schools

Back to school

/ berkocat / Leave a comment

It’s been a long time – 10 months according to my blog stats – since I have done more than merely contemplate writing another post. Instead, with both children now at school, I’ve immersed myself in re-learning how to teach after 6 years off from the profession: not this time as a teacher, but as a TA (with a little bit of teaching thrown in …!) at my children’s lower school.

When I left teaching  to be a full-time mother, I had begun to fall out of love with the job. I say ‘job’ and not ‘profession’ because I believe that the profession of teaching is and always will be an honourable and exciting one: working with children and young people who make every day different and challenging, trying to inspire a love of knowledge and exploration that will be life-long and in turn being challenged, inspired and constantly surprised by the children you work with. However, this was no longer the job that I found myself doing. There was little or no choice in what could be taught in the classroom: where I taught – in an Upper school – the curriculum in Years 10-13 was dictated by GCSE and A Level syllabuses and in Year 9 by the abysmal SATS. Not only was professional judgement restricted by external tests, but – because of the pressure put on schools – it was also ham-strung by various internal assessment tests, which meant that I felt like some kind of glorified data-entry clerk.

Moreover, the tests produced the kind of data which was easy to reproduce in graphs and tables and percentages. Try fitting ‘James has worked hard this term to improve his spelling and punctuation. To improve further, he now needs to support all his points with evidence from the text’ into a spreadsheet, then convert it into a some kind of quantifiable score. Oh, and then remember that James lives in house with two parents who have mental health issues and he gets up every night to see to his baby brother when his parents aren’t able to. Quantify that.

I don’t know if I expected primary education to be different. If I’d really thought about it, I’d have probably realised that it was unlikely to have escaped the endless onslaught of quantification. It hasn’t. Phonics – although not without its merits in the very early stages of reading and writing – is beloved of governments because of its easily quantifiable nature. How many letter sounds/digraphs does a child know? Can they blend and segment? Can they – my least favourite thing to do with phonics – identify ‘alien’ words and real words? Tick! Tick! Tick! Enter a  number in a spreadsheet and out comes verifiable progress (!)

This continues further up the school, where 6 and 7, 8 and 9 year olds are now required to identify parts of speech that most of my A Level students couldn’t identify – and some of which are still up for debate amongst professional linguists. Experiencing this as a parent as well as a teacher makes it both professionally and personally frustrating. I work in an amazing school, with committed and professional staff who teach lovely, creative and enthusiastic children. If only the ‘profession’ could be treated as ‘professionals’ – people who are more than capable of designing, implementing and assessing their own curriculum. Perhaps then we would view government interference in the curriculum with the same shock and aversion as we would do if they suddenly started telling doctors what to prescribe their patents and measuring their progress by how quickly they recovered from bouts of ‘flu or chicken pox.

At the moment, government and –  because of the way this ‘trickles down’ – a significant proportion of the general public, view the teaching profession in a similar way to my six year old who, when I referred to what I did as ‘work’ said, ‘That’s not work! You don’t work, Mummy. Daddy goes to work.’ Clearly a future politician in-waiting…

Starting school: The (terrified) parents’ guide…

/ berkocat / Leave a comment

BackToSchool

Nervous about starting school in September? Worried how you’ll cope with a new routine and different faces? Scared about the demands and expectations that will be placed upon you? Then chances are, you’re probably a parent, not a child. Whilst a child’s first day at school is a huge milestone for parents, for most children it’s as big a deal as their parents choose to make it. We run around buying uniform, attending information evenings, having earnest chats with our children’s prospective teachers about why our child in particular is a special case and on the day itself we take photographs,  say anxious goodbyes in the classroom and walk around for the rest of the day feeling like we’ve lost a limb. Worse still, with our modern-day tendency to think, where previous generations would just have done, we torment ourselves by reading studies which helpfully suggest that: summer-born children will be adversely affected by starting school ‘early’/those parents who don’t read enough with their children are condemning them to a life of illiteracy/we must have a thorough and detailed knowledge of the merits of synthetic phonics versus ‘look and say’ before our child sets foot over the threshold of the classroom. I’ll save the rant about our modern-day obsession with ‘knowledge’ for another blog. Suffice it to say, that if we were as adept at assessing the quality and validity of the studies we read as we are at scaring the hell out of ourselves with them, then we would all be much happier human beings.

My son started school in a reception class at our local Lower School last September. And no – I’m not claiming that I walked him to school on his first day with some sort of Zen-like calm. Did I have doubts about his ability to cope with this? Yes. Was I worried for him? Yes. Did my stomach feel as if a hundred wriggling, writhing worms had taken up residence? Yes. My son’s only experience of any care outside the family up until his entrance to school was 3 mornings a week at the local pre-school. Until he began school he had never done a full day, never had the experience of eating lunch away from home, and still needed my help to dress himself in the mornings. So I worried about him going hungry, changing for P.E., going to the toilet – all the usual things.

