Samantha Hemmings, as a teacher with more than 20 years? experience, I can confirm what you've found. There has been a big deterioration in educational standards over the last 20 years, as we all know. Many parents are worried. The main culprit is a change in children's lifestyles. They don't read any more. Too few do real written homework.
Instead they spend up to six hours per day staring at the screen:
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1122225/The-toxic-Web-generation-Children-spend-hours-day-screens
Children should be doing a minimum of 5 hours per week on homework or reading, and more as they get older. At school we only get 6 hours, and after deducting lunch and breaks there are only four and a half hours left in a day ? and how many other subjects are there. It is not enough. If some of the extra study is tuition that is fine.
There can be no doubt that screens are harming many children's lives. This has been confirmed by a number of studies and there is a growing body of scientists who recommend that children should be severely restricted in watching TV and computer games in order to prevent brain damage. This is now standard advice in most schools.
www.simplydumb.com/2007/10/tv-causes-brain-damage/
Explore Learning exploits parents fears, and simply makes matters worse. When modern lifestyles are causing this problem the last thing we need is children spending even more time in front of a screen.
Most studies show that regardless of the activity on the TV or computer, it is still harmful to overall learning outcomes and success in life. TV, computer games, etc. inherently require reactions that are too passive, primitive and basic. They stifle the child.
We have found that the simple multiple choice type computer programme used by Explore Learning does harm learning in Maths and English. It is a poor substitute for complex oral responses and sentence based written responses in English or hand written Maths answers showing full working out. None of this can be done in the US computer programme used by Explore Learning.
While I wouldn't use the word scam, I would say that Explore Learning is not a real tuition provider, but a baby-sitting service. Parents should not kid themselves that this is real learning or tuition. It is not. Children should spend more time interacting with their parents while they shop in the supermarket, not be left to sit in front of a screen with Explore. They would learn more exploring the store than in Explore.
This is the conclusion most of the teachers at our school have drawn.
We were even at the receiving end of their aggressive sales tactics. They pestered the head teacher?s office with sales calls, so they could come in to the school. Inside they gave us another aggressive sales pitch about their programme. After hearing them out, and discussing it amongst ourselves, we were quite shocked to discover what we found. Some of the worst performing children in the school had already been enrolled onto Explore Learning for some time. Teachers also found the 'blank stare' in these students, and a difficulty with listening and concentrating in lessons. Many of them had not been poorly performing in the past. Their parents told us Explore Learning had been very aggressive in trying to enrol them at the local Sainsbury?s. Some seemed upset at their children?s lack of progress.
Since then I have spoken to teachers from other schools as well. They all report problems with the ?blank stare?, and poor academic performance. The most common problem mentioned by teachers is with memory. The children tend to retain very little of what Explore Learning claims they have learnt via the computer screen.
Our school decided not to have anything to do with Explore Learning. We have always been positive about tuition programmes in general, but advise parents quite strongly to limit time on the computer and TV ? they are good for entertainment, but very poor for study. We don?t directly recommend any programme by name, but we do suggest any programme that asks children to do real written work as the core element of learning, or includes real teaching requiring complex oral understanding from the child is better, and will not harm the child.
As for Explore Learning we do not feel they should be allowed to call themselves a tuition provider. They do not provide real tuition. We do not have enough information about Kumon to draw a conclusion. However, parents report that they provide worksheets only, and do not provide tuition. All marking and teaching must be done by the parent.