When people say they go private to avoid the National Curriculum what do they mean exactly?

[therightcompany]

Is it the SATs, all the levelling? Or what is actually taught and what isn't?

The NC is the bare minumum a child should be exposed to at school.

However, as a parent you have no control as to how rigid your local school is in relation to it. If you happen to live next to a rigid one it is going to be very boring for your DC.

Also, some teachers cleve to the NC in order to produce good SAT results for league table purposes. Hence you get a lot of disgruntled parents here on MN when their DC are in year 6.

Hi therightcompany:

I agree with a lot of what mrz (and we don't always agree) is saying. I also think that Isabelleringing's point on SATs scores being used to rank schools has its good and bad points. Our school has been gradually doing worse and worse & it rather matches my feeling that they aren't on top of 'the basics' at our state school.

I think like anything, and as mrz spiritedly defends, it absolutely depends on the school and the individual teachers there.

Interesting that Great Fire of London Y2 is seen as 'old school' mrz.

It isn't a case of being "old school" really PastSellByDate.
The QCA/DCSF published unit plans for all subjects a number of years ago and The Fire of London which some schools adopted so they didn't have to think for themselves Fortunately I've never taught in a school that stuck religiously to the unit plans as it would bore me to death to teach the same set of plans year after year.

mrz

so love the crossed out words regarding QCA/ DCSF unit plans.

explains so much with our school.

thinking out of the box has never been knowingly observed.

Wonder why people view the NC as a bad thing . surely it has been devised by a team of experts with far more collective expertise and experience between them than a private school could hope to find.

Ponders our two local secondary schools use the SATs results to stream the new Y7 intake. So they are for the benefit of the pupil too.

Re the National Curriculum - I understood it to be a guideline, the minimum the school must teach. How they teach it, and in what order, is for a large part up to the school.
Our primary school (which ds attended, dd still attends and where I work as SEN TA) uses a mixture of NC and IPC. They feel that IPC fits certain subjects and others such as Science are taught according NC guidelines.
This seems to work.

The school is also big on sport with many teams, swimming lessons every summer term in the school pool, weekly music lessons, weekly French lessons and an optional after school German club for those who want it.

surely it has been devised by a team of experts

you would expect it to work that way wouldn't you unfortunately not we have a curriculum devised by committee some who are experts because they once attended school ...

Two weeks ago I visited a very good independent school that I am considering for my DTs.

I asked about SATs and was told that they did not follow the NC. But as they had finished the 11+ they gave the boys a paper just as an additional thing to do. All the boys scored the max mark!

This is a highly competitive selective school. So yes, you would expect the boys to do very well. But if you have bright kids, them obviously you want them to be stretched beyond the NC.

"But if you have bright kids, them obviously you want them to be stretched beyond the NC."

Not going to repeat what I posted on the other, similar thread....but this is exactly what does happen in state schools. Bright children are stretched beyond the NC, and while there are some schools whose approach to SATs is dyfunctional [primarily due to political rather than educational pressures, it has to be said], there are many, many more where they are a day or two of tests out of 7 years of full-on wide-ranging education.

The difference is perhaps in the RANGE of abilities catered for. The children in the independent school you mention would be like my DS's 'top table' in his state school class - all of whom gain full marks in the up-to-level-5 SATs tests and so are working on level 6. However, state schools also educate all the other children and stretch them to achieve the best they can - whether that is below level 3 or above Level 5.

It's like saying 'grammar schools are better than comprehensives because more of the children get 5 A*-C'.....they jolly well ought to, given their starting points, what is really important is how well the children have progressed from their starting points as frankly any grammar schoiol failing to get 100% of children through 9 excellent GCSEs would represent failure given their starting points.

Generally because they understand what the National Curriculum means.

We are having a fun time at the moment, because our daughter in Year 1 is behind... she has a very unique way of looking at things and hasn't really gelled with the class.
We want her to go to the Steiner school because there is much more emphasis on learning things through creative means, and there is far less pressure. However, we can only afford to if my Dad pays most of the fees.
Along with the alternative view of teaching, the classes are also far smaller, and my daughter needs a bit more support 1-on-1 (she is currently being assessed by educational psychologist).

