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!

Why are you being difficult? My question is pretty simple. Were you having to do anything specifically different in order to need to refer to it as "homework"?

The point about Brecht and homework is this...
The kids are doing a project. It explores the theme of conflict and introduces them to Brecht's main ideas (they are yr 9, not A Level Theatre Studies students) Any homework I set needs to enhance the students' ability to hut the success criteria of the project. Knowing about Brecht as a person will not do that. If there was an ofsted inspector in the room, he or she would need to see evidence that the homework task led to progress in the project. Researching Brecht's life would not do that in this context. It simply wouldn't. I do think I know my job better than you.

Well evil it sounds like your parameters for what is successful are too narrow for my liking. And for my DD's drama teacher for that matter.

But each to their own.

Why are you seeking to derail the OP? You may feel that all the activities that you do with your DCs trumps any homework that the school might dish out but that isn't the issue in front of us.

And why do you keep quoting Brecht to me? I'm not aware that I've criticised the type of homework that you assign to your students.

Well Evil I'm quite cheered to see school children not being taught to go for the biographical approach to texts, actually - which is often quite a lazy option. In this particular case, I quite agree that that would be an example of a pointless homework for the sake of it.

You are completely missing Evil's point, Habba, and I don't think anyone has actually quoted Brecht.

I'm still waiting for a teacher to tell me that homework is not for the parents.

Here's what happens. Your oldest starts at primary school. You invest everything you can in choice of school and want her to be very successful there. The school doesn't do much homework because up until about the age of 9 children only have around 3 hours spare time in the evening and most of that is taken up with eating and bathtime anyway. The parents push for homework, concerned that their child is somehow falling behind in the race. Over the years schools have obliged reluctantly to give homework to children, ever younger.

It works well for parents who have time but not so well for the other children. Those children are left behind by the pushy parents, who then proclaim to teachers that their children are 'bright'. They are not 'bright', they have just had more learning time.

If the school encourages the pushy parents the gap gets ever wider until at some point in the child's life, they just have to coast while the other (normal, not 'not bright', perfectly as good as everyone else's) children develop and learn at a normal and average (not thick, or underprivileged or neglected) rate. Parents get peeved and so try and blame the school, the teachers or the system. If they have time to waste they set up a free school so they don't have to put up with the horrors of averageness. Their child is 'bright', remember.

Pushy parents make a rod for their own backs. My dd did no extra work in primary school, we didn't spend whole weekends on projects like some of her friends. Her teachers liked my attitude! She's doing fine at GCSEs, with A* anticipated in most subjects. What has happened is that she has learned in the way the national curriculum is designed - at a steady rate, allowing for plenty of free time to develop her life outside school. And she is doing very well thank you.

I am bitter about this because I see many children being made to feel inadequate when there is absolutely nothing inadequate about them. And it's not because they are born 'bright', it is because they have been pushed at an early age.

But wondering if you felt so strongly about homework, why as a teacher didn't you just say no?

wordfactory, the GCSE results that I posted were for maths.

talkinpeace, I love 'The Life Scientific' and often sit in the car listening to the end of it .

"The school doesn't do much homework because up until about the age of 9 children only have around 3 hours spare time in the evening and most of that is taken up with eating and bathtime anyway"

At the age of 9 DS did 20min homework (English and Maths - happy now Evil? and 30 min music practice most days. On top of this he had football on the Monday and athletics on the Wednesday. On school nights he was allowed about an hour TV or PC (his choice which) but all gadgets had to be off by 8pm and he had to read for about 15 minutes before bed (his choice of books).

He had swimming on the Saturday. After swimming he had orchestra and a music lesson in the afternoon. Saturday evening he would alternate homes with his BF and they would play PC games or watch YouTube videos. Sundays is family day. We usually go to the park and walk over to our local Toby for a sunday roast. Afterwards the adults would read the Sundays with a glass of wine. The kids would either hang out at home or walk over to their mates. Evening meal followed by TV or some board game. Cluedo and Monopoly was quite popular.

This is with both DP and myself in fulltime jobs. And they ate and bathed daily :)

So please excuse me while I roll my eyes at the 'kids don't have time for homework' argument.

"If the school encourages the pushy parents the gap gets ever wider until at some point in the child's life, they just have to coast..."

We put our kids into selective schools. Coasting problem sorted.

wordfactory, do feel free to come and teach my lessons for me. Brecht at year 9 is pretty advanced, and given that it is a performing arts lesson, I will stand by my assertion that knowing a theatre practitioner's life story is utterly irrelevant. I am very very good at what I do, and whilst your DD's drama teacher may have a different approach, it doesn't make mine any less valid. I have many years of Yr 11 & Yr 13 results to justify myself, before anyone accuses me of arrogance.

