There's a "culture of low expectation" in secondary schools. Do you agree?

[HelenMumsnet]

Hello. You may have seen/heard on the news today that Ofsted is warning that thousands of bright secondary-school-age children are being "systematically failed" at school.

And we'd like to know what you think about this.

Ofsted says there is a culture of low expectations in England's non-selective secondaries - meaning that, according to a new Ofsted report, more than a quarter (27%) of pupils who achieved the highest results in primary school fail to achieve at least a B grade in both their English and their Maths GCSE.

The most academically able, says Ofsted chief inspector Sir Michael Wilshaw, arrive "bright-eyed and bushy-tailed" from primary school, but things start "to go wrong very early. They tread water. They mark time. They do stuff they've already done in primary school. They find work too easy and they are not being sufficiently challenged."

Do you think this is a fair reflection of life at secondary school? Do you think your child's secondary school has a low expectation of its pupils/your child? Does/did your child "tread water" in Year 7? Do you wish secondary schools did more to challenge their more academically able pupils?

Please do tell!

I totally agree wondering. The world won't cave in but I've told mine that I am drawing the line at eight A*s

I'm afraid you got a D- for your sense of humour module Habba.

habba only 8 A+?
shocking. what are you, cavemen?

EvilTwins: I dislike the idea of giving homework for the sake of it tbh. Students need to see the point if it. I am not totally against kids working independently, but setting homework just because it's Tuesday and Tuesday is homework day? No.

Can you explain please? Presumably you have a timetable that says "it's Tuesday, and Tuesday is Year 9 in lesson 3". Do you ever decide not to give the lesson "just because", or do you plan and prepare for it? Why is homework accorded different emphasis to lessons? Surely you either do it properly or not at all; you can't dip in and out as the mood takes you (or if you do, then you can't complain when the pupils take the same attitude!).

I wondered about that too senua.

In the example I gave of DD's drama homework, I can't see how else a drama teacher could cover it.

They have, what, two lessons per week. They couldn't possibly have covered the book and the script in class could they? Or that would have been quite a number of (dull) lessons. Yet they knew they were going to the performance, so it had to done beforehand.

Maybe I'm being a ninny, but I can't see how else it could be covered.

Out of interest DS homeworklast night was English. He had to come up with a figure for a balloon debate, and it had to be a woman.

Surely that's better done at home? Then the boys can all go to the next class with lots of different ideas and chat about who to choose.

Foolish dd2 spent ages on a homework involving drawing and making things look nice last night, and left herself about 20 minutes for a science homework, only to come really unstuck when the last two questions were deceptively long because they required the finding out of latitude and longitude for a long list of places.

Script learning obviously better done at home, balloon debate too, though perhaps a combination would also work. But the fact that there are many good times and reasons for homework to be set, still wouldn't make me worry about a year 7 who didn't get an awful lot just yet. There's time enough.

For a start, I wouldn't expect a class to read a play simply because we were going to see it. Where's the magic in that? The point if watching a play is to see a story unfold before your eyes.

I do not automatically set homework just because I've taught the class that day. Homework needs to have a point. My yr 9 classes are currently learning about Brecht through practical exploration. They are learning what they need to learn through a variety of practical activities. They can't continue to do so at home as their work is being done in groups and the chances of 6 kids in the rural area that we're in being able to get together to work on their drama in the evenings is slim to none.

Homework set for the sake of homework is rarely effective.

I always read a synopsis at the very least before going to the theatre, opera or ballet and it would not cross my mind not to ensure DD was not acquainted with the story before a theatre visit.

Sorry, ET, still not getting it. I thought that teaching was all about different techniques to capture different learning styles. I understand that they cannot continue the lesson's groupwork for homework but you could set them something different - read a review, watch a YouTube, read his biography for context, etc. Why can't you plan that?

Oh I can quite understand seeing a performance for the sheer joy and magic of it. But these pupils do this all the time. This exercise was not about that. This was about adaptations from books. A more academic exercise if you will.

beatback - I totally with your comment about people adapting to the norm.

In primary school I would set homework for my DCs because their school wasn't particularly academic. DD was ok but DS would often have a moan about how no one else gets given homework by their parents.

They are both at selectives now. It is the norm to do regular homework and to revise for the regular tests so I don't need to be a helicopter parent anymore.

I've retired my subscription to Pushy Parenting Monthly for the time being :) No doubt I'll renew my subscriotion as they approach their next milestone ie GCSEs but for the time being, peer pressure has negated the need for pushy parenting.

senua, because that would be homework for the sake of homework, which ofsted frowns upon and I believe us pointless. Read a review of what? Read his biography for what purpose? Watch a YouTube clip of what? Knowing when Brecht was born will not extend their understanding of verfrumdungseffekt.

