what do you think of the national curriculum, league tables, sats, coursework etc?

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whilst i think the national curriculum is a good idea, i think sats should be gotten rid of. they have enough stress with a-levels and gcses and frankly they are not important. league tables should be based on a lot more than blardy sat results. when i pick a school i don't care how blardy clever everyone else's kid is, or more often, how many of the kids parents can afford a tutor. i think end of year testing by the school is sufficient enough for the school to see how the pupils are progressing and that should be it.

coursework is a good idea when they are older but it should never be allowed home and it should be done in exam conditions i think. i remember when i was at school the children who had mums who were teachers not surprisingly did rather well on their coursework.

random ofsted checks would be better than planned ones cos i know schools do put a lot of effort preparing for these visits which defeats the object of it to me.

I think the national curriculum is too rigid. For example in theory a top grammar school and the MLD school I work at study the same subjects and topics.

Should there be a one size fits all curriculum. What do you think of THIS level of detail in the national numeracy stragery.

www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/primary/teachingresources/mathematics/nnsunitplans /year1/Y1T1Unit3Moneyandplace/nns_unitplan050803y1t1unit3.pdf

What happens if a class just doesn't get it?

I think:

• The National Curriculum is a good idea
• SATS are pretty terible more because of the way they are adminstered than the fact of testing.
• League tables I'm shamefully addicted to.
• OFSTED reports are interesting to read and I like to have more information than just local gossip. On the other hand, I suspect OFSTED praises schools who know how to pass an OFSTED inspection.

idea

I dislike having to devote a third of the year to teaching the SATs when they count for very little.

I dislike and find it fairly pointless having to mark and report in levels up to year 9 and then switch to grades for GCSE & A Level. Parents tell me they are happier with grades than 5a or 7c.

The pupils are meant to progress in levels from primary school to secondary but a level 5 descriptor at secondary is not the same at a level 5 at primary. A parent or child may well think either they have not made any progress or that the teacher hasn't assessed accurately.

Although I think league tables are useful they are not the be all and end all. The school that I personally attended had about 50% A-C (in pre-league table days) and I received an excellent education & went on to a prestigious university. I now teach at a school with superb results and an outstanding ofsted report, and yes it's a good school, but I have taught in a better one merely graded very good by Ofsted.

I'm really interested in what you have to say about Ofsted Heated. I've recently seen a school that OFSTEd rated good overall and outstanding in one area and I thought it was awful. I saw the school before reading the report and was amazed.

National curriculum - too rigid.
League tables - not really an indicator of anything.
Sats - a waste of time which could be spent actually learning something rather than cramming as much as possible in to make the league tables look better.
Coursework - boring for most students. Some students get a lot more assistance than others so can be unfair.
Ofsted checks - some schools are good at passing tests, some are not. Not always an indicator of whether a good school or not.

Whilst in one sense it's flattering to think that I work in an outstanding school the majority of the staff don't recognise it as such from the report. In fact the aspects that were praised as outstanding innovation (we have a SMT with new broom syndrome) are the bane of teachers' lives & viewed with contempt by the pupils - bah! - but at least it shows we 'embrace change'!

My ds is going to attend a primary school that had a pretty good Ofsted but was criticised for not stretching the more able, esp in English. But actually this is the one area I'm not worried about since the report was 18m ago and the one thing the school will have been doing since that report is pushing the more able!

So Heated is it your opinion that there are certain things that OFSTED likes to see and a school will score well for doing/having them but they might not mean anything in terms of pupil learning or happiness.

The special school I work at has personalised learning and I wish it existed in mainstream. The first lesson of each day is called skills groups. The children work on areas that they find difficult for six weeks every day. The children are grouped across years.

For example child who is completely and utterly unfit might be made to do PE every morning for 6 weeks on top of their usual PE. A child with reading difficulties could be made to have a reading lesson every morning. The children get to do things like typing courses, extra numeracy, fine motor skills work or help with social skills.

I imagine in a mainstream setting personalised learning each day could be used to stretch a group of gifted and talented kids. Why should a child be made to spend an hour a day doing basic literacy or basic numeracy for the whole of primary school if they have already achieved a certain standard?

The school I worked in was OFSTEDed recently and the report was very fair. Whatever you say about OFSTED, the inspectors are impartial.

I think that two days notice is about right for an inspection. Do you really think a no notice inspection would be fair on a school?

Two days is not enough time for a school to fake an inspection.

No, I agree you can't fool an Ofsted inspector into thinking a poor school is a good one but the gloss that's put on a visit can make the difference between gradings.

