The UK Government has now announced that the teaching of languages is to become compulsory from the age of seven. Great!
My son is in a class where he has children who struggle to speak English and to demand they learn a second language is an absolute joke; and he's in a school where there are not too many children where English is a second language! Kids should be busy playing until they're six but in this country we try and cram them ful of facts as early as possible and so many of them switch off.
EDUCATION EDUCATION EDUCATION was Tony Blair's forceful first words when he first
became Prime Minister. I've been a school governor for the vast majority of the time that he has been Prime Minister and as far as I'm concerned his words are hollow. The bright ones succeed as they always will but the others? WHAT ABOUT THE OTHERS?
I've been writing in my journal about how upset I have been because my daughter is failing to gain subject knowledge in most of her classes because she is a quiet child in general but she likes to chat with her friends in class. She's not naughty. No one will say she's naughty, only chatty but all her teachers like her. There will be thousands upon thousands of other children like MY daughter who are passing under the radar and underachieving. Teachers do not tell you until the end of the year when it's too late. teachers have hundreds of kids at senior school and they cannot contact every parent......Some WILL NOT contact parents because their self esteem is so low because they are worn down by a terrible education system.
Far from fixing an education system, this government is now pulling it apart. Publishing SATs tests do not work. All they do is make schools push those bright kids to get the high grades. I'll be honest here, my daughter is just as bright as my son but my son will fly because he has a confidence in himself. Maybe if these tests were taken away from kids at such a young age and children were not pushed to succeed, children like my daughter, would not feel under so poorly about themselves?
Maybe we should be looking at changing other parts of the education system and not adding unnecessary aspects to it? Who is going to be teaching the kids French? Where is the money to pay for this? Speaking as a governor, what normally happens is this; the Government gives schools a sum of money to pay for this sort of thing for the first year or sometimes two. Then it withdraws 40% and expects the governing body of the school to find the 40%. The following year it will be a 60/40 split and then 80/20 and of course after about five years the governors have to ask the parent to help pay for the teaching because the Government have reduced the support to NOTHING.
We all know Jamie Oliver and how school meals have supposedly changed and the government have put money in? How much you ask? They reduced the money from other areas to put it into the Jamie Oliver pot AND parents in general are having to pay an extra TWENTY PENCE more for their child's meal. Also, some schools have to pay more because their governing body's are not subsidising the costs. We had to subsidise our school meals and the governing body took money out of another cost area to pay for this. Last year we lost a member of staff because we could not afford the level of staffing we had. We had NO MONEY LEFT and went into the red. Every school in our area went into the red and the government did not care. They did nothing to help us.
In those immortal words of ABBA,
'MONEY MONEY MONEY, MUST BE FUNNY, IN A RICH MAN'S WORLD'
My son is in a class where he has children who struggle to speak English and to demand they learn a second language is an absolute joke; and he's in a school where there are not too many children where English is a second language! Kids should be busy playing until they're six but in this country we try and cram them ful of facts as early as possible and so many of them switch off.
EDUCATION EDUCATION EDUCATION was Tony Blair's forceful first words when he first
became Prime Minister. I've been a school governor for the vast majority of the time that he has been Prime Minister and as far as I'm concerned his words are hollow. The bright ones succeed as they always will but the others? WHAT ABOUT THE OTHERS?I've been writing in my journal about how upset I have been because my daughter is failing to gain subject knowledge in most of her classes because she is a quiet child in general but she likes to chat with her friends in class. She's not naughty. No one will say she's naughty, only chatty but all her teachers like her. There will be thousands upon thousands of other children like MY daughter who are passing under the radar and underachieving. Teachers do not tell you until the end of the year when it's too late. teachers have hundreds of kids at senior school and they cannot contact every parent......Some WILL NOT contact parents because their self esteem is so low because they are worn down by a terrible education system.
Far from fixing an education system, this government is now pulling it apart. Publishing SATs tests do not work. All they do is make schools push those bright kids to get the high grades. I'll be honest here, my daughter is just as bright as my son but my son will fly because he has a confidence in himself. Maybe if these tests were taken away from kids at such a young age and children were not pushed to succeed, children like my daughter, would not feel under so poorly about themselves?
Maybe we should be looking at changing other parts of the education system and not adding unnecessary aspects to it? Who is going to be teaching the kids French? Where is the money to pay for this? Speaking as a governor, what normally happens is this; the Government gives schools a sum of money to pay for this sort of thing for the first year or sometimes two. Then it withdraws 40% and expects the governing body of the school to find the 40%. The following year it will be a 60/40 split and then 80/20 and of course after about five years the governors have to ask the parent to help pay for the teaching because the Government have reduced the support to NOTHING.
We all know Jamie Oliver and how school meals have supposedly changed and the government have put money in? How much you ask? They reduced the money from other areas to put it into the Jamie Oliver pot AND parents in general are having to pay an extra TWENTY PENCE more for their child's meal. Also, some schools have to pay more because their governing body's are not subsidising the costs. We had to subsidise our school meals and the governing body took money out of another cost area to pay for this. Last year we lost a member of staff because we could not afford the level of staffing we had. We had NO MONEY LEFT and went into the red. Every school in our area went into the red and the government did not care. They did nothing to help us.In those immortal words of ABBA,
'MONEY MONEY MONEY, MUST BE FUNNY, IN A RICH MAN'S WORLD'
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