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?

Don't have lots of time but - When working out timetables (primary age children) IMe it is best not to have 3 very "intensive" (for want of a better word)lessons back to back. Children find it hard to concentrate for such a long period of time at such a young age - and therefore I would want to mix up the subjects so that they were not sitting down for so long. For those children who find reading and writing hard whole morning of it could switch them off education entirely, which is counter-productive.
yes children need to learn the basics. Yes, sometimes there is too much "dumbing down" but otoh, if you ask a child at the end of the year what they remember about a topic - they are likely to remember the bits where the dressed up/ did something active/ made a big project ( and I am aware of how much a pain this can be to parents). children learn in different ways - as do all of us - some learn best by reading and writing, some by doing, some through music/ art/ activity etc etc. Unfortunately, unless HEing, all children have to "cope" with a mixture(and many will actually benefit from it) .
It is very easy as parents to state what we think is the "ideal" way of doing things - because we do know what is best for our children. But that does not make us experts in educating all children.

Very interesting! I have opinions and questions. Can you bear with me until later this evening.

Ha! prepared tea in double quick time.

Thank you so much patience. for your patience.

Firstly, yes I do think three hours every morning with only playtime or two playtimes to break maths and language.

There is no reason for basic literacy and numeracy to be dull and static. You as a teacher will be well aware of different ways to make it interesting. I don't think it helps to move on from times tables to an environmental project, or d and t, or straight to spelling. If children can sit for half an hour or forty minutes, and they are getting fidgety, why can they not then practice and reinforce the times table they've just learned by say, making themselves into groups of two, or three, and joining themselves up with physical sums, or other maths games. Why not simply get up for ten minutes and stretch? Why not do any number of non boring activities linked to maths and numeracy to reinforce the lesson?

Why feel the need to move on to the Greeks or the rainforest or whatever else?

All literacy (reading not writing) past a certain stage must concern A Subject that is being read about. That's how their interest can be maintained and how they can expand their interest. But the focus should always be on literacy, not The Subject. So bad spelling should not be ignored because it's a lovely Roman story. Bad spelling should be the focus and the story secondary. I know this is reactionary but the current system is not working.

I see the problem is, that instead of finding ways to make focusing on the basics for sufficient time, making that an absolute priority, how to get round this problem -- instead of that there is the response, that children can't, they can't sit still for that long, they can't focus for that long. We should be thinking, this is essential and we MUST find ways, no excuses.

There is no way that a half term project on the environment contributes in ANY WAY to their basic learning, or these history days that take up vast amounts of the day and prep time, and waste enormous amounts of parental voluntary time. Children can play and watch TV at home. Teachers should assume that the school time is the only educational time available to the child and make that time work as hard as possible.

Phew. I await your response with interest.

Children work better in the morning and an established routine of work, sport/art then home would be very effective.

Thsi all sounds very didactic feel free to comment and criticise. I am not criticising you I'm criticising the NC which builds in a great deal of time away from the basics, makes that time an ofsted requirement.

There is no reason why maths should be boring. I regularly run 1.5 hr workshops in schools and at a maths club for ks1 where the children learn maths.

We play games that are active, we solve puzzles, we use giant floor games and carpets, lawn darts, gaint chess and counters. Young children often learn best when they are active and maths is very easy to teach in this way.

Maths can be made fun and practical. Scores of books have been written about maths in the schoolgrounds, maths magic, practical maths, maths and movement, there are hundreds of songs and traditional games that involve maths.

Just a few weeks ago a deputy head came in to the room where we work "Oh how lovely you have the number line" yep, it came out once this term, because there are so many fun and interesting ways to learn other than sat on a carpet while teacher points to the number line. No wonder children fidget so much! and teachers are constantly looking to entertain as well as teach.

Can I also say, lots of children seem to be put off by the way things are done at the moment.

The way to engage and instil the desire to achieve is surely to make them achieve, not say we won't try. It takes a complete change of approach.

Fabulous mini, absolutely fabulous.

Work in the morning, sport and creative activities in the afternoon, is pretty much how dd's state primary tries to run things. It doesn't always work, of course, because lessons have to tie in with staff availability etc.

And I do agree with lots of what Appletree says, but at the same time: dd seems to still be doing number or literacy work when studying the Victorians, or writing poems. Numeracy and literacy run across almost everything else they learn. No humanities until after the age of 9, IMHO, runs the risk of losing a whole bunch of kids who are passionate about those and prepared to learn number/word skills in order to access more of what they are interested in.

Also isn't 7-10 the age that kids are able to absorb and enjoy reams of information? I remember writing reams on giant squids aged about 8 and all of that was literacy practice....

Not taking away from the importance of literacy/numeracy, but I do think we need to stay balanced.

Cross curricular teaching! Literacy is part of most 'project' work, and maths spreads into all sorts of other subjects too!

Of course all children should come out of primary school with the required level of maths and literacy, and as it happens, in much maligend, much feared (as a place to live, amongst MN-ers, it seems) , by and large, they do! The children who don't (in ds's class) are often barely awake and come fom homes where they are allowed to stay up til 1am, etc. I defy a school to teach maths for 3 hours, however entertainingly, to a child who is half asleep. The problem isn't the school, it's a much deeper chaos in the children's lives.

"So perhaps, we have to accept that state education cannot be the great social leveler we hoped it would be. It cannot equalise the outcomes of different children from different backgrounds.? Litchick" To me that suggests that it is wider society, and huge gap between rich and poor, the able and achieveing and the dispossessed and left behind that is the problem. How can education be a great leveller if those with the most to gain before they even step into school are immediately put in a different system? Education is a part of bringing the whole of the population into an educated society, and in creating a civilization rather than a population, but if it is failing in the furtherst reaches of society, then there are issues of housing, parenting, disadvantage etc which need additional interventions.

