Keep politicians out of education.

Annobel and Mamie - thanks, that information is a relief to me as well, as my GDs are also 6 this summer, and I'd forgotten about the disadvantage school-year-wise.

First POGS, I would say that I would not expect a six year old to learn times tables. She will be counting in twos and fives I expect, but the learning of tables by chanting started in Y3 for my eldest GD. Again, I wouldn't expect her to learn a foreign language; it is great when they can, my six-year-old grandaughter does it at a lunchtime club and it is very expensive, but she loves it so much my daughter is finding the money. It is hard to judge the progress in reading and maths against our own children, my feeling is that my elder grandaughter is a bit slower than her Mum was and the younger is much further on, but six is very early to make judgements.
As a former inspector of schools, I am well aware that some schools are better than others and some need to improve (I worked for many years at the sharp end of that), but I simply don't recognise the picture painted by the present government. I have seen the improvement in primary schools with my own eyes and I think the statistics are used negatively and are frequently misleading. The data from international comparisons is, frankly, not very robust and as we have said many times on here, employers have been complaining about school leavers for at least a hundred years. I have absolutely no confidence in the knowledge and judgements of the current crop of ministers, I am afraid. I honestly don't know if they understand that 95% of what they are proposing is or was already in place when they came to power.

POGS as your GD has a summer birthday she will have been at a disadvantage, starting school when only just four. Two of my GSs were in the same position, July and August babies respectively. The first had already a big sister in the same infant school which I think was an advantage to him. He is also big for his age so had no problem fitting in size-wise. Several of his pre-school mates were also in the same year group. Now in year 3, he is well ahead of the expected levels in every subject - well, maybe not PE - and a very confident and opinionated young man with an extraordinary vocabulary, gleaned from the immortal Lisa Simpson!
The other GS had few of these advantages, except height. He is also deaf in one ear and the local authority had to make the teacher take note of this disability. Once he got a hearing aid he made much better progress. His reading has come on by leaps and bounds since he turned six and he can now tackle almost anything; his number work is good and he is having a story included in a booklet of the children's stories. He is very good at drawing and makes fabulous designs using Lego and other media. I hope his progress continues in Y3. Younger brother, an assertive character, will enter the infant school this September, but he is far more ready for it than his brother was, having a December birthday. Just a few months makes a big difference at this stage.
So POGS, I wouldn't worry about your GD's progress yet. It's not yet common for children at her stage to have modern language lessons and what they do in Y1 tends to be pre-reading phonics exercises. What is consoling is that 'summer babies' can and do catch up, especially with good home encouragement. If parents are concerned about a child's progress, they can always go and talk to the teacher at parents' evening.

Fascinating to read all your responses and to see what a lot of good sense there is among us grans. But j04 made me giggle. I certainly don't live in a cosy middle class world, j04. I grew up in Tooting in the thirties and forties and taught English and Drama from 1952 to 1985 mostly in London comprehensives, some of them pretty tough, and my husband taught in a London primary, which certainly wasn't middle class. But my circle also included people like Leila Berg, Mike Duane, A S Neill, Sheila Kitzinger and others in the NCT as well as people with experience of the Peckham Health Experiment, all of whom were knowledgeable about the natural process by which we all learn and the factors that were either helpful to it or so adverse that they could stop it from functioning at all.

My G.D. is six this week. She does not do any languages, she does not do times tables and I am worried her reading and writing skills are not as good as her mothers were at the same age. Now I know that those of you on gransnet will be thinking, perhaps she is a little slow, have dislexia or something wrong with her. That has been a concern so I asked her classmates parents and they say their children are in the same position. So basically if you are in a school of the quality all of your children are in, well done and lucky for you. Not all children are getting the same chances, hence the lowering of our place in the world ranking and report after report that is proving there is something going wrong and needs looking at. Not for you obviously but don't deprive my G.D. of getting a better education than she is.

I think there should be some acceptance that there are good and bad schools and I can only speak the truth as I find it.

In my time as a school governor - just over 20 years - there were eleven secretaries of state for education. Each attempted to put his (or her) own stamp on the system for good (?) or ill, with the possible exception of Estelle Morris. Such ego-tripping can't be good for children or teachers.

Annobel Jess Mamie and nanaej thanks, just thanks!

The majority of schools deliver good education to children! But that does not make a good headline or political soundbite!

I have said before: all teachers want the children in their school to do well! They work hard to do this. My own children& their pals (and now grandchildren) attended ordinary state schools in a mixed socio-economic area, attained good exam results and had a good time too. Many , inc my two, went on to university and gained good degrees. As a teacher in some very 'poor' areas of London I with my colleagues worked very hard to make sure children learned to read , write and become numerate. However teachers can only do part of the education job and some 'failures' are not the result of poor teaching /schools.. sometimes it is all the other influences on a child /young person.

Jess and Mamie, I'm glad to see you setting the record straight and I would like to suggest that any of you who take such a bleak view of education as does Poggs, should volunteer to become school governors. It should be possible to be accepted as a community governor. I was a governor for more than twenty years and saw nothing but improvements in standards under several very competent and hard-working head teachers.

