To expect my grandchildren to be given a good education?

Everybody has right to get better education and live up to standards of the society, Make sure that one becomes educated and live a happy life we need to make sure that they get everything in life that they deserve to have better future.

well everybody need a better education to live up in a society, Even your grandchildren,so help her develop that credential and try to solve the problem that is affecting her education.

I am no apologist for poor teaching or school leadership. I have taught in schools, lead schools, advised schools and inspected schools. Most are absolutely fine and children make good progress and enjoy their time in school too!

My advice to gillybob is to get parents to write a 'non-angry' but concerned letter about grandchild's progress and ask to see the Head to discuss this and how they and the school can make sure she is progressing and attaining at the right level for her. No good saying most of the others are not at her stage..she is and she needs to progress!

OFSTED are awful at publicising what their (ever changing) grades mean.
Requires improvement is the old satisfactory. It can mean that one relatively small aspect of the school is not working as well as an other , e.g kids make slower progress in KS1 than in KS2 or that the gap between boys/girls learning is too great or the children in receipt of free school meals do not make the same progress as children not on free school meals. The report will spell it out.

OFSTED expect all children to make good progress from whatever level they start at and those that start at lower levels than expected for child of that age are supposed to make faster progress to 'close' the attainment gap. if they do not they are likely to judge the school as requires improvement.

It is not a 'crap' school! It will have some very good aspects to it otherwise it would have been Special Measures!

Gillybobyour DGD does not need school readers to get better at reading (though it would be a great help!). Make sure she goes to the library and gets some interesting picture books and let her listen to those and then read along with the grown up. She is on the reading road and will pick up the more she reads. BUT it is the teacher's job to do this so that needs to be addressed!

My grandson goes to a catholic school now. Lots of different faiths, and no faiths, there. The C of E one was oversubscribed I suppose. They could have appealed but the appeal wasn't going to be heard until the October after he was supposed to start school. Not a lot of use.

Can I suggest some practical steps? If you or someone else close to your DGD could offer to go into the school a couple of times a week to help with reading you might get a clearer idea of what is happening and help out stressed teachers (not excusing them just trying to get to the root of the problem). But don't think split age classes are necessarily a problem. The old Literacy strategies set out clear guidelines about how these should be dealt with, and any good teacher should be following these.(although there is a new National curriculum introduced by Mr Gove which is now being implemented-more change!)
Also don't assume that a reading book is necessarily an essential in learning to read. That probably sounds a bit weird but think how much reading we do that doesn't involve books. They do give a means of monitoring ability but you can encourage reading in so many other areas-recipes, labels, shopping lists etc- you know what I mean.
Other actions you could take-is there a PTA? This school needs some sort of support system. I can see why you are worried, getting together with others to work on this will help. Approach your parent governor with your worries but also an offer to help where you can.
Finally don't assume a supply teacher is necessarily a bad teacher. I was one for years when my children were small. I was sometimes dropped into situations where I was expected to clear up a mess left by someone, get to know new children and a new school, teach, and reassure worried parents- it wasn't easy but I did it. Try to make your approaches to teachers concerned but supportive. People under stress react badly to more criticism and respond much better to offers of help.

Governors are usually reluctant to pass a vote of no confidence in a HT. If there is still any LEA control, measures can be put in through the advisory service. However, Mr Gove has set himself the task of taking away this safety net.

Yes they do anno my DGD attends a Catholic primary school and neither parent is of that faith.

Lots of school problems are down to poor leadership. Can school governors and parents get a vote of "no confidence" in a head teacher.

It would probably happen in an area where the parents feel they are involved in their children's education.

The state of my grandchildren's school is as a direct result of amalgamating several smaller schools. It is now a very large school in the middle of a large council estate. A lot of the children are from fairly deprived backgrounds. There is a shortage of teachers and a large amount of pupils. Virtually all the classes are split , something I cannot get my head around as I fail to see how one teacher can teach two entirely different curriculums to around 30 children at the same time. The head teacher is an unapproachable and by all accounts a nasty piece of work who is feared by children and teachers alike. Ofsted have been "working with her" to try and bring the school up to scratch but I understand they have now left.

