Primary education for the modern world

[ThinkingForward]

Discussion on how to reform the primary school offering to make it suitable for modern britain

> benefits of having more directed hours of experiences and learning
> more diverse educational offering
> societal benefits: broader opportunities for parents, families an the economy

I am a father of a 6 yr old dc, and both my wife and i work full time, she works for the NHS and i run my own business(es). We have elderly parents, who also require our input and limited family support (our son gets picked up by my mum 1 day a week and she has him for 2-3 hrs).

The need to better provisioning of early years childcare is often highlighted, however there is little public discussion about the effects of a Victorian timetable on modern society, especially at primary school level.

This touches nearly every aspect of society,
a) educational regression of pupils after long summer holidays
b) lack of holiday provision for students and family's that receive pupil premium (from school meals to welfare checks)
c) discriminatory effects on women's earning, career progression and pension provision. Furthermore the effect on families/ relationship stability as a consequential outcome.
i. on breakdown of relationships this can lead to loss of homes and employment, in some case lead to problems of homelessness and addiction for the parent without the children
ii compounds disadvantage, for children especially if extended family support isnt available.
d) environmental impact of a 5 day vs 4 day week for example (additional heating, travel etc), if the current level of funding was capped then a shorter week with longer days may provide additional opportunities for parents to gain good quality employment
i. economic impact of the mismatch between typical holiday allowance (4-6 weeks for full time adult) and 13 weeks school holiday.
f) impact from unauthorized absence due to rigid holiday patterns and consequential high prices of travel

Forster introduced the education act in 1870, even at this stage the need for continuous evolution was recognized in the introductory speech. The timetable is probably one of the only recognisable elements of the schools system from 150 years ago. So much of our society has changed and the persistence with this timetable reinforces discrimination and could be seen as a root of many negative outcomes especially for women. Impacting short and long term earnings as well as pensions in retirement, but this also changes the dynamics of the economy, family life and even the environment. The academic literature indicates that long holidays are not to the children's benefit, with the loss of skills over these longer breaks. The travel industry becries the seasonality of holiday, and justifies its crazy pricing as a result of this.. So who actually benefits from a 150 year old timetable?

Almost every section of society would benefit from reviewing the school timetable, it would be ideal if there was more funding for more provision, but there seems to be almost no loosers from having a more fit for purpose timetable. Different funding options for the short, medium and long term could be considered. For example use of the tax free childcare allowance. As schools provides good quality educational options and childcare at a lower cost than the private provision (typical outside funding rates are around £4.20/pupil per hour with most priviate provision being 25-50% more for "just childcare"). Furthermore the marginal cost for increasing this provision would be modest as there would be mainly variable (additional direct staff and minimal additional overhead).

Working patterns have been brought into sharp focus following C19 and the working from home revolution. There are plenty of opportunities to look at different school and working patterns, for example a 4 day school week with longer days. This might allow those that work around school drop off and pick up to improve their employment opportunities, cut there travel costs and the school to only heat the school 4 days a week . Similarly a 45-46 week schedule then most 2 parent families could manage childcare with their normal holiday although this would be a challenge, but would not create such dependence on family friends, private provision etc to be able to manage the holidays.

So what problems do people see with changing the current victorian timetable to one which fits with modern life.?

I think the "dismissive and nasty" comments are because people are so frustrated that you can't see the really obvious issues with your proposals.
You don't seem to be able to address any of these issues in a way that shows any awareness of pedagogy or practical issues in teaching
It comes across as really telling grandmother how to suck eggs and that is my problem .

Yawn.

You get people's backs up. And you fail to take on board what people are saying in terms of limitations and constrictions which aren't at local but national level.

And that's your main issue.

Even if you had the best idea in the world (you don't) you are your own worst enemy.

You issue lies with government not a Head or a PTA who are fire fighting just to stay open and keep kids safe.

You are picking fights and picking fault. Not doing something proactive and positive. At all. You know best and everyone else is wrong.

