff.

At boarding schools the young people do the work. I was not, ever, involved in the homework they did. Their results were down to them, the quality of teaching and their hard work. My DDs are self-reliant and I can assure you all that at some schools, parents have very little input into school work or results. However, they have been able to pay for this type of education in the first place.

Getting back to the question, it is alarming that often in failing schools, parents think their children are doing well. Many parents have no idea of how well their child is being taught. They do know if they are well cared for and happy at school and most schools do well at this. It is extremely hard for a non educationalists to know what the child should be learning and what parent ever gets to see the curriculum, let alone work out where the gaps are?

There are poor schools in both sectors and I really feel for people who have no choice (WSWS - you in particular ) and have to send their children to a poor school. It would make me up sticks and leave! Easier said than done of course. It does show though that there are not enough good head teachers and senior staff to go round. Some schools do have a succession of people not up to the job and every school with repeated problems has poor leadership and low standards. Poor leadership is not confined to state schools either.

I think teachers can be reluctant to communicate that a child is performing badly because a parent is likely to ask what they're doing about it. The teacher may not feel they have the time or expertise to give the child additional support. Just making the contact can be enormously time consuming.

Whendidyoulast- if the teachers don't communicate that a child is underperforming then the teacher is failing in one of their key roles IMO. Whether the teacher has the expertise to offer the required support is irrelevant, she still has a duty to put measures into place to support the child and obtain additional funding if required. It might be that the child needs specialist help, but the teacher had to ensure that the help is sought by the school. To say that just making the contact is time consuming is really not good enough.
Parents evenings and school reports are some of the platforms that can be used to inform parents. But teachers can also phone the parents, speak to them at home time, leave them a message asking that they contact school. Some parents might not realise that their child is underperforming due to not having any previous experience with children's development, but a teacher will have lots of experience.

I agree with you Norude but I am also sympathetic to teachers. I think it can be the kids who don't cause trouble and don't necessarily have SN who particularly slip through the net.