I am not saying I never set homework. I teach GCSE and Level 2 & 3 BTEC as well and they need to do things out of lessons so that we can focus on the practical stuff in lessons, but at KS3 I will only set homework if it actually has a point.

Habba - with regards to setting your DCs homework because their school wasn't academic... Is that the same or different to what I do - reading a range of books with them, taking them to plays, concerts and galleries, playing maths games, doing science experiments, creating pictures of the solar system and letting them stay up late to look through our telescope, playing spellings games in the car on long journeys...

It would never occur to me to refer to that sort of thing as "homework".

DS gets very little "homework" : but I have him working gradually through the whole of bitesize before he's allowed on the x-box and our house is a BBC2/BBC4/Radio4 house so the learning is seeping in and round constantly.

My (GDST) school used to set lots of homework that came back with a tick at the bottom and a grade.
Which was fine but the homework grades bore no relation how I did in my Os and As
because - now I'm married to somebody who visits staff rooms a lot - I realise that that sort of homework is pointless.
The online maths stuff is GREAT as it self marks and just sends the teachers the moderation information

but the homework I see kids from the private schools doing in the bar at the gym is quite clearly padding that will only be cursorily marked
or even "peer marked"

With all due respect talkin I suspect the students you see in the gym attend one or two of your local schools.

To extrapoltae from that that all private and selective schools only give out HW to please the parents and it is all pointless is plain silly.

I think the difference is that if you're in a school, as evil clearly is where HW becomes divisive, then you work around it. You have to! Wheras if you work in a school where HW will get done (generally) then you can use it to its best purpose.

The only problem that I can see is that the motivated DC in evil's school may miss out because she has no laternative but to run things to accommodate those who wouldn't do it...

Which I guess brings us full circle to the OP.

As for Brecht, I can only think that putting him in contect would hugely deepen a student's undertanding of his work and importance.

As would watching some of the wonderful clips on YouTube. There are clips of Meryl Streep on there, the National Theatre etc etc etc

wordfactory
as you stated yesterday that you did not know what KS3 was
I'll take DH's extrapolations (which I merely post on here) as being rather more accurate than yours.

Time to go to work.

What extrapolations have I made?

I have not said all homework is great and purposeful. Quite the opposite.

I have not said all private schools and selective schools only give homework that is great and purposeful.

I have simply said that your gross generalisations are silly. And as you can see teachers have not flooded on to support you or refute what I've said. So...

Evil - I said that our primary school wasn't particularly academic so I had to step up and make up for this. What has that comment have to do with what you do with your DC? So right back at you.

talkin - I know that you like to wheel out your DH whenever someone questions your opinion on education. You've probably mentioned it in the past but what does he actually do? All I recall reading is that he 'visits hundreds of schools each year'.

If he sells supplies to schools or service their PCs then that hardly makes him an authority on education matters. In any case, I visit hundreds of shops a year but it doesnt mean DP should be citing me as an authority on retailing or merchandising issues

Talkin - I only got round to reading your latest posts.

You caught a glimpse of some kids doing homework at your gym and that is the basis for your generalisations about private schools and homework???

You have a number of parents describing to you what kind of homework their kids get (researching WWI at home so that the class could discuss how that gave rise to Soviet Russia and Nazism is not 'padding').

Yet you choose to ignore this and instead you prefer to generalize based on what you saw down at the gym and from this you extrapolate to to cover all private schools??? Nice to see that you came to the thread with an open mind.

Habba, my point was that a great many parents do stuff with their kids because that's the kind if stuff parents do with their kids. It was your insistence on referring to it as "homework" that made me My question to you (which you haven't answered) was is the "homework" you did with your DC any different to the "activities" I do with mine?

Researching Brecht would not be deemed an appropriate homework by ofsted because it does not add anything to their learning in my lesson. Being able to recite his life story doesn't come into the success criteria for the project so it's pointless. Whilst I would never prevent a child from a) doing that research and b) sharing their findings with the class, I would not set it as homework. Ditto watching YouTube clips of Mother Courage.

Evil no one mentioned reciting anything!!

You're deliberately trying to make any homework sound pointless...

But if you can't see that anyhting outside of your lesson (what do they get? One or two a week?) would braoden and deepen a pupil's understanding of Brecht then that is actually very very sad!

We were talking about schools and their homework policy and whether homework serves any use in backing up what the teacher is doing or whether its a time wasting distraction.

What has that got to do with what you or I choose to do at home with our respective kids?

If you want to know what I do with my kids, homework or otherwise, start up a thread and I'll meet you there.