You have to work with what you have rather than the burn the house down approach. Why? Cos kids are involved. And what you propose isn't viable. Crack on saying let's go to shift working at your school and see how many new teachers you'll need to recruit because the exist ones walk.

And genuinely parents DO NOT have money.

No one is going to be honest about how they are struggling financially to someone who takes the attitude to 'just work harder' or that you've had it harder then them (when you have absolutely no fucking idea what the background of anyone here is). Your entitlement seeths regardless anyway.

If you had deep enough relationships with a range of people from different backgrounds you'd understand just how strapped people are

You ARE out of touch. You ARE talking down to people in a way that's utterly disrespectful. Especially to those WHO ACTUALLY WORK IN THE PROFESSION.

I will say again - when did YOU last volunteer to help at school?

You are correct, OP, about all the problems you have highlighted. You may even have the solutions, who knows?

The problem is that you are one person and you are going about it in a way that is not taking people with you.

Your funding ideas may work. The changes you suggest may produce the extra income you suggest, who knows? Economic projections would need to be done on a nationwide level... but none of that can be replicated in one school. That is beside the fact that, if this particular Government could increase income by getting more parents back into work, there is scant evidence that they would choose to spend those savings on education at all.

It is not your son's Head Teacher's job to run with your ideas - however well thought out you believe them to be.

Carry on, if you think it is the answer, but do it with a Head Teacher who wants to do it, or set up a school to run the research in.

And don't dismiss the experiences of seasoned education professionals who have been working in education for decades. They are not all drones who go with the status quo, they have opinions based on experience and are likely to be able to spot flaws you won't. That isn't being negative. It's using existing knowledge to prevent foreseeable pot holes.

Telling grandmother how to suck eggs is the perfect phrase to describe the OP.

It's just rude beyond comprehension and the OP is left gawking like a goldfish as to way it's not getting a positive fawning reception.

It's a pile of out of touch nonsense coming from someone who doesn't understand the problem but amazingly knows how to fix it anyway.

In my experience you have to understand the problem first. I believe that's management 101.

And the next point on good management is endeering yourself to others in order to bring them along with your idea. Massive fail on that score if you talk down to those who work in schools like that...

i think the difference between 6 weeks of fixed holidays + 2 weeks flexible and 13 weeks of fixed holidays is small.

5 weeks isn’t small. If you want to remove 5 weeks of teachers’ holidays-what incentive are you going to give them to stay? Where will the money come from to add those 5 weeks’ pay to everyone’s salary?

This might be taking a walk to a neighboring school or a local park, in the forest etc

The neighbouring school has no field either-the government sold them off for housing. There is no local park with a toilet and no forest.

This plan is as good as the ones during lockdown telling schools to ‘just’ decamp to community centres and libraries.

I couldn't care less what you think about the criticism. I don't care how hard your life was or how hard you worked or how many people you employ. That's not relevant at all.

Schools are extremely overstretched and at breaking point, but you seem to take pleasure in making their life even worse by running some peculiar political agenda onto them.
You really need to go into politics if you want change on the scale you're suggesting. I don't know what is powering this hatred towards schools, but I kid you not, you would never have gone this far in your passionate run in beating a school whilst it's already down, in most other European countries. Maybe that's why you moved here?
You are abusing your perceived power and will not get where you think you will. You have come onto a website called MUMSNET, hint is in the name, and proceeded to ignore any constructive criticism you've been given. You've not engaged in any feedback in a constructive way, rather spewed some more facts about your sad background and amazing success despite your perceived difficulties. If this is how you engaged with the school, I am not surprised you didn't get anywhere. You didn't even need to say you're a father, that's very obvious from the way you write and your absurd entitlement. I suggest you spend some more time being a father, rather than wasting time attacking a mainly female profession because it doesn't suit your idea. You don't stop at stomping at an already crumbling school, you go on a website for mums, complain, don't hear what you want and and sob sob, no one is agreeing with you, sob sob, sexism.
I think the forum you're looking for if you want a pat on the back for this frankly narcissistic behaviour is 4chan or some mansplaining part of Reddit.
I hope you get banned from the school.

