Is your primary school turning into an exam factory?

[echo]

Umm? The new curriculum seems to have changed our school- the focus is on maths, reading (phonics, phonics, phonics!!!) and obedience?

Where has the play and creative ideas gone?

What's your experience???

[david_carnell]

Welcome to education a la Michael Gove

[Earl Aelfheah]

You mean ad imaginem quippe Gove.

;-)

[Monkey]

No - not from what I can see. We are key stage 1.

[landsberger]

Any school not like this would soon be closed down or academised by Ofsted and the DfE.

[DaveR]

It's a false distinction. Good heads and teachers will make sure kids progress and hit targets for basic skills (and basic maths is really important for everything that follows) without sacrificing creativity.

[????]

Yup. When I went to the ciriculum meetings the teachers (I presume in inner London) not massive fans of the Govt seemed actually quite enthused as they had targets (as before) but much more freedom on how to reach them rather than the perscriptive version before Gove's reforms.That's what I heard anyway??? I guess some are intimidated by this 'freedom' so what DaveR said.

Basically the evidence of the much needed educational reforms started by New Labour are working very well now especially in London.........good old Jezza of cousrse would throw this all away on ideological grounds. Good old idealsitic Jezza.......

[Curmudgeon]

Schools teaching children to read, spell and count and follow community rules

Who'd have thunk it

[redjam]

I find the new emphasis on grammar in literacy rather depressing - and I'm actually an editor, so I do care about grammar! But when my 8-year-old daughter comes home talking about fronted adverbials and embedded clauses, it makes me want to weep. Mind you, she seems perfectly happy about it (she's a bit geeky), but I fear for the kids who are put off literacy for life as a result of all this clunky emphasis on the nuts and bolts of language. I do feel that at primary school the focus should be on getting kids to stretch their imagination and come up with wild and creative stories rather than ticking off a list of ploddy grammatical learning objectives in every bit of writing. I'm not knocking the school at all - I think they do a decent job of making it interesting - but the emphasis seems skew-whiff to me. Surely you want to get kids loving reading and writing for its own sake before you start on the deconstructing and labelling?

As you might be able to tell, I'm a product of 1980s state education where we weren't taught grammar at all - I had to pick it up myself later when I was learning French and later still at uni studying English, which I admit brought its own problems. But overall I'm glad I came to it after I'd already established a love of reading. I worry that for some kids this change in the curriculum will have the opposite effect.

[Pickle]

redjam, I have to admit having to do a quick (and sneaky) google when attempting to help my daughter with her literacy homework, I had no idea what a fronted adverbial was! I'm a product of 1980's kiwi schooling, definitely not something that we were taught!

[bawdy-nan]

redjam Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> I find the new emphasis on grammar in literacy

> rather depressing - and I'm actually an editor, so

> I do care about grammar! But when my 8-year-old

> daughter comes home talking about fronted

> adverbials and embedded clauses, it makes me want

> to weep. Mind you, she seems perfectly happy about

> it (she's a bit geeky), but I fear for the kids

> who are put off literacy for life as a result of

> all this clunky emphasis on the nuts and bolts of

> language. I do feel that at primary school the

> focus should be on getting kids to stretch their

> imagination and come up with wild and creative

> stories rather than ticking off a list of ploddy

> grammatical learning objectives in every bit of

> writing. I'm not knocking the school at all - I

> think they do a decent job of making it

> interesting - but the emphasis seems skew-whiff to

> me. Surely you want to get kids loving reading and

> writing for its own sake before you start on the

> deconstructing and labelling?

>

> As you might be able to tell, I'm a product of

> 1980s state education where we weren't taught

> grammar at all - I had to pick it up myself later

> when I was learning French and later still at uni

> studying English, which I admit brought its own

> problems. But overall I'm glad I came to it after

> I'd already established a love of reading. I worry

> that for some kids this change in the curriculum

> will have the opposite effect.

Yup - but the school can also foster a love of reading and problem solving and creating and all kinds of things and many do. I hated hearing all that guff from my primary school child but, what's interesting in secondary is that all that constant analysing and trying to demonstrate knowledge and tricks and turns of language seems to have left her with a more well developed awareness of language as a construction rather than a "natural" thing. So she's wiser to adverts and their persuasive language and seems more adept at shifting between registers in her own writing.

[redjam]

That's very reassuring, bawdy-nan, and I certainly hope that will be the case for my own kids. I suppose I worry that this grammatical approach might be a massive turn-off for those kids who don't naturally enjoy reading in the first place. I guess we won't know if that's the case for several more years, until the 'Gove generation' has gone up through the education system.

I also find the re-introduction of Imperial measures into the maths curriculum quite weird. On the other hand, I rather like the fact that primary school kids are now expected to be able to recite a poem - yes, it's an old-fashioned skill, but one I'm quite happy to see revived.

Overall, though, I do pity the teachers trying to wade their way through all these reforms - must be a nightmare. And no one seems to have a very good idea of how these level-free Sats are going to work in reality...

(Edited to add: Pickle, I've got an English degree and been a book editor for over twenty years and I had no idea what a fronted adverbial was either! Which is why in the end it seems like an utterly pointless thing to drum into an eight-year-old's head, but hey ho.)

[Curmudgeon]

bawdy-nan Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

>

> Yup - but the school can also foster a love of

> reading and problem solving and creating and all

> kinds of things and many do. I hated hearing all

> that guff from my primary school child but, what's

> interesting in secondary is that all that constant

> analysing and trying to demonstrate knowledge and

> tricks and turns of language seems to have left

> her with a more well developed awareness of

> language as a construction rather than a "natural"

> thing. So she's wiser to adverts and their

> persuasive language and seems more adept at

> shifting between registers in her own writing.

It is also important for the age they are growing up in with social media,internet and the majority of interactions being text based

And when they teach the "names" of grammar parts from an early age our children grow up unphased by it,it becomes innate knowledge. Unlike the way we were schooled. Judging our children's education by our own knowledge / education doesn't help.

But then I don't "help" my children with homework...I facilitate and nudge them and help them find their own answers if required ...seems to help them become self-motivators ...if they fail it's on them and the teacher knows what they can do, not what I can do...that said I don't believe in homework in early years beyond reading for pleasure, and neither do the best teachers I've known ...many say homework is due to parental pressure not need