Thought teachers/parents of sons may be interested in this . .

[KnittingisbetterthanTherapy]

I'm both a teacher and a mum of two boys so will definitely be watching!

Extraordinary School for Boys

I can't wait to watch this!

Yes the trailers looked interesting

Looks interesting doesn't it?

I was only talking to a colleague today about boys and literacy so I will remember to tell her next week that this is on .

I love Gareth Malone and am really looking forward to this. Have one DS and encourage him to take risks and push physical boundaries. I understand why schools no longer do this but I think it is a bit sad. In Norway, where there are more men in childcare this is normal for all children, not just boys.

I must add that other members of my family regularly freak out at the things DS does with my encouragement.

I agree with you about men in early years education - I've just started a new job and there are no men in the school at all .

I think the competition thing is really important too - there is such a push now not to have competition in schools which is a crying shame as it's a normal part of life .

Will be very interested to see what else he does. I have a 'passive refuser' in one of my classes so will be interesting if I can get him to do anything after getting some tips from GM!

It is really interesting because my DS (10) loves literacy but is at a school where the head has spent time in Norway and has encouraged tree climbing, activity holidays and Forest School. There are 3 male teachers and quite a few of the female teachers are Tom Boys so it is the perfect environment for boys. The head has encouraged outdoor classrooms.

Houses with the most housepoints (four children from each year) get to go bowling once a team, great for boys and girls and they have a competitive (inter-house) sports day every year. Plus there is a football team that wins all the cups, cricket team, rounders, netball, chess, gaelic football. All of these teams compete in local teams and almost always win.

This might sound like an independent boys school but is actually a state mixed primary. The reason why they play in competitive leagues is because it is a catholic school that plays in the Catholic League. There is no normal state equivalent which to me seems ridiculous. I hope the new Govt goes back to competitive sport. My DS is football-challenged but loves cricket and climbing. He loves going to school.

There are 'normal' state leagues - my primary school plays in a football league and my previous one used to play in a hockey one. Do you mean none in your area?

Your school sounds great - it does soo depend on the staff. I'm a tomboy too so looking forward to climbing trees with my boys !

I do hate the assumption that boys lag behind girls in literacy.

I have 2 sons who are very good readers, both are amongst the top in their year (DS2 even more so than DS1, he reads about 2yrs above his age). DS1 is also very good at writing, and is one of the best in his year.

Their teachers often seem baffled by them as the assumption is that boys shouldn't enjoy reading!

I'm sure it must be just as bad if you have a girl who hates reading and would rather be climbing trees.

Oh, and 50% of the teaching staf in my DC's primary school are male

I think encouraging reasonable risk-taking and boundary-pushing is important for boys and girls. The current overemphasis on everything being completely fair to the point of no decent competition, and 100% safe and organised by teachers does neither gender any favours. The world is not like that.

There are already examples of this sort of thing happening in the UK. My DS goes to a state infant school which is a pilot in the county for 50% of learning taking place outside, including maths and phonics - and even during the very cold weather this winter! It's been a real success, especially for the boys. As for risk, even the reception children are allowed to climb trees in the woods under certain guidelines and having been shown the safe way to do it. No-one's been injured beyond the odd scrape, although they have changed the uniform so that girls wear trousers to protect their legs.

The pilot is now in the third year at the school. No idea if it's going to be rolled out wider. I imagine current govt funding cuts could influence things, though I don't think it's cost much. The PTA funded certain items at the start, but mostly it's been a success because of the staff commitment to make it work.

I am so looking forward to watching this.

Ds is nearly 8, and still struggling at school mainly because he just doesn't like being there.

We are lucky though that there are 4 male teachers in our primary school, and Ds has one this year. Also there are only 19 in his class this year, which also helps.

Seems to be plenty of competition (as well as co-operation - equally important skills) at ds's school. Every newsletter congratulates a whole host of kids for winning something, whether it's sports or chess or music or a poster competition for the local town council.

Physical risk taking is sometimes discouraged, sadly. The head stands next to the play equipment in the playground at home time to make sure no-one goes on the tyre swings (dunno why she thinks the tyres are so particularly dangerous).

It's sad that we are losing our only male teacher, though. Not that I buy into that crap about the feminisation of education (it really is crap with sod-all evidence) but just that it's important to have SOME male role models. I wouldn't be terribly happy with all-male staff, either.

Oh, and this is play equipment us parents have provided, via the PTA.

I have three DSs, the eldest is 8. He's very good at literacy but I have noticed that he doesn't enjoy reading and rarely if ever reads for pleasure to himself. He does however love writing and enjoys having stories read to him. I'm encouraging him to read more for imformation, for example looking things up on the internet. DS2 is 5 and also loved writing and also seems more interested in reading fiction to himself. But I will watch this program with interest as I would love DS1 to enjoy fiction more! We have loads of play equipment at our school - strangely many of the parents do nothing but moan about how dangerous it is!

