Do you think your DC is getting a better education than you did?

[ampere]

The question occurred to me just the other day as once again I was dealing with the blizzard of notices about school trips here and there, visiting theatre companies, curriculum information etc ...

Personally I think that my DSs ARE!

Briefly I went (latterly) to a village primary. Our final 3 years' teacher was absolutely inspirational, an older bloke (wife was the headteacher at the school with three classes, 4-11!) but he'd been a head in a secondary, a teacher at a prep and all sorts over the years... BUT he was great if you were clever. Those of us bound for grammar flew BUT those who weren't- well, I'm not sure they got a vast amount out of it, tbh. The school 'did' humiliation quite well, for example, was hugely competitive, and I don't recall one 'enrichment' activity, though we did a lot of group singing and sport (walk to the Rec!). I then went to a girls grammar which certainly, from 11-16, suited me perfectly.

My DB's experience wasn't nearly so good. He liked primary well enough but was shunted off to a dire SM along with the rest of the -ahem- 'bottom' 85% of kids! Left there with as good as nothing.

MY DSs go to a high achieving primary (8th in the county at SATS) BUT the school seems to do well with ALL the DCs, not just the very clever. They get a go at so many activities, external activities seem to be carefully selected to tie in with what they're learning, their progress is monitored to the nth degree, we know exactly how they're doing, we get 3 parents evenings a year + open days, and we can more or less wander in to talk to our DCs' teacher whenever we want. But I don't think any of this is unusual in this day and age.

The secondary to which they're bound is top of the county (state, 11-16) for GCSEs BUT again, ALL the DCs seem to be well catered for, not just the hyper clever ones. Sport, art, humanities and craft seem to be taken seriously and there are endless opportunities for a DC to explore different avenues.

So when I say 'better' I don't mean 'academic' at all. I think my DCs education is more coherent than was generally available when I was young; far more 'science' seems to go into the act of teaching and learning these days; there seems to be more opportunity available for a wider variety of personalities.

What do you think?

dd is definitely having a nicer education! she is only 6 so jury is out on whether it is better.

Yep, without a shadow of a doubt.

I know people really criticise SATS and Ofsted but I remember my parents having no way of telling (as people without much education themselves) how good a school was, what its strengths and weaknesses were. Hence, moving house and sending me somewhere with very low academic expectations and horrendous bullying

I'v been able to read Ofsted reports on local schools, compare SATS results, look around and make an informed decision.

I've - my schooling wasn't that bad!

i did gcses and yes they are dumbed down but my education wasn't. it depends on teh school tbh.

i watched the dispatches program last night and was fairly horrified at the fact the in some schools teachers work solidly for the sats exam and then stop for the month afterwards.

My DS is 4 and he is definitely getting a better education than me at that age. I got a better education later on, but at 4, OMG it was so terrible!

Primary schools are very different now to how they were in the late 70's/early 80's when I was there. The national curriculum has made them much more structured, and children now learn things which were not touched on until secondary school.

Homework was unheard of when I was at school, and we did not do that much during the school day either. I think that teachers got away with being quite lazy back then, but now they are stressed so it has gone too far the other way. I think that children are quite stressed too with all the work.

So yes, primary schools are better now.

My dc are not at secondary school yet, but I do agree with Riven about GCSE papers being dumbed down too much. I think the same also applies to A' Levels. Why do we need an A grade? An A should mean an A . I know that teenagers who get a string of A's have worked hard and should be awarded, but exams should be able to distinguish between bright hardworking students and brilliant ones. At the moment they cannot, and I am not convinced that even the A does this.

Possibly I'm younger than most mumsnetters, so by the time I went through school, primary schools were interesting and nice places to be.

I went to three. One fine but dull, one super-exciting (no school uniform and interesting teachers) and one poor. (We moved around).

I feel that my dd experiences an education similiar to the one I experienced at the super-exciting one. However, I do believe that they are pushed a bit harder at a younger age. I don't know whether this is a good or bad thing...probably doesn't matter that much. And of course, primary schools now set homework although - after a long review - my dd's school is about to change its homework policy and only offer a limited amount.

However, compared to her grandparents, her education is superb. My mother went to a primary where the teachers were cruel and if you didn't pass the 11+ you had to stay there until 14. (There were no secondary moderns in the town). My mother says that all they did was arithmetic in pounds, shillings and pence.

As for secondary school, my mixed comprehensive offered a very academic education to the bright children and (hopefully) supported the others well. Compared to my parents experience (at uninspiring, low achieving grammer schools where attendance and behaviour was poor) my education was great. We live in a area of mixed comprehensives and what I see on offer is very similar to what I experienced.

Yes, my DD is because we have chosen to send her to private school. We started off state and no it definitely wasn't as good as my education imo.

I agree with Riven re the dumbing down of exams. In fact I think everything has been dumbed down.

I went to a lovely village school in the 70s - teachers followed their enthusiasms, and we learnt a love of learning. We were only reminiscing the other day about how, for a random small school, we did extremely well.

We were all HAPPY!! Teachers and pupils alike

No.

I worked until recently as an exams invigilator and IME some exams are just so simple it's scary, multiple choice that you could have a stab at without ever going to a lesson. Some others, though, did test stuff I was never taught. I found Geography GCSE to cover a much wider range than when I was at school.

