Live webchat with Sir Jim Rose, Tues 2 Feb, 1-2pm

[GeraldineMumsnet]

After our webchat with Ed Balls last September, another thread started about summer-born babies and on it you asked us to try to get Sir Jim Rose along for his own webchat.

We're really pleased to say that he's coming to the Towers on Tues 2 Feb from 1pm. It's his first-ever webchat, he admits to being a social networking novice and is bringing along a typist, so please be patient!

Sir Jim was formerly Her Majesty's Inspector and Director of Inspection for OFSTED. He retired in 1999 and since has acted as a consultant to the DFES on nursery and primary education. He has led several independent reviews, including early reading, the primary curriculum, and teaching and dyslexia.

As ever, if you can't make it on the day, please post your questions here.

The webchat is nearly up, but there a few more answers Sir Jim would like to do, so he's staying for another 15 mins or so to post those.

Thanks to him and thanks to everybody who has taken part.

Yes - good chat, very informative - thank you!

Hi Sylar. While I do not think there is a hard and fast case for teaching boys and girls separately we need to recognise that boys performance in some important respects often lags behind that of girls. At primary level this can generally be mitigated by effective group work and one to one teaching. This is something however that should be for the professional judgment of the school. The DCSF are also producing guidance on children?s early writing which will have a specific section for practitioners on supporting boys development.

thanks for all your replies Mr Rose, you covered a lot of ground. I just want to add - how lovely, you seem such a proud grandfather

Thanks Sir Jim.

Zazizoma

Thanks for your questions on ICT. Making sure that children have the necessary ICT skills should not be at the expense of other forms of communication. I cannot imagine any time in the near future when reading and writing and speaking and listening will not be of central importance. However, I have also tried to recognise the increasing importance of ICT and technology in children?s lives. ICT also has the ability to strengthen development of literacy and numeracy, not least by enlivening the way it is taught.

Another key concern to me is the fact that not all children will have equal access to ICT outside of school. I think it crucial that we avoid raising a population divided between ICT haves? and have nots?.

Thanks for very interesting questions, I am sorry that we have to finish the session now. I'll reflect on those questions that time did not allow me to cover and hopefully respond at a later date.

Thanks

Jim

Sir Jim, thank you for your response. I'm hoping you will have an opportunity to this follow-up to my question at some later time.

While I do recognise that ICT is relevant, I'm questioning why you would assign ICT the same level of importance you do literacy and numeracy.

Your report states "we must avoid raising a population divided between ICT ?haves? and ?have nots'." This suggests that a significant factor in the decision to include ICT in the primary curriculum is to support those children whose parents can't afford a computer at home. Fair enough, but this hardly justifies ICT being placed on par with literacy and numeracy.

Futhermore, the type of critical judgement required to determine the validity of internet information requires the capacity for such judgement, which is only fully present from a child development perspective at around age 12.

And finally, why would you want to require that teachers use ICT to "enliven" their subject? Surely there are many other ways for teacher to inspire their students?

I've just got in.

Thank you so much to the posters who pressed Jim Rose to address my question on summer- borns.

I need to analyse the thread, but if I'm not mistaken, we may have made a little progress, and that progress should be publicised.

It was sensible of Sir Jim to mention about his granddaughter but I suspect that this family example will have influenced him. For those whose children are neither happy nor happy but simply bewildered in reception, that must have been quite hard to read.

"The recommendation recognises that there are exceptions as you suggest."

"there is nothing to stop the LA from allowing children to start their reception year at age 5." 13:44

That calls for a glass of wine.

What a pity he didn't engage with MrsBean though.

MNHQ, do you do a press release or shall I just see if I can get this publicsed? This is very important, because LEAs are using Jim Rose's report as justification for allowing no year-deferrals.

I agree Lingle. Sir Jim implied that it was not his intention to prevent children from entering reception at age 5 if healthcare professionals recommended it. This is very different from what we heard from Ed Balls, who constantly referred to the Rose report as saying that all children were best supported within their year group.

Well he semed quite nice and effectivewith his answering.

Maybe MN can employ himto brief guests in the future,along with 'erfrom the Greens who was also good (in single sex classes perhaps)

Yes, Balls was sort of "I sent this question to Rose and Rose said no, sorry, so it's Rose's fault".

Interesting, interesting.....people need to know this.

a lady writing an article for The Independent on the issue made email contact with me a while back so I've emailed her to alert her to today's webchat.

Hasn't answered mine yet....

"Sir Jim implied that it was not his intention to prevent children from entering reception at age 5 if healthcare professionals recommended it."

This is rubbish. We have been told and it has been the experience of other parents in a similar situation that either your child starts the year they turn 5 or they start a year later but have to go into year one the following year. People have really fought this but been told thems the rules

(my case being dd was prem due oct but born sept- no way near ready for school in sept)

Or have I completely missed something?

no that's exactly the ponit bronze. Sir Jim was saying that LEAs can choose to make exceptions.

So LEAs have the discretion - they cannot blame "The Rose report" - it is up to them to formulate the policy.

Bradford has a formal special needs exemption to its policy, (drafted largely by me) but you have to be very clever to find it - they don't advertise it. They try to keep it secret.

Thank you
I know I'm not the only one who has come up against this

Bronze we had that too,definitely alone.Adelayed start may have been enough tokeephim in MS (at thetime he was non verbal in nappies).of ourse it may not have been and his SNU isadelight, but it would have been nice togive it a try.

ooh he was good wasnt he

"Sir Jim was formerly Her Majesty's Inspector and Director of Inspection for OFSTED" but of course he can't say anything about why Ofsted claimed schools had no bullying problems when they did - although he was in charge of it.

His answer to my question included a broken link and when I found the information it wasn't useful.

Good - he was as crap as the education system he helped to ruin when at Ofsted!

I deferred starting my Aug born son in school until a year later. He then went into reception aged 5 and Yr 1 aged 6 etc. so we deferred all his formal education by one year. I think it's been a success and certainly he's far more socially and physically confident than he would be in the year above. My feeling is that there is a tremendous amount of evidence to show that children with June, July and Aug birthdays are far more likely to struggle both academically and socially, and none at all to show that those born towards the beginning of the academic year suffer in any way. The facts are there, it's obvious and because some children do cope with being the youngest in a class should not condemn the others to feeling never quite good enough for the early part of their education.

Sorry to backtrack - re the 'feminisation' of KS1 (if indeed it is that)

Ach, Lenin, it's all so vague. I have a general feeling that it's a combo of:

1. 'soft' curriculum which focuses on 'girl' subjects (eg 'growing' nature rather than 'dramatic' nature)
2. Tendency of KS1 esp Reception teachers to enjoy the cuddles they get from 'programmed to please' girls
3. Lack of awareness amongst practitioners that it is entirely possible to 'rephrase' each curriculum area in language which will grip boys. [eg. ds's astonishing Yr 2 teacher, who to him prefaced pretty much everything with 'what would Dr Who do?'.

lenin and onebat,

As the mother of a child with an "extreme male" brain, I think that language use is a factor in boys not getting on board with their education.

• Women talk much more than men. Far far more words per day apparently. speech therapists are very aware that if a child appears not to understand, women tend to respond by amplifying what they just said, rather than simply repeating or showing visually. For visual learners, verbal amplification just compounds the problem.
• when I'm trying to describe the "interventions" my son needs to access the curriculum, I try to get people to imagine what a primary school staffed by engineers would be like. There'd be a lot less talking, a lot more showing and doing. Things we consider "special" teaching for kids with SEN would just be considered "teaching".