State education system, is it broken?

[minimathsmouse]

I believe the wheels have fallen off the state education system. You might not agree but I have read so many posts here from parents who have had and are still having huge problems with their child's school. Many people seem to have worries about standards of teaching, clashes of ideology and problems with making up the deficit with tutors and home study. Horrendous SEN provission, huge class sizes, lack of provision for able pupils, the list goes on. It is truely depressing to think so many children are not receiving the education they deserve.

How many people believe the whole system has failed? Are falling standards only due to poor teaching or wider problems that are not being addressed within the system?

I write for a living, and have clocked up a couple of degrees in English, one from one of those posh universities that people get frightfully impressed about.

I am impressed myself by the way my daughters are learning in their Lewisham state primary about writing as a craft; about narrative and story arcs; about how language works and how to make it work.

And they are really rather good at reading and writing. And maths. And generally Learning Stuff. There is an enthusiasm - an enthusiasm which is being met - for learning which once again does not conform to this idea of dull-eyed stifled promise.

www.ofsted.gov.uk/Ofsted-home/Publications-and-research/Browse-all-by/Documents-by-type/Thematic-reports/Reading-by-six-how-the-best-schools-do-it
not quite so good headlines as 1-5 failing but then success doesn't sell many copies of the DM
Summary
The best primary schools in England teach virtually every child to read, regardless of the social and economic circumstances of their neighbourhoods, the ethnicity of their pupils, the language spoken at home and most special educational needs or disabilities.

Mrs, I have just had a quick read through the research from your link and this is the first paragraph.

In recent years, there have been major strategic and
significant local initiatives to promote and support
approaches to raising standards in reading and writing. Yet
weaknesses remain in teaching children to read and write,
with the result that the standards achieved by many children
at the end of the primary years fall stubbornly short of what
are desirable and, the evidence suggests, achievable.

Not sure if this makes such great reading! What do you think? This relates to the best schools, not ALL schools.

What Feenie said.
And to add to my post yesterday - my experiences of the state system have been completely positive so far. I do have my concerns about our local secondary school, it was on the edge of special measures 5 years ago and its GCSE target only just scrapes the minimum criteria, but its sixth form does very well, and our town has some pockets of very serious deprivation.
Society has changed a lot since the days of big classes with one teacher, and whilst some of the old ways would still be useful if used in addition to much-maligned modern methods - to complement, not replace - I think children these days have a much broader range of learning skills than just rote learning. My older DD at enarl 10 is tackling subject matter I was not touching until secondary, and doing it better than I ever did. I have no doubt that there are some shocking schools out there, but I just don't buy the universal picture of state = bad.

I think you should read on, minimathsmouse - that specific paragraph does not relate to the best schools, but refers to schools across the country as a whole.

Basic information retrieval is a level 2 reading skill, btw.

Indigo for many of us there is not choice of school unless you move house. My dd is trapped in a failing school.

I can read Feenie, don't you worry.

Paragraph 1 pg 5

Too many children in England do not read or write well
enough by the time they leave primary school. The
proportion of 11-year-olds that reach the expected level
(Level 4 of the National Curriculum) in English has stalled
at around 80% and the national average point score for
reading at the end of Key Stage 1 has remained between
15.6 and 15.7 for the last four years

Level 4 only became the 'expected' level when David Blunkett deemed it so. Until then, it was the level an average Y6 child was required to reach. Slightly different.

You may be interested in reading this article: Playing Politics with the 3Rs.

Whilst I would agree with Ofsted that best practice is too patchy in our primary schools, it's worth remembering that Ofsted are fighting for their survival at the moment, and are desperate to prove their existence.

Thank you Feenie, I will read it.

I don't feel that a return to traditional teaching of the 3Rs is beneficial. Actually I am in favour of modern teaching methods (read previous posts) I just feel that teachers have the impossible task of teaching 30+ all with individual targets, working at different levels. I think there are solutions but feel that many are opposed to change if it questions their ideology and socio/political beliefs.

Well, I've been doing it for 20 years - if I thought it wasn't possible, or that we weren't successful doing it, then I'd have bailed years ago. I work with lots of other experienced teachers and between us we have many successful stategies to help. Have you ever done it, minimathsmouse? I imagine it does look like an impossible task to someone who hasn't - but it can be done.

That doesn't mean I am not open to new and different ideas - this job is never, ever static. Lots of the ideas work, and are fantastic - but lots of them are rushed in with little thought by whichever government needs to make their political point at the time. We hold on to the best ones, pay lip service to the others, and carry on teaching children as well as we possibly can - which is pretty well, we think. Luckily, Ofsted and our parents agree.

