iaink

We have experienced a few years of school here in Ontario now, and its mostly OK. None of the headaches of the UK where family and friends seem obsessed with living in the "right" area to get their kids into the "right" school.

You can see why when the UK government issues a report that says:

one in seven still cannot write their name after a year at primary school.

Assessments showed that 14% of them struggle to write
and
one in 10 had trouble linking sounds and letters.


Minister (rather confusingly) quoted as saying and

Holy crap, how bad was it before? One in ten struggle to put the right sound to letters and one in seven cant write their own name after a YEAR at school.

Is it really that bad there? Discuss.

Zoe Bell

I reckon.
I don't have much experience of primary teaching but my gut feeling was that we should allow the primary school teachers to concentrate on teaching the basics.
If primary school teachers could teach basic reading , writing and numerical skills , then by the time the pupils came to secondary school , they would have all the skills needed to learn science , history , geography etc.

Instead pupils would arrive with no literacy skills at all, major misconceptions in Science (having been taught by non specialists) and more importantly in some cases , no social skills at all thus rendering them incapable of surviving in a secondary school environment.

Shortly before I left teaching my school was engaged in a trial project to totally revamp the way we taught years seven and eight. The idea was to put 90 odd pupils in one area of the school under the supervision of several learning facilitators ( not necessarily teachers). The idea was for them to work on "cross curricular" projects individually , seeking support and guidance from the appropriate learning facilitator depending on what particular help they needed.
The idea was "to mimic the learning environment found in primary schools". My thoughts that the "learning environment" in primary schools wasn't that damn sucessful didn't go down too well.

I despair of the education system in the UK

MikeUK

Worth putting in the perspective that the expectation for Kindergarten here is that they leave being able to know all of the letters and all the numbers and spell their names and maybe of few other family members (at age 6-7yrs)
This is directly from the public school my 4 year old has entered two weeks ago

He already knows his letters can spell his own name, read a little and count up to 100 and add and subtract small numbers

Looking into private schools here now

Zoe Bell

I've taught 15 year olds who couldn't meet those criteria.

dwight-van-man

Our oldest has just started P1 having been in private nursey since three months - so knows how to write his name, can write most of the alphabet (although not in order!) and is pretty good with numbers. More importantly to us is that he actually enjoys doing that stuff and we've never had to push - so we were kinda shocked when one of our teacher friends told us that his first proper school reading book is likely to have no words and that there is an opinion among some teachers that reading and writing shouldn't be taught at all in P1, with the emphasis being on the development of communication instead. After three weeks of P1, it now seems that different schools in the same local authority area have totally different approaches to P1 education - fortunately, ours seems to be more on the traditional side.

mzp

my daughter's just started P1 just outside glasgow. she's using "jolly phonics" to learn to read and write... and i cant believe how well she's doing - recognising words, letters etc. they've started on sentence structure too.. and she loves it.
daughter was at private nursery full time before this and could write her name no problem, now she's asking how to write her friends names. we sound them out (Phonetically) and she can do it... and all this after 4 weeks.
numeracy is great too.
cant praise her school enough. think that's the only thing i'll miss when we move.
does anyone know how i can find out if a school uses Jolly Phonics in alberta or ontario (still not sure where we're settling).

m

Biiiiink

I've been disappointed with how little content there was in the JK year - I know it's optional and more about socialisation, but I was still surprised. It's not so critical for my boy (a fine example of the gender gap at that age if ever there was one!) but it would no doubt bore bright little girls senseless. I expect to do reading, writing and maths with him at home, but not that he would get that exclusively from me. I'm hopeful it steps up a bit in SK...

Elaine B.

My little guy did JK and SK in Canada and has just started P2 here in Northern Ireland. I was happy with the Canadian system and so far the school here seem to be doing a good job. We've been luck so far to get teacher that really seem to care.

Zoe Bell

Again just my gut feeling , but I think that what is done at home during the early years of a child's education has far more impact that anything that is taught in school.

Elaine B.

I agree with that 100%

nikki dreaming

From my experience in the UK, a lot of it comes down to the individual school.

We are very lucky at the moment that our son is in a good primary school and we have no concerns with the learning to date. They use the read write inc system using phonic sounds for spelling and he has done really well on this method in his first year.

gryphea

My son went to reception class in the UK for 2 months and then came out here into KG. He has just entered grade 1. Calgary is I think a very good board of education nationally and so it may frame my viewpoint. We also selected where we live here, on the basis of the school.

My personal viewpoint is that in the UK we educate our kids too early, to really no LONG term benefit. We also have too large class sizes in the UK, which IMHO burns teachers out, which impacts the kids. the kids are coached to perform and we burn them out. Little 4 year old boys are being failed in the UK as we label them naughtey or under acheivers because they do not want to sit still all day. There is a massive gender gap in the UK, and it starts very early and only closes for kids that go to uni. The governments approach to this seems to be to set more early learning goals, whereas I think it would be to set less. Setting kids up to fail at 4 is hard, and something that seemingly they never recover from. I think in the UK we should look to the examples set by scandanavia and we need to think of ways to engage boys (maybe through daily sport? or more freedom in the curriculum to study 'boy' things, ).

My son left the UK above average achiever for his class, and I suspect if we went back tomorrow he would be achieving below where he would have been , but still above average. BUT I do feel he has had a good early years education here, far more grounded in science (freedom in the curriculem meant he spent a month studying dinosaurs and a month studying space etc)and social aspects and these skills will set him up to be a life-long learner more had he been in england. In particular I think his writing would have been better had we stayed in england- but at the expense of what?

I was a lecturer at a good uni in UK and I was shocked by the number of students clinically depressed or with serious mental health issues (10-20% in any given year had clinical medical excuses) . I have no evidence that it is better here - but my gut feel says it is.

Gryph

lilacheart

I was very disappointed with the English school system. My now 10 year old knew all his numbers and letters when he was 2 and could read before he started nursery. All the school did was made him read every single book up to level 12 until the others caught up

My 4 year old is very different, he knows colours , shapes , the alphabet and about 15 letters. I have given up for a while because he is really not interested.

From what I have heard JK is more about play and developing social skills

dwight-van-man

I'd like to think my two year old daughter understands quantum physics - but since she's only learning to speak, she can't tell me yet

Butch Cassidy

Would these be the Letters to The Corinthians????