OTOH before Christmas I was trying to help DS revise for his mock Biology GCSE. I asked him to tell me about the heart, aorta, chambers & all that. He said they hadn't covered it. OK, what about those little bones in the ear? Nope.

Have to agree with stickylittlefingers. I went to 3 primaries - the first 2 were OK, the 3rd was a small village primary and just fantastic.

Academically, I don't think they do get a better education now. I do think the children who are struggling get more support thrown at them but as a secondary teacher, I don't see that it does them much good. The level of our lowest set has fallen in the 15 years I've been teaching.

A PP commented that they start stuff at primary that previously wouldn't have been covered till secondary. IMHO this is part of the problem. For example, if you are struggling with basic maths, there is little point in covering algebra, fractions, percentages etc. By leaving it till secondary, it gave your brain time to mature and gave the strugglers time to consolidate what they did know.

Also, I can honestly say that at my village primary I was never bored, always happy. It was the one school where I was never bullied. Schools are getting larger and with that come numerous problems, including bullying.

My son loves his school and is certainly far happier than I was at primary school. He also enjoys an interesting range of activities that I never had at his age.

He has been taught to read extremely well, but I am not so sure about maths teaching.

Bullying is less of an issue. My son's school is very hot on stamping out bullying and it is a big primary.

It is difficult to compare schools between 30 years. My son's school was rated by OFSTED as being good with outstanding elements. His school is better than the average state schoool and probably better than the average school in the 1980s.

However I imagine that a school in special measures would be worst than most schools in the 1980s.

I think my junior school was better educationally. Looking back it was spot on actually.

It stuck to the point and taught all the basics very thoroughly. We used to study some quite grown up poetry, as I remember.

My dc have a lovely school, it teaches very well by todays standards I suppose, but there's an awful lot of faffing about with dressing up days and visits from people playing a few drums or discussing feelings.

I don't think they cover anything in much depth. The English for eg is just extracts from books on sheets of paper with some prompted questions to answer, rather than spending time on the whole book.

I don't think that any of this is their fault. They're probably just following a modern curriculum; but it's comes over as very general even bland to me.

My children are getting an education far superior to my own or DH's.

I was a creative and clever child in a working class primary and then comp. Every day was dull and grey. Most pupils left at 16 and only a handful went on to uni.I was a very, very square peg...

DCs school is dynamic and interesting. Expectations are high, achievement follows suit.The curriculum is very broad with high attention to sport, music and the arts.
I am unbelievaly lucky to be able to send my children there.

My dc are. Much broader in terms of art, sport, music & cultural stuff and no worse academically. Dumbed down exams are compensated for by wider range of subjects (including twilight subjects), doing a few harder exams earlier & teaching beyond the curriculum where appropriate.

My 7y DD is getting a better education than me and DH did IMO. She goes to a small prep school, with lots of opportunities facing her all the time. She gets to do so much, and she is loving school so much, it is great to see.

Just to mix things up, I think my DSDs are having a much worse education than I did (my own LOs aren't school age).

They do get more opportunities with after school activities and trips, but certainly the actual education they've had so far (they're in yr7) is pants.

But it's 2 very different situations really. I went to a school in a wealthyish area and DSDs live in a deprived area.

But more importantly my parents really value education, they enriched my education loads and taught me to make an effort and the main thing is, they helped me see that learning is really fun!

DH's ex, OTOH, doesn't give a monkeys, school is pointless in her eyes. But that's a whole other thread I guess.

Sorry kind of hijacked the thread there, it's just very frustrating when our efforts to help DSDs are getting nowhere!

3m

Mine are still only primary school age but I wish my school/education had been more like theirs is.

I went to school in italy in the 70s and 80s and it was all very dull and very academic, even at primary. It was sit down and your desk and learn everything by rota, write a page of As a page of Bs type education. We had to learn poems by heart every week (age 6 onwards) and I remember crying my eyes out as I struggled to learn a 10 page poem that didn't mean anything at all to me, in fact I couldn't even understand it as it was 17th century italian). There was very little creative curriculum, hardly any sports, no languages or singing or plays. It was plain sit down and learn all the time. I enjoyed school as I was a bit swotty etc but if I think how much my daughter does at reception and how much she loves going to school well I can't really compare it. Jury is still out for the years to come, but so far my answer is yes, it is a more all rounded education.

I was told recently at a parent evening that DS age 10 only had 8 weeks left.

What she meant was until he does his KS2 SATs, but what a terrible way to look at education. In her mind, primary school was over then. In my mind he will be in education at least until he is eighteen, if not longer.

I do agree that their experience is enriched more than mine was, and it seems more coherent, but it is now driven my results and league tables.

My ds's grammar school education is as lousy as my own grammar school education was. How very very sad.

I went to state school in Sweden at the time when they lead the world in education, so I was rather fortunate. Still, there are things that dd is taught (I think) better than me. She is taught to write far more than we were, taught about how to marshal an argument and use language for effect. Otoh we were taught foreign languages far more efficiently. And our spelling was better.

Her experience is very different anyway, because she goes to school in a city, where there are other children interested in drama and reading and thinking about careers. My school was in a small market town where those things were simply not on most people's horizons. So I was far more isolated.

not in infant and junior school.

senior school definatley - the school i went to was positively ferral, and that was just the teachers. Classes were out of control, teachers crying all the time - nightmare.

i think that schools have a better framework WRT bullying now.