Curriculum for Excellence

[onestarrynight]

I have a DC due to start school soon and I feel like I keep hearing negative things about CfE (things like too much emphasis on group work, muddying of boundaries between different subjects, not enough factual knowledge, too nationalistic, etc) but I don't know anyone with primary age DC who can tell me about the reality. If you have primary age DC, how have you found it? If you have particular complaints about your DC's experience, what sort of things have been poor? I'm not really sure how worried to be.

It just seems so complicated. My DD is in P1 so I’ve not much experience. I was initially quite happy with the idea of play, but there’s no learning.

She sometimes goes to the blue table and she has to put her photo beside her target task. She has a great time avoiding much of this I think. Academically, she hasn’t really made any progress. She knows a few sounds but no words. I’m actually gutted typing this tbh.

To a large extent it depends on your local school and their teachers and resources available and how well the free play suits your child depends to an extent on your child's personality and learning style.

I wouldn't worry - assume you've looked at your local options and been on the school tour? The learning side of it, especially in the earlier years is relatively easy to supplement at home with the hundreds of apps and reading books available at the library etc.

I have children at the end of primary. When they were in p1 they still had the kids sitting at desks doing phonics all year but I believe it is much more play based now. I can see benefits to being more play based at this age. The younger boys in the class tend to struggle as they aren’t maturity wise ready for such routines.

as they have gone through primary my biggest concern has been the lack of clarity as to how they are getting on. Every child is doing well and there is no such thing as being behind as everyone progresses at their own rate. Which is all good in theory but in reality you do want to know if your child is meeting expectations for their age. The report cards are so vague and cut and pasted information in each section.

they are working at “early level” “first level” and “second level” I think the idea being they reach the end of second level at the end of p7. But second level is being worked on through p5, p6 and p7. And the reports just say “working at the beginning on second level” or “towards the end of second level” etc which is frustratingly vague. Also the reports say “meeting expectations” which I later realised that I think that actually means their individual expectations that they are predicting. So they can be doing really well or really badly in a given area but as long as the school predicted that that is where they were expected to be it will say “meeting expectations “

i would recommend lots of reading with them for enjoyment. Provide lots of books from library and read together lots. Not just fiction but also fact based books about sharks dinosaurs etc. if they have a love of reading and learning this helps a lot more than anything

DD is in S4. I haven't seen it affect her negatively in any way to be honest. She's doing fine. I'm not a teacher though so I don't have their perspective.

And the reports just say “working at the beginning on second level” or “towards the end of second level” etc which is frustratingly vague.

You are lucky - ours just say which level they have achieved. So they will say ‘achieved early level’ for years and it is only when the still say ‘achieved early level’ in P5 that you realise there might be an issue. Especially as, as you say, the school may be merrily telling you they are meeting expectations but without telling you how low their expectations for your child are.

Yes exactly shelefttheweb it’s like it’s all shrouded in secrecy how your child is actually doing. And the reports are so difficult to decipher. Achieved first level looks like they aren’t doing very well and if you ask the teacher they say “ah no it’s ok we just show what they achieved so far. they achieved first level 2 years ago, they are actually working within the second level now which where they should be” but it really doesn’t need to be so complicated. They could be more upfront about it all and save parents trying to decipher the mystery. I remember one year we had “working towards the end of first level”. And the next year we had “working at the end of first level”. And we were like wtf isn’t that pretty much the same thing? And the whole meeting expectations thing can falsely give the impression your child is doing great when actually in p1 they predicted they would always be bottom of the class so they are meeting expectations

Forgot about the levels and the report cards! Yes they were confusing and anxiety inducing but she's gone on to do well so they do feel a bit meaningless. More information would be preferred. Actually there's another S4 report coming out so I do wonder if it will be just levels or actual details.

My DC moved from an ordinary English primary school to start secondary school in Scotland. They were a long way ahead of the other children. I remember thinking that they were about 2 years ahead of the Scottish children in maths, for example. Then for the first 3 years of secondary there was almost no homework and everything was very laid back. The young people seemed to be babied - expectations were low, and this was at what is locally perceived as an academic school. Things only picked up somewhat when public exams kicked in. Scottish standards seem to be a long way below English ones, and English standards are behind many other countries. I know a Ukrainian family with a child at primary school here, and they think that it is far easier / lower level than primary in Ukraine.

I don't usually defend c for e (hell may have frozen over) but they deliberately de emphasise memorising facts at early primary so if you pick up workbooks from America or England it does look 'behind' but it's supposed to encourage creativity and independent thought in the end.

I agree the lack of accurate feedback was a significant problem for me as a parent - the reports and consultations were meaningless so we did our own learning to gauge things.

It's a fact that Scottish education has slipped down the rankings although believe we don't engage with some of the ranking now.

‘Applications of Maths’ seems to best represent the curriculum for excellence; principally problem solving using data presented and little actual knowledge or maths skills required.

www.sqa.org.uk/files_ccc/ApplicationsOfMathsPaper1SQPRN5.pdf

It's a fact that Scottish education has slipped down the rankings although believe we don't engage with some of the ranking now.

