A foreign mum's perspective: Our experiences of Primary School...

[MyOneAndOnly]

I am sure this specific subject about parental involvement in your child?s schooling, has been done before many times but recently I started to think long and hard about it again and my old discomfort in this subject has cropped up, I really need to get it off my chest.

I must add, I do not intend to criticise UK education system. I genuinely want to work with this system but from our own personal experiences, it does not seem to be very user-friendly, I genuinely feel that I am not part of it and I am hoping to gain some perspective maybe, if you come and tell your opinions.

My problem is: I have a 5.5 yrs old dd and I have absolutely no idea what is going on in her school life apart from bits of info that dd tells me when I ask her specifically. But they are not reliable info AFAIK as she is oly 5.5 and not mature enough to let me know what she has been going at school in reliable detail. Her judgement is influenced by how much fun she had during the day and she only tells me bits and pieces that made her happy or sad etc, such as her relationships with the other kids etc which are all emotional stuff which is fine but, I have no clue about academic stuff. And to me, being so clueless does feel wrong. I know I should be more involved, but how? There are no parent helpers in her class, not sure if there should be, so, I cannot volunteer.

I am originally from another country and therefore I have experienced a whole different style of schooling and it is very different to my DD?s schooling experience. I have the following immediate reasons why I feel uncomfortable:

1-) One of the reasons is because it is a mixed year class combining year 1 and 2, total of 30 kids ranging from 5.5 years old (my dd) to 7 years olds. All in the same class, sharing the same teacher?s precious time. How could it work out? Not very effectively, I think .

Okay, teacher gives individual targets to each pupil etc but how effective and reliable can they be within two different classes and within each class being many different levels? Teacher is only a young lady who is apparently in her third year of becoming a teacher. I totally respect her professionalism and her training but.. number of kids, range of levels within two year groups in the same class etc? it is definitely less than ideal, even for an experienced teacher who has been doing this work for years.

2-) Where I came from, there are text books in the schools. Parents buy the books at the beginning of the academic year and parents can see at a glance, what the kids are going to learn throughout the year. These books are guidance for kids and parents and it is the backbone of what they learn week by week, month by month, all year. Parents can assess where their kids are struggling or doing well etc and also can supplement these subjects with extra curricular stuff. It is a golden opportunity for parents to feed the child?s mind at home, with the curriculum related info. If I know that she is learning about, for instance; sea creatures (or whatever else it may be), I may take her to an aquarium or museum etc or even talk about it etc but if I don?t know that, I will not. So, currently I feel that what she is supposed to be learning, is staying within the school, it is not getting supported at home. A missed opportunity.

There are no text books, no other source of info apart from once a week spelling sheet and three times a week reading books? These are precious years when kids? minds are so open to knowledge. It is a short lasted window of opportunity but we are not using it to our advantage because no feedback from the school in the form of some lesson plans given to parents. Am I totally missing something?

One example: apparently she had learnt about Florence Nightingale before Christmas and I only found out about it recently. Had no idea. I could have taken her to a museum on a weekend. I still can do it now but the high-time is gone. It is a missed opportunity. Whatever subject covered in the class, stayed in the class. Such a shame.

3-) Also in my opinion there should be end of term personal progress reports showing child?s level in each subject and how it is developing. So parents can see how the child is doing and take remedial action before it is too late. It also opens up communication between teachers & parents. Surely, it is very useful. Some people may say it is unnecessary competition and puts kids under pressure too early. In my opinion, there is nothing wrong with knowing your level compared to what is expected of you, it is a very positive thing. The pressure of knowing your level, can be handled sensitively and beautifully and it could turn into a win-win situation. Personal progress report in written form should be available more frequently, at the end of each term. And definitely NOT once a year which is at the very last day of academic year when there is no room for even slightest discussion. This is what happened to us last year. At the very last day: this is your report, here you go!

This week dd?s school has coffee morning where I will have a chance to talk to the headmaster as well as teachers. I would appreciate it if you other parents, tell me what you think about all these.

Thanks a million in advance and sorry for the long essay.

TrailMix, ragged, Acanthus, thank you all for your support.

The last thing I said to the headteacher on Friday was that I would be writing a letter to her about all my concerns in an organised way, as the words to and fro, are not easy to remember later on and written communication would be easier for both parties. So we agreed on that.
Now I will have to carefully write my points to her and will be waiting to hear her reply.

As for helping in dd's school, there are no parent helpers, it is not the school-culture so I will not press for that, besides I do go to work and have limited time anyway.
Apart from that I seriously intend to go for Teaching Assistant training just to be able to relate to dd's education more. No harm in that, I want to do it on a distance-learning basis so I can juggle with my existing work commitments.
On Friday, I also enquired about becoming a school governor and I found out that the school secretary was not sure whether there was a School Governors position or not and if there was, I should speak to the head-teacher herself about it. Apparently I needed to give my CV to the school and it is appointed by the school, so there is fat chance of me being selected for the post.

