can't be 'polite' and good any longer....

[swallowedAfly]

ds goes to a village primary with all the subsequent over-reliance on parents wealth, education, time, etc. re: assuming sahms are the norm, money is plentiful for fanciful trips and activities, we all know how to sew up costumes at the drop of a hat etc.

that's fine. i chose to live here. however....

homework is way over the top in terms of quantity and right from day one of school. one part of homework (there is loads) is the 'learning log' which is pretended to be something children could do indepndently and consolidates learning. except in reality it is not, by a long shot.

i've put up with it and put up with and felt enslaven to doing it until today when i've had enough. this week for ds (6yo and one of the most able in his year) it says, "show me what you've learned about number bonds up to 20 and what patterns you can see". then there's a blank page.

i don't know why (because this is far from the worst that's come home) but today i've had enough and found myself writing on the page that i have no idea what the learning objective is, what outcomes they're hoping for or how the hell they see this as differentiated. i've also asked how they think a parent with numeracy or literacy problems would tackle this task and whether they would actually set this as a task in class to 6yos and expect a meaningful outcome.

there is no context, no structure, no literacy support, no prompts nothing. same as ever. sometimes the tasks don't even relate to anything they've been learning.

am i totally unreasonable or would you after a year or so be fed up too? i am (if it's not obvious) an ex teacher and i know what education is supposed to be about and this is not it. homework should be meaningful. how could a 6yo read that question and face a blank page and do something a teacher could look at and assess to see what they've learnt? they couldn't.

on top of this learning log (given on a friday and expected in by tuesday) daily reading and signing of reading book is expected plus other bits and bobs. he's 6! he's been getting this since 5 at a point where some kids couldn't even write let alone face a blank page and an open ended task and produce something yet they'd get in trouble if they didn't. this is just a test of parents surely? and an unfair one given it assumes knowledge and literacy that some parents won't have?

sorry for long random rant but help! i'm not playing this game anymore and i'm ready to speak up. it's a joke.

Did they have an end of year assessed spelling test? Do you know? Not all village schools are the same just as not are all comps in the toughest parts of our cities are. As a teacher I wouldn't have considered reading and a journal log to be a huge amount of work. As I said, learning logs are common and the children quickly become versed in how to do them. Are your expectations of what was to be in the log in line with the teacher's? Are you expecting more than she is? It's always worth remembering that reading scheme books are only 1 part of reading. Children should be reading widely anything that catches their attention on top of that. It shouldn't be one or the other. Children who don't like reading,for example, will often listen to audio books and follow the text.

I think you need to think very quickly if you can work with the school. If you feel you no longer can then really your only option is to move elsewhere.

"perhaps ds has sen or something that i'm unaware of and all teachers have been foisted into thinking him able when he is actually sub normal because he could not write all of the number bonds 1-20 on blank paper"

What makes you think that a child with SEN couldn't do the task?

What makes you think that a child with SEN isn't able?

Why are chidren with SEN sub normal?

How do you know that the work wasn't differanted and was set the same for every child?

It certainly sounds like the wrong set up for you and your family for sure.

Just a thought on log books. It's easier to just quietly ignore the log book than to have a confrontation about it. There are probably a lot of half-hearted incomplete log books in the class already. And the teacher probably just sighs and forgets about it. Just "yes her to death" sweetly, and then go off and do what you want. Simple.

i don't think a child with sen couldn't do that and i hope clearly my 'sub normal' comment wasn't to do with sen children but teachers expectations.

god i should have expected this no doubt.

saying i was concerned about no differentiation and worried that if it effected children without sen and parents without barriers to supporting their children then it must be massively discriminating to those with apparently makes me a cunt who should mind my own business.

so parents of children with sen should fight solo for diffentiation and illiterate parents intimidated by teachers and officialdom should be expected to fight against them for recognition of their needs.

righty oh.

incidentally i never said ANY child couldn't do number bonds and write them out i said that few children could ACCESS the task that said, 'show me what you know about number bonds'. sure loads could do a task that said, 'write out number bonds up to 20'.

way to miss the point.

Well what about children with 1:1 hours clearly specified in their statements? Should a teacher do what they think is best with regards to removing that support or relocating it?

Or do sometimes teachers NOT know best and simply follow the guidelines that professionals with expertise in the field have set?

And if they should do what they think it best without regard for legal established practices, then why should they not do what they think is best for simple 'guidelines'?

But language like 'Show me what you know about x, y, z' is really, really common in the primary classroom. This is not an unusual task.

indy,

Exactly. And in exactly the same way, parents saying 'I don't know what a number bond is' are also missing the point spectacularly, because virtually any child of that age in a current primary classroom will know what one is (including all but one of the statemented childre I have taught - the only exception was pre-verbal), and it is THEIR homework.