I don't think it is broke. I think steady sustained pressure on schools to improve key outcomes is a better way for politicians to hold them to account than tinkering with details like should they learn poems or not. Education has improved a lot in this country in the last 10 years. It is difficult to make fair comparisons when the goal posts are continually moved. Sometimes it feels like you are busy trying to play soccer successfully and the minister suddenly announces that you are playing rugby.
The statistical measures that schools are judged by seem to change nearly every year and that has many knock on effects I can assure you. Not to mention clouding the issue of how well schools are doing.
The general public would be amazed to see the mountains of statistics that the dept of education produce for every school. Trouble is they take about 6 months to do them, so you get them half way through the next school year, by which time the goalposts have usually been adjusted.

Well that is exactly what I see my grandaughters getting in the UK, POGS. They are reading well (the little one is a fluent reader at 6) they are doing well in maths, they learn their tables (I get roped in for practice every time I see the elder one), they both do French (although this is an extra lunchtime activity for the six-year-old). The PE, Art and Music are all excellent. It is a normal, state primary school and I have seen hundreds like it with my own eyes.

You know what I cannot understand is why ideological views or political bias takes the stage over a childs right to be educated and expect to be able to read, write, do sums and be employable.

This is not the case at present, it is not a case of 'If it's not broke don't mend it', the system is obviously broke and does need mending.It cannot be a case of continually defending the indefencible because it offends.

Ask employers why they are having to teach our kids to read, write and do basic maths just to give them a fighting chance in the employment market.
On a holiday I was in a shop and the till was broke. The girl behind the counter was practically in tears, she could not add the cost of a sandwich, two packs of crisps and two drinks, because she did'nt know how to. If I had been any one of her teachers I would be mortified to think I had let her down so badly, disgraceful.

Yes parents and 'GOOD' teachers probably do know more than politicians but I am sorry I welcome my G.D. receiving a good, sound education and to me there is no harm in helping to teach her to read, write, know a poem or have the advantage of a basic foreign language if it is on offer. It would offend me if she was not given the opportunity and I deem that a failure not only the part of the teaching profession but me also as a grandparent.

If Mr Gove wanted children to learn the periodic table off by heart as well as reciting poetry, they could do a lot worse than Tom Lehrer's version sung to the tune (I think) of I am the Very Model of a Modern Major General. Tricky – and noisy – when it comes to exams though, unless everyone sang in unison.

In science it brought in lots more rote learning (e.g. names of planets) at the expense of useful scientific thinking for the modern world.
Gove probably thinks they should recite the whole periodic table by memory. Along with the Ancient Mariner!

Actually I do think the National Curriculum was / is a good thing. The first version was a bit bonkers with far too many Attainment Targets (especially science), but it did mean a much more consistent experience. I was teaching in the seventies too and I do remember that the "topic" based teaching did vary a lot in content and quality (it could be wonderful when done well and dire when done badly) and could make it very difficult for children changing schools. The problem with the NC was, as ever, that it was brought in too quickly and was too complex. The Dearing review sorted a lot of that out, but there has always been too much prescription from the politicians via the DfE. The first version made huge amounts of work for teachers as the programmes of study hadn't been sorted out first. After that we have had lots of well-developed, supportive material (literacy strategy, numeracy strategy, MfL etc), but all brought in too quickly without enough consolidation.

Agree with you both. National Curriculum is that which insists on Shakespeare in Y7 etc. Great if you have brilliant teaching - or disaster if not.

Our current education secretary Michael Gove appears to be one of those grammar school boys from a working class background who has "made good." Good luck to him for that, but he seems to think that he is now an expert on educational theory despite having been a journalist by profession.

I would like to think that anyone who is appointed to a job as crucial as education secretary would have a decent amount of experience on the theory of education or at least gather around him some expert advisors rather than, as he appears to be doing at present, making some rather silly pronouncements on what schools should teach on what seems to be the basis of "it never did me any harm."

Politicians need to stop micro-managing education - it is as simple as that.

Their job is to provide sufficient resources for teachers to do their job well (which they all want to do), good teacher training and to have sensible inspection in place to make sure that the money is being spent wisely. They should not be telling teachers that 5 year olds should recite poems to the class - a sure-fire way to put them right off poetry, especially of they are shy. These are the decisions of the teachers - who are the professionals.

Next thing we will have politicians telling docs what drugs they should prescribe.....hang on a minute..........I think that may already be happening!!

Leave the pros to do their jobs!!!

And what problem, in particular, did the national curriculum address J04 apart from a politician's desire to tinker?

I had to teach it!

They did feel the need to bring in a National Curriculum. (Much needed in my opinion)

Mine in school then too..they did well! so what does that prove?

Politicians are not well known for evaluating evidence and making sensible judgements. They are well known for worrying about the next election. And thinking they are experts just because they have an opinion.
I just don't think politicians should go round dictating what must be taught and how it should be taught. I think they should judge schools by output e.g. number of readers, number of good maths GCSEs and then back off and let the profession adopt good practice, using their own judgement and professional networks. There is more than one way to skin cats. What suits a bunch of middle class white kids in a cute village in Cameron's Oxfordshire constituency may not be the right thing for an inner city school that is 95% Bangladeshi, just for instance. And such extremes do exist.

Based on the education my daughters received until we took them out of the system.