plans for one to one tuition blocked by Tories

[cornsilk]

This makes me very sad.
'Reforms of the primary school curriculum, allowing schools greater flexibility to tailor teaching to their children, have also been shelved, as have catch-up lessons, one-to-one tuition and small group support for pupils needing extra support.'
The rest of the reforms I am not too bothered about but one to one tuition and small group support is so important.

1 to 1 tuition as proposed by the government is a complete waste of time and money IMO. Sounds good but has little real impact.

"'Reforms of the primary school curriculum, allowing schools greater flexibility to tailor teaching to their children, have also been shelved, as have catch-up lessons, one-to-one tuition and small group support for pupils needing extra support.'"

Have you got a link to this please cornsilk?

I do one to one tutoring in the school I work at. It has had a real effect, actually. What makes you think it doesn't?

My experience of it is that it is too little too late. The kids that benefit are not the least sble they are the kids who are quite bright anyway. The impact is temporary at best. IMO smaller class sizes i.e max 20 is one of the few things that would make a real difference

One-to-one was a stupid policy anyway. It just admitted failure earlier on.

Because of course all kids are the same and need the same amount of help.
Good grief this is where they are planning to save money??
So we have one party who have gambled our childrens future away and another party not giving them the opportunities to work their way out of it

It admits failure because the children concerned slipped through many nets, often because of poor behaviour.

Your DD's disability is not really relevent to this topic, and of course, it is right that she gets one-to-one teaching. We really can't afford that level of intervention for otherwise able children.

It's like paying for a tutor, or in this case, the taxpayer paying for the tutor. Of all the children that I have come across who have a tutor, it's because they don't do enough work at school when they are supposed to.

One to One tuition is a named initiative with specific funding, Riven - or it was. It was targeted towards children who needed an extra push in Literacy or Maths, with schools being allocated a few places each. (We had six this year.)

Far from being useless, it allowed me as a class teacher to give 2 children in my class, and one child in the class above, 10 hours of individual attention and tuition in Literacy. How can that not be valuable? All three made lots of progress.

Can someone post a link to this please or it it just more labour scare mongering because I haven't seen this policy.

I'm pretty about the scheme today, or rather some of the recipients, when we have 3 children funded to receive 1:1 over the holidays. One hasn't bothered to turn up to any sessions so far ("something came up" apparently) and the other two can't come to the last session tomorrow. So the teacher concerned, who travels in some distance to work with them, has to come tomorrow on the off-chance the 1st child deigns to turn up. And if she doesn't arrive, the money's wasted, as is the teacher's time, although she's still paid, I believe.

Think of all those other children who might have benefited.

Link here

Agree it's very annoying, clam - not sure holidays are the best time, though. An hour after school once a week with orange juice and biscuits is easier to swallow than 10 hours in the holidays! Not even sure I would want to teach it then.

Riven the tories are not saying anything about stopping anything for children with SNs - I really think it doesn't do anyone any good for you to keep throwing your arms up everytime something is discussed in relation to your daughter's needs who would not have her tutoring reduced at all.

don't really get this. ds has an iep and additional support in small groups will they cut that?

1-2-1 is treating the symptoms of poor achievement, not the cause.

And as has been pointed out, some of the recipients are ungrateful.

Well, presumably the parents concerned were given the opportunity to decline the scheme, if they didn't want their child to attend during the holidays. Giving the chance to someone who would welcome the help.
The bottom line is, there are some children who are under-achieving for obvious reasons! And teachers are banging their heads against a wall in trying to get them to progress.

Yes, clam, I agree.

Southeastastra, see above for an explanation of the named initiative One to One in capitals!) - it's nothing to do with any one to one help (lower case) or normal every day small group teaching.

I think the real issue that should be discussed is how support like 1-2-1 is targeted. In an ideal world every child would get this kind of help. In a less than ideal world, the help would go to those who need it most - ie 1-2-1 reading support would go to those who are least able to read. In our completely cynical target driven world, the children who are actually getting the new support (not talking about SEN here) are those who with a bit of help can get up a SATs level. In other words, we'll help those kids who can make a difference to target achievement go up a rung on the ladder and those who aren't even on the ladder can just stay where they are.

But those children really struggling with, say, reading get the majority of any support going anyway. Here we have an opportunity to help those who have slipped through the net for whatever reason and have not made any measurable progress. OK, to be cynical, they may well be those who "need" to be seen to move up a level for the SATs but for that we can look to the Government who are obsessed with naming and shaming schools whose pupils aren't "making progress." Who can blame us?

sorry forgot link!

1 to 1 tuition is arealhelp for many children with SEN such as Spld who struggle to keep up in class for reasons related to their SEN. NOT because of poor behaviour by the way Mme Blueberry.

Children with learning difficulties get help throughout their schooling via the normal SEN process (school action - statementing). The 1-2-1 is for those who have slipped through the net despite school efforts in KS1.

I believe that the demographic is mostly boys, with poor attendance, from chaotic families.

Once again, the problem is one of poor parenting, and that is what needs to be tackled. Having extra lessons in Y5 or 6 is nothing but a Band Aid on an arterial bleed.

This initiative, even if it does disappear, needs to follow up the children who made progress. What has happened to them when they transferred to secondary? Did they take their place among their rightful peers, or did they slip back to their old ways?