When DS (Y1) started reception I wanted to know everything they did in order to support him in school, I spoke to his teacher every couple of weeks regarding this or that. At the beginning of Y1 I asked the same question again and was shown a board where they write down what they do each week - last week the board was empty. My DS tells me very little and I want to discuss topics and do stuff to reinforce learning, but I can't.

On the other hand, he seems OK at school and really, he is 5, at school all day reading, writing and learning. When he comes home he wants to do his own stuff and I am for now just happy to support his own interests and let him build cardbord trucks, watch Human Planet about the Arctic and Rainforest, bake cakes, play with friends and whatever he thinks up - I feel he benefits more from that than doing extra maths.

Governors aren't appointed by the school.

Parent governors are elected by the parents.

LEA governors are chosen by the LEA (just ring them up and ask them if there are any vacancies...)

And community governors are elected by all the other governors.....

I can see where you are coming from.

I'm from Sweden and trained as a teacher and taught there for several years. I then moved to England and have worked as a teacher here for about 4 years.

Textbooks, we had those in abundance in Sweden and I felt that I was a lazier teacher with them. It's so easy to just go with the text book and they offer much less chance of differentiating the work. I enjoy the lack of text books here now, although it was a learning curve to start with. It gives the teacher the opportunity to adapt to the needs of the children. You should definately be able to ask and find out which topics are being taught in each term though. At my school we have a yearly plan of topics for all subjects which we stick to more or less.

After school clubs, most teachers do these in their own free time for no extra pay and often for no thanks. Absolutely you can ask for recipes, but I can see why the head might be reluctant to be more authoritative in getting the teacher to do it. Teaching is hard work in England, much much more paperwork than in many other countries, and running an after school club as well does eat into your own free time.

Joining your PTA might be another option (or rather becoming active in it, as all parents are automatically members). Schools can be a bit closed to parents, and I don't think that asking them to be a bit more open about topics, information on how parents can be supportive etc should be a problem. Many schools do give out this sort of information.

However you do need to be aware that you are coming from a very different place than many parents. I've also experience of different schooling systems, and it sounds like you are more familiar with a US style approach, where you can buy the curriculum for the year, children use set text books, and homework is set very frequently (and there is lots of it). I think that approach is a bit alien to the UK (we certainly found it a bit overwhelming).

I think you also should stop worrying so much about teaching the same thing at home as your dd is learning at school. Take her to museums, read her books and teach her thing you think are important, ad encourage her own interests. She'll learn much more and you will both have more fun that way.

On the recipe thing, I don't really understand why it is important to cook exactly the same thing in the same way at home. If your dd says that she made something specific and she'd like to do it again then find similar recipes and experiment with them - IME the experimentation is the fun bit (but I rarely follow recipes exactly in any case).

On the more important side of things if you really feel that your philosophy is very different that that of the new head, then do start to look around. I totally agree with whoever said that the head sets the tone for the school, and if you are not in tune it can be very difficult.

There does seem to be poor communication in this particular school. I'm guessing that the new headteacher is feeling insecure and defensive.

You do seem to be well suited to be a governor and, as someone has already said, it is not up to the school to appoint governors. Parent governor elections take place at regular defined intervals and it is not for to the headteacher to interfere in this process. Along with the appointment of LEA governors, it is part of the checks and balances in the system.

There are documents already mentioned here which will help you understand the curriculum but, quite honestly, you'd probably be helping your child just as much, if not more, by reading with her a whole range of books that aren't part of a reading scheme and generally helping her to pursue anything that interests her as well as things you feel she should know in life. Then it seems less like school work and so is much more interesting!

On the TA training front you can't do that solely via distance learning any more - the current qualification insists on practical placement. The last pure distance learning one - the BTEC level 2 certificate for teaching assistants (which is still being sold by companies like ICS ) was withdrawn from colleges in 2008 and had to be completed by Sept 2010. It's been replaced by the certificate in supporting teaching and learning in schools, which is a placement based qualification.

Any info on the BTEC for teaching assistants will be 3 years out of date and it was probably developed 10 years ago. Now I trained in 2004 (not as a TA) with a refresher in 2007 and things had changed in those 3 years (we went from bto3 and the FS to introducing the EYFS for example) so something as out of date as that just isn't worth doing now!

Of course anyone holding it and working in schools will have benefited from ongoing training etc so will be up to date, before anyone pounces on me to say it's still valid/worries that their DC's TA is hopelessly out of date.

If you have time to follow an OU course and do a placement, possibly in your DD's school, 1 day a week you could approach the headteacher about doing E111