Do some parents ask too much from the teacher?

[Cloud2]

I am just a bit curious about this.
I have read quite lots of thread from mumsnet, some mum think their children are not stretched enough at school, not being given works to their children based on childrens individual needs. But how can a teacher provide such attention to 30 individual children? From my point view, given different work based on 3-4 groups must already add enough pressure on the teacher. Is it fair to ask the teacher to really make sure each children be given special designed work?
And also, what would happen if you always push the child to learn more advance stuff, a year 1 children maybe learn year 2 stuff, a year 2 children maybe learn year 4 stuff, what do they learn by the time they are year 5,6? Do primary school then has to teach stuff from secondary?

One reason for disruptive behaviour is boredom in class. A bright child can easily be bored when the work is too easy.

So, teacher should assess the children and group them and give advanced children material or tasks suitable for each level. It doesn't have to be Y3 ofr a Y2 child, it can be more work or additional work. I doubt that you have 30 individual levels in each class.

But yes, some children may need more advanced work because they are that much more advanced. Our school has each year in Y6 a couple of children they teach KS3 already, I doubt more than 3-4 but they do it.

A friend's DD is very advanced in reading, they had the issue that she could read more than what was age appropriate. So instead of just letting her loose on the library they gave her tasks for the reading books to formalise it, make a report from your book, research xyz and make write 1/2 page about it etc.

For the children who have learnt KS3 in primary school, what can they do in year 7 and 8? Maybe they then done GCSE and A Level in year 10, then can they get teaching University stuff in secondary? And certainly we wouldn't like our children go to University at a young age when they not socailly , emotionally ready.There have to be a point that they will get bored. Why not just let them learn at the normal rate, maybe take on more responsibilities in the class room. Maybe help the slow ones? Or strech on the other things?

I am amazed at the teacher have provide different stuff for 3-4 groups, and then some children may even need more advanced work. Certainly the teacher's time is limited.

Cloud2

Presuming you're not spoofing us here - and are not a teacher posing as a concerned? parent....

First question is what is the outcome you want from primary in general.

For me - it's that my child has a reading age = to their chronological age and can add, subtract, multiply & divide (with the proviso that this obviously may not apply to those due to disability/ illness unable to fully access curriculum). I personally think some reasonable writing skills wouldn't go amiss - able to write a paragraph answering a comprehension question on a passage perhaps? (from what I can work out that would be a high NC L4/ low NC L5 ability)

So - that leads to a second question:

Should schools be required to teach to that - well I suppose in essence that is what the national curriculum is for and things like KS2 SATs are about.

At present schools only have to get over that NC L4 barrier. The vast majority of pupils in England achieve this. www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2013/sep/19/sats-results-key-stage-two - scroll down to tables at bottom (~85% achieve this NC L4+ threshold).

Now you're asking about the KS3 ability - officially NC Level 5 is KS3 ability (end target NC Levels KS 3 are NC L5/ L6) - roughly 50% of pupils are achieving into NC L5 ability in English and 45% in maths at end KS2 (again see guardian link above for that data). So the question isn't - surely we can't be teaching to that level in Primary - because 50% of the population are working there.

Now that can be for all sorts of reasons - here in Birmingham with state funded grammar schools of very high quality - many parents do more at home with their kids or hire tutors to ensure that their children are working at roughly NC L5 ability to have a good chance to pass the 11+.

The reality is the government has now declared that they want schools to record how many pupils achieve NC L4b - which they now deem is the appropriate score to be 'senior school ready'.

The other reality - is that puberty & just being a teenager can be a period of time when if school is a real struggle or you fail to 'get' what the teacher/ your classmates are going on about - there is a great tendency to just 'turn off'/ 'drop out'.

So perhaps the question to ask - is would it be helpful if we actually caught them whilst they were young and sent them on from primary to senior school working into NC L5 ability?