I think it’s unfair to hurl the “you don’t volunteer” allegation at the poster. I never saw any full time working parents anywhere near school except at sports day and Christmas! They never volunteer for anything. For good reason. In many schools, it’s the majority of parents. It’s also not fair to say these parents don’t have needs. They need Dc looked after. We also need more people to work. That’s how we generate money for government spending. The people working pay taxes. It’s a fairly simple concept. We are heading towards the rich, those subsidised by parents and those on benefits having DC. Others cannot afford what they want for family life. We have a falling birth rate. If we want state money, we need to have a population that’s going to work to provide benefits, NHS, water services, social
services, prisons, transport infrastructure and education plus plus plus. If people give up, all of us get less. But some are at the bottom of the pile and that gets bigger and bigger.

In effect, no political party can solve everything. We do need to solve some things ourselves.

'5 weeks holiday for teachers'

All the teacher I know will not be on holiday for five weeks. They will take a holiday and then do a fair amount of work in preparation for the coming year with stuff like getting up to speed with the new children they will have the coming year and what their individual needs are and where the weaknesses of the class as a whole will be. They have to do this because it's good practice for transition. The kids don't leave at the end of July and the teachers do nothing until day one back in September!

I know my teacher friends spent whit holiday working. A couple had writing assessments for yr2 /6 to prep for inspection. So spent a significant amount of time doing that.

They certainly don't work every holiday but the definitely do a significant amount of work when the kids aren't in.

What happens to this? When do they do this critical amount of work?

Remember class sizes in the UK are bigger than in many other European countries. They also have greater levels of inequality. And there is less specialist support as everything is now 'inclusive' in the UK, which just seems to actually be a euphemism for 'we are just going to dump on mainstream education without supporting additional needs adequately'.

@TizerorFizz I think that was said in the context of the OP spending a lot of time suing the LA, basically breaking a PTA and running a huge political agenda at the school without success. The question was, have you spent a day at the school? If not, how do you know this grand idea will work? Why are you so sure you know how schools work?
The OP implied he'd done all this research and it was foolproof. His idea was foolproof and he couldn't understand why the school wouldn't implement it. The question as to whether he's actually spent a day in a school, was never answered.
I imagine the school probably gave him a perfectly good reason why they can't implement this plan, but just like the many reasonable replies on here, he doesn't engage.

Someone earlier made the very fair point that the head teacher and governors are entitled to simply say no thank you to the request to take part in this 5 year trial the Op was intent on organising. They don't need to give a reason, or argue their case to an individual parent. No is sufficient. The fact that the Op went and spent his time planning and organising for it anyway, and then getting cross when the school still said no is just remarkable.

It isn't about criticising a working parent for not volunteering though. It is about saying that the op should spend some significant time in a school ( volunteering or otherwise) in order to understand the issues and see how teaching works before telling people how to do things without the foundational understanding of teaching and learning.

The OP is so identifiable in the details he has given, I’m sure it won’t be very long before one of the staff/governors/parents see this post. I would be very interested in their points of view.

@RoseslnTheHospital

Im not going to tar everyone with the same brush here, but some people are being quite bitchy. Whats the problem with calling it out?

Theres lots of calls for more money but i havent seen anyone put forward a proposal on how to raise it, and the impact on society of doing so.

i) even up the NI position on Self employed?
ii) claw back SEISS like student loan?
iii) some kind of subscriptions system for schools?
iv) increase tax on unhealthy foods, alcohol, vapes/smoking
v) ? RITH?

We will move school if it doesnt get better soon, it means moving house and that at the moment its not so easy, in the new year hopefully the market will be more understandable.

Pensions/pay gap: How do you talk about issues and explore route causes without stating the issue? Ideas?