Was my son worried? He certainly didn’t appear to be. I expected tears (to this day, there have been none), refusal to go (the most I have ever got is a jokey ‘I don’t want to go to school today’) and anxiety. What I got was tiredness (to be expected), a little grumpiness for the first half term and overall a boy who seemed happy and settled. True, my son had the advantage of moving up to reception class with nearly all the children he knew from our village pre-school, but in other ways he was probably less prepared than your average 4 year-old, in that he had been largely at home with me since the day he was born.

So what is being in a reception class like? Well, much has been written in the press recently about how in this country we force children to start school too young. This time last year, full of fears for my son, I might even have agreed with this point of view. And whether you agree with this statement or not really depends on how we define formal schooling. In my son’s school, reception class is part of the main school, but in some schools it can take place in a quite separate building. Either way, the curriculum followed is quite separate. If you have been sending your child to a pre-school or to a private nursery prior to them starting  school then the curriculum they follow in reception class is merely a continuation of this. They continue to follow the EYFS (Early Years Foundation Stage) and don’t begin to follow the National Curriculum until they are in Year 1. Granted, they attend all day, every day, but many children in private nurseries already have experience of this and those that don’t – as my son didn’t – tend to adapt fairly quickly.

Through volunteering in my son’s class, I have been able to experience what a reception class day is like and it’s pretty far away from the idea of ‘formal schooling’ that I had this time last year. My son’s class will start the day by finding their name tags – this has now progressed to writing their names – and then sitting down on the mat to register. They answer their names, give their lunch preferences – packed or school dinners, meat or vegetarian. Then there’s time for show and tell, based around their current topic. They then have a short amount of whole class teaching – phonics or numeracy – before breaking off into small groups to work on a play-based learning activity. Last week, the group I was in charge of were playing bingo – cue much shouting and laughter – but in previous weeks we have been drawing numbers on chalk in the playground, filling up beakers with water and sand to learn about ‘capacity’, making shapes out of straws and opening up a ‘play shop’ for the rest of the class. Most of the time, the children aren’t really aware they’re learning: they’re far too busy having fun.

After their group-based activity, the children are allowed ‘choosing time.’ This means exactly what it says: they can play inside – dolls, Lego, listening to music, watching birds from the window – or outside – climbing frame, slide, scuttle-bugs, ball games. They can even go and visit friends in the other reception class if they chose to. This pattern is repeated pretty much throughout the days and weeks. Yes, there are ‘assessments’ of reading and numeracy but the children aren’t aware these are taking place. They laugh, they play, make friends, fall out with friends, learn to share, and, yes, somewhere in all that they may also learn to read and write. To my eyes, it appeared to happen by osmosis, by magic, but I think it’s probably down to the skill of the teachers…

So, what I’m trying to say is don’t worry. Of course you will worry, but trust me – reception year is as far from formal schooling as driving a car is from flying a fighter jet. Oh, and I say this as the mother of a girl who will be starting reception class this September, who was born on August 30th, scraping into the academic year by just 24 hours and who was ‘meant’ to be a September-born baby…

For those who prefer practical action to worry, here are some things you can do:

1) If you haven’t already done so, visit your child’s school. If possible, ask to sit in on a reception class to see what type of expectations will be placed on your child . Most of us will have no memories of what school was like at this age and this should help to reassure you!

2) Try not to pass any worries you have onto your child. Most parents view starting school as such a milestone that we have the potential to create anxieties in our children where there were none. Pretty much, children will respond to situations the way they see us do. So by all means, take pictures, make an occasion of buying school shoes, but don’t spend the summer constantly talking about school in the hopes that this will prepare your child, when all it will probably do is alert them to your anxiety.

3) If your child isn’t transferring to school with children they already know, then it may be worthwhile trying to organise a play-date with a child who will be in their class, so they have at least one familiar face. You will usually meet other parents at some sort of information evening before school breaks up for the summer.

4) Don’t worry if your child can’t write or read before they start: this is what school is for! Some nurseries or pre-schools do focus on these skills, but my son’s didn’t – largely because his school teaches cursive and prefers a ‘clean slate’ to work with! As a result, my son arrived in September, able only to write a ‘w’ for his name. Now, he can write beautifully (joined up – I am a most unexpected convert to the teaching of cursive!) and actually enjoys writing. He can read well and – most importantly – is completely unaware of having been ‘taught’ these skills.