There was a long discussion at some point on MN Talk Primary about what KS2 SATs results meant for GCSE - but basically NC L5 meant it was highly likely you'd score C or better, fairly likely you'd score B or better and there was a reasonable chance you could achieve an A at GCSE (if you worked a bit). Getting the majority to high NC L4 or even NC L5 ability - could radically change the depressing statistics for many state comprehensive senior schools.

It also may make that transition to more intensive teaching less daunting - as pupils will have the maths/ comprehension skills to cope with more specialist and demanding classes.

It's only anecdotal but there was a tv documentary (I think it was Panorama) about a school in Birmingham that doesn't expel disruptive/ problem students but deals with them in a special unit. What kept coming up was that most of these kids were disruptive because they couldn't read - cracking that meant that school wasn't difficult and they could participate.

Finally - and this is about predicting future employment directions which is tricky - but there seems to be a consistent call for a better educated - more numerate & literate - workforce. Ultimately education (just look at the history of Universal education in Britain) is about creating a nation's future workforce. So ultimately the question is not so much can teacher's do this - but may be more knowing what we do now, what do employers need in future? The needs of the employers may mean that how teaching is organised/ manned may need to be rethought.

As a parent - we got more out of paying £14.99 a month to maths factor than from St. Mediocre. DD1 scored NC L6 at KS2 SATs and with no maths homework and only two pieces of work actually shown to me briefly at parent/ teacher meetings in maths - I'm pretty vague on what was actually happening in school. OFSTED agreed that the maths curriculum needed serious rethinking. The average salary at St. Mediocre is £39K a year - obviously the Head of Maths gets more. So my question to you Cloud 2 - is what would be the outcome if well designed & responsive on-line teaching was available for each child - that could help them when stuck/ work at their pace/ and identify struggling children whilst also support high flyers. Maybe the solution to higher achievement - more one to one attention for pupils is technology. It certainly worked for us.

To take maths as an example

DDs class is taught a concept. They are then given several levels of problems. DD easily does the hard level problems. There is still time left, so she does the next to hard level problems as well, or sometimes she is asked to help another child. This is sort of ok from a consolidating knowledge point of view.

However the next day, the class are doing more examples on the concept as a good number of them didnt get it the first time. DD got the concept yesterday, so she does more of the hard problems , but is now getting bored.

What happens when on the 3rd day the concept is revisited again? Am I really asking too much to expect DD (and the other children that have understood it by now) to be given extension material that stretches them sideways? Im a great fan of lateral problem solving type questions for maths so the child has to think about applying what they know, rather than teaching them more maths. Id be quite happy for her to be asked to tackle something like that with no teacher input (as would DD who doesnt want to spend yet another lesson effectively doing busy work).

Our primary school has started streaming for maths. So the really bright Y4s are taught in Y5 while the low ability set go in with Y3. It is working well.

Am I really asking too much to expect DD (and the other children that have understood it by now) to be given extension material that stretches them sideways?
Red a friends DC who is G and T is at private prep and gets given seperate maths homework to his level.

she also showed me the normal pupils HW and seemed advanced compared to our normal average HW

Talluhah that seems to make sense to me. My DD is cusp sept and is older in her year and seems to be ahread.

Mouse I was answering the OP, who seemed to suggest that parents who want harder work for their DC are being unreasonable. I was trying to suggest that I wasn't being unreasonable!! I am well aware that some schools do this very well - in fact so (ironically) did DD's school until this year!!

tallulah - puzzled how streaming works under the new curriculum where there is age group expectations? And how does that work for the lower ability DC (who presumably will always then struggle to catch up)?

At present schools only have to get over that NC L4 barrier. The vast majority of pupils in England achieve this.

This is a massive over simplification. Primary schools need to:
Have all children (sen, eal, BSED, looked after etc) achieve 14+ points over ks2. This is equivalent to 7 sub levels or 2 and a bit levels.
Meet their personal school targets in terms of how many should get level 4s based on their ks1 data. This is a percentage not specific children.
Meet 'floor standards' for level 4. This was 65% last year and I think what PSBD was referring to.
Meet targets for value added - again personal to the school but usually expected to be over 100. Anything above 12 points across ks2 is value added.

