Do you want what Gove wants for your grandchildren?

Mr Gove would do well to consider this quotation:

Don't limit a child to your own learning, for he was born in another time.

Rabindranath Tagore

And many more here, by some great thinkers and even some politicians. Not one of them cites the purpose of education as being to gain the qualifications to earn a living.

Yes Thanks for that Lilygran and Anno. I do think there is a lot to do in sorting out the 14-19 curriculum and it is a shame that Tomlinson's proposals got shelved.
We used to do a lot of business link work in our secondary schools, where people from businesses came and worked with the pupils, who then went out for work experience. This meant that everyone understood more about reasonable expectations on both sides, what training businesses would need to put in, what schools could do better to prepare the pupils etc. It was so much more useful than the kind of blanket whining about school leavers that sometimes seems to be the speciality of the CBI, though I am sure that is not really the case.

Praise where praise is due. Gove has pledged to clampdown on homophobic bullying in schools.

Surely that is up to the school? How is he planning to deal with it?

Sorry gadabout but schools have been working on this for years now. It is down to the governors to have their own anti bullying policies and staff to implement. The school I was governor of had an gay childcare teacher and he got on fine there. Children a lot more tolerant than they were when i was a teacher.

Just caught up with this thread- very amused by your descriptions of Michael Gove and comments on his policies.
Like Maggiemay 'I do not want Michael Gove full stop! I am definitely not a member of the GAS in fact have long thought that he is a liability to his partyand find him devoid of any charm or appeal.
As well as his recommendations in Education it seems he is in charge of Family Justice which may be the reason that there is so little progress in 'Shared Parenting' law.
How on earth did he get to this elevated position?
Thanks again Mamie for the resume of Gove's policies

Good question Maniac - how did the awful Gove get elevated? The few comments in support of his ideologically based attack on our education system seem to me to come from a world I don't recognise. Gove's plans are not based on evidence, but on his own unpleasant view of the world. Most of our children and young people benefit from and enjoy the existing curriculum. Any changes or developments within the education system should be led by people who actually have the experience and knowledge to evaluate and discuss improvements. That rules Gove out then. Having the tories in power is like the 80's all over again, always winter and never christmas

Iam64- I don't think all posts arise from genuine beliefs - sometimes they are just knee jerk responses of hostility to other posters. This is why, when challenged, they cannot respond logically to points made.

Someone on the Today programme was saying there is too much learning by rote involved, ie learning dates of historical events and reigns of kings and queens. You know, I don't think that is a bad thing. It's quite good to know when a particular king reigned without having to resort to google!

The other person in the interview was saying there would be plenty of scope for the teacher to develop the curriculum in his/her own way. And to expore local history with the children.

Perhaps it's not all bad. (Though I feel sorry for the teachers - more changes!)

Jingle, unless you are taking part in a quiz, when would you need to know the exact dates of a reign? Knowing multiplication tables is probably still useful - saves you getting out your calculator/iphone/whatever in the supermarket.

j08 I listened to the Today programme and nearly had to take aothe blood pressure tablet.
Can I just let anyone who does not already know that Local Area Study in History has been on the KS1 curriculum for ages..it is not new!

Also in reception classes teachers have been teaching children about halve, quarters etc for years.

Trouble is interviewers never ask the right questions...

Also whilst there is no harm in knowing your 12 x the reason it was dropped was because we went metric and we only went to 12 x before so we could measure things and get the right change! It is so sad that the headlines focus o these aspects when teachers are teaching kids so much more than you or I were ever taught in infant schools!!

I know nanaej, it is unbelievable cheek. They were also talking about "Labour's dumbed-down curriculum". They were the ones who wanted knitting and flower-arranging in the new DT curriculum until James Dyson and the Engineering Council had a go at them. I think the Labour government had a pretty good set of reforms to the original over-full 1988 national curriculum, but still, why let facts get in the way of party politics.

Thinking about plans for the History curriculum, I tried to remember what I was taught in my 4 Primary schools in the 1950s. Apart from a trip to the Tower of London in the top class all I can remember is learning about Abel Tasman & Ozzie history in my first 3 years at school in Sydney. I do remember however knowing my 13x table so perhaps we were into Baker's dozens Nanaej!

But eggs still come in dozens, and bottles in boxes and a host of other items, even in metric countries. Then there are months in the year. So the 12 times table is universally useful still.