I suppose the thing that I have never been clear about is:

• Did the OP's child read the homework (or have it read to them) and have a go at it independently?
• Did the child genuinely struggle to understand what was required?

OR is it that the OP didn't understand the homework, and read a whole lot into it (in the same way as she did for the menu task, which could easily have been completed through pictures drawn or cut out) whereas the child expected to do it would have been fine to complete it in a way that seemed reasonable to them.

It is, of course, possible that the OP's child is already so used to the OP's attitude to homework that he already knows that 'what he would do with it in school using his own knowledge' is NOT 'what Mum thinks I ought to do' and so, at home, waits to be told what mum thinks he ought to do.

I agree that the teacher's phrasing was clumsy, and it may be that it is a terrible school. However, sending home a learning log with a task understandable by a child at their own level (not, maybe, a high level, but at their own level) does not, in itself, make the school terrible - and in many ways this is better homework than 3 or 5 way differentiated 'closed' worksheets with neatly worked out exemplars.

You clearly said "perhaps ds has sen or something that i'm unaware of and all teachers have been foisted into thinking him able when he is actually sub normal"

Which point did I miss?

and again how do you know that its not differentiation? Do you have access to the books of children with SEN's or children with uneducated parents?

"so parents of children with sen should fight solo for diffentiation"

If you want to fight and feel that strongly about it, maybe a better start would be agreeing that children should get what they are legal entitled to ie whats written in the legally binding statement of SEN, rather than getting your knickers in a twist about homework!

This very misguided teacher is taking a position mooted by early psychologists, and later in the 1950s by US sociologist Talcott Parsons, called Functionalism. This basically says that society sorts itself out by self-regulating and that social mobility is not really possible. This was superseded in the 1960s and 1970s with the work of David Hargreaves (teacher typing), Paul Willis (a study called Learning to Labour: How working class lads get working class jobs) and many, many others. They found that social reproduction - mindlessly reproducing the social status of parents, amongst other things - caused problems in education, and argued for reform. Which we have been doing ever since.

If your teacher was in any way interested in her own profession she would have touched on this in her own training and applied it in her work. (I am not even going to dignify her eye rolling nonsense with typing a view on that, by the way).

Which is my way of saying she sounds crap and you may wish to make a complaint or move schools, to avoid future nonsense.

god i hate primary education in this country. actually i hate a lot about education here period. this is a perfect example, together with some of the responses it has provoked.

writing for the sake of producing evidence of errr who knows. to whose benefit? who cares- we have paperwork to document it. joyless, senseless, pointless.

Wow I haven't heard those names since A Level Sociology. Remember the chapter in Haralambos Boffin?

Love a bit of sociology, me

Now, my problem with differentiation by outcome is that it sounds remarkably like hit and miss education - you never really find out what the child knows, just what they feel like showing you, which with a question as dull as the one in that homework, is unlikely to be very much for the majority of children, however clever they are.

she's old enough to have had a very different teacher training expereince than me but it's no excuse really as that's what cpd is for.

to believe it's natural, normal and not even to be avoided that children should only achieve what their parents are capable of doing is inexcusable.

feel yuk about it all this morning.

my boss is a school governor (at a different school) and i've asked him to give me a call when he gets the chance so i can get his advice on what's best to do and whether it's actually worth doing anything. he's a whizz who will no doubt know exactly where the info is, what ofsted looks for, latest guidance etc.

just not sure if i have any energy to see this through anywhere. it seems to me the 'shame stickers', the undifferentiated homework (home teaching) disguised as a 'learning log' and the attitudes of this teacher towards parents and children of lower ability are all part of the same picture which is a pretty sad one. maybe they complete missed the revolutions in theory, attitude and ethics in education through the 60s and 70s?

To me it sounds as though this teacher is not the brightest in the bunch, or else she would realise her theory about children just doesn't work in real life - the evidence will be there in the classroom if she looks for it.

I am surprised her Head hasn't stepped in, given that Ofsted would have a fit if they got a whiff of this sort of nonsense, but perhaps the Head is not exactly top notch either. It does happen.

So ultimately your best step is to take this to the governors' Curriculum and Standards Committee, and if they fob you off, find a better school. You might need to do that anyway, as you sound very frustrated with this one and that rarely works out for the best.