Feenie, I think you make a very good point about education being a political football - as a matter of fact I do think a lot of the problems in our education system stem from the fact that politicians aren't necessarily interested in doing what's best for our children - they just want to be seen to be doing something, however inane it is. Hence academies, free schools, SATs and so on. Some good things have come out of this - 1 to 1 support for children who need it, ring-fenced funding for sport in schools - but it seems to be a matter of 'let's throw some things out and see what sticks'. And to add insult to injury, a lot of the good stuff that has worked is now being cut by our [really hate this government and Michael Gove icon] government.
On the whole I think that schools and teachers are best placed to do well by our children. Obviously some regulation will be needed, but we need less interference, less testing, more common sense.

Hear, hear! Much sense there, pointy.

Feenie, I do with KS1 and 2, maths.

Yes you make a very good point, governments seem to feel a need to meddle. I have a huge problem with the two tier system of accademies and free schools. I am torn between the belief (as a parent) in choice and my views on equality.

No two schools are alike in ethos, policies, intake, teaching methods, learning outcomes and the way in which it is managed. No two parents will have the same expectations, execpt that many parents now view themselves as "consumers" People are now very good at asserting their rights.

I simply ask what is the purpose of education and can the system as it is, achieve its aims? If it isn't what can be done?

Appletrees Mon 15-Nov-10 21:42:18
"Yes beta I loathe the bc and this is my big beef.

Sorry but who mentioned Germany? They can start from five and a half and primary is very very heavily focussed on the three r's with sport and music.

In fact iirc Germany streams children in diff schools across three or four levels. Future decided at eleven or something like that."

Actually, the person mentioning Germany may have meant Sweden instead. When I was a child in Sweden, school starting age was 7, but some children were close to 8. So if the critical learning age is 3 to 7 that means my generation is pretty well doomed then. Good luck that nobody told us

fwiw I have never felt at an educational disadvantage compared to my British colleagues who started school at 5.

Even today, school starting age in Sweden is either 6 or 7, depending on the decision of the parents (they can choose whether to send their child to Reception or straight into Year 1).

And I remember lots of messy crafts in primary, heavy emphasis on things like sewing and woodwork (using real machinery at age 10), and plenty of history and geography.

And the first streaming we came across was in secondary school- and then only for maths and foreign languages (which were compulsory).

I did mean Germany and am German myself, but hey what do I know about the German education system

I come back with a rather heavy heart in some ways, rather depressed at the automatic naysaying by many people of anything that appears to value the strengthening of core skills. For example, the suggestion that literacy and numeracy aren't that important, that having a reading age of eight at the age of eleven isn't bad really, that focussing on literacy and numeracy is only for "plodders" (rather than one's own amazing product), that it is naturally associated with dryness, a poverty of pastoral interest, a failure to stretch, a failure to engage and interest, an oppressiveness of rote.

None of these need be true: we do not live forty years ago. We have new algorithms, new methodologies, new resources.

To start from the beginning: parents are being asked to listen to their child read, because teachers have no time: they are being asked to practise their times tables, because they won't be learnt in school time: they are being asked to supervise homework which one must assume is essential to learning or why hand it out to five and six year olds. Methodologies at the moment therefore do not allow for crucial skills (this cruciality is not accepted by rabbit, but there we go) to be learned during six hours of school time. These are facts.

Another fact: many parents are unwilling or unable to supply this need. Partly due to a poor education, among a host of other complicated reasons. This is not just a generation of parents in the noughties, but the nineties too.

Another fact (link to be supplied): thousands of children are not acquiring the necessary skills required for a secondary education.

We could address these problems by educating the parents. Some efforts are afoot. Then waiting for the trickle down effect to their children, in however many years time. Then this generation of primary school children, which will not be able to benefit from this long term project, will have its turn to be helped as parents, while their own children suffer from the poor education their own parents received, and so on and so forth.

Or we could decide to stop it in its track by educating this generation of children in school, and abandon this reliance on parents.

So, if there isn't enough time to instil the basics in six and a half hours of school every day at the moment, what do we do? We can decide that numeracy and literacy are less important than history, art, dressing up, the environment, the Romans, and leave things as they are, or we can decide that they are more important, and change the way we operate. We plainly can't do it all, or we would be doing at the moment.

Some people might say numeracy and literacy are less important; in which case I have no argument: for my argument is based on the idea that core skills are more important.