5) You can, however, help your child – and their prospective teachers! – if you ensure that they are prepared in other ways for school. If your child doesn’t already do this, it may be a good idea to spend some time over the summer gradually getting them to dress and undress themselves, to take some responsibility for putting their clothes away and to learn how to wipe their nose (!) and use a shared toilet properly. It’s these self-care skills that will matter more to your child’s teacher than whether they can read or write come September. Children in my son’s class have to have responsibility for their coat and P.E. kit (putting them away, taking them home), their book bag and their water bottle. This will take time, things will get lost and forgotten and muddled up – my son and another boy spent most of the first term accidentally, repeatedly, swapping identical pairs of black, Clarks school shoes back and forth, until one of them had a growth spurt and changed sizes – but if they’re used to taking responsibility at home, then the transition will be much easier.

6) ….and RELAX. We all did it, we survived (and that was in the 70s and 80s, when our parents let us ride with no seatbelts and go out without sunscreen…) Thanks, Mum.  😉

I vote, therefore I am.

/ berkocat / 4 Comments

As some of us may be aware, there is an election tomorrow. It seems like it’s been a lot longer than five years since the last once – possibly because the last time I voted in a general election I was pushing my brand new, 2-month old baby boy in his pram, whereas tomorrow I’ll be dropping him off at school, then walking his 3 and a half year old little sister to the polling station, where there’s a reasonable chance she’ll disrupt proceedings when I don’t let her use the chubby pencil to make her own marks on the ballot paper…

My vote tomorrow will largely be ‘wasted’ in the purely political sense: we’ve moved house since the last election and now instead of the excitement of a marginal seat, we have the iron-clad, locked-tight certainty of Tory-voting, I’m-alright-Jack villages to contend with in our new constituency. Not much – if any –  chance of an upset here, unless UKIP manage to grab a few votes from the disgruntled right. The did look like they were staging some kind of invasion last week when they parked an ex-army jeep in the centre of the village, slap-bang in the middle of the home-time school run…And in addition, I know that my husband will visit the ballot box at some time tomorrow, directly cancelling out my vote.Love is indeed a beautiful and mysterious thing…

So why am I writing this post? Well, because despite all of the above points, I have never considered not voting. To me, not voting seems to be the equivalent of not actually existing as a  person, of saying  that you have nothing valid to contribute. This campaign – more so than others I can recall – seems to have been full of apathy from a vocal minority of the general public. I’m not sure that this apathy is genuine:  I don’t think that people really don’t care –  it’s just that it’s much easier to pretend that you don’t care, because then you don’t have to do anything. Statement such as ‘Well, they’re all the same’, ‘There’s not one of them you can trust’ are very, very easy to say and – frankly – it’s a cop out. Untrustworthy some of them may be, but would you vote for them if they told you the cold, hard truth that you claim to want so badly? We get the  politicians that we deserve and if perhaps as an electorate we were a little more sophisticated and realistic then we might hear the truth more often. Not a political animal? I think you are. Do you use the NHS?  Care about the quality of our social care and housing?  Worry about your child’s education? Moan about taxes? Then you are political.

I’m aware of being something of a hypocrite as I write this post. You see, I’ve spent the past month or so ‘thinning ‘ out my newsfeeds after they seem to have become overrun with people trying to a) convert me to some form of religion they have newly discovered (I’m happy you’re happy, but you’re not getting this girl) b) tell me that there is one way to raise a healthy child and one way only (always from a sector of the middle class new hippy movement) or c) convince me that (yet again) there are razors on the underground escalator handrails or if someone flashes you in their car it’s a new kind of crazy gang initiation (please, people, snopes.com before you post – unless, of course, you actually like believing that crap…) So, I’m a hypocrite; I dislike being told what to do, and yet I’m telling you to vote. Please. Would you? Thank you. (And yes, that goes for those of you voting for the bat-shit crazy parties too) That’s how much I believe in the democratic process.

Simple numbers

/ berkocat / 4 Comments

Last week, shortly after David Cameron declared a  ‘war on mediocrity’ in schools, I returned to the classroom for the first time in 4 years; this time not as a teacher, but as a volunteer parent-helper in my son’s reception class.  I volunteered partly out of a sense of duty: my younger child attends pre-school 3 sessions a week, so I – at least in theory – had some ‘free’ time that I could put to good use, but also so that I could keep in touch with my son’s learning in a more meaningful way than simply trying to decipher the symbols written in his reading log each week. I was also intrigued to find out about the mechanics of a lower school day. What proportion was explicit teaching? How much ‘play’ was allowed? Just how do you teach a child to read and write? After six months’ attendance I had been able to garner very little information from my son: Me: ‘What did you do today?’ Son: ‘Ummm…we went on a school trip.’ Me: Really…?! Son: ‘No, just joking, Mummy. Do you have chocolate in your bag?’ Generally speaking, the more I ask, the more absurd the responses become.