1. shared NIC's for both parents for the first 5 years of childs life.
2. more tax free saving options for childcare from a younger age?
3. ??

It's exactly what a narcissist would do.

Wtf is actually wrong with you?? Proposals on how to sort funding problems are for politicians to create. That's their JOB. Not for you and not for me. It's for voters to express their discontent and then for politicians to sort out. You don't genuinely think that your funding proposal will actually be implemented do you. You really are quite deluded and uneducated in how politics and policy work.

If I was in government and in charge of teaching and education, my first step might be to get together a panel of experienced and successful teachers and educational academics. Then ask them what changes they'd like to see made in education in order to move forwards.

But realistically, what would immediately work in all schools and for all children is smaller class sizes. If the typical class size was 15 instead of 30, but with the same staffing levels that would make an enormous difference imo. Both to what teachers can deliver to children and the workload/morale of teachers themselves. Of course, finding the necessary teachers and the funding to pay for them is the issue there.

@EducatingArti

This idea of @sandberry was quite interesting. We also need to ask are we trying to teach stuff to test or concepts.

This are all political issues. These are not solved by one school or one parent or even a collected whole school community.

These are issues for Central Government. We could hypothesise and discuss until the end of time, but I'm not an Economist. I don't know who on here is (I'm sure there are probably a few), so this is not my area. This is for lobbying Parliament on, not expecting educators to come up with all the answers.

All I know is schools are in dire straits and education is blatantly not a priority at the moment. I'm not sure what is, but it isn't public services as a whole. There are always ways to pay for the things that Governments think are important. It is just about priorities.

So try to sell them this idea of yours, but I'm not sure what you want us to do - nor your Head Teacher.

"Bitch", "bitchy" are misogynist terms. That's the issue with them. It loses my goodwill immediately to see that term being used about people posting in a way you don't like.

Funding for education is a uk wide political issue. There is money in the govt pot, it's a question of priorities. Raising more funds for schools if it were necessary above and beyond that can be done through the traditional tax systems, or through more novel taxation schemes. But that's not something that individuals can push through. You need to be joining a political party and getting involved with policy and manifesto priorities if you want to effect change across the UK.

I use the 'you don't volunteer ' not to shame parents who don't - and don't volunteer for good reason.

But I think if you are going around saying this is how schools should be run, you need to see first had just how pushed the teachers are in terms of merely managing the kids and how extreme the staff shortages are, and what impact they are having on whole classes

BEFORE you go saying we should have this extra activity or that activity and leave school to go do it.

You have to understand that the teachers are THAT stretched in many many cases. Even good teachers at good schools in good areas.

One of my good friends is retiring as a ta this summer because she's so sick of being assaulted by SEN kids. The school doesn't have the facilities and support for the most needy kids or to protect their staff from kids who are too overwhelmed in a system that isn't suitable for them. They need smaller classes and places to go and sit quietly. There just ISN'T anywhere in the building.

Having grand ideas about longer school days won't fix this. If anything it will make it worse as these are the kids who will struggle most with longer days.

There HAS to be a wholesale change from the top to provide appropriate alternative mainstream level schooling for kids who don't fit mainstream. It's not inclusive if your kid behaviour dominates a class so much that they affect the education of others.

And you can't always take these kids out of their routines to go off site. Certainly not without enough support trained in special needs - and that goes beyond the training that's standard for teachers.

This year there was one incident where my boy got into trouble for restraining another child from hurting his best friend. The Head starting going on about how he shouldn't have done it. We had to point out that we'd never taught him to restrain anyone and if he was doing that, we had questions about how and why he was doing this technique if it wasn't so normalised in his classroom and where the hell were the staff anyway if it had got to this point. It raised concerns about levels of supervision. Head went very quiet at that.

Having seen children have full on meltdowns in the middle of class or on trips it really focuses your mind on just how much is being expected of the teachers. It's beyond anyone's ability. The parents melted at how bad it was at one birthday party a few weeks back...