Yes the Scottish Government pulled out of international rankings as they were falling down, including behind England, which didn’t show them up well.

Userwoozer that’s all very worrying. Not sure what to think hopefully they catch up eventually at university

I don't think you can just catch up at university. You won't be studying all the same subjects as you did at school, for starters. I have read (this is anecdotal) that Scottish students at Scottish universities are behind English students, who are behind students from the EU. It presumably doesn't help that there is only a one year 6th form in Scotland, whereas in England it's 2 years. Personally, my DC did quite a lot of work outside of school, which gave them a chance to stretch themselves. Including taking lessons online and at one stage doing a correspondence course. This was not just to help them do well at school - it went beyond that, and included doing a subject that was not available at the school. Another issue I found was that in Nat5s and Highers there seems to be a lot of rote learning - the exam marking scheme seems to be based around for instance needing to write down 3 facts to get 3 points. It doesn't encourage you to develop your own essay style, to argue things, etc.
If you want your child to be "well-educated" rather than just to do okay within the Scottish system, then there's a lot you can do, but it takes time, probably some money, and motivation from both parents and child.
Some people will flame me for this, I expect.

My impression too @Userwoozer - parental input makes a lot more difference than anything else is my experience.

I agree that a side effect of 'free' tuition for Scottish students at Scottish universities is that you have a cohort of young people with even less experience outside of Scotland than in any other time.

I imagine it being very difficult to persuade children to do extra work on top of what they are doing for school if they appear to be doing fine in comparison with peers and getting good grades. Did you have to sit them down with a frank discussion about how
tje education system they are in is considerably worse than neighbouring countries and they need to go above and beyond work wise?

I can see how to help them with extra maths for instance. But much less so with essay writing and presenting arguments etc . Without it being officially marked I don’t know where they will find the impetus

How do first year English University students compare to second year Scottish university students? That is a better comparison. It used to be that English students could enter the second year of Scottish universities due to A levels being more in-depth. That has changed now though and despite being four years compared to the English three, high tariff courses like law in Glasgow no longer let you start from S5.

A second year Scottish student is working alongside second year English students - at least in the arts and humanities, where it's not possible for English students to skip the first year.

But the way the systems were set up it would be a second year Scottish university student versus a first year English university student. I know things have shifted but in many ways that is still the fair comparison as both the same number of years away from an honours degree.

We’re English but living in Scotland. I agree with others the levels are so broad that reports are meaningless.

I think the play based learning is great, but it does depend on teachers/school. I don’t recognise phonics, maths and more academic work being optional that others report!

Ours are only P2 and P5 but I don’t think their schooling is less academic than their English cousins so far, in fact probably the reverse.

I have a feeling that how well Coe is implemented depends very much on the school. My older DC is in p4 and has liked the play based learning. They are transitioning to more formal learning now and quite a lot of the class is struggling to adjust to all the sitting down.

We get detailed reports from parents evenings and I know in which difficulty group my DC is. The biggest issue is the massive class size (over 30) and the fact that the teachers only have time to focus on the 'failing' students. DC could do enormously better if someone would actually pay them any attention rather than let them get on with it alone.

There is meant to be an emphasis on learning skills rather than facts - so my dc (now both at university) did not set topics at primary - ie Vikings, the Victorian era, Ancient Egypt, etc as my friends dc at school in England did. Instead the children themselves would agree the topic to be studied - one was plastic bags, I think another was shoes. Not sure they actually learned anything from that. Having said all that, both of mine are at university alongside English and international students and looking at their marks seem to be holding their heads up ok

Instead the children themselves would agree the topic to be studied - one was plastic bags,

Except the children don’t choose. At best a couple might have suggested a topic. All the previous topics were thrown out at our school just before my children started, and it moved over to ‘children choose’ which quickly became obvious it was the teacher choosing. This meant my dd studied the same subject (China) three times as it was chosen by different teachers, but missed out basic knowledge like history including world wars (which had previously been a P7 topic). ‘Minibeast so also made too many appearances and by P7 I objected and asked that they called them invertebrates.

Sorry, but I don't understand what you mean. I don't know how things worked when the system was originally set up. But looking at how it works now (which is what matters now), a Scottish student studying their first year of a French degree at Edinburgh will be in the same year group as a student from England who has also just started their undergraduate degree in French at Edinburgh. They will be doing the same work as the English student throughout their same length course and will take the same final exams at the same time. So I don't understand why it's useful to compare them with an English student who is one year below them at the university. Or are you arguing that they will catch up over the period of the degree? I have read that universities sometimes do have to put more work into the Scottish students, because they're behind. Whereas English students find degrees in Scotland relaxing, particularly in the first year.

So there's no curriculum planning or even communication between different teachers? And when the children and/or parents point out that a topic has already been covered, does the teacher just ignore that and plough on with a topic because they've already prepared it? What a shambles. Allowing the children to choose topics must inevitably lead to them choosing unsuitable topics (eg too complex or lacking in interest or repetitive) and missing out on big chunks of important learning. Why can't skills be learned at the same time as important and interesting knowledge? I'm so glad my DC went to primary school in England, which was (and I think generally is) a positive experience.