So upset about school report. feeling like a shitty mother

[Harriet220909]

Had my son's school report back yesterday and I'm really upset
He hasn't met any of the targets for he's year. Not one.
I know I should have done more with him at home but I have an extremely demanding toddler, I'm stuck in a one bed flat so there's nowhere for him to go to do he's homework and I feel so shit.
He's such a bright child bit completly lacks confidence due to him being behind. He's writing is unreadable and when he asks me to read he's writing I try so hard to and he's little faces just crushes when I get it wrong

I feel awful and like I am failing him. He's got an awful father who never helps there's just little old me trying to do everything

And now he's behind and he knows it. Today he told me he feels stupid after attempting he's homework. I can't afford a tutor, how can I help him?

I just wish the school had told me he was behind instead of me having to read it on the report at the end of the year. I would have pushed him harder and tried to do more

www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/10/sweden-schools-crisis-political-failure-education

A significant number fails to get a GCSE pass. These children also trail in primary. They do not believe in themselves; their education does not help them to do so and to overcome their home background deficiencies. It does not provide them with the tools to learn (resilience, etc) but material to master.

The problems in Sweden are the same problems that have beset British education since records have been kept:
'...inequality in the Swedish system has gone up. “This used to be the great success story of the Swedish system,” he said. “We could offer every child, regardless of their background, a really good education. The parents’ educational background is showing more and more in their grades.

“Instead of breaking up social differences and class differences in the education system, we have a system today that’s creating a wider gap between the ones that have and the ones that have not.”

Lack of perceived equality, lack of a sense of all being in it together, all contribute to failure. When a system starts to lose track of the goal of enabling or maintaining equality as its central purpose, and instead panders to the fears of parents or the ambition of investors or the megalomania of bean counters, the result is bad for children's outcomes.

'...it was not one single change that caused the problems, but a combination that helped create a “fragmentary school system” which lacked steering and sowed the seeds for growing inequality.

“The school system is not a market where everyone has the same possibilities and the same information. It becomes that some parents, the educated parents with strong resources, use the possibility to choose schools.”'

I posted this before, about students' experience of ability grouping, the class system, and so on. Division never turns out well.

Math
"I think people here are mistaking the sort of activity that takes place in school playgrounds at lunchtime for the half day spent outdoors that forms such an important element of the Swedish preschool experience."

No, Im not, and I've probably to been to more scandinavian schools than you. We keep wellingtons and water proofs at school. My son is dressed entirely as appropriately for play as his best friend in the non- uniformed school nearby.

I think you are mistaking 'people on here' for idiots.

That said I do agree that uniform can be a means of control, it's a different argument though. What seems to be said here is that uniform as most people experience it in the state system now is not a sinister or as impractical as you state.

Our governments plans for the future may well be a little sinister and unpleasant (in my opinion).

If you can't work out the difference between 73% (WB FSM) in primary reaching expected level or beyond and 32.3% (WB FSM) in secondary achieving expected level you should perhaps rethink your user name

Free range uniforms

Good morning all. Just thought I would give a little update.
School have been preparing the children for year 2, which is alot more classroom based from what it sounds. Ds has been finding this difficult which explains the trying to get out the school ( that's what I believe not always easy to tell with kids)

I in no way have let my son knoe about my worries so he is unaware that he hasn't met targets. He has become aware that he is behind due to watching he's school friends
He was asked to describe something in the classroom and he told me he couldn't but everyone else could.
It's obviously killing he's confidence as the teacher told me in the last month or so he's become restless and not concentrating.

My main concern for him is if he's confidence in himself keeps dropping he's going to give up and fall further behind.

Love all the suggestions on play based learning with definetly be doing those and also the school has given him lots of little projects (write an invitation to dinner, and cook it) that sort of thing etc. The children can earn points and whoever earns the most gets to chose a class treat. He's very excited so will attempt as many of these as possible.

Thanks again for all your help

Praise his efforts rather than getting things right.
I tell my class that we learn from mistakes and if we get everything right all the time then we've learnt nothing.
It sounds as if you've got it worked out have a lovely summer break and enjoy time with your children.