Habba, thank you for answering my question. What a shame your DC's school didn't cover the basics.

My DTDs are 6. I do not make them do homework, and agree that very young children don't really have "time" for it. I would rather they spent that hour between school and dinner playing outside at the moment. They read avidly and do their fair share of activities. There is no space in their week for worksheets. Fortunately, their (outstanding state) primary has the same opinion and doesn't set homework.

I'm not going to say what DH does because he is easily identifiable. He is a qualified teacher who is put in charge of groups of children from Year R to year 13 from 5 to 900 of them for up to a week at a time.
And because he's not an inspector, I'll believe his version of staff room chat over just about anybody's. As do other teachers, inspectors etc that he meets with.

"My dd did no extra work in primary school.... She's doing fine at GCSEs, with A* anticipated in most subjects"

That is a bit like Usain Bolt's mum going - well, we never took him to training sessions.

Not all DDs are like yours. There are kids who are destined for a handful of GCSE Cs Ds and maybe a B. Are you telling me that those kids should be content with being average and shouldn't try to push things along and go for Bs and Cs?

"What a shame your DC's school didn't cover the basics."

They did. My DCs just found the pace a bit slow. I'm beginning to wonder if Wonder was our teacher ie be happy with being average. if you get ahead of the crowd you'll just end up coasting. Better to pace yourself so that you end up at the finishing line at the same time as the other kids.

At DD's selective school homework is referred to as PSC (prepare, stretch, consolidate) and each piece is classified as either P, S or C. There is a strictly adhered to homework timetable and regular assessment grades that take homework marks into account. DD can see the point of it and has learnt a lot about managing her own time so as to fit it all in (3 x 20 mins per night in Y7) also, having a regular time slot dedicated to each subject served her well when it came to revising for her end of year exams. All in all it has been a positive experience this year for her due in no small point to excellent school to home communication and good organisation and planning on behalf of the school.

By comparision, at our local comp, the lower sets have their books collected at the end of every lesson (they are not allowed to take them home) and any homework set is on a worksheet (which invariably gets left behind by a good few students) or is a research type of homework to be done on the internet. Top sets do get more meaningful homework and are allowed to take their books home. I have said it before but our local comp is a school of two halves, the 'haves' and 'have-nots' (play on words there before the spelling and grammar police jump on me) i.e. those kids that have interested parents and cooperative peers and those kids that may or may not have interested parents but their peers are largely non-cooperative. Contrary to popular belief (i.e. that having interested parents is the key to 'success'), I think that having cooperative peers is a huge boon and shouldn't be underestimated. [Just as a side note, even the most uncooperative of peers will probably 'behave' when talkin's DH Ofsted come calling.]

pickled Too right : teachers store up ready for him to "nail their year 9's to the floor" And yes, its a shame that kids get left behind, but TBH that went on at my private school as well.

*"What a shame your DC's school didn't cover the basics."

They did. My DCs just found the pace a bit slow.*

Habba you said in an earlier post that your children didn't want to do extra work that you gave them. It wasn't your DCs that 'found the pace slow' it was you.

Oh here it is- 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.

And that nicely proves what countless teachers and 'average' people say - that this is all about what parents want, and very little to do with what their children or what is best for them.

My DS feeling bored at school because he finished the maths in half the time as the others and was left to stare out of the windows. What has that got to do with him whinging about homework? He whinges about having a bath, having to go to bed, not being able to play PC games for hours at time etc etc.

A lot of people are obviously happy being 'average' and for their children to be 'average' which brings me back to my original point which is that a lot of people 'suffer' from average expectations.

And at the assumption that my DCs are unwull

... unwilling participants in all of this.

YOU said that your DS moaned about it. That makes him an unwilling participant. Stick to your story, Habba.

He moans about having to take a bath. It doesn't mean that he wants to be smelly

No, but it does mean he's an unwilling participant. If he was super enthusiastic about his mum-imposed homework, you'd have mentioned it. Let's face it, it was you, as the parent who decided that the extra work was necessary and you who arranged it, so that kind of proves the point being made up thread about this being more about parents than kids.

My girls learn the piano because they want to. They asked if I would teach them. That's different. What you describe is you deciding that your DC need extra because the school isn't providing it, rather than them being hungry for more.

You are obviously no longer pissed with me for my drama teacher remarks

Too mature to carry a grudge.

Talkin your admiration for your husband is lovely but it seems to me that you believe wat your husband says about teachers over and above wat teacher say about teachers.

I set homework every week to each of my classes and each week it is marked and handed back. How do you know from glancing over a child's shoulder in the gym whether a piece if work is going to me marked or not?