I don't know whether she is doing badly because of the school being crap, or because of this attitude that every child must learn the same way at the same rate. I feel like they think it's a race! She is in year 1 and already feeling pressure on her to achieve... this is insane to me!
They only teach phonics to help her read/write. She isn't very good at grasping it, and neither are we to be frank! But there is no alternative to learn. The teacher admitted on parent's evening she cannot cater to every type of child in the class, and that they just do the best they can. I sympathise, but think that this attitude is damaging.

I perhaps have an idealised view of the independent school she would go to, but I really find the State school she is in utterly depressing. Oh and I also think SATs are a monumental waste of time!

Bugger. My post should have read "generally it means that they don't understand what the National Curriculum means.

'asked about SATs and was told that they did not follow the NC. But as they had finished the 11+ they gave the boys a paper just as an additional thing to do. All the boys scored the max mark!'

..and since the results haven't been published or externally marked you believe that because...?

Please don't assume that children at the Steiner school will not be expected to learn things at the same time- they will just be different things. Think very carefully, look very closely, ask lots of questions and canvas lots of opinions. then do all that again.

of course

ESPECIALLY if she turns out to have any additional needs.

"SATs a monumental waste of time"

that depends a LOT on how the school approaches them. My DC's school spends exactly the length of the tests (and no prep in advance) in Year 2 - so a total of a few hours. In Year 6 I think they do perhaps 2 sets of mock tests over the year, plus the actual tests on the day - so vcertianly no more than 10 hours over the whole school year.

A maximum of 13 hours over 7 years of schooling.... and I will be honest and say that when looking at schools when we moved I DID look at league tables (for value aded, though, not total scores) as well as Ofsted reports, so I DID use the results of SATs tests to guide school choice. For me, those 13 hours over the 7 years seems proportionate in order to provide a basic level of information about the school in comparison to others.

Obviously if the school followed the bad practice of others and spent many weeks on preparation for SATs, I would agree that is a waste of valuable learning time. So it is not the tests themselves, but the decision of some schools to spend too much time in preparation for the tests, which is the waste of time... and that is a choice down to the individual school, not a result of the existence of the NC or of SATs...

On the NC, I have a personal perspective that it is good to have the minimum every child should be exposed to in a codified form. I attended 5 or 6 primary schools, back before the NC. What was learned in each, at what age, and to what level, was wildly different. In some schools, I was accelerated by a year because I had covered in a previous school all that was planned for my age group. In other schools, I was with my own age group and had huge gaps in my knowledge compared with others in the class who had been in that school throughout. I did the Romans in EVERY school I attended, but learned no other history at all. Had the NC been in place then, the standardisation of age expectations would have made life a LOT easier - and it is that wild variation between schools that a combination of Ofsted and the NC have reduced..

Apologies for end-of-term appalling spelling!

In Y6 our pupils work through a previous year's papers with the teacher to become familiar with the layout in preparation.

To be clearer, mrz,, that's what I mean by 'mock tests' - as I understand from DS he did one set like that, and I think (not sure) that he did one further set unaided. Certainly no more preparation planned, far too much interesting learning to do!

However, our experience does seem to contrast both with other schools locally (I do know of a highly-regarded local primary which does a Year 2 SATs paper every Monday morning all year.... and goes through what they wrote and how they should have done it better every Tuesday..... haven't dared to ask what they do in year 6) and with MN reports of Year 6 given over to SATs rehearsal.

Interesting that this thread sees the NC and SATs as 'the same thing' though - in my mind, they are entirely separate, with separate purposes...

well strictly speaking the term SATs is wrongly used to describe National Curriculum tests (SATs are actually college admission tests)

Aridne, I guess I believed them because they got 92% A and A* at GCSE in 2011

Only 92%? what went wrong?

That's not difficult to achieve if you are careful what you put them in for.