Would you choose a school if in reception they only spend 50% of time on child led activities...

[loubielou31]

even though the Foundation Stage curriculum says it should be around 80% of the time?

Depending on where we are housed (army family) it is likely that I will have a choice of two schools for DD for Reception in Sept.
One is walking distance, fairly new building, two form intake, good Ofsted but was told the above by the headteacher when we visited.
The other is a two mile drive, having building work done, smaller but mixed age classes, also a good ofsted.

I taught a reception and mixed R/Y1 before having DDs so I was a bit when she said this because I remember having to work very hard to make my headteacher understand the importance of a play based curriculum.

What would you all think?

What do they do the rest of the time? How formal is the rest of the time? How do they cope with the differing maturities of the reception children during this time?

I would think the school has read the curriculum

Sorry loubielou the school is right and you are wrong.

In EYFS there should be a balance between Adult initiated activities (play) and Child Initiated activities (more play) That is the statutory curriculum.

You are confusing the requirement that 80% of evidence for the profile should come from child initiated activities ...not the same thing at all.

sorry I've been eating dinner.

mrz I was quoting the head teacher who herself said "the government says we should be doing around 80% child led but we are a very traditional school and do about 50%. Traditional lessons in the morning and more playing time in the afternoons." So from that you would say the Headteacher is wrong!

Hulababy I don't really know these things and I only had a half hour tour. She said many times "We are a very traditional primary school" It's an overtly Christian school which I like but then so is the other choice.

The school has invested ALOT of money into extra to really boost reading levels across KS1.

Yes the head teacher is wrong

From the statutory framework for EYFS

All the areas must be delivered through planned, purposeful play, with a balance of adult-led and child-initiated activities.

Mrz is right, it's about the evidence. There will be times during the day when teacher and teaching assistant will do group work with 5-6 children, let's say guided reading, maths games etc, and the other can choose - but there will be work prepared on the tables linked to the topic, covering most areas of learning. So some children might choose to write a shopping list, play with money in the roleplay area shop, complete a computer programe etc. If children don't choose certain areas themselves, it will be adult led for them.

HOW MUCH TIME TO PLAY?

Sue Ellis of the National Strategies is keen to dispel the myth that children must now spend 80 per cent of their time playing.

The idea arose from the EYFS assessment document, which states that evidence should come 80 per cent from child-initiated and 20 per cent from adult-led activities. But there is no such rule. Basically, one-third of the day should be spent on adult-initiated and two-thirds on child- initiated activities, half of which is spent playing alongside adults.

Why on earth would she say such a thing though? I hadn't told her I used to teach but it came up in conversation a bit later. She said "you won't have liked what I said earlier then" which made me even more than before.

You see the other school is mixed age and the very nature of teaching yr 1 and YR means it would probably be more structured than just YR in order to meet the national curriculum requirements and I don't have a problem with that.

I think the suitability of a mixed yrR/yr1 class probably depends on the child. DS1 (7) went to a small school with a mixed class and got on fine with it as he is very independent and very bright, but I don't think it would be suitable for ds2 (3.11) at all. We deliberately looked for a school whose yrR is very much a continuation of pre-school for ds2 when he starts in september.

My DD is very shy and won't answer any type of direct question in front of a group. I feel that in those hands up type lessons she just won't join in.
Her preschool is part a nursery class in a primary school so she thinks she already goes to school iyswim.
I would much rather walk to school each morning I'm just not sure what I think about the quite old fashioned approach to the curriculum.
I can tell you which school I'd rather work in straight off but choosing for my children just seems soo much harder.

by old fashioned I think I mean rigid, from other things she said it didn't sound as though there was a lot of opportunity for going off plan and taking advantage of situations that may just arise.

Thank you all for reading and responding, please keep asking me questions. It is helping me clarify my thinking.

loubielou you have heard there is a new EY curriculum from September? Mr Gove is very keen on school readiness

www.education.gov.uk/publications/eOrderingDownload/EYFS%20Statutory%20Framework%20March%202012.pdf

Ooh, no I hadn't heard, (very definitely out of touch)
I will look at the link. thanks.