There was a long discussion at some point on MN Talk Primary about what KS2 SATs results meant for GCSE - but basically NC L5 meant it was highly likely you'd score C or better, fairly likely you'd score B or better and there was a reasonable chance you could achieve an A at GCSE (if you worked a bit).

It is expected that a child who got 4s will get a C or above. Level 5 children are expected to get a B or above. 'Fairly likely' is meaningless. This is what secondaries are expected to do so they will do everything in their power to get children there.

As a parent - we got more out of paying £14.99 a month to maths factor than from St. Mediocre. DD1 scored NC L6 at KS2 SATs and with no maths homework and only two pieces of work actually shown to me briefly at parent/ teacher meetings in maths - I'm pretty vague on what was actually happening in school.
Yes, her level 6 will have had nothing to do with the teacher. This is definitely the case.

OFSTED agreed that the maths curriculum needed serious rethinking.
I have heard with my own ears Ofsted inspectors say that they don't know anything about foundation stage, aren't interested in x subject, think handwriting is/isn't important - they never agree on anything, they are biased, judgemental and make mistakes like any other human. Osted is meaningless.

The average salary at St. Mediocre is £39K a year - obviously the Head of Maths gets more.
You cannot possibly know this. It is not 'obvious' that the head of anything gets 39+. I am a subject leader and don't earn anything like this. If they are on the leadership scale then they are earning this for more than just their maths.

PSBD - the, incorrect and biased answers to questions no one asked. I will continue to say this - stop making out you know anything more about education than any other parent. You do not.

Cloud2 - a child should always be progressing and learning - if that means teaching then degree level at secondary then so be it. 'what about next year?' is pure laziness.

However it is certainly true that children can learn and progress in many ways and do not need to be doing a certain level to be being stretched. They can be challenged by the way in which they apply their knowledge and manage their own learning.

Being 'bored' is never an excuse for bad behaviour. Life is boring. Is it ok for me to sing at the top of my voice and throw things in the doctors waiting room because I am bored? I would be worried to find that children in my class found their work boring or too easy but I do not accept it as a reason for bad behaviour. It is lazy and irresponsible to give that message to children.

I can give my experiences if you like - I am gifted in maths.

Just to confuse you - where I grew up primary school carried on until the end of Year 7 although the local private secondaries started from Y7 (like the rest of the country.)

I went to a large primary school. (3 classes in a year.) There were 3 of us in the year who were defined as "gifted enough to be a significant problem" (it was a very naice town!) and they put the three of us in the same class. There were problems (in Y4 I had a brand new teacher and my mum always remembers the first parents evening where she tearfully told them that every night she spent an hour preparing extension work for me and every day I finished it before she had finished explaining to the rest of the class what they were supposed to be doing. My mum laughed and suggested sending me to "tidy the music room".)

However, by Y6 it was working really well as, although the three of us were well onto secondary work by then, we would be sent off to the library to do our own extension work - often with the task to think of a hard extension puzzle of our own and solve it. It worked but only because there was 3 of us.

In Y7, my 2 comrades went off to the local private school leaving me on my own. That was a difficult year. The "problem" (ie me!) was solved partly by the purchase by my teacher of a GCSE Algebra revision book but it wasn't ideal.

In Y8 I went to secondary and was conveniently taught by the Head of Maths. He was very keen to check if I had any gaps in my knowledge and so I had a slightly frustrating year of being "stretched sideways". I then spent Y9 and Y10 doing the 3 years worth of GCSE course before doing GCSE a year early.

I then had a nice lazy year where I did a bit of A level maths while doing the rest of my GCSEs. As a result, when I started A-levels (and I was doing 5 - and I'm not that clever at anything other than maths - so quite a tough set) I had one that was nice and easy meaning that I had more time for the rest.

