Conservatives plan to make 'failures' resit last eyar of Primary

[Peachy]

yes, because my poor SN DS1 needs to be amrked out as a 'failure' at 11, separated from his friends and held back with his younger (NT) bother....

Cue, I suspect, one angry child who becomes even ahrder to teach and engage

hmm i read this too. what a plank david cameron is.

Bit like the take away the chance to drive from teens who get in trouble- which in rural areas means, take away their chance to access education, get a job and pretty much grow out of what is basically usually a phase

God that man scares me!

Ridiculous! There's nothing like giving a child confidence and worth at 10 years old is there!

It won't come to anything. It's all talk. Totally unworkable idea.

the only problem is that once the kids get to us in the state secor we don't have the funding, manning, or training to fill in the gaps in kids basic numeracy/lieteracy. I don't think that keeping them back is a fantastic idea, but the current situation isn't so great either.

2 years ago I had a group of kids, 16 in the class (great class size). Three were 11 and functionally illiterate with reading ages of 5-6, one child had EAL, and two had ADHA/ ASD. I had no support in the class at all. Moreover I'm a science teacher and have no idea of how to teach a child to read. On top of this I was expected to give them the KS3 curriculum, where they hd to access words like chromatography and disstilation, when their targers were to learn the high frequency words of year 2.

I don't think that keeping them back is a good thing, but neither is emersing them in a secondary school curriculum which they simply cannot access.

PS none of these children were statemented on entry to secondary school

Definitely NOT in year 6. How demeaning. A flexible approach during all primary schooling (with parental agreement) to skip or stay down a year is much better.

I learned virtually nothing of use at secondary school, except how to make cheese sauce. Everything I learned of worth I learned at primary level. Keeping 'failing' children back a year isn't the solution, but it is obvious that primary education as it stands isn't working.

but isn't that something like 20% atm (based on recent KS2 tests) . How would they propose to accommodate the extra pupils (average 6 per class) being held back in an already full Year 6, or do they get out in a special class and be stigmatised ?

goodness knows, Liz. And I'd bet that a fairly large number of the children who are 'failing' do so because Primary schools are already so stretched in terms of their class sizes.

Have classes of 20, and lots of these kids wouldn't need to repeat anything anyway!

I had what I regard as a fantastic primary education on the state and we had classes of thirty plus with no TAs. When I got to secondary the class size fell below thirty and I trod water for 2 yrs waiting for the school to start teaching stuff I hadn't already learned.

I do think primary schools are overstretched but I think this has more to do with enforcing the curriculum, setting and marking homework and the fact that so many children are forced into learning before they are ready. And of course what happens to a child at home has a massive effect.

I do think there needs to be a re-think of what happens at secondary level with children who are already behind - especially with basic literacy.

We run literacy booster groups at our school (as most schools do), but the resources allocated to this (i.e. time), are so small they are unlikely to be very effective.

If children are going to progress to secondary school without Level 4s in Maths and English then they need to have a separate curriculum from the start, focusing on basic skills.

Many countries run a system where children have to re-sit a failed year, and it works OK. I don't have a great problem with it myself.

Also part of the problems is tha increasing numbers of children are entering primary schooling without the social skills they need. (and I'm talking here about NT kids, not those with SEN)

Yes, exactly, a friend of mine taught in an inner city school and they would get NT children whose parents had never had a conversation with them. What happens to a child at home is crucial to what they can acheive.

when I was in school many moons ago it was very much like that and from year 1, if it was felt the child was not able to go on/ keep up they would repeat the year. this was in a private fee paying school abroad in Europe.

when I moved here I thought it was odd and quite unfair that kids would reach secondary school while unable to read.

I have no idea what would be best but the current situation is worrying, my dd is only 2 and I have real concerns about the school system. along with under funding poor morale etc. I feel the current it is also too geared up for exams results instead of getting to learn because learning is good, knowledge is good.

sorry about the incoherent ramble

My dd1 goes to an 'outstanding' school, but some of us feel it is little more than a SATS factory.

Still have the 11 plus here in Kent. It's shit, I well remember the day we got our results - it divided us like nothing before.

Shocking that any government advocates all this rubbish.

We just got a place for ds1 (4) at a local 'good' school - the one parents fight over places for. (we were just lucky)

I am busy sewing in nametapes while thinking it's all going to be about tests and achievements...academic ones I mean...

Homeschooling sounds like a smashing idea the more I think about it.

Would it not be possible to have some kind of summer schools for children who are not keeping up?

I'd love to home-ed but we decided to give dd1 a year and she loves it. However, I forsee trouble this year as her teacher expects an hour of homework each night and it just ain't gonna happen.

Keeping chn back is just the worst possible thing for a child's confidence. Why not just invest money to help chn with sen in the first place? It's not rocket science.

I think the problem is that children w/out SEN are arriving at secondary school without basic literacy or numeracy skills.

i saw a programme ages ago about how children with dyslexia tend to fall through the net and just lose interest in school. because some primaries just don't have the time to teach them differently.

Not just time but money. And a lot of the schools that specialised in that type of education have been closed down.

On holiday I got chatting to a German teacher, and we spoke about the fact that in this country teachers are expected to differentiate in every lesson and teach children on different levels. In a primary yr3 class for example you might have children who are still struggling to read at all, amongst others who are reading and writing extremely fluently.

She was actually quite shocked, and said that in Germany parents would complain if the children were not all doing the same work. That if the children were not capable of doing that grade they should be in the class below, but that a German approach would be that all the students in the class should do the same work. And if they don't get it finished/can't do it in class, they should take it home and do it as homework.

I don't agree with this perspective, but she was clearly quite shocked by our system, and the idea that children keep moving up a level each year, even if they haven't made the academic progress.

I really don't see how this can be resolved by just setting academic targets from some ministry.

I do feel the funding should be at local level for truly community centred primary schools to involve parents and address local problems / needs.

but I guess that would mean valuing all children, valuing learning and I don't think this is high on the agenda.

surely there must be enough interested parents to sort something out

I don't think making an 11-yr-old stay on at primary school is a good idea; but I wish a policy of repeating a year at any point when a child is falling behind could be tried.

Some children struggle all the way through school - a chance to catch up could make all the difference.