Thank you mrz we tried the hamma beads with him, he absolutely loved it and was really able to follow the instructions to make the picture, have more on the way!

Thank you for the update Harriet. I am glad that things are looking a little brighter now. I hope your son has a fantastic year next year and things are better.

(I would urge you to keep talking to your son's teachers regularly and show your interest. I think teachers feel more confident and encouraged to work with children when they know parents are supporting them. Also, my DD is about the same age and this seems to be the age that it becomes clear that some children have particular difficulties which have nothing to do with parenting such as hearing impairment, dyslexia, etc. I am not saying this is the case with your DS, but perhaps worth keeping in the back of your mind.)

Knex is another good construction toy.
Does he like music, because as i said above my ds has a learning difficulty (not saying your ds has spld) and i am sure piano lessons helped him. I know piano lessons are expensive but a cheap little toy organ or recorder helped as did swimming as my ds didnt crawl.

also my dd had a skin craft on her hand and the hospital said being in the water was excellent excersise for her hands which will help with writing.

knex is too hard for a five year old. I would be doing join the dots in letter shapes.

Do not let him think he is stupid and he will learn to write in his own time.

Mine had knex at 5(op ds is nearly 6) and there is also a version for younger children anyway.

Our three year olds use Kid KNEX before moving onto normal KNEX

Good luck op.

mathanxiety;

"When did you see an illustration of 'The Famous Five' wearing tracksuits?" "That is quite funny." It was meant to be funny - 'tongue-in-cheek' British humour!
"Back in the days of bombshells, there were no such thing as trainers." Exactly my point and children had more unstructured, outdoor fun than they do today.

Whatever the merits of the Swedish preschool experience (up to age 7) the Swedish education model as a whole is now labelled, 'The Swedish Disaster'. Sweden has tumbled in the OECD PISA rankings to 27/28th out of 34 countries. Inequalities within society and between schools is one major problem but also poor quality teachers, progressive teaching methods and large class sizes are also blamed. In Finland teaching is a 'high status' profession, only 1 in 10 applicants are accepted onto teacher training programmes and they train for 5 or 6 years with a masters degree before getting their own class. In Sweden, 'student demand for teacher training programmes is so low that almost anyone applying will be accepted.' Class sizes in Stockholm can be as high as 35 but in Finland they are less than 20 with science practical classes as low as 12 (which of course explains why Finland does so well for average ability in the PISA science test).

My point is that giving British kids from poorer backgrounds no formal teaching up to the age of 7 will only reduce their life chances even further (Sweden is now below the UK in the PISA test) unless there is a whole change of education policy, training, support and interventions for every struggling child (at the expensive of high achieving children) in small classes from age 7 onwards (as in Finland); that is not going to happen in the UK.

One from the U.S.
www.understood.org/en/learning-attention-issues/signs-symptoms/age-by-age-learning-skills/writing-skills-what-to-expect-at-different-ages?utm_source=pinterest&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=understoodorg&pp=1

It has faltered because Sweden somehow or other decided tried to emulate the British model.

Life chances are enhanced, not ruined, by early attention to what is important in the long run. Britain has always suffered from a 'long tail of underachievement' and Britain has always tried to put the cart before the horse in early years education. Nothing has changed and nothing will change until the right approach is used and the academic focus is ditched.

Britain's scores are held back by the one third of students who drift through school unable to learn. Britain has always been prepared to sacrifice those children in order to facilitate those who can succeed despite the bass ackwards educational approach. Instead of investing in tremendous quality teachers and small classes, ideas which would be greeted by taxpayer uproar, Britain resorts to the deckchair rearranging approach of micromanagement of professionals' work (via testing), forcing children who are not developmentally ready to read and write and do arithmetic far too young (targets must be met), and setting in primary schools at an age when children are developing their core self image.

No they are going to adopt a model similar to the UK as a result of the failure while UK adopt the failed models from Sweden and U.S.