Then I went to Cambridge and discovered just how ordinary I really was!

I was very lucky. Lots of teachers willing to "go the extra mile" for me. Me doing the same course as everyone else wouldn't have worked. Whenever it was tried it made me feel like I was going to explode. I still remember the panic I felt aged 13 when they tried to keep me with the rest of the class and we were all told to get to the end of page 32 but no further for homework and realising that I was already on page 38. (And I'd spent most of the lesson gossiping!)

redsky it just means they can all work at the right pace. Presumably the lower ability will always be behind, but then that happens in whole class teaching.

They started with phonics groups last year, and have extended to maths this year. My DD needs quite a lot of help and is in one of the lower sets, so I'm pleased she isn't being expected to go faster than she can manage. Her bf is in the top group and is working at a higher level.

They have their other lessons in the normal year groups.

I didn't get the chance to look at mumsnet today. Thanks for all the reply.

Actully, what I mean is I think the teacher's time is limited, and if the teacher has to teacher 3-4 group differently, and then even more, some talented children need to be streched even further, and some bottom children need extra attention to keep up. So the overall progress is slow.

Through my children's school experience here. I am quite happy with the English, but for Math, the progress is painfully slow. No matter some bright children would be bored, and then teacher has to give them more difficult stuff to do which makes the difference in a class even bigger.

And I think the children in the UK start formal education too early, by 4 years old, some children are ready, some are not, so teacher has to catering too many different levels right from the begining. By age 6-7, most children are ready, but for bottom group children, even they are ready now, there is big gap between them and the top group. If they get the help , they can catch up, if not, they may stay at the bottom.

I come from a country which school start at 6, and from year 1, the learning pace is much fast. Teacher teach the same to the whole class,most bright children won't be bored. Maybe a few really talented children would be bored, but most bright children are fine. A few children might not be able to catch up, then they have to do extra after school. By the end of year 6, children's overall math level are much advanced than here.

In England, especially by year 5&year 6, the math curriculum is too simple for bright children. The difference in the class is too much.

Just want to say, overall I think the teaching method in the UK is interesting and creative, and children are happy at school. But math are a bit simple.

But for maths there are a huge wealth of logic/problem solving type questions that can be given to bright children. They don't need to be taught "more maths" but can still be kept interested. My older child used to do a lot of these sort of questions and even I (graduate in mathematical subject) found them interesting and challenging! I also think they could be given to children with minimum of teacher guidance, so other than working out was appropriate to give the children at a certain level, this shouldn't require teacher resource. I actually think this is a better way to stretch bright children then just teaching them the next thing as well - all very well knowing a mathematical method, it's applying it that is the hard part!

I agree with redskyatnight. My daughters find their maths lessons too easy but to be honest I don't want them being taught years ahead of themselves. they are already ahead and finding it easy, I would prefer them to have more challenges and they don't require much teacher input really.

"In England, especially by year 5&year 6, the math curriculum is too simple for bright children. The difference in the class is too much."

I'm stumped by that word, bright, I hate its meaningless.
DD got L6 in KS2 math SAT & has been challenged in ordinary state school math in yr7-8. Looks like DS-now-yr6 will be similar. DD's English results are also very high & she's challenged in English, too.

Our not-so-popular primary school in high-ITV-viewing not-Outstanding SAT-results-below-national-avg has catered for my kids reasonably well. Academically at least. Even when school said until 6 weeks before SATs that there was a timetable conflict (school were wrong), so no child could be put in for L6 tests, school were still catering for DD. I have never once complained that DC weren't stretched enough, and must admit I often read those kind of posts with small cynicism. But then, folk can only speak to their own experience. And in my experience, clever kids find ways to drive themselves given half-decent support. DS spent yr4 writing out the 17 times-table for fun.

