Is it OK to NOT stream children at all in primary school for any subject?

[livingadream]

I would appreciate the opinions of others on this.

My children attend a school where they do not stream at all, in any primary year, in any subject. It is not in the UK.

So my youngest, who is Year 1, is doing the same maths and reading as all the other children in his class. I wouldn't mind this at all if their abilities were even and if the curriculum allowed the teacher to work at the ability level of the class. But the curriculum is pre-determined and set for the year, and is IMO way below the ability level of the class. The Year 1 children are not allowed to read beyond Stage 3 yellow books, within Year 1. The teacher has told me this and apologised but said that although my son is already at stage 3 yellow and there is still a good deal more of the year to go, she will extend his reading by giving him a broad mixture of stage 3 books.

But he is already reading stage 3 without problem, so is not learning anything new and is showing signs of being a bit bored with the books. It seems a long way away till September when he can move up to stage 4.

Also in maths he is adding simple sums up to number 10 and this is as far as the teacher takes them in this year. She has told me this. But at home he is pushing for harder sums and asks me to write hard sums that he enjoys doing - like double digit sums. He also wants to learn his tables and can recite 5x, 2x and 10x tables through listening to his older brother doing them, but they don't do these at his school until Year 3. So do I hold him back so he doesn't become more bored with school than he is already? or do I challenge him at home but accept that school will never challenge him.

I can't afford to home-school him and not sure I would be able to do this anyway in terms of my patience, but I can't see how a bright child can thrive in this type of constrained system. Maybe others have been through similar and can reassure me??

No, I don't thinik it's OK not to teach to the level of the child(ren). "one size fits all" rarely does fit all and you end up with either bored children, struggling children or both.

TBH, I think it is lazy teaching.

Crikey, sounds rubbish. Where are you OP?

Streaming is NOT the same as teaching to the level of the child! As for being lazy teaching it is much harder work to teach a mixed ability group than to teach a class of same ability pupils.
So yes it is OK not to stream (most UK schools don;t according to Ofsted) but is not OK not to recognise different needs within the class.

I feel a bit reluctant to say which country I live in as I started a previous thread about the education system here in September and a few people from this country commented and were upset by my views. I have NOTHING against the country itself - we moved here for my DH's work and we love the friendly people, lovely beaches, quiet roads BUT the educational system is rigid, dull and does not meet the needs of individual children but teaches them as a homogenous group throughout primary.

I am worried about how to keep my child on track and enjoying learning. At nearly 6 it saddens me when he says he is bored with school, finds the work too easy etc etc. and asks me to give him harder work at home. All the schools in the country have to work to the curriculum so it is not a private/public issue, there are no alternatives.

What do I do? I have tried talking to the teacher and she apologises but can't offer much. I have friends, also new to the country, (from the states and sweden) who are as bothered about it as I am.

Our school is similar to yours.

I now use school as the social and fun side of their education and teach maths at home to the level of my children's abilities. The teachers have said they are beyond the level in the class but with 30+ other kids in the class they cant focus on mine.

I struggle with literacy at home but hope this will change over time.

We set in Y2, but my HA set is differentiated significantly. I have children working with thousands and negative nos, whilst the lower end are only happy working with numbers less than 100. The other group's higher end is similar to my lower end, ranging down to special needs group of children working within 20-30.

So even the sets have to be differentiated 3 ways.

But setting is different to streaming

How is setting different to streaming? Not that it really matters to me anyway as the schools here don't do either.

How do you work at home RoadArt? Do you use maths books from bookshops? I have tried this a bit and we certainly have time as the school day finishes at lunchtime, but I was worried that this will set up a bigger problem as the years go on and DS2's work is further ahead of the curriculum.

Surely he will get even more bored?

Streaming involves whole classes grouped by ability for all subjects. Setting is ability grouping for some subjects.

True, but I think OP means 'setting'?

OK I get the distinction between streaming and setting. You're right stoatsrevenge what I meant was setting. I would like the class to be discreetly divided for reading and maths so that they are working to their ability and each piece of work has a challenge for each child.

My DS1 was taught in a primary in the UK - throughout his 3 years there he was divided up though it was discreet and he didn't seem aware of it - what I mean is I detected no stigma attached to being in different groups. I was happy with the fact that he seemed stretched; he enjoyed school and loved project work and interesting activities. He flew through some levels of the reading scheme and slowed for others and that seemed to be easily accommodated by the teacher - I completely trusted her to move him up when he was ready and keep him steady when he was struggling. My only 'issue' with the school system was that I worried that in Yr2 they pushed the children too much and they were exhausted by the SATs. But I wasn't as concerned about that as I am now about this issue.

We are in Ireland BTW. I know people from Ireland might feel upset by my views on the education system here, or might not recognise my experience as being close to theirs and I apologise for that. I can only react to what I see. My DH is Irish and educated here. He shares my concerns over what he sees of the change in DS1 since moving from UK to Irish system and now he sees DS2 starting school in Ireland and being bored, held back in his reading, asking for harder maths at home - right from the start. He is worried. He trys to reassure me by pointing out that he did OK, went on to get a degree, PhD and is now a University Professor.

I feel the curriculum is very dull - we bought the school workbooks in August that contain the work for the entire year - it is rote learning and repetition of very dull work. Each week is mapped out and the class stick to the weeks work with no deviation. How can a teacher meet the needs of different ability levels with that sort of pre-set work? DS2 has not done a project since he left the UK, only this workbook set work.

It really saddens when I hear my children say how bored they are with school, especially the 5 yr old. Sorry just ranting now!

Sorry, it is DS1 who has not done project work since leaving the UK. He is year 5 equiv and though he is bright he is not particularly driven as a child so despite finding the work boring he doesn't seek out harder work. He only complains about being bored, so I suppose I've accepted things are generally OK for him.