We live in a small close that was built recently and the Council made the builders allow for a play area. There are only 15 houses. All was fine until we started to put play equipment in there. As it is such a small close we all know each other. One family hung a tire, another bought a small trampoline and the kids started having fun.

That is until the Council took it all down, because of health and safety issues and refused to allow any play equipment in the play area that the Council wanted left. Have we all gone mad?

I was going to let my DS have a sleepover in a tent in the garden with four of his mates (all 10). Our garden is miniscule and surrounded by fences. One of the mothers refused to let her son stay because it was too dangerous. I wish the press would start prining articles about how risk is good rather than taking a great delight in sharing every incident that involves a child being hurt and we could get some balance back into our kids lives. Or maybe it is up to us to try and build the confidence in our children to take risks and put pressure on authorities to accept children's need for this.

I am loving Gareth Malone more and more

He shines

DS (10) is very good at literacy (years ahead of target) and is in fact my voracious book worm -- I can't keep up with his appetite for reading books.

But he HATES literacy at school. He hates how prescriptive it is, he is convinced that he is "no good" at it. I think these teaching techniques sound great, just what boys like DS needs.

Gareth Malone was interviewed on Woman's Hour this week, quite good, honest about what didn't work too!

I heard part of Gareth's interview on R4. Couldn't help wondering why girls weren't allowed to join his scheme - why is it assumed they won't be interested in getting outside and exploring the woodland near the school? I did when I was little, in a huge gang of kids, boys and girls.

fantastic article, can't wait for the programme. He is so right that competition is key. It is the motivator that spurs them on to succeed, and if they can't succeed in one sphere, they will look for another sphere in which to succeed. The egalitarian planners have done their best to deliberately remove competition as much as they can. The problem, as he says, is embarrassment, the boys don't want to look foolish, so they don't take the risks with literacy because they may end up looking foolish. It is competition and winning in other spheres that gives them the courage to take risks and gain the rewards. Competition teaches them that losing is part of winning, that you can't always win, and that losing is only a temporary state before you are able to win. Being able to accept loss builds the confidence needed to take risks so that they can eventually win.

Let's hope the politically correct planners watch the programme too, let's hope they cast aside their PC dogma, and reverse the damage that they have done to our children's education.

Claig - I simply don't see all this lack of competition in ds's primary school. Seems to be plenty of it. I hope what has happened is that PE has moved on from the days when all teachers of that subject were sadists who were only interested in the top few athletes and visited ritual humiliation on anyone who wasn't sporty, or not sporty in the kind of stuff taught in school. (Took me years to work out I wasn't unsporty, just good at gymnastics rather than ball games. Sadly high school was all athletics and ball games.)

fortunately not all schools have been placed under this influence, but unfortunately some have. KnittingIsBetterThanTherapy is a teacher who says "there is such a push now not to have competition in schools which is a crying shame as it's a normal part of life". If you read the papers, there is lots of evidence of the lack of competition and of non-competitive sports days and health and safety bureaucrats saying that conkers are not allowed or numerous other activities that children used to do in former times. There are some great schools like fsmail's school, shame they aren't all like that.

But with teachers who understand the problem, such as KnittingIsBetterThanTherapy, and with the decline of the politically correct functionaries as a new eductional ethos and system is introduced by a government that believes in different things to the last lot, then I think things will change for the better. Gareth Malone's programme will hopefully be the beginning of rolling back the damage that has been done in the past.

Claig, I really hope you're right, but sadly I'm not a headteacher (yet !) and so wield little influence . The last school I worked at had one of these hideous non-competitive "Fun Days" instead of a sports day, but my argument that it was about as much fun as watching paint dry (and this was the feedback we got from the kids too!) fell on deaf ears.

edam, I take your point about excluding the girls, but there is a very real problem with boys and literacy and so I think it would have muddied the waters to include girls on this occasion.

Anecdotally, I think there is a case for teaching girls and boys separately in some subjects anyway (in fact a poster above mentioned that their dh went to an all boys' school and was taught in a completely different way). I used to separate boys and girls for certain subjects on certain occasions (project work in DT and science for example) with amazing results. Both genders worked differently and, I believe, more effectively, without the added complication of trying to impress the opposite sex!

Just think it's very unfair and wrong to send children the message that only boys are encouraged in adventurous/outdoors play. (Am the mother of a ds, btw, so not defending my own corner here.)

There may well be a problem with boys (in general, far from all) and literacy but I don't think reinforcing old, tired and untrue gender stereotypes is the way to go about it. They aren't living in the 1950s.

And those boys who are apparently doing so badly in literacy will go on to earn more than girls doing work of equal value... (it'll take another 34 years for female managers to earn the same as male).