On the other hand you can't rule out the fact she may be a lone operator and they get rid of her once they realise what she is up to in her classroom, as its abysmal educational practice.

it's

i sadly think this is a cross school issue boffin. i don't think it's just her. same homework being set in the other year 2 class and it was the same across year 1. presumably the rationale is the same too.

i've just been invited for interview for a job i've applied for on the other side of the country so with a bit of luck this will become a non issue for me. i realise though that when i next pick a school i will be asking more questions and will definitely ask about homework.

just to be really clear it's not a blanket 'i don't want homework' thing for me - i'll happily do g's spellings, read with him etc and would happily sit with ten 'sums' sent home for him to do or do a finding out facts type task that involved developing research skills and fueling interest in a new topic etc. it's the nature of the homework and the worrying attitude behind it that concerns me - she has confirmed they do it knowing full well it is differentiated by parental input and that that for them is the whole point and a perfectly natural state of affairs

right - have consulted my boss (governor, educator and safeguarding consultant amongst other things) who has consulted primary heads in the area and scanned through the school info etc and it's definitely not just me being neurotic.

the homework according to other heads is totally unacceptable, totally undifferentiated and would not stand up to any kind of evaluation of educational worth. the teacher's attitude is also considered incredibly inappropriate and school's equality policy and equality action plan is a) woefully inadequate and shows a complete lack of understanding of indirect discrimination (and what 'discrimination' means in general actually) but b) none the less it directly contradicts what this teacher said and believes about homework and parental ability and directly contradicts the schools homework policy and practice in general.

the school is actually a level three and on closer reading of the last ofsted report in respect of having used the school for 3 years now i am seeing clearly that what it really says is that children are lovely, well behaved, respectful and willing to get on with work despite the fact that the work is inappropriately set, doesn't adequately stretch able students and is without clear direction. it appears now i read it again that the ofsted report is basically saying - lucky you, you get lovely well behaved kids whose parental input means they do ok on sats despite the fact that you are not adding much to pupil progress.

my email this morning has been ignored so i've contacted again saying that i want the appointment, i've taken advice, i've read the schools equality plan etc and this has confirmed my concerns are well founded and i hope they will get back to me with an appointment and that this can be resolved in house but that i am aware of how to address this with LA and Ofsted.

chatting with my boss it is quite clear that it's a waste of energy because if they've managed to ignore ofsted, managed to ignore reality and the passing of the decades and still arrogantly plough forward with doing it there way then realistically they're not going to give a flying fuck about the views of one parent but.... we shall see.

i have to say i was reassured by hearing that not one but two local headteachers said this homework was woefully inadequate and totally unacceptable and both had assumed that this was a 'lazy teacher' - though as we know this is actually a whole school approach not sadly the work of one rogue teacher.

their sorry. bit stressed.

the school is actually a level three and on closer reading of the last ofsted report in respect of having used the school for 3 years now i am seeing clearly that what it really says is that children are lovely, well behaved, respectful and willing to get on with work despite the fact that the work is inappropriately set

So at the next inspection they'll be given notice to improve or possibly special measures: three years ago coasting schools that were doing a bad job with a good intake were able to get away with it, but under the current frameworks the inspection looks at value add and quality, rather than just outcomes. They'll have bad contexualised outcomes and will, by the sounds of it, fail on capacity to improve (if they were 3 across the board three years ago, they will be asked to show everything they've done to improve) If what you say is right about discrimination then they'll also get clobbered on "closing the gap", although if they have very low levels of FSM/EAL as is common in such schools the gap may be difficult to measure.

There will then follow a deafening wail of middle class parents whining about Gove, forced Acadamisation, "our school", the Tories (whom they all voted for anyway), etc, etc.

they do have very low levels of non white british and low levels of fsd children AND low levels of sen compared to national so yes - hard to measure and all too easy for the school to write it off as well most of our kids do well and of course a small proportion won't as per natural ability outcomes etc.

hope the inspection will see through this but don't hold out much hope.

i just feel really sad actually. sad for the students of less advantaged backgrounds there, sad for the middle class mummies whose insecurities and shame and fear of being not good enough are being preyed upon to make them toe the line and not complain, sad for the local community that the only school there to serve them is caught in the dark ages and so very arrogant etc.

today i've been comparing their prospectus with other schools and seeing that arrogance writ large with comments like, 'if you are lucky enough to be able to secure a place for your child at our school'. just breathtaking really seen in context of other schools prospectus' that are about showing their worth and their commitment to service etc.

their 'equality action plan' is stunningly short sighted and reveals so much about their miscomprehension of what discrimination looks like and just how frankly smug they are. even in the face of a level 3 inspection result it was flagrantly portrayed as ofsted tightening up their procedures and focussing too much on end of ks2 outcomes rather than the school actually needing to improve.

i'm afraid everything i've read, discussed and explored has confirmed they are smug, complacent and assuming they can get away with marketing their parental demographic intake and the subsequent advantages it confers as their own achievement. one can only hope they will be given a rude awakening at the next ofsted inspection because it appears their arrogance has led to largely ignoring what ofsted told them and continuing on in the same old vein.

ha i've just seen the christmas appeal business is up - if anyone could nominate me for a 5 gallon bottle of gin i'd most appreciate it

am wondering now whether to get on to my old uni professor whose still involved in educational policy etc. i know i sound daft but i'm genuinely shocked there are still schools who think they can get away with this kind of differentiation (and results) by parents approach.

sure i expect it in selective and private schools but naively thought state schools had moved on.