Do you want what Gove wants for your grandchildren?

I see we're from the same region, Cagsy. I have pm'd you.

Annodomini I couldn't agree more, I was a member of the LDs as I say for 30 years, campaigned, leafleted, attended conference but not any more. I'm really sad but I think they'll get wiped out at the next election

Gadabout, what a lovely picture you conjure and I'm sure it came well up to your expectations, given the exceptional weather. The roads around here were busy with coaches full of youngsters, heading in the direction of Alton Towers; yesterday, My DiL was taking a load of Y7s to AT from Hampshire. It must have been absolutely heaving - not great weather for queuing for rides.
Iam64 and Cagsy, I'm in agreement with both of you. I despair of politicians who are increasingly out of touch. Why is Gove getting away with so many damaging 'reforms'. Now Clegg and his henchman Laws have come out with proposals which out-Gove Gove.
If I hadn't been sure about ditching the Lib Dems (after long and faithful service) before, I am now absolutely sure I did the right thing.

Amen lam64, and why fewer and fewer people are engaging in party politics, and I speak as someone who was a member of a party for nearly 30 years. The lack of people voting has nothing to do with apathy much more about frustration and even disgust at what our politics seems to have become. It's hard not to become too despairing, I just know that on the whole people are good and we'll find a way somehow.
I'd definitely vote for some of the people who have posted on this thread!

Cagsy and Greatnan - I was moved by both your stories, and now need a cheering cup of coffee. I don't understand the opposition expressed by some folks to schools providing breakfast and dinner for children. The evidence about the impact of a decent diet on learning is not controversial is it. I agree, no child should be sent to school without breakfast, but so many have been, and continue to be. Neglect, emotional abuse, exposure to violence all go hand in hand with poor school attainment. How can children learn if they're hungry, tired and worried about what's happening at home. The gap between those of us who can and do meet our children's basic needs, and those who don't has grown. I wonder if Michael Gove really means his recent comments about providing breakfast and a balanced, nutritious mid day meal. Who will pay for it. My view is we would be better spending what money we have as a country on providing breakfast and dinner, to be eaten at a table, with adults and children sitting together than on fighting wars in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. I am ashamed of the priorities our governments demonstrate. The news last night was about cut backs in the NHS and the opposition of Cameron to any reduction in the nuclear deterrent. I don't mean to hijack an education thread - but that's just another example of how unrepresentative our elected representatives are.

Cagsy - it seems not enough has changed. When I was teaching remedial classes at the Catholic High School in Ellesmere Port in 1973, one of my pupils came in looking gaunt and exhausted. He had slept in the bus shelter all night with his mother, as his father had got very drunk and thrown them out. I arranged for the school canteen to give him some breakfast and asked the Head if he could have a sleep in the medical room. The Head, who had only ever taught in a highly academic Christian Brothers grammar school before his appointment to this large comprehensive school, looked at him in disgust and said 'Where's your tie, Smith?' He also refused to act when one of my 13-year old pupils told me she was being abused by her father and uncle - apparently, it was unthinkable that a good Catholic father would behave like that.
However, the Sixth Form was doing very well, no doubt preparing them very well for the world of work.

Some great posts here, especially from Mamie, Bags and Greatnan - thanks. I have many friends & family who are teachers, some have been quite ill with stress and one is leaving the profession as she feels it's become almost dishonest, that getting the results the head thinks the school should will be done by fair means or foul.
I worked as a learning mentor in a secondary school in a deprived area, I saw the homes some of the students came from and the struggle it took for them to get themselves to school at all - only to be suspended the moment they did for not having the right shoes or tie. I've seen children who are hungry and for whom the breakfast club we ran made such a difference to their chances through the day, only to see the finances scrapped. These are the real barriers to learning and we are piling them higher not breaking them down and I feel for these young people and their lack of prospects.

On Thursday we are joining my GDs school on a whole school family trip from Tooting to Littlehampton. Not an easy thing to do in this day & age of H&S etc & unhelpful Network Rail (only 2 years can go by train, in the old days they hired a whole train). It will be a wonderful collection of children, a diverse range of colour, race, creed & wealth, on the beach that day, all playing together. It will be a day of fun and of unscripted learning which I bet they will always remember. I wonder how this kind of trip will fit into the brave new world of future.

Agree with every bit of this. Freedom and learning to amuse themselves whilst not in the rigid constraints of school is beneficial for children.

As I said, everyone who has been to school, albeit 50 odd years ago, thinks him or herself an expert. And while I agree that being a school governor (been one) will provide a person with some insight, it cannot provide that person with any sort of deep knowledge of educational concepts and theories.

As Dave says, the ministerial role is to intervene when the "lower" echelons fail to deliver.

JessM and Ariadne. Drawing on my own time at school and of more recent years as a School Governor yes it is my experience that we all benefit considerably when facing the person who is addressing us, so sitting in ranks or a horseshoe facing the front is still the best and only way I know of making contact with everyone in the class. Teachers moving around the classroom is fine and they always have done in my experience dating back many years. Jess you are so right the Secretary of State should not be involved with how children are seated in the classroom, but when those who should deal with these things in the lower eshelons fail to act; then the buck travels upward till it reaches its stopping point. Remember Harry Truman who had a notice on his desk the buck stops here.

Oh yes, Flickety! Everyone who has ever been to school is an expert. Might be a good idea if they all got a bit of hands on experience. And I include Gove in that statement.

Flickety

Government ministers have been obsessed by learning tables, spelling and phonics for years.

When my children were at primary school in the late 1970s/early1980s I can remember Ministers getting their knickers in a twist about tables, spelling and phonics. Meanwhile I and my children recited tables in the car on the way to school ready for their tables test. I also tested their spelling, based on lists of words drawn up on phonic principles.

Now DGD is at school and once again, just like her parents and grandparents before her, she is learning tables and spellings on phonic principles.

I think ministers should spend less time pontificating and spend more time visiting schools and classrooms to see what children are actually being taught.

We learnt tables up to 12 x 12 in our first year in primary school, by singing or chanting them every day. It was quite painless. When I was training to teach 7 - 11 year olds, we used Cuisenaire rods to teach place value. Children need to understand how tables are built up, but they haven't got time to go back to first principles every time they need an answer, so rote learning is needed too. Once they are learnt, preferably at a very early age, they are never forgotten, in my experience.
I did and do find maths fun - I love the number round on Countdown and now know my 75 times table!
I specialised in teaching maths to children with learning difficulties, and also volunteered to teach basic arithmetic as part of the Adult Literacy Scheme. I think having a teacher who really enjoys the subject can be very helpful.

Tables are useful but sometimes in the past they have so dominated the teaching of maths they have put kids off.
Hands up those of you who thinks maths is fun? And i bet you all know your tables.

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!

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

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)

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.

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

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

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

JessM, It is September 2014 not September 2013.

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.