DS2 is Yr1 equiv, is also bright but is a totally different character - very driven, asking for more work, harder work, always trying to read billboards with long words on. He complains about being bored and about the work not being hard enough. So that is why this issue has become such a source of concern for me.

that sounds awful! my dd is in year 1 and would be so bored if her school were like this! it can't be doing the children any good at all?
i dont really know what you could do to change it other than answering his questions at home, but them you will be teaching him the stuff he will learn next year and he will be bored again, so i really dont know? what do other parents think about this?
It also seems like they are holding them back to what they should be learning in uk. im sure that average reading level here by the end of y1 is stage 5 or green book band, i would have expected them to say they would let them go up to there and also number bonds up to 20 not 10. it just seems mad!!!!

It seems mad to me as well. They can't compare to the UKbecause it is an entirely different system/country. I understand that different countries WILL have their own systems and we have no way ofknowing if the UK system is actually better than the Irish system.

My DH as an academic has taught first year students in the UK and now in Ireland and he feels that Irish uni students are far more able to construct a clear well balanced argument and are better at basic grammar and spelling so perhaps this slow rote learning of while class together is a good thing.

I am torn, I want to see the longer term picture and have faith in this system, but I feel so sad that my kids are so bored in school.

We often have this discussion in the staffroom after getting children in from Scotland. Should KS1 children be writing single sentences, day after day until they understand where to put a capital letter and full stop?; should they be writing spelling patterns time and time again on worksheets?; should they work through maths worksheets ad infinitum?

We ruminate on this for a number of minutes, then decide we'd all be jumping off a cliff before long, and carry on in the vain hope that the broad curriculum will expand their minds!! (Fat hope eh?!)

No stoatsrevenge don't give up hope of expanding their minds! I love the fact that in the UK system the children don't really realise they are learning loads of actually quite boring work, because they're doing their learning through fun, creative activities, rather than boring worksheets.

I am very homesick for this system where there is lots of art and creative writing. I remember DS1 in the UK doing creative writing each monday morning, where he would write about his weekend. To start with in Reception, very few of the words were legible, though the teacher always gave it a big tick and a smiley face, but by Yr1 and Yr2 he was doing a clear story with picture and it was all HIS work.

DS2 on the other hand has writing each monday morning but the class, as a whole, agree which piece of weekend news they will write out, from lots offered verbally by the children. Whichever piece is agreed, this is written on the whiteboard, and the whole class copy it into their books. So they sort of reach a consensus about which news is used but that means each child does not 'create' their own news they just copy the agreed words. I struggle to get DS2 to do creative work at home because he just doesn't 'get it', it such a different approach. I also know it is not just peculiar to the actual school we are at because my nieces and nephews all do the same type of thing at totally different schools/cities within Ireland.

Anyway given the number of literary geniuses that Ireland has produced this system must be good in the long term.

I think they are much more prescriptive this way in France, too - my nieces have done an awful lot of rote learning and practising skills without any creative content. Even the colour of pen used is prescribed by the teacher and use of the wrong colour results in a stern telling off. It was a nightmare for one niece whose handwriting never really improved beyond a certain point, yet until she could improve her handwriting, the teacher didn't want to move her on to anything else, despite recognising that she was both bright and frustrated. Building up from the basics certainly has something to say for it, but not if it is rigidly followed, regardless of the child in front of you. I'm not sure where the happy medium is, though! I know that for my children, who do not have difficulty with writing (albeit I would like their writing to be neater), spelling, grammar or mental arithmetic and times tables, a more creative curriculum is much appreciated!

Yes rabbitstew I had heard this about france too. Infact I heard of an interview with the French Minister for Education who said he could look at his clock at say 10o clock on a monday morning and know that all 6 yr olds in the country were doing maths, or whatever. Even the timetable is set.

I feel now I have been unfair to the Irish system - though I have to say entirely honest and accurate. But every child in every class spends a whole hour each day learning Irish and so that is one hour taken away from an already short school day (830-110). So they just have less time overall, so perhaps art and 'being creative' come lower down the list of priorities when time is so short.

It used to be non-streaming in primary in Sweden in the days when the Swedes were very high up on world education and still is. I think it is in Finland which is currently heading the leagues. But at least the Swedish system (can't speak for the Finnish) took in children a lot older and though they spent more time on crafts and practical things progress in the 3'Rs was usually very quick for the whole class (everybody learnt to read in the first year) so difficult to compare to any system remotely like the British. On the downside there was a tendency to segregate children with SN and teach them in special classes, and at least in my days that did carry a stigma.

I'm Irish but living in UK, I think a lot of it (certainly from my time at school) is huge classes and a lack of resources, teaching assistants, art equipment etc. oh yes and the insistence on spending a large proportion of the day on a dead language!

I think there is a benefit of the system in Ireland in that there is a very relaxed attitude amongst the majority of parents about progress. They seem to trust in the system and the teachers to get it right. I'm sure that relaxed approach is good for the children as they get lots of praise for doing things that are easily within their grasp so perhaps they feel more confident as children about their own abilities. Perhaps more so than children who are being pushed through work that is only just within their grasp. ??Just a theory?

mspotatochip you're right too - there aren't the resources that there are in UK primaries. There aren't nearly as many teaching assistants to help with messy subjects like art I suppose and the school is poorly resourced in terms of books, equipment etc. The only books DS2 was bringing home were Kipper, Biff books and though his teacher told us that he was much happier and more motivated reading the non-fiction books, she apologised that there weren't many in the class and he'd read most of them. She suggested we buy some which we did but that was going to get pretty expensive so I signed up to Reading Chest which sends us a lovely selection of books every fortnight and DS2 is delighted.