Looking at the state of the school system now, are you really happy about putting your own children through it?

[bronya]

I quit last year but keep up with teacher friends. It makes me feel sad to think of my own children having stressed, overworked teachers, an increasingly narrow curriculum, over emphasis on tests etc.

I can't think of a single politician who would even come close to understanding what education is like in reality... it boils my piss to hear about yet another 'improvement'

I wonder about it (ex secondary teacher) but my primary child seems so "school shaped". She's very bright and reading, writing brilliantly. Loves a challenge and to please so is motivated by results and increasing skills.

I wonder how long this will last for though and wonder about homeschooling year 6. The thing is I'd want to return for secondary - I love all the subject specialists and enthusiasm from people other than me....

Thanks all, you have confirmed what I was thinking.

We are considering Home Ed for Primary, then private Secondary. That would involve DH moving jobs to earn the extra £10k a year we'd need to save, but would get us out of the South East and the stupid prices of everything here! We might be lucky and end up somewhere with a school that hasn't been affected by the recent changes, but if not, we have a back up plan!

I've always been very opposed to home educating but now I could quite happily do it. I wish the Tories would read this thread. Shame on them for causing such a shambles.

bronya - it depends a lot on the local school, at least visit it! We were considering home ed (and still would if my daughter was unhappy) but she has gained so much from being at school. It's a lovely community infants that doesn't set homework and she has really loved being in the class environment. We'll reasses with the second but my first would be really upset not to be in school.

hi. i qualified beginning of this century and taught for about 4 years then before i decided it was time for a change as things went a bit nightmarish and impacted on my health. i dipped back into teaching at the beginning of last year after a redundancy from a job i loved and it was hell on earth, i was quickly back out of it and withdrew my son from school too as i realised that if it wasn't good enough for me then it really wasn't good enough for him either.

it sort of stopped me burying my head in the sand about how ridiculous his 'education' and school was (he only went for reception, year 1 and part of year 2 but enough was enough) and what a sad effect it was having on him if i was honest. the culture and atmosphere and.... sickness of a school environment nowadays (i was a secondary teacher to be fair so maybe primary is different i don't know) is just so toxic. why would i want to put my child through 14 years of being mangled through that system when it doesn't even achieve much?

Callooh, I agree! The individual voices saying the same thing over and over are heartbreaking. Something needs to be done! I can see that teachers are so tired and dispirited that they can't organise and stand up to what is happening - though I wish that the teaching unions would take a lead. Wonder if the collective voice of MN can start to do something?

THe teaching unions have tried. Have you seen the threads on mumsnet when they organise a strike?!

The meddling of the government and the target culture really has to change. They see it as raising standards and improving though :(

I have seen the threads and am totally sympathetic to teachers - I used to be one. However, the strikes have always been presented with a focus on pay and conditions/pensions. I know that it is hard to separate out pay from the wider issue, but as a teacher, I would have totally supported industrial action which set pay aside and addressed the idea of the centralised dictatorship and its target led culture which is education today, led by a Gove driven ministry of education! Now I fear as pay is related to performance, it's too late to address the issues separately.

I voted with my feet and took a massive paycut and left teaching rather than to "deliver" the national curriculum to my students. I didn't go into teaching to channel anyone else's ideas and beliefs - I went into teaching to introduce students to the subject I love, to foster their own individuality and creativity and to empower them to be what they wanted to be. Huge respect to those who have remained.

I think, to an extent, parents buy into the mantras that the government use to justify it all. The various schemes are targets and goals all sound totally fine. Who can argue that children should learn to read, know their times tables etc? They are great aspirations which teachers have had for hundreds of years! What the public don't see is how a good concept can turn bad very quickly when you factor in (for reasonswe could probably argue about for years) increasingly less well prepared children, more behavioural and special needs, ever increasing demands to 'record' and prove what they've learnt and a whole heap of paperwork associated with it all which demands you can show in every 20mins what every child has learnt irrespective of their circumstances, if they went to bed a bit late the night before, mummy's ill or Grandma just died. The devil is in the detail.

my kids (12 and 14) are in a state secondary (1600 pupils, oscillates between good and must do better) and are thriving, soaring, enthused by the whole experience. They have some lovely teachers.

The encouragement given to DD14 with her talent for art is phenomenal, the plaudits given to DD12 for all round improvement have been the making of her, she holds her head high.

Their education does not stop on the way out of the school gate, so anything we feel is not "broad" enough gets looked at outside of school too, music and computer sciences in particular. Apart from those 2 areas I think our state secondary is bloody marvellous and cannot see why everyone is always on a downer on education on here.

My DD will be starting at the local primary school in September. If we have any issues then we will consider private schools later, but I'm not keen due to the distance/travel time.

I worry about who will be teaching my DDs in the future. There is a real lack of commitment by the government to having qualified staff and teachers are leaving in droves, many seem to be hounded out. I think that teaching will become deprofessionalised. We already have teachers leaving and becoming TAs, which is a bargain, but also says a lot about what life is like as a teacher.

Teachers who are pushed out by new HTs, who have been brought in to turn schools around, have often been well regarded and successful before. However some HTs seem to have a mindset of "if only I had the right staff...". But in most places there aren't queues of capable, qualified, cheap teachers banging at the door. So classes get left with a mish-mash of agency staff and TAs and the school is destabilised.

