Maths and Literacy

[Earlytorise]

Can anyone tell me where I can find an official breakdown of what children are to be taught/ expected to know in each year of primary school, particularly with regard to maths and literacy.

DS1 has just started Year 1 and I want to be able to support is learning at home appropriately.

TIA

Google national curriculum 2014 and it is all there on government website.

But bear in mind that schools can choose to move things around within a key stage, so worth checking with the school what they plan to cover this year with your DS.

Hi Earlytorise:

As Admiraltea suggested - the new national curriculum outlines programmes of study and describes what should be covered in each given school year. Web link here: www.gov.uk/government/collections/national-curriculum#curriculum-by-key-stages - just scroll down to Programmes of Study, select subject area and then scroll down to programme for KS1-KS2 (KS1 = Key Stage 1 - Years 1&2 and KS2 = Key Stage 2 - years 3 - 6).

It's a little out of date but I think at core still applies - Campaign for Real Education has prepared a document describing what in an ideal world should be covered (and presumably mastered) in a given school year by subject area here: www.cre.org.uk/primary_contents.html

It's ideal world stuff - so you're school may not be quite working to this - but it does at least give you an understanding of what is believed possible in ideal circumstances.

HTH

well, there isn't actually any list anywhere of what a child should be taught each year, because the national curriculum doesn't work like that. The list given above is what an average child covers approximately, but that assumes that your child falls into that group.

Each child is assessed as to the level they are at. Your child may begin year one on level 1c on writing and level 1b in numeracy for example.
Or they may be working at a level which is not yet in the NC scale, or they may be amazingly ahead and may be on 2b.

The schools expectation is then for your child. Your child is then expected to move up 2 sub levels in a year. So if they start at 1c, they should move up to 1a over the course of a year. But if they start at 2c they need to be working to move up to 2a over the year.

There are lists of what a child should be able to do at each level, but not every child in the class will be covering the same thing at the same time.

Just to add confusion. These levels have no officially been abolished, but the school still has to asses them, and the principle still holds true, that your child needs to be learning at their level, and their goal is to move on from their level.

steppmum does raise a fair point - schools will level your child and should be differentiating work for their ability level (so not giving them overwhelmingly difficult/ easy work).

But steppmum schools are a mixed bag and although I'm sure there are many many very good schools out there - we encountered St. Mediocre who excelled at doing very little and relied on parents doing more at home.

I hear parents complain about homework here - but would they really be happy at a school which never sent books home (as ours did for all of KS2) or said there would be homework and then never sent anything home until Easter before KS2 SATs when 200+ pages of photocopied KS2 SATs Success books were sent home and we were told to get children to do ca. 10 - 15 pages a day over Easter break.

Personally - I think it is a very wise parent to be aware of what is notionally covered (and presumably understood by your child) in a given school year.

Although I accept the notion that schools have flexibility in delivering this curriculum - I think it is important that parents are fully aware of what should be covered and speak up if they find whole elements overlooked (say division - from inverse multiplication to division with no remainders through to remainders or expressed to 2 decimal places - all of which WERE NOT taught over the last 7 years at St. Mediocre).

Again with nearly 50% of pupils in England achieving NC L5 in English/ Maths - I think the most important thing parents need to absorb is that just scraping NC L4 is no longer 'a good result'.

I totally accept for some pupils that's quite an achievement - but for well nourished, well looked after, ordinary kids - I have to say I somewhat query such a low standard.

Depending on what year your child is, they will either be on the new curriculum or the old one. Year 2 for instance will be studying the old curriculum as that was what they had in Year 1, The current cohort on Year 1 should be studying the new curriculum. Added to the mix, the government are removing Levels for assessment, to be replaced with "Less than expect progress" "Expected Progress" and "Exceeding expected progress" for each year.

That said, a school should always be delight that parents are engaged and wanting to help their child progress. I'm sure if you spoke to the class teacher they could point you to some resources to help.

Thanks for your responses everyone you have raised some really interesting points and have shed a lot of light on how the education system works. It's obviously not as clear cut as I had thought .

I should have mentioned in my OP that I'm in N Ireland. I couldn't see anywhere on the .gov.uk site that pertained to my region so had a quick google and came up with this site www.nicurriculum.org.uk/

PastSellByDate the cre link is really useful

Yes, many thanks PSBD!