Just read the Mumsnet info on proposed N C Changes

[Sittinginthesun]

Am I reading this right? The plan is that a class can't move onto the next level, unless the whole class are ready?

How is this going to work? My dcs school has very mixed ability within a class, as I'm sure most schools do. In Year 3 maths, for example, around a 3rd of the class go up to Year 4, and a good handful are working at Year 5/6 level. Others within Year 3, are working at Year 2/3 Level. If the class have to wait for everyone to catch up, it would be chaos.

Hope I've completely misunderstood this.

In November I put SEVENTEEN children in my class on the SEN register (yes SEVENTEEN) as of the 1st March only TWO remain on the SEN register because they have worked damn hard to catch up (some of them making up TWO years progress in that time) I'm very proud of them.

Please don't see the SEN register as something negative it can help but in most cases children should not put on for life it should be a temporary support to get them back on track.

I agree with teacherwith2kids we are all normal teachers doing a job to the best of our ability we want the best for the pupils we teach and it's sad to see the experiences some parents report on MN. But I have to believe they are the exceptions.

camicaze the PISA is very flawed with many of the high ranking countries removing children with SEN from their figures.

PISA, if I remember correctly, allows countries to disregard a very high proportion of children by claiming that they 'have special needs' - so it may be that the REPORTED COHORT of children in Shanghai do better than the REPORTED COGORT in England....but equally it may be that the reported cohort in Shangahai is only the top 70% of children whereas England may report 95% of all children..

Those are imaginary figures, by the way, but unless and until PISA reports 100% of ALL children of exactly the same age (including those with SEN who, in some school systems, are 'kept down' in earlier years and thus may not take 'age related' tests at the normal age) then it is open to misinterpretation.

snow I love you I don't think you realise how good a teacher you are - please can you go and consult around schools I am forever suggesting that my booster children be given mulitilink and other things to help - well all the class if necessary- but there is an unspoken policy in our school of no manipulatives in kS2 - well it seems that way - I use them all the time but one teacher has suggested using them in the classroom might cause problems with the other pupils noticing some standing out as different - please please please can you talk to them.

mrz you're on my brilliant teacher list too (sorry there are other excellent MN teachers too I just happen to have been bumping into mrz a lot recently) - I hope you're right and the ones I have come accross are in the minority - only been back in teaching a little while and just this one school - you keep me sane believing others do teach as I was trained.

avoiding - your school would hate me, last week I taught my year 6 level 5 set ratio and proportion using multilink. Funnily enough they grasped it pretty quickly as a result.

Your school sounds bonkers and a bit crap tbh, you are right that most teachers/schools are like you!

What I worry about is if they decide to go with the idea that all children should be moving on at the same time, is that social division is going to get worse. Parents who want their children to do well and be ahead of the average, so to speak, are going to seek out schools that have a high ability intake, even more so than is happening currently.

BTW indigo, I completely agree with your points about attitudes towards pupils with sen. Having progress data published for all children in my school at least has sharpened certain people's minds towards progress for all rather than just those who are likely to get a level 4. The idea that with the correct support and intervention many could catch up would be even better!

'a bit crap tbh' you don't know the half of it -jockeys thank you - I couldn't imaging teaching ratio any other way - I am considered a little odd in our school but I get results so they keep me [smug emoticon] I do know i'm doing it right it's just hard to work against the flow sometimes. [sigh]

avoidinglibellaction
You can now buy special KS3 multilink in shades of black, grey and white so it doesn't look so "primary"!
When I was asked to teach yr 5/6 ( it can be a bit of a poisoned chalice!) I agreed but with the proviso that I could buy what I wanted for the class. They had no multilink, no counters, no dominoes, and very few dice, all of which I find it impossible to teach without! I spent an absolute fortune but KS2 is now very well resourced in practical mathematics equipment! Children learn best by going from concrete to abstract and NEED the resources to enable them to do so.

To make these chocolate crispies I used:

20 g (grams) of chocolate
15 g of cornflakes or similar

This made 1 cake.

Your mathematics task is to:

1. calculate the ratio of chocolate to cornflakes, and then:

2. work out the amount of ingredients to make 21 cakes.

MRZ do you have details? I only say this as I have read lots and not come across this and I'm really interested to find out more.
Also at ALL levels Shaghai and others are two years ahead - not just bottom 10%. Its a head in the sand attitude to quibble with the figures. Say they are so very badly wrong that the Chinese are only 1 year ahead really- still a really serious problem in our country by comparison.
I agree that the teachers on Mumsnet are not representative in terms of their focus on moving all children on.

Thanks snow but all the DC I work with like the colours too - I work with KS3 and 4 sometimes and they all have no problem with multilink - of any colour - I always get the guns out of the way at the beginning
mrz - you're right I have taught ratio without multilink - we made fudge and ate it all

I've mixed cement

www.comenius-individual-support.eu/Material-Dateien/Brussels2-20110203/PISA_Presentation_digest%202.pdf one example camicaze

Feenie - Despite the way this is presented in the BBC report, this is not really related to Michael Gove. It is a battle between the civil service and the ICO.

Civil service rules are that government email addresses should only be used for government business. Ministers and their advisers are supposed to use private email addresses for party political matters. Under both this government and the last government this resulted in ministers and advisers using private email addresses extensively, certainly for party political matters but possibly also for some government business.

Then along comes someone with an FoI request. The civil service view was that private emails are not subject to FoI requests. In the particular case that triggered this investigation they also stated that the emails concerned were party political, about the Conservative's Spring Conference, and therefore not subject to FoI requests. They therefore refused to provide information from the private email accounts of ministers and advisers. However, the ICO has taken a different view and has ruled that relevant emails from private email accounts must be provided in response to FoI requests, provided the email concerns government business. The civil service is not happy, hence the reason the DfE is considering an appeal. But then, the civil service was never really happy with FoI in the first place.

The ICO is tackling the DfE first but plans to work its way through most (possibly all) government departments.

SittingintheSun - yes, if a child wants to work ahead of his year group, he/she needs to skip a class or two.

Level 2 might be the expected level for "most" children by KS2, but if a child didn't achieve this then surely they would be considered to to have SEN of some form or another, or be G&T at the other end (depending on the school of course as only 10% are G&T)

No they wouldn't be considered to have SEN just because they failed to achieve level 2 in Y2 and neither would they be considered G&T for achieving higher than level 2.

Why not?

I see, prh47bridge. Rats.

probably because they haven't got SEN and they aren't G&T

I KNOW this, but in schools any child in top 10% is officially G&T, and I would be concerned about any child who didn't achieve level 2 at end of Y2, which is usually what the SEN is for in most schools (flagging up concerns in order to initiate extra support), and in my experience is what would happen.

Well the top 10% in one school could easily be SEN if they moved to a different school which makes nonsense of the system. I would argue the child working at level 7 in Y5 is gifted but a child working at level 3 in Y2 isn't gifted just able.

G and T doesn't exist any more and it was a travesty when it did!We have schools locally where around 80% of the children in year 2 have been in the country less than 12 months, don't speak any English and didn't previously attend school in their home country. The top 10% could be children working at barely above "average" expectations!

Agreed. That doesn't mean that a child not achieving level 2 in Y2 wouldn't need 'flagging up' as a concern, and/or targeted intervention - but wouldn't necessarily have an SEN.