Primary school curriculum asking too much of children

[Ipsos]

Hi,

I wondered if I might ask what others think of the pace of work in the primary school curriculum in England the Wales?

My son has been struggling at school and I went to talk to the senco. I said I felt that they were asking too much of ds.

The senco agrees and says that she doesn't know any teacher who thinks that the current fast paced learning is healthy or appropriate for little kids of their age. She says people are always talking about mental health problems in young children as if it was some kind of mystery where it comes from, when in fact it's obvious that it's caused by the school system.

She said there is little that the school can do to shield him from this as they have to meet targets or they will be marked down in their ofsted assessment.

I feel really sad for ds that he is being put through this in his early years, which should be a time of free play and freedom to think and develop naturally.

I wondered if anyone might have ideas on how to solve this problem? If people generally agree that the curriculum is too fast paced, could we perhaps start a petition or something?

Thanks!

Is that for writing Or SPAG Feenie? I'd expect children to be using expanded noun phrases in their writing without having to know the term.

I'm not sure I see what the issue is with identifying adverbs, giraffe? That seems like a perfectly normal activity of the sort that I would have expected to see even before the new curriculum.

Fwiw, not twice!

Writing, Rafa.

Its, fgs. Bloody hate autocorrect, I know my grammar better than you, you beastly thing.

Don't get me wrong I think the whole assessment process has become a farce. To still be waiting for the reading exemplification materials is ridiculous! But there are so many half truths and misinformation being repeated as facts and so many teachers taking them and worse still acting on them I feel it's wrong to allow them to go unchallenged.
If people believe they have to stand in front of a class and extoll the virtues of "fronted adverbials" because Mr Rosen says so they will do just that and then where will our children be! If people believe children need to be talking about extended noun phrases because they read it on MN they are going to ensure their child can!

At least it's not you'r this time.

Oddly that seems to have given autocorrect no issue at all. Either it's a word or a lot of people are using it.

I have no problems with him being politically active. But in his desire to be an anarchist he often fails to do the most basic research. Which means he gets caught out when people point out he's wrong.

This would be less of an issue if he wasn't an author and ex children's laureate. People know his name and trust it and think he does have experience in teaching children to read and write, so they take what he says seriously.

I agree with both of you. But I'm glad someone influential is at least trying to shout about all of this.

Yes, I just wish he'd do it in a way that didn't make it so easy for people who are informed to dismiss him.

He's a huge name and could be a force for good if he actually thought about what he was doing. Or as much a force for good as you can get with the DfE.

I feel that Rosen's ideas about schooling spring directly from his politics, and that this is the problem: he doesn't let facts and evidence get in the way. Here's what he had to say a while ago about phonics teaching (I've emboldened the bits that especially cause me concern):

"You talk about the 'politicised' nature of teaching to read as if this were either a surprise or a mistake. How we run schools and curricula is of course political. It involves the organisation of human beings engaged in collective enterprises. The teaching of phonics comes loaded with a set of notions about children's consciousness and agency. If you've watched Ruth Miskin at work, you'll see that her phonics teaching is wrapped up in ideas around conditioning and control. Underlying this is the old theory of behaviourism, that children operate on a stimulus-response basis. Now people might agree or disagree with the notion but it's hardly non-political. That's to say, there is an alternative view: namely that all human beings are 'reflective' and that any stimulus is responded to by a being that reflects according to their knowledge and consciousness. What's more that being reflects on their own response and adapts and changes according to the response that his or her initial response receives. In other words, instead of a master-servant model of learning, there is a co-operative model of learning."

This idea that teaching children something directly amounts to a "master-servant" model, and must therefore be avoided, is something I find quite dangerous and damaging. It's a recipe for perpetuating the disadvantages of children who are already disadvantaged. And in fact, you can see the elitism at work when he talks about his ideal model of children learning to read, sitting on a parent's knee and interacting one-to-one, in that "cooperative" model of learning. But what about the children whose parents can't or won't do that? What about the children who simply don't learn that way?