Having arrived at the conclusion that we need to devote more time to core skills in schools (that's probably only me by now), the question is how and when.

The morning is the best time for focussed work for children. I have heard this time and time again from teachers and nursery staff.

Still, it's a large block of time. Discpline is no longer of the style to oblige children to sit still in fear for three hours, during which period they may not even listen, let alone absorb.

Fortunately there are many wonderful, amazing, engaging and interesting ways to teach. I'll give a personal example, as so many others have done this.

One of my children was in a class with a teacher on the cusp of retirement. He was in maybe his 35th year of teaching. And still in his last year he was reading reseach on new methodologies, new algorithms for teaching maths, and full of ideas for individual teaching plans. One of his maths methods was "guess and check" for very simple algebra for eight year olds, like how many children can draw how many pictures in such and such a time etc. "Guess and check" seemed like an absolute perversity to me, as it was so easy to show the children how to work it out; but we, the parents, were explicitly told not to use algebra to help with this homework. It was just teaching chidlren to guess! Pointless! Of course I had to eat my words: the children, who were really engaged by this and had a lot of fun with it, acquired a fabulously accurate estimation skill, robust mental arithmetic and speedy pen-to-paper arithmetic for checking.

It's just one example, but it's a good one, of how an interested and even passionate teacher can use quite radical, but very enjoyable, methods to bring about achievement. There's no dullness, no boredom. If you assume core skills learning to be dull and rote, then you yourselves live in the past.

The greatest point is, of course, that confidence and supreme skill with numeracy and literacy mean these subjects can be expanded and travelled in more depth. A clear and sound basis of skill and reliability in these areas leads to greater self confidence, sense of achievement, improved behaviour, increased engagement among children.

I'm particularly puzzled by the assumption that increased focus on core skills will mean a depreciation of pastoral care or interest in the individual child. I have no idea why it's imagined this will be so: unless you think I'm calling for all of today's teachers to be sacked, and replaced by a corps of heartless automaton Gradgrinds. The same teachers will show the same amount of pastoral care and individual interest. Why would they not? It might be lacking in the first place but there's no reason to assume it would disappear if more time was spent on maths than history, or English than the environment. Why would it?

just posting this large block!

my gosh that was a lot

And in my school, children would be away from the academic focus and exploring their kinaesthetic and other skills in the afternoons, with sport, art, drama, music. Even DT or an afternoon of projects. There would be no need for homework: all core learning would be done in school.

It's the responsibility of a civil society NOT to allow children to suffer because of the failings of their parents. The current system can condemn such children into a total and complete lack of social mobility.

I firmly believe it's a school's duty not to abandon them in this way. They're not "plodders". They might excel, be brilliant, be authors, physicists, heart surgeons, great social reformers. But without focussed education, it's pure chance whether or not we'll ever find out, and more likely than not that we won't.

As for Germany, while some kindergarten teachers may positively forbid attempts to learn to read and write, some actually don't, and will initiate early skills: with respect to Emkana. But even if that were not true, there is something odd going on here: if you laud the start of German education, do you also laud the second part, with its heavy focus on core skills: and the third part, with its very heavy streaming and selection?

Does it not occur to you that German core skills may be good not because of playtime until the age of six, but because of intensive core skills learning for the first four years of education after that? Or because the demands and expectations of early streaming mean great pressure to achieve in core skills?

Interesting how all the benefits are loaded onto playtime, and not onto the further stages. It suits an argument which is all about learning through play. But not if you look a little deeper.

You seem to be automatically assuming that an opinion which doesn't quite follow yours is 'naysaying'. I don't see where people have done that.

And I can second this with the Italian example - kids don't start school until 6 but gosh I have seen the work they do in comparison to my Y1 and it's probably triple the amount of core skills.

But private schools do it don't they? And why do they succeed? Is it because they have a receptive audience or is it because they teach more traditionally? (huge generalisation I know).

I don't really buy the receptive audience argument too much, as my children's current school is in an affluent catchment and still doesn't deliver on the core skills tbh.

I am glad you're in agreement then blu. Smashing:)

Emt: I would definitely forego an earlier school age for greater core skills focus. If that was the choice.

With the type of children often entering school now from failing families, it would be helpful to have a year spent entirely on core human skills and emotional I.negligence. they need to absorb those skills pretty intensely before it's too late.

Intelligence not negligence! Good lord.

Sorry acanthus, yes I have been around. No agenda though? I have been on the vac boards a lot and was a vegger and have namechagrd a lot! Everyone's life is unique but my circs are particularly and instantly identifiable. So I do change a lot.