What is happening to education

[1popinamillion]

Anyone else feel like school is becoming a factory? Or maybe its always been like that? We chose a primary school because it had an independent spirit, but with out second child now in year 4 the spirit is being squeezed out of it by the excessive focus on achievement.
No one else seems that bothered - am I the only parent out there who is not interested in achievement? My daughter is learning everyday and has loads of skills and talents, and I want her to go to school and have fun and learn about all sorts of things - not just what the Government think she should know. I'd love to know what other people think

I suspect many people think the same

I don't feel that my DCs school is a factory - am hoping that when DS starts year 6 in September that it stays that way too.

Our school is fighting against it ... but know that the authorities will find fault, as ever-rising targets are the only value recognised by this government.

It's hard work fighting the tide that sees children as percentages not people at the moment we are succeeding

Totally agree mrz - a child is a child, not 6.25% or a perfectly round peg - the current system takes no account of spiky year group profiles nor children who naturally rise and plateau and rise,- nor does it measure sharing,caring and happiness.

I suspect a lot of people feel this way ... And home ed numbers are rising ...

And, as I said before, the 'standards' rise every time there is a change, so that what was reasonable progress five years ago is now failure.

Schools are under huge pressure to make the children achieve, often to the detriment of the child.

I worked in a school where, if a child did badly in the weekly spelling test, they missed playtimes to copy out the spellings. So a child who finds spelling difficult and stressful then watches her friends go out to play while she stays in the library alone ... I own a child who finds spelling difficult ...

Intervention groups are great, but they take children out of the 'fun' stuff in school, such as art and music, RE and sport, where the children may well do well, to spend more time on the aspects which they find difficult and stressful. School becomes a far less positive experience, which in turn reduces motivation and therefore achievement ...

We run interventions before & after school and at lunchtimes so it's in addition to not a substitute for other teaching

I don't feel this about my DC's school. Although maybe that's why it recently went from Outstanding to Good.

I think most of them manage despite the government.
(I don't know why people bring John Holt in- he was writing about schools in USA in 1950's and has never been very relevant, except to those with their own agenda.)

I think one of the issues is that when there was more heavy industry in the country (ship building etc) there used to be work for people who left school with relatively weak basic skills.

Now there isn't really, so somebody who can't read or write that well is scuppered.

Some children find it a struggle to acquire these skills to competency and to get them to do so means spending a lot of extra time with them (which could be perceived as putting a lot of pressure on them). It's a lose-lose scenario for a struggling kid who either leaves with weak skills or misses out on art/ playtime etc.