What we have now is unsustainable. There seem to be some teachers who are tied to teaching because of their financial commitments (it's hard to walk straight into a similarly paying job), but some of those teachers are sinking and I really feel for them.

i have a pretty different take personally.

the school, the school system, the concept of kids being churned out by a sausage factory, the subjects taught, the number of kids in a classroom, the ratio of adults to children etc etc emerged in a very different time, society and economy that we just don't even resemble anymore.

it's not just less paperwork or less targets or if the govt would stop tinkering or pay more or x, y, z in my mind. for me it's just not a model fit for purpose today. it was designed for a different world, different children, different economy and culture and world of work.

the whole thing needs rethinking really.

Honey I agree! I just don't see it happening in the near future . For those who are very happy with their schools, great! Sadly though many teachers don't believe in the system anymore. I have no big desire to HE, but feel that may be the only viable option. I would prefer formal education that started at 7, no testing and lots of singing, reading stories, writing stories (for fun and not to fulfil 2 stars and a wish!) maths and plenty of opportunities to be curious and explore ideas. Maybe I'm the only one!

I think our state secondary is bloody marvellous and cannot see why everyone is always on a downer on education on here.

Perhaps if you read some of the threads, you would understand why?

This is well worth a look. Ken Robinson has some very interesting points about how we should teach for the 21st century and the impact of keeping to the old ways.

30 children packed in a room with one adult telling them what to do and them unquestioningly obeying and moving quietly in neat lines from class to class worked in a very authoritarian and regimented society where you could be beaten for disobedience and where you were being prepared for working in a factory line of similar order. NO i don't want to return to those same conditions but nor do i want to pretend the same education system and structure works for a very different socio economic time, system and culture. nor do we live in a culture where anyone inconvenient by virtue of cognitive, social or emotional factors is institutionalised or otherwise removed from play (thank god but if school becomes the place to deal with all of those factors you need the funding, specialisms, space and staffing located in schools because ideology alone won't cut it).

to use the same building, system, ratio, timetable, subject list, staffing, etc etc etc now as you used then is frankly ridiculous.

if you want education to remain as the preparatory centre for modern life and contribution to society, whilst simultaneously dealing with a much broader section of society over a much longer period of their life cycle then school has to reflect modern society and industry and to have all of societies institutions based within it. you can't pretend school is still about someone standing at the front of a class barking instructions at cowed factory fodder kids who can beaten answering back and who'll be institutionalised or written off if deemed 'not normal' or sent to the workhouse if from a majorly disadvantaged background. nor can you pretend that all we've got to do is discipline and cow them enough to go work in a factory and do as they're told.

it's just not a system that fits our world. there's no good tinkering we need a massive paradigm shift.

Its a good job my daughters infant school isn't like that then!

I used to despair that unions only ever struck on pay and conditions, till I became a teacher and joined one and discovered that they are not allowed to strike for standards or educational policy nonsense from govts. In fact this is logical as a trade union is for members' job cobditions - they are not 'professional bodies'. However I do agree it is weird that they have accepted more and more onerous duties - I really don't think break duties should be teachers - they could employ ancillary staff for that.

well that's infant school taken care of then anewmein - and from 7-18?

that '18' bit alarms me too. it's hard enough keeping disaffected 16 year olds who've been let down by education for years already in the classroom till summer term let alone dragging it out for another 2 years just to save the government money.

I do regularly wonder what we will do at secondary. There is a very good grammar school (although that comes with a lot of pressure to do well and obviously only if they pass the test). I have dallied with the idea of homeschooling in the past and would at junior level if my child hadn't suited school as well as she does. However at secondary level I benefited so much from learning from teachers in a class environment I really wouldn't want to homeschool in the same way my OU degree wasn't the same as one where you can learn with others. I do think GCSEs are still important too. There's a lovely secondary I'd be happy wiht but its catchment only. The one we're catchment for I'm not at all happy with and won't choose. You're right there's secondaries where it does just feel like cattle herding.

I honestly don't know yet. I do love the local infant schools though and surprised at how good they were as I had assumed I'd homeschool.

I do wish we could afford private (which I never thought I'd agree with). I think teachrs are straightjackettted with what they can teach/do and with a class of disaffected students its close to impossible. I've taught in a grammar school and loved it. I did supply in some "difficult" schools and wouldn't want any child to go through that to be honest. It does need a complete rethink....

Not happy!
I have been teaching 15 years, I want out but we can't afford the salary drop. DS is 3 years and started nursery. ATM, everything okay. The school has went from outstanding to serious weaknesses in 3 years but that doesn't bother me. The school nurtures kids and they all seem happy - at primary level, that is what is important for me.
If I could, I would pull DS out from Y3 onwards and home educate but finances put a stop to it.
I really don't think education will get any better. Ironically, my head is utterly bewildered at my opinion about state education yet he is sending both her DCs (11 and 8) to private school in September!!!!

Wow - some great posts on this thread! I have (hopefully) quit teaching for good, after nearly 20 years. Dh is a deputy head in our local comp, where my dc will go.

I agree that the way schools are atm is miserable and awful for teachers (hence voting with my feet). And it's tempting to think that because your (particularly primary age) dc seem happy at school, that it's all ok for them. But it really isn't. That video of Ken whatsisname that someone posted is brilliant.

The state of education today always reminds me of that slightly feeble joke about someone asking for directions 'Excuse me, could you tell me how to get to Dublin? ' Reply: 'Well I wouldn't start from here!'

We keep on pushing further down the pointless path of pointless initiatives in the vain hope of driving up standards, when what we need to do is re - think what the standards should actually be. In other words, what we really want to be teaching our young people. And how we can help them develop into good, happy, productive members of society.

Oh I should add that I wouldn't consider home educating. Dh would be violently opposed and I'd be rubbish at it anyway .