Add a subject, bin a subject

[noblegiraffe]

Lots of cries of 'why aren't they taught X at school, it's really important' with the response 'what would you like to see binned to make the time for that?'
I would like to add all aspects of managing finances - mortgages, credit, car finance, gambling, loans, costs associated with owning/renting a home, savings, investments, interest rates, the general economy. I know it's supposedly done a bit in PSHE, but I'd want it done properly. With homework and tests.

In order to make space for this I would bin: KS3 Drama.

You don't have to bin a whole subject, so for example you could bin the study of poetry in English, or anything involving circuits from science, but you can't bin the study of oxbow lakes from Geography and replace it with learning Latin - they should take about the same time.

Bin SPAG, replace with creative writing & critical thinking.

It's interesting how if school was redesigned what seems to be going in on this thread is all the preparation for life stuff which I would say is the responsibility of parents.

I trained to teach my subject and do some pastoral care, not do endless 'get ready for life' stuff. Don't get me wrong I enjoy pastoral stuff but i wouldn't be happy with a timetable of 'here's all the stuff 80% of you will do at home with a bit of English reduced down to functional literacy'.

I would introduce first aid too. Some schools do cover it, mine does, as part of citizenship/activities day/week. All of our year 11s do a half term of first aid as part of their pshe/re/citizenship lessons (they only have one lesson a week to cover all 3 of those subjects, I think we're running with the legal minimum).

I would add Interpersonal/Communication Skills and drop RE....

DD's school does CPR but not First Aid.

Interpersonal/communication skills should be embedded in pretty much everything anyway. Back to drama...

I agree with Maisy - so much of this is parenting. Should we just pick the babies up from the maternity ward and return them to their parents at 18?

But Maisey, surely if you've trained to be a cookery teacher then you'd be quite happy teaching the kids to cook something a bit more appropriate to feeding themselves later in life. You can say it's the parents responsibility to teach kids to cook, but in that case I've failed in my parental duty because I can't cook, therefore I can't teach dd to cook. Our whole family would have benefited from her being taught how to cook, much as I would have benefited from being taught to cook when I was at school.

Evil my DS covers standing in front of an audience and speaking loudly in primary school.

MsAwesomeDragon
Oh yes. If i was a cookery teacher I would be thrilled to offer the students more than the 6 weeks to cook a pizza'.
Tailoring something like cookery to include more cooking and healthy eating makes sense.

Or even woodwork/electonics etc to have more DIY to them rather than 'make a money box'.

What I was meaning is that there is a danger in a push for a 'life skills' curriculum, instead of a general broad and balanced education which gives them enough subject knowledge to take specific subjects to a higher level, what some students would probably end up with is some sort of utilitarian 'basic numeracy, basic literacy, basic IT and some skills on how not to suck at life' because i never needed algebra in life/never looked at shakespeare again which actually would only widen educational inequality.

noble my DTDs covered adding up at primary school but I don’t believe schools should ditch maths.

Bin triple science replace with single
Bin RE (piss easy to pass at gcse but frankly pointless) replace with life skills, budgeting, ironing, how to keep a home clean, nutritious meals
Make food tech compulsory ditch DT

How depressing that it’s all coming down to preparation for being an adult. What about the joy of learning and the intrinsic value of knowledge?

In that case I completely agree with you Maisey. I don't want kids to be limited by what some adults have never needed. I certainly wouldn't want to drop something like trigonometry as was suggested earlier, as that would mean kids wouldn't have the knowledge to become engineers, architects, etc. We do want a wide and varied curriculum for as many pupils at possible.

I would also like them to understand the world and how it works. I'm not sure what to drop in order to cover the understanding the world stuff though.

Maths isn't adding up, though Evil. I'm not sure Drama is meant to be speaking loudly to an audience either. Presenting, working in groups etc is covered in other subjects too, so drama isn't vital in that respect.

I agree evil.
To ke at least thr point of education is to develop rounded knowledge of a range of subjects (as wrll as some life stuff).

If people didn't do STEM subjects in detail just in case someone doesn't jse them then it closes doors to children. Same for studying great literature or a modern foreign language.

A life skills focus would only widen inequality and prevent (or at the very least limit) children developung social and cultural capital.

Yes, obviously I know that noble.

Ditching drama is already happening, and I think it’s a great shame. When done well, drama teaches more life skills than most other subjects. Before we know it, it’ll be gone completely from the state system and all those skills it teaches will be the preserve of the independent sector.

It's been cut in most schools i know at ks3 and only left as an option at ks4/5. RE seems to be heading the same way.

But if you want to argue Drama's case, then it's got to be better than doing stuff they did in primary or already do in other subjects.

I get the opposition to a strictly utilitarian curriculum, but I don't think it should be entirely academic. How many parents would be able to teach their kids about finance? How vital is it to understand?

I would take out bits of subjects rather than whole ones. For example, geometry and trig etc out of maths lessons and replace that time with maths that is more useful for the stage they’re at. The stuff taken out could be introduced at A-level.

noble I usually agree with most things you post but am disappointed at your attitude to drama. It is as worthwhile, for its own sake, as music and art and requires no further justification IMO. In the country that produced Shakespeare, Coward, Stoppard, Ayckbourn, Pinter & scores of other brilliant playwrights, of course drama deserves a place in the school curriculum. Take it out of KS3 and it dwindles and dies at KS4.

Why drama rather than music? Or Art?

I’d also combine geography and history in KS3, only separating them out at GCSE, and use the spare time for politics and economics (which could include citizenship and personal finance)

Or pink have pathways within subjects.

E.g. top set students do trig (i wasn't great at maths but managed fine through trig) and other pathways exist.
Then we could have gcse tiers again in subjects instead of single tier english like we have now.

The off the wall part of me would like a bit of the US system of students taking classes rather than being stuck in year groups so if a 13 year old musician was ready for gcse level music, they could take a y10/11 course in music. But if a y11 student was still struggling with basic literacy then instead of analyising Bronte they could do a functional writing class.

Then students get some sort of transcript for every year other than y7. None of the wasted years crap and no shoving kids onto edcl because it gets extra points.

Admittedly that is probably a bit of a bigger shift than the OP was suggesting.

Maisypops is that how it works in the us? From what age do you pick your classes and how wide is the age range in any particular class?

Evil I'm open to being convinced, but all you've offered so far are some skills which crop up in other lessons so are not unique to Drama. How much does Shakespeare or Stoppard feature at KS3?

What have poor art and drama done to deserve the dislike on this thread?

Can we get rid of PSHE in ot’s current form and maybe combine it with RE to have a ‘social studies’ kind of topic. A bit of economics, finance, government and politics, philosophy and ethics (could include aspects of RE here).

Agree the DT curriculum could be rejigged with more focus on specific skills and getting rid of a lot of the designing/evaluating stuff.

Very sad about those saying bin drama. Itvwas the one subject that kept Ds going through difficult times at his previous school. It's not on offer atvhis current school which is very sad for him but at least he has music.

My solution would be to have partial options in Year 8 so kids could choose 2-3 out of all the arts/technology/language subjects & use the extra time for philosophy and finances.