Pupils' right to one-to-one catch-up tuition ended

[telsa]

Oh great. First they come for the students......and then the little ones.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-11718968

I think its a shame.

DD's school does one on one sessions with a TA for any kid that struggles with a particualr session. So the kids in the one on one session can be different ones every day. If DD or another kid has not understood that morning's maths lesson then they will get a short one on one (or sometimes a couple of kids) to go over it.

She's in Yr5 now. From Yr2-3 we paid for her to have an hour of private tuition every week as she was a year behind at school. School (her old one) weren't doing anything to help. After 18months of private tuition she was still a year behind. Plus I've bought every Letts book going, played maths games with her, signed up to Education City, etc, etc.

We moved her to a smaller school that do more one on one informal stuff and I do think this has helped more than anything else. Probably because these sessions will be tailored to exactly what the teacher has been teaching that week. A private tutor will follow their own timetable but that can leave a kid out of sync in elssons still. Drifting along, becoming increasingly switched off.

DD was lucky that we did do stuff at home with her, plus could afford tuition, plus not be afraid to move her to a smaller school that we thought would suit her better. But if a child has parents that either can't/won't do that then why should the child be penalised? Its not their fault. Their are quite a few children from the travelling community at DD's school. I know their parents and I know that they can't read or write, nor could they afford tuition. They're not in a place to help their children and if the school doesn't give the extra help then these children could be condemmed to a life of low achievement themselves. Would probably leave school mainly unable to read or write and have poor employment prospects. But with some input now they could achieve so much more and in turn be of more benefit to society themselves.

What concerns me is that the research report on the effectiveness of these programs is being delayed, and the money which could be accessed for struggling children is being spread across the whole of the schools budget. So it is highly likely that the support for this children of children will simply disappear.

This seems incredibly short sighted. Early intervention is known to be cost effective. Children who have poor literacy/numeracy for whatever reason will struggle for the rest of their lives. They are likely to fail academically. They are likley to fail to get jobs. More likely to have mental health problems, and are also more likely to end up in the criminal justice system. The long term costs to society are huge, certianly in compared to what is a really very small and inexpensive program.

My ds is dyslexic. He got zero support from school, who were concerned about his behaviour but did not seem to understand that behavioural problems are common with children who know that they are failing and cannot do anything about it (although research shows behavioural issues and dyslexia often go side by side). So we found (with MN help, thanks Maverick) a tutor for him. He had about six one hour, one on one sessions and it totally turned things around for him. A few years later although his writing is still totally shot he is being assessed for a G&T program.

Specialist tutoring is not something a parent can provide. It's got nothing to do with not reading aloud to them or being a lazy or inadequate parent. Some children, mostly through no fault of their own fall behind and a short intense specialist program can make a huge difference to the rest of their lives.

Reducing centralisation is all well and good, and I think that for many schools and possibly for most children it may have many benefits. But individual schools do not have specialist knowledge and services, and many resent the high costs of children with extra needs. With the current set up the ring fenced fund was available only for children who really needed it, at the teachers discretion. Now it will be part of a smaller pot, so any extra funds for such children will be at the expense of other things the school needs. I wonder if exclusions etc will go up as schools try to shed such expenses?

The point is that the system is flawed if any child can leave school without GCSE C+ in English and Maths, not sure if you've seen any of the papers but really they contain the very basics that you can't get through life without.
1 to 1 for the lucky few is wrong the whole system needs dragging up by it's boot straps.
My 6 year old knows her 2, 3, 4, 5, 10 and 11 and is starting on her 6 times tables in year 2. She knows them mixed and by heart. Her friends from her old school haven't even started them and won't until next year.
I am not claiming my child is a genius but why hold the other children back ? Same with reading, she gets through 5 books a week now compared with one a week previously.

I agree that too many children leave school without a C grade in maths and English but there are some children who will never reach that level. Small minority but they exist.

And they should be a tiny minority, really they should you know that.

I do think parental interest and involvement is important in how well a child does at school. My parents took little interest in my education and they appear to take no interest in my brothers at the moment. If parents don't care then its unlikely that a child is going to push themselves

I am not disagreeing there but as I said there are some children who will never get a grade C no matter how hard they work.

I welcome this move give teachers the power over how their school is run and I'm sure we'll improve results.

One approach would be to set standards for each school, with associated financial rewards and the leave it to the head to achieve them. That was the regime the school in New York that my children attended for a while. The school had an extra catch up lesson every afternoon, extra classes on a Saturday morning, ran a summer school, and at 8 and 9 my children had two hours homework every night. They did get very good results (although it should be said that this was in quite a wealthy area, where funding from schools was mostly through local taxes).

huddspur Sat 13-Nov-10 21:39:51
"Why I trust headteachers to allocate resources far better than DoE bureaucrats in Whitehall or LEA offcials and their "ringfencing""

Have I told you about dd's headteacher?

The man who would not consider moving the maths sets around so that a wheelchair bound child could have her lessons on the bottom floor in a school with no lifts, but thought she should crawl up the stairs on her handsa and knees and that it was her own fault if she wouldn't?

The man who refused to open up the disabled loo because he wanted it to be kept clean for visitors?

The man who suggested that if a disabled child needed access she had better go to a special school- despite the fact that the only local special schools cater for severe learning difficulties and the child in question was in top sets?

The man whose comment on same SN child was "Yes, we do appreciate that X is ill but you can't expect us to be happy about it.

Sorry, but I think almost any bureaucrat would have been a safer bet than the man whose life would have been made a lot easier if he could persuade all parents of children with SN to take them out of his school.

Cory With the extra autonomy and responsibility that I would give headteachers, I would also make them more accountable and if shown to be incompetent then they would be fired.

But how would it be proved that he was incompetent? His results were good, and if we had given way and taken dd out of his school, his attendance records would also have looked a lot better: that is why he kept hassling us (and other SN families).

He didn't want children in his school that might make him look incompetent: that was the whole point. So children with high sickness levels or other problems were less desirable. He wanted children who would make it look as if his school was improving. I do not deny that he was efficient and improved the school's results no end- just that his efficiency got in the way of dd's wellbeing.

You would use school performance and have a much better and more powerful redress of grievances system.

Thats why you'd have a stronger redress of grievances sytem alongside school performance

You can't blame though, I went to a "sink" school and so many people I went to school with have done nothing with themselves. Educational attainment is crucial in determining your life opportunities.

I find it really very sad that some people would begrudge help to an innocent child, just because they have lazy parents.

These children have no say who they are born to, who are you to decide that because of that they deserve less help?

Maybe we should punish you for the sins/wrong doings of your parents or grandparents...No you can't have child benefit, tax credits etc as your parents didn't so enough to contribute to society!

What a crock of shite and a truely selfish and disgusting attitude to have.

Sorry if I have repeated what anyone else said I only got to page5 and was so furious I had to post!

I don't think league tables mean diddly squat, my brother goes to a terrible school and he is 11 with a reading age of 8 but apparently he is average for his class, so quality of school is crucial.

They have to be read in context. Our old school had a unit for children with moderate behavioural problems, and they included those scores in the tables, which was daft, plus they had a lot of churn, so children fairly few children who came in at 5 and left at 11. It always did much better when they introduced the value added component (more interesting really) and when they ran analysis of the children who had been there for two or more years at SATs time. Trouble is it is very difficult to know if your child is doing as well as they should be doing, which is what most of us woudl like to know really.