The actual inspection of lessons took 90 minutes. Who the inspector saw was suggested by the head who put together the itinerary so those who had a chance of being seen were forewarned. The outcome of the inspection was largely decided before the visit based upon results and paperwork, the rest because the head and his team talk the talk and are very good at self promotion through the educational press. I'm not saying that a good report wasn't merited but there are other schools out there that actually do as good if not better job than we do but don't get such a glowing report.

In some instances I think there is very little between a good and outstanding. I would be concerned if a school were in special measures or failing and the existing management were still in post.

Reallytireed, your personalised learning sounds great. Can I ask what the class sizes are like at your school to run this?

We have 'personalised learning' which means pupils take GCSE & AS levels early whether capable or not!

I think:
the National Curriculum is for many subjects ghastly and a disaster.
the end

What struck me was that I thought the school was awful. Not even vaguely good except in pats. And I don't think of myself as some rather alternative minded educationalist who doesn't like systems. I couldn't see what they would have seen.

The average class size of the school is about 12 children. The school also has plenty of LSAs and the profoundly deaf children also have BSL interpreters as well.

The skills groups vary quite a lot in size depending on what activity they are doing. Some of the groups are as big as 15 where as some groups only have 5 children.

The children all have fairly major special needs so it is difficult to compare class size with mainstream.

curriculum - I don't know enough about it to comment but hear from those in the teaching profession that it leaves little time for tailor-made, innovative teaching. Maybe it should be there as a framework for new teachers to fall back on and experienced teachers should be allowed to branch out and teach in the manner they see fits with the pupils.

SATS - Not sure. If they had never existed I doubt I would miss them. In the summer I am moving to a new area which I know little about and need to find a school for my DD to join Year 1, so I am finding the results and league tables semi-useful.

What is interesting to me it to look at schools which have a decent amount of pupils getting level 5 and less than 90% getting level 4. It seems to me these schools show they are able to teach across the different abilities and haven't relied necessarily on an all good catchment to obtain the level 5s. Still, the schools with high level 4s and 5s are appealing to me too

OFSTED - Again, moving to a new area, I am finding the Ofsted reports useful to gain more information about a school and its catchment. I pay little attention to the Good, Satisfactory or Outstanding aspect. So long as it is not in special measures. I pay more attention to what it says the school needs to do to improve. I'm also able to gain some insight into what extra-curricular activities are offered and what facilties the school has before I commit to visiting.

Although the upshot is that I realise I have little chance in finding a free place in one of the better, popular schools and perhaps it would have been better for me not to have been able to know so much and then be taunted by it.

The school DD goes to now doesn't look fantastic on paper, just good enough. But it was our closest school and I had no reason to dislike it. So far it seems to be a lovely school and very well suited to DD. It's a shame I have to move her.

National Curriculum is t5oo rigid.

Sats should be got rid of. Without them no league tables.

Ofsted - inspection is necessary I think and the reports are useful on the whole. A few days notice is fine - you can't fake it with a few days notice - you may be able to deliver an excellent lesson as a one off but the management etc has to be in place and there's a whole lot more to an inspection than just the observed lessons.

Coursework - I think in some ways this is good - not all children perform well under exam conditions. But there are issues around having too much help I think.

OTW I feel that my kids have been pretty much shafted by the education system - they are older and ds1 was one of the first to do Sats; there seems to have been continual changes at GCSE and then the introduction if AS levels and more testing at that point. The goalposts have moved throughout.

We have had the benefit of some fab teachers along the way though, mainly in primary but at secondary too. It's just a shame that they don't get the freedom to just 'teach'.

NC and SATs are time-consuming nonsense.
Give the classrooms back to the teachers.

National curriculum is too rigid.
There are no SATs in Wales now and no league tables.
Coursework is god gor my 15 year old and it is good she can do some of it at home. She has Dyspraxia and if she was only allowed to do it at school she would not get it finished in time for the deadlines.
Saying that she has done a lot of science and Maths course work at school and the school has held course work days for both these subjects.

i think coursework days where the teacher gives minimal help are a better idea than taking it home. it makes it fair.

I deliberately chose my dc's school becasue it has no SATS and is not constrained by teh National curriculum.

My children are thriving, learning interesting facts not being pushed to marks on a test and are very happy so it is worth the sacrifices to pay for it

I cannot beleive how narrow the NAtioanl curriculum is and how little children these days are 'allowed' to learn compared with what i did. And SATS are vicious, time wasting nonsense