On history, Gove is re-introducing the 1950s syllabus, prehistory to Saxons in primary school, Normans onwards in secondary. If you opted for science O levels you never got past the Stuarts, if you only did O level it stopped in 1815 and you only got to relatively recent times if you did A level history. Personally I think the concept of prehistory and the imagination required to understand the concept of life 5 - 10,000 years ago is very difficult for 5 - 7 year olds.

DGC (aged 3 & 6) adore the Horrible Histories and have grasped a real sense of the chronology of history since the Normans with that. DGD comes home from school and looks online for more information on Florence Nightingale and Grace Darling and uses her grasp of the sweep of British History gained from the HH's to understand when they lived.

I find knowing to within 5 years when a monarch was reigning is very useful in pinning down many aspects of the past. When we bought our current home we were told it was late 16th century, I could place this as late Tudor as I knew Queen Elizabeth died in the early years of the 17th century. It gave me a context for the house. When later scientific dating discovered it was built in 1467 I knew it dated to the War of the Roses and Edward IV and I adjusted the context of our house accordingly. The same thing applies when visiting any historic site, whether a house, castle or any other historic site.

It is wearying, even though I am retired. I was, like many teachers, subjected to many changes and innovations in my career. It finally got to the stage where I realised "I did this x years ago under y government" and that meant I just went back to what I used to do with a few frills and a lot more paperwork. Until the next time.

(Nearly always very good results, though, whatever the fashionable curriculum of the time)

Hey ho!

Anyone explain to me how teachers can start a new curriculum in September when they are only now being told what it contains? They are on holiday from the end of next week.
A major irony is that if you are an academy then you can ignore this new curriculum (hoist, petard, own?)
Only one or two secondary schools in this city, out of about 10, are not academies. And increasing numbers of primaries are academies.
Exit Mr Gove, spluttering with frustration as he tries to equate his policy of giving academies and free schools autonomy and freedom, with his fervent desire to micro-manage what happens in them.

JessM, It is September 2014 not September 2013.

As a not too recently retired school governor of both an Infants and a High School I think that there are some basic things that Michael Gove is trying to tackle for example learning times tables by rote and learning to read proficiently, but he is missing things for example where and how children sit in class. How can anyone learn with their back to the teacher. There is a strong need to reintroduce a grammar school level of education together with junior technical/commercial schools and a need to reduce the accent on all to go to university. There must be a freely available route to upward mobility. Not so long ago our leaders in politcs and industry were coming from the ranks of children who had benefitted from that form of education. However it did not preclude those who went to a plain secondary school who very often went on through indentured apprenticeships and day release to became our master craftsmen/women and made an excellent living. The strange thing I find is that those I have met who are most strongly opposed to grammer schools are those who went to and benefitted from such schools. My own grandchildren suffer from insufficient school places and over subscription to popular schools

Thanks flicketyb
daverich do you really think the secretary of state should be intervening at the level of detail "where children sit" ?

Before the obsession with university degrees for all, industry and politics did not exclude secondary modern educated people from progress. Many Labour party MPs and Ministers had not been to grammar school and came into politics through the unions. Others went to the Union sponsored Ruskin College, Oxford, formed to help those from working class backgrounds achieve a university education.

I worked for British Gas and quite a number of my senior managers and contemporaries started their working lives as apprentices or technicians, including one Chief Executive. This was not uncommon in industry, although less common in the professions

Jess think DaveRich would like then all in rows, facing the front, with the teacher immobile on a dais a la Mr Grandgrind. Teachers today MOVE round the class.

I have expressed my views on Gove elsewhere; but to add to that - he is yet another politician who knows which buttons to push to engage and recruit his potential supporters, who probably understand as little about real life education as he does, but think they know it all.

I don't suppose he cares one way or the other, as long as his seat is safe.

Great summing up Mamie.

Some things puzzle me though, for example why the shock at the introduction of tables up to 12 x for 9 year olds. So what? Those who worked in old money did that as a matter of course.
Also I still know my 16 x and 14 x now, though we didn't do them till 3 rd/4 th year Juniors (Y5 & 6)

What?? When was anything above 12x introduced into the curriculum?

I have no objection to kids learning their tables at all and to beyond ten or historical dates. However learning by rote is a useful tool but does not make anyone a mathematician 0r a historian in the same way that learning phonics does not create a reader or writer.

Bricks are terribly important if you want to build a house, you would struggle without BUT there are lots of other things you need too PLUS the understanding of the how to put them all together!

By focusing on rote learning of tables etc. and drilling of phonics a great many of the other equally important, but less measurable skills are sidelined. It will end in tears!