Don't 'faith' schools have to take a certain quota of children who don't belong to that particular church?

I sympathise too. My grandson's local school was rated unsatisfactory across the board. He couldn't get into another local primary because it's a C of E school and they wouldn't lie and say they were church goers. Not good!

I really feel for you. My DGS seems to go to a school where teachers have so many different jobs that the children are taught by different teachers depending on the day.
Can you volunteer to hear readers? You wont get to listen to your GC, but it will benefit the childrenand give you an idea of whether the lack of provision is a school-wide or just a teacher issue.

Re split classes: Blame the government for part of the problem. With an intake of 50, the ideal class would be 2 x 25 in each year, but there is insufficient funding, so what we get is 1 x 30 FS, 1 x 20 FS + 10 Y1, 1 x 30 Y1, 1x 10 Y1 + 20 Y2 and 1 x 30 Y2.

Few teachers would choose to have a split class, but that's how it is. The way to avoid this in many areas would be to amalgamate small schools and bus children in and out. I wouldn't like that either.

Having said that, it's not as hard as it sounds. You look at the children's abilities aand the targets for the year group. Layered targets have Must, Should and Could for each year. For Progression and Challenge, the targets should be differentiated according to ability. For each year group there are 3 broad ability ranges.
Must – All children in the class (with the exception of children with special educational needs) should achieve this target. This target is generally taken from the year group below (the Should target for the previous year).
Should – This is the age appropriate target and the majority of the class should achieve this.
Could – Children working above age related expectations. This target is generally taken from the teaching programme for the following year (the Should target for the year above).
Good teachers will be using some form of this. Have a look here for an example.
http://www.cumbriagridforlearning.org.uk/index.php?category_id=259

Thanks for the link Mamie. It's interesting that there has been little publicity about the problems Ofsted find in private schools. The problems in the school in Derby were predictable. I appreciate the frustration when children aren't getting a good experience at school, but I don't see Free Schools or the move to academies as the answer. Flickety's 18.10.13, 18.31 post expresses my views, much better than I would.

You have lost me there Mishap. Are you saying schools should or should not be inspected? How can you judge if schools are adequate without some sort of inspection framework and judgement?
There is some interesting stuff here on the blog written by Janet Downs.
www.localschoolsnetwork.org.uk/2013/10/all-pupils-have-the-right-to-be-taught-by-properly-qualified-teachers-80-of-parents-say-so/
Very interesting that more independent schools than state schools are found to be unsatisfactory in Ofsted inspections.

To my mind none of those criteria makes a good school. A school that puts a happy environment ahead of helping children learn is failing as is one that indulges in academic hot-housing. A good school can be committed to any faith or none - and so can a bad school.

I think a good school is one where children enjoy learning and get the help and encouragement they need to achieve the best they can regardless of ability and where individual skills and abilities are recognised whether academic, practical or artistic.

The "requires improvement" category used to be titled "satisfactory." Any school, however good, has things it can improve on. Visiting schools and getting a feel for their ethos and how happy the children are is the best way forward. Children will learn in an atmosphere of calm and safety, and where the teachers enjoy what they do. These are better markers of a school's suitability for your child, than the views of a "hit and run" visit from people who do not know the community.

It is a disgrace when children are obliged by law to spend their time at school, but the state is not obliged by law to ensure that those schools are good ones. The problem of course is that people define "good" in so many different ways. For some it is a happy environment, for others academic hot-housing, for others the installation of a particular faith.

Paying for education is not always the answer - we paid at three different schools, and all failed our children for different reasons.

I get furious when teachers say 'bright children do well anywhere' No they don't, a lot of the brightest, in particular, get bored, lost and confused and start just messing around or just drift into a world of their own. In extremis they truant and get into trouble.

In primary school DS was frequently bored and mentally unchallenged in class. His coping tactic was to completely disconnect from classroom life and disappear into a world of his own that was so complete that he failed to hear people speaking to him or what a teacher had said so often that he was referred to a clinic for hearing tests. DD looked at one point as if she was going down the truant and trouble route. Fortunately we could afford to pay for education, much as we disliked being forced into that option. That was the 1980s

Now DGD is at school, the attitude to brighter children is so different, they seem to be encouraged to stretch themselves and teachers are pleased when they do well.