Maybe by 'bright' you meant kids who need to do L8+ math in yr6 and anything else would be stupefyingly dull. I don't know people like that anyway.

Teachers are trained to differentiate between several sets of children. If you think that your DC's teacher is having trouble doing that then they probably aren't a very good teacher. They don't have to provide individual attention to 30 different children. They group them according to ability, teach the lesson to the class, send the top set to do their work whilst reinforcing what has needs doing with the lower sets. Most classes in DS's school have a TA who will help the bottom set more. The teacher plan to have work to cover all abilities.

Actually I am not sure what you are asking. Are you saying teachers should hold bright children back to save themselves having to prepare more advanced work? You don't expect much of teachers do you?

IMO, all children should be encouraged to meet their potential. If that means Yr 6 children starting GCSE level work then so be it. The school, be that the teacher or a GATCO will have to find a way to deal with that. You can't hold children back just because it is easier for the teacher.

I have a DS2 who is predicted to get lvl 6 at the end of this year so capable of doing the work of an average child in Yr 9. His teacher is positively encouraging this and helping him and others who are the same level. She isn't stopping them from reaching their potential and nor am I having to ask her to provide work of the appropriate level - she just does because she is a good teacher and knows her job!

Bertha - the issue is that due to the change in curriculum, children will only be taught stuff that is defined for their year group. So Y6 children can't go on and do work that is aimed at Y9. The challenge is how to keep the more able children engaged. OP seems to be suggesting that this might be unreasonable. I, like others, think that making a child who can easily do the work plod along at the speed of the slowest is not a good idea and that there is (fairly simple) things that can be done to keep them engaged. Unfortunately the curriculum is so new I think that teachers are still finding their feet in terms of how this works in practise. At least there seems to be a larger than usual number of posters saying that their DC are not challenged!! In my case I am seeing that my Y4 DD is not given the opportunity to do the harder work that was routinely given to her older brother at the same age group.

I live in a country where primary school (years 1-4) is taught the way OP described, and then depending on their year 4 grades children go to totally separate secondary schools in year 5 (bit like grammar, old style secondary modern, or a vocational school, although there is more movement between schools after year 5 than that would suggest).

DD is very strong in German (I.e. the equivalent to being good at English if she was in the UK) and humanities (also at the non core subjects like music, art and sport) but struggles with maths and hates it.

The pace of learning is relatively fast,at lleast from year 2 on. DD is not bored in the subjects she is near the top of the class in, but maybe because they are creative ones that is because she can write a better poem rather than need to move on and learn about another poetic form, for example. She gets very stressed about maths though and often comes home not having understood what she has "learnt" in class, so I have to re- teach it before she can do her homework.

In school systems like the one in the part of Germany where I live, and perhaps the one the OP knows, the children who are working at a lower level/ struggling get left behind unless their parents can help them - very ordinary people pay tutors, not just pushy parents. By year 5 though they are split up into different schools entirely, so no need to ddifferentiate.

I wish DD's teacher could differentiate for maths, but am glad that if she has to struggle at least I can help her... Not sure for how much longer though.

I teach English as a foreign language and have adult students who are taking my evening classes to enable them to help their kids with English homework - that is the kind of lengths parents have to go to to help theikids keep up where there is no differentiation and a fast pace in the classroom.

Redsky - thank you. I really didn't get that from the OP, it looked like an issue of differentiation to me, but then what you have explained and what the OP appears to be talking about is not the experience of DS's school so perhaps I shouldn't have replied anyway.

I know they have implemented the new maths curriculum in the lower school but haven't in the upper school - they are phasing it in. The HT said only last week that the upper school can be working on things that she was doing at GCSE so there is no question that they aren't being stretched. I would have assumed that since you can get a level 6 in SATs that it is perfectly acceptable for children to be working above their year group - does the curriculum not dictate the topics rather than impose a narrow band on what can done with those topics?

But then levels are going anyway so maybe who knows what is round the corner!