That's just what I'm saying. Past a certain stage, literacy has to be about something and that's where you chose interesting topics. But it should be secondary to the literacy.

It is, though, isn't it?

RL got in the way - and have to rush out but I agree mini, Elibean and Blu with all you say - I'm not saying that maths are literacy are always boring - IMO they never should be - but just that mixing up the curriculum in the day can work well to keep children engaged.
Topics with literacy being paramount is important, but sometimes it has to be just about the topic too...
And I think this is one of the most important thigs to remember:"The problem isn't the school, it's a much deeper chaos in the children's lives."

No no not cross curricular, not at all. Gah. It is all about the literacy. Just because you can't learn to read without reading something does not turn it into a cross curricular activity. The focus is on the literacy. This is prime, not a by product.

Topic work is pointless when you are churning out thousands upon thousands of children without literacy skills. Patience thank you so much for your long answer for me, it was very interesting.

I think certain areas of society are broken for some people.

You don't need to mix up the curriculum to keep children engaged. You should not have to, for the sake of covering history or social geography, the environment. Literacy is not drawing a poster about the rainforest. Literacy is not making a model of the pudding lane bakery.

I think that it is improving now that it has gone full circle and is back to topic based learning in the primary school.
I think that we need a national debate on the purpose of education. We need a complete overhaul of the exam system-one size doesn't fit all- and we need to place importance on practical and technical skills.

We definitely need to decide what the purpose of education should be.

Why?

The French education system (within which several of my nieces and nephews are being educated) seems to be much more prescriptive and starts with the basics before children can move on to anything much else. This kind of rigidity has its problems, too, and turns an awful lot off children off formal education. I therefore don't think that focusing on the basics and cutting out all the other stuff is the great panacea that Appletrees appears to think it is, it's just an alternative way of doing things that will fail different children. Done well, cross curricula teaching and a creative curriculum can be fantastic. In the wrong hands it can go seriously awry (possibly more awry than sticking to the "three rs"). So scrapping the current way of doing things altogether just strikes me as being a bit more unnecessary interference by those who don't actually trust teachers to be able to teach the basics properly unless they do it from a book labelled "teaching the basics - how not to let yourself get sidetracked or reveal yourself to be uncertain of the basics yourself."

Agree, rabbitstew. My nephew and neice are also in the French system, and for one it works ok (she's quite academic, though she longs for more creative stuff) but for the other, its a total and utter turn-off. He's miserable.

I honestly don't think the problems with literacy that currently exist are the result of a mixed curriculum. Lots of other issues I can see, but not that.

There are many miserable, non learning children in our schools. Many thousands let down and leaving primary without skills. Many thousands put off by being unable to achieve, cut off from expectation, abandoned to the mediocre .

Rather than even consider a return to focussing on the basics - for lo, how could this ever be an issue - we find ourselves, what a surprise, bogged down in some putative debate about the purpose of education.

Allow children of all backgrounds to achieve. Do not assume that sense of achievement is acquired by colouring in a poster or cutting letters out of magazines for spelling or blocking up to be a chimney sweep.

Creative and self motivated learning might be alright for tarquin and his mum who can spend three hours putting together a sequin-encrusted powerpoint on tigers and is at home to teach him to read harry potter at the age of five.

But if this is the model we have, then it plainly doesn't work for society as a whole, which, like it or not, means it doesn't really work for tarquin and his mum - however much fun they are having.

Eli
what are these lots of other issues of which you speak? Failing parents? Lack of money? Poor teachers? Naughty children? What?

Appletrees - I agree with pretty much every one of your comments.

The school you described is pretty much what my village primary school 40 years ago was like. Just 3 Rs, sport, art and music.

We had no homework, teacher listened to us read every other day, maths and writing every day. No TA in the classroom. Two year groups per class 35 in the classroom AND very mixed ability. We got the basics done, traditional approach but we still did creative stuff too.

My sister went to the school about 6 years behind me and they go a trendy young Head with 'modern' teaching methods. My parents were aghast at the deterioration in standards.

Oh honestly, Appletrees. Tarquin indeed... What do you actually mean by focusing on the basics but still making it fun? Isn't that actually what teachers are currently trying to do? How do you propose to make three hours of English grammar, spelling and punctuation fun each day if you don't intersperse it with something else? Or learning times tables? I frankly don't see what's even the remotest bit fun about grouping myself with a couple of other children to get myself into a threesome, as per your "making times tables enjoyable" suggestion... So surely what you really want is something more akin to the regimented system in Singapore, where they churn out highly literate and numerate people extremely successfully? In a society that bears exceptionally little resemblance to our own, of course... Perhaps if we were more disciplined and regimented in our daily lives it would work to have us all chanting out tables in class each morning - but we'd have to stop tolerating all this family break-up and the general self-centredness in our society, re-introduce marching and saluting each morning in the school playground and otherwise radically change our society. Which brings us round to the point that there are many other issues involved in this discussion...

Thanks beta.. Rabbit that isn't what I described at all: what you have described on the other hand is, in fact our old friend the straw man argument.

Tarquin is a generalization, a representative of the i'm alright jack parents who, rather than address what would actively help educationally deprived children, instead sit in judgement because their reading bags are never opened and they sit on the bottom table being bored.

who knows why the parents don't support the child. the fact is, that is a generational problem to solve. whereas th child is in the classroom right now needing help. what is the point of relying on the parent? teach the child properly in the classroom.