In my teaching career as a secondary school English teacher, I had often grumbled about the small group of students each year who arrived with very poor reading and writing skills and had wondered aloud with colleagues just what primary schools had been doing with them. By the time they arrived at our gates, there was very little we could do to improve their basic skills. It was too late; and we were not equipped to teach children the basics of reading and writing.  Moreover, the curriculum required that these children write lengthy coursework essays and speak fluently for several minutes: the demands placed on them were dramatically and cruelly out of step with their abilities.

One year it was my task to coach – although ‘coax’ seems like a much more apt term – a class of students just like this through their English GCSE. For once, our department had been allocated an extra class in a year group, so instead of the usual 25-30 students I was faced with just 5. Any teacher in the state sector will tell you what a luxury this is. For one whole year I was largely able to focus upon basic reading and writing skills. We played word games, had competitions, talked about our lives and largely escaped the pressure and antagonism that inevitably comes with a larger class of more able students, where expectations are higher. In two years I didn’t achieve miracles but the almost-equivalent: one student achieved a grade C. Oh, and most teachers won’t be surprised to learn that after this small success, the following year the extra class was taken away to meet budget cuts not continued.

I hadn’t thought about this class in a while, but I was reminded of my time with them last week when I was given charge of small group of pupils in my son’s reception class. This group was finding number recognition a challenge and I was asked to take them out to the playground, draw a number line from 1-10, call out numbers and get them running and jumping to the correct place. In between the girls (who wanted to draw pictures of themselves on the ground) and the boys (who generally wanted to run anywhere on the playground, as fast as they could) we managed to do some number recognition, some counting and some number sentences (new-fangled name for sums!), which the children drew on the playground themselves.

What struck me about this experience was that by the time we came back into the classroom and the teacher asked me how we had got on, I was able to describe to her precisely what each child had been able to do and what they had struggled with. It was possible to outline each child’s current position and to work out their next step. Moreover, the rest of the class had been working in similarly small, focused groups, roughly according to their ability. In total, there were 4 adults in the classroom, working with a class of 28: one qualified teacher, one parent-helper, one childcare student and one teaching assistant. As someone used to teaching in the secondary classroom, I felt like my cup was overflowing.

However, I am aware that this is not necessarily the case for all lower/primary schools and I am also aware that this bounty of help gets less the further we progress up the year groups. To a certain extent, fair enough. If help is available, then surely it is best to concentrate it upon the early years, where the foundation skills of reading and writing are being taught. This is obviously wise, but it leads me back to my class of 5 GCSE students. I spent two years knowing – and teaching – them as individuals. I could tell you precisely where they were academically in detail and what they needed to do to improve. I knew them as people, which is far more important also a bonus. Now, I know that the great, invincible, omniscient, god of Ofsted would say that it is a teacher’s job to know every student in such precise, academic detail, no matter how large the class. But back on the human (and humane!), fallible, imperfect earth it is simply not possible to do this when your average class size is 30. Teaching assistants get scarcer in secondary schools and are largely concentrated upon individual students with specific learning and/or behavioural issues. The cup gets emptier the further up the scale you go.

So is it at all possible to apply the primary model of learning to the secondary school? Well, yes, I would like to hope so. But few people in positions of power will listen. And they certainly won’t listen to teachers who – after all – are not really professionals (but surrogate parents/social workers/doctors, financial advisors, sexual health counsellors – jack of trades) and who are content with mediocrity. We’ll be told that there’s no money/it’s not what they do in Japan/it’s not a sexy enough idea/ that’s why private schools exist.

Now, I have sat through years and years worth of training days and meetings which have introduced the next transformative teaching method: interactive whiteboards, hand-held whiteboards, laptops for every student, Ipads for every student, AfL, active learning… Governments have been voted in and out again, and still I feel like the little kid at the back of the class whispering the same heresy to his friend, ‘Smaller class sizes, more teachers…’ Is it radical? No. Is it sexy? No. Will it cost a lot? Yes (but I refer you to the above list of endless, money-wasting, futile initiatives). And we keep being reminded of our chain of expenditure  – a strong healthcare system relies upon a strong economy first goes the refrain. Now, I’m certainly no economic genius, but I would bet that there has to be a link between a strong education system and a strong economy…

As I prepare – with genuine excitement – for another week of helping in class, I really hope that someone is listening. Because, it’s really not complicated: like my little group playing with chalk in the playground, it’s just a case of simple numbers.