Gillybob, I can only repeat my earlier advice to write a letter clearly outlining the issues. Send it to the Chair of Governors and the Headteacher and copy it to the Local Authority (unless it is an Academy). Have a look on the LA's website to find out who is the senior adviser for primary education. From everything you say, it sounds as if there is a serious problem with the recruitment and retention of staff at the school.
For what it is worth OH and I both went to independent schools. We had no issues about sending our children to state school where they did very well and our grandchildren also go to an excellent state primary.
I don't think any of that helps you or your grandchildren and I can only urge you to keep raising your concerns. It sounds as if other parents will be doing the same.

I agree with the head of your DC's primary school to some extent Harrigran you cannot make a child intelligent if they are not that way inclined but what you can do is give them the best education possible and encourage them to do the best they can. My two GD's loved school. They love learning. Speaking to other parents and grandparents in the school yard it is apparent that a lot of children are saying they no longer want to go to school and the reason they seem to give is that they either don't like their teacher or they don't know who will be teaching them from one day to the next.

After asking my youngest GD's teacher yet again this morning for a reading book and speaking to my DIL on the telephone we have decided that we are going to make a formal complaint. It is not just about the reading book. She has plenty of books at home and at mine and can whizz through a book no problem it is the fact that (as other people have mentioned) there should be a structured reading program in the class. The excuses I have had range from " I have been too busy, she is brighter than her classmates, I don't know where to start her off" and usually followed by "I will get it sorted this week, I promise. I am starting to wonder how much teaching actually goes on within the classroom.

Two of my GC are having a very good education at their local primary school which is 'outstanding' and has lots of enrichment activities. Their mother is a secondary maths teacher and has no complaints about the teaching. She would say so, if she had. The other two GSs do not seem to be in such a good primary school which has recently become an academy. This does not seem to be a guarantee of quality.

it was a great shame when they removed the assisted places at independent schools. My son went to the Royal Grammar in Newcastle and there were boys there that got the education they deserved through this scheme. When I spoke to the head of DC's primary school she said that bright children do well anywhere. The head had acknowledged DD's intelligence by sending her on a gifted children's course but tried to deter me from applying to an independent school. I wish now that they could have gone at primary level because the primary maths, at local school, was so poor that DH had to tutor them in basic maths.

There is no way ( short of winning the lottery) that our family could afford to send three children to private school. For us it would not be a case of doing without holidays and luxuries it would be a case if not eating, paying mortgage etc. What really annoys me is why the school has been allowed to slide like this. As I mentioned before this was a brand new school 2011 and had a completely clean slate. Where and how did it all go wrong?

DH and I were both state educated, but like you, Harrigran, we struggled financially to have our children privately educated from 11.

It made me very angry because the state primary school DC attended, which was a 'good' school, acknowledged DS's ability, he was up a year and coming top in all the assessment tests they did back in the 1970s. The school advised us not to try for too academic a school for him as he might not pass the entrance exam. They said this without any awareness of what this said about the education they had given him.

Other educational authorities admitted that, because he was a quiet, pleasant well-behaved child, he would probably under-achieve at secondary school because teachers would just pass over him for not being troublesome. Nobody considered that he had any entitlement in the state system to an education that was fit for him.

He went to a good, but not outstanding, private school which nurtured their pupils. They nurtured his passion for a subject not on the school curriculum, but made him learn the basics which he would willingly have ignored. As a result I have a happy and fulfilled son workingsuccessfully in a profession he loves, even if it is not one that brings extensive financial rewards.

I have searched for Free schools and apart from Grindon Hall there only appears to be Cramlington Primary School. A friend's daughter was at Albert E.... primary and she managed to transfer her to Cleadon.

gillybob it was the best thing we ever did but it was only from 11 years of age. I had help from my sister as she didn't have any children. We never had holidays or any luxuries for years and years but I would do it all over again in a heartbeat. Do you have a Free school nearby ? We have one in Sunderland, my hairdresser's children attend and she is thrilled with the way they are progressing.