Actually, they tried to adopt the fragmented UK model that features both private and state schools, and abandoned their commitment to inculcation of egalitarian values and true levelling by means of local schools that catered for everyone equally. They pandered to market forces, just as Britain's approach does.

Isn't that a U.S. Model?

Unless you're going to tell me Milton Friedman is British

It is British.

From the Guardian link you posted earlier:
'“This used to be the great success story of the Swedish system,” [Fridolin] said. “We could offer every child, regardless of their background, a really good education. The parents’ educational background is showing more and more in their grades.

“Instead of breaking up social differences and class differences in the education system, we have a system today that’s creating a wider gap between the ones that have and the ones that have not.”'
www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/10/sweden-schools-crisis-political-failure-education

Results in GCSEs correspond exactly to socio economic status.

The British school system is characterised by a plethora of options for parents, from state to private to independent to academies a public/private hybrid, above all a lack of commitment to equality that results in setting and early forced academic focus, i.e. the prioritisation of the interests of the better off and the disregarding of the interests of the less well off and the less obviously able students. Plus there is a tendency to experiment with pedagogy that is only half understood in the British case an approach to literacy education that was developed with children who were older than the British children currently exposed to them, with seemingly no understanding of the fact that brain development stages have to be taken into account when designing a curriculum.

Results in GCSEs correspond exactly to socio economic status.

I do not know if this is true or not, but may I ask, how does eg graduating high school in the US correspond to economic status? Is there a link?

"To the extent that Americans think about Sweden at all, it usually conjures images of gibberish-speaking Muppets, Ikea furniture, and, when it comes to government policies, the welfare state. So it’s something of a surprise that a higher fraction of Swedish students go to privately run (and mostly for-profit) schools than in the U.S.The system was put in place in the early 1990s by a center-right (by Swedish standards) government, inspired by the ideas of the godfather of free market economics, Milton Friedman. In a 1955 article titled “The Role of the Government in Education,” Friedman advocated for a system in which governments would issue vouchers to parents that would be redeemable toward tuition payments at a private school of their choice. This voucher system would allow market pressures to work their magic, as schools would be forced to improve their quality in order to compete for students and their voucher dollars. (Even if governments remained in the education business, public schools would face the same market pressures to maintain enrollment as private schools.)
There are differences between the libertarian ideal espoused by Friedman and the actual voucher program the Swedes put in place in the early ’90s. Friedman would have allowed schools to charge parents more in tuition than what a voucher could cover, potentially allowing rich parents to send their kids to better-resourced schools than poor parents could. Friedman’s system also allowed for choice on both sides of the market: Just as parents got to pick where to send their kids, schools had the right to accept some applicants and reject others. In the name of equal access, Sweden forbade nonvoucher tuition payments and permitted only limited screening (based on scholastic performance) for high school admission.

But Swedish school reforms did incorporate the essential features of the voucher system advocated by Friedman.The hope was that schools would have clear financial incentives to provide a better education and could be more responsive to customer (i.e., parental) needs and wants when freed from the burden imposed by a centralized bureaucracy. And the Swedish market for education was open to all, meaning any entrepreneur, whether motivated by religious beliefs, social concern, or the almighty dollar, could launch a school as long as he could maintain its accreditation and attract “paying” customers.

For a while, at least if media accounts of the reforms are any indication, things looked like they were going pretty well. Voucher school students consistently outperformed their counterparts at government schools; in 2008, the London Telegraph described the reforms’ impact as “tremendous.” The number of private schools increased tenfold in less than a decade, with a majority run as for-profits.

But in the wake of the country’s nose dive in the PISA rankings, there’s widespread recognition that something’s wrong with Swedish schooling. As part of ongoing efforts to determine the root cause, the Swedish Schools Inspectorate (the equivalent of the U.S. federal government’s Department of Education) called for a regrading of a subset of standardized tests administered during 2010 and 2011. In total, nearly 50,000 students at all grade levels from more than 700 schools had their tests in English, Swedish, science, and math re-evaluated."

As in many things the NLS tried to copy the US with predictable outcomes

I am sure it is a similar story Indole.

And the point of that is, Mrz?