I'm with tootired on this one!
Mrz, you obviously have a lot of experience but I find your approach to issues on here overly rigid. Everyone is entitled to their opinion.

Rosen is a sensationalist but he is trying to defend our children from a system drawn up by politicians.

The new curriculum is limiting creativity IMO. It is very rigid in assessing what is/ isn't good writing.

If read write inc ever comes to my school, I'm leaving!
How boring it is!

Ha house I've loved rwi the way my school is doing it. Low income area on the whole and it's really engaged the children (I've been around during the time they do it) as the teachers have been fab with it and it's enabled them to go at their own pace. It seems to get very good results in terms of children reading and enjoying reading
. But it is a really lovely school. Iwasnt concerned with them becoming a trust with the other schools they might change it!

He really isn't trying to defend our children. Kestral has hit the nail in the head.

And the new curriculum only stifles creativity if teachers let it. I can see why the current year 6 teachers are forced into drilling grammatical terms. It's a bit of a worry if it's happening further down the school. That's down to individual schools though and not the curriculum itself.

Are the children working at their own speed on RWI but behind expectations being given the appropriate 1:1 Giraffe?

What looks boring to an adult may well not be boring to a small child. After all, few of us would choose to read the same Thomas the Tank book over and over dozens of times, yet plenty of children seem to enjoy it. So I don't personally think that's a good approach to deciding what or how things are taught in school, especially to the youngest children.

At least Michael Rosen is heard in his criticisms of the educational reforms. Too many government things are going unchallenged because of the right wing print media.

Fwiw, there are things that Rosen is BANG ON imo - his writing about how children are being taught poetry is very interesting.

I don't know what he's said about phonics, but fwiw, I've had 4 children go through primary, each taught reading in a different way, and the only one who's really struggled is the only one who's been taught by pure phonics. You can't draw any conclusions from that I know, but part of the problem was that he was BORED by it. He just couldn't see the point of learning the sounds. He is a child who would have really benefited from a mixture of methods as my eldest had, so that the books he was reading were of interest, and would motivate him to want to read. He's a real problem in class, because he doesn't 'fit' into any of the groups - he's a very bright, very curious, intelligent child, who doesn't want to read or write. So he's bored on the less able tables, and though his brain would do all the work the more able children are doing, he can't record it, or read the questions etc. So he floats around between the groups.

That's my gripe with phonics - I do feel he has been properly let down by that system.

Early reading is totally unnecessary IMVHO. And early writing, before hands are strong enough for proper penmanship, is counterproductive.

BoboChic, genuine question. Why?
My ds was really willing to read and write. He was trying to write letters when he wasn't even three years old. It didn't damaged him in any way.

And LilyBolero , my ds learned to read without phonics, but learning phonics at school actually helping him now, when he encounters new words.

If DC really want to read, no problem. But there is no need to push those who aren't ready. I say that with the benefit of hindsight and DC in the French system who learned to read later - and far more quickly and easily because of it.

Penmanship is taught in a very haphazard way in England. DC really ought to drill in cursive rather than learn to print.

In my native country, children start school at 6/7. But they actually learn to read and write in kindergarden, so when they start school, they are actually ready to start learning using text books. I wonder when people say they start school age 6/7, are they actually start from 0, no knowledge of letters or sound or anything else.

In France there has been a lot of pre-reading work in maternelle (of dubious quality IMO) but that is supposed to be stopping. DD did a lot of writing drill work in Grande Section (i.e. aged 5) and learned to write in beautiful ink cursive by November of the first year of primary.

Yes House everyone's entitled to opinions ...even me!

Feenie I don't think he's influential, famous perhaps certainly well known but I don't think he has any real influence.
He's ranted about everything for as long as I can remember and changed nothing.

"Fwiw, there are things that Rosen is BANG ON imo - his writing about how children are being taught poetry is very interesting."

Lili you have teachers on this thread ask them if they teach poetry in the way Mr Rosen claims