That's why I say to volunteer. To have good understanding and eyes on the scale of the issues before deciding you have a magic solution. A magic solution that will only break teachers as there is nothing left to give and no capacity to organise and roll out with the pressures they have. Not to virtue signal.

It's very clear to me that the OP has exceptional limited understanding of being WITH the kids. And that's relevant. And volunteering would be a good way to seriously consider whether little Johnny could cope with more trips or whether Mrs Jones will avoid a nervous breakdown.

We also need to ask are we trying to teach stuff to test or concepts.

This, would be answered by this:

If I was in government and in charge of teaching and education, my first step might be to get together a panel of experienced and successful teachers and educational academics. Then ask them what changes they'd like to see made in education in order to move forwards..

But that's not up to us. The DfE sets the curriculum and the agenda and the Ofsted have their own ideas. Teachers, outside of Free Schools (and I don't mean to harp on about this, but it seems that this is really what you need if you want a small scale, local curriculum that teaches what you want and how you want it) have no say in what is taught and what the priorities are.

I would love education to be run by education experts and health to be run by health experts, but that's not the country we live in.

So maybe go and storm Parliament and insist the entire political system be changed instead?

The reason I volunteer for my son's school is PRECISELY because I know no one else is able to. I don't begrudge them at all. I know if I don't then it would result in the cancellation of things that benefit not just my son but the whole class. I see regularly just how bad the situation is and it's the only proactive thing I can do to actually make a meaningful difference NOW not in years time when politicians notice and change something. It's far from ideal.

I wish it wasn't this way.

The school PTA HAS managed to raise a significant amount of money this year. Money that can only be spent on certain things unfortunately. But that still doesn't really make up for it having a particularly low allocation of money per child - our council has had one of the lowest in the country for years and our school one of the lowest in our council. This all has an effect. This was one reason it was forced into an academy trust to help manage its own finances better.

The PTA has bust a gut and annoyed a fair few parents in the process, over fundraising too. There was talk of another event but the Head said no because of the extra pressure that put on staff and parents and enough was enough. It's a fair position to realise the limitations of even that.

Fundraising isn't easy. DH and I are involved in a number of fundraising events over the summer and it's hard hard work to run. You have to have goodwill to do it and know when not to burn through that.

I would love education to be run by education experts and health to be run by health experts, but that's not the country we live in.

So maybe go and storm Parliament and insist the entire political system be changed instead?

Whilst always remembering that if you try and stage a revolution who gets mucked around with lack of continuity, disruption and experimented on whilst you do that?

My year group trialled the National Curriculum at our school. We were a year older than when it officially was due to be introduced. We were the guinea pigs. It was very apparent to us even in y7 what was happening and how less than ideal it was and the strain it put on us and the teachers. We went through the system doing SATs at 14 (again before it was brought in) and doing extra papers.

Every change has huge ripple effects that the kids are at the centre of. And it doesn't run smoothly.

It also takes YEARS to write and roll out of you do it properly. DS would long be out of primary if change was decided on tomorrow. In the meantime he's in yr3 - one of the most affected years nationally due to COVID. They need catch up help with extra teachers and TAs NOW not system change which will bring further disruption and won't benefit their year anyway.

@RedToothBrush
Do you feel funding should be universal, based on a per child basis?

There is such a lot of lack of knowledge of what happens in primary school and education in the statement "We also need to ask are we trying to teach stuff to test or concepts."

Primary schools teach concepts. They have to and they know how to effectively teach concepts in number, literacy, etc etc. They also have to demonstrate to the government that the children can pass the statutory tests. Currently, as far as I can recall that's just the Year 6 SATS in primary schools. Of course they spend a lot of time prepping the kids for those tests. Because they will judged to the ends of the earth on the results of those tests. Which will impact the whole school potentially. Because that's how our culture works. If the children as a group don't meet the required standards then the school will be judged, blamed, castigated, etc etc.