Children and education.

Deedaa perhaps you might consider posting thus on the homeschooling thread?
THIS is why home-education can be so successful. As your mother said:

the trouble is the school doesn't teach her the things she want's to know

I'm sure the parents make the difference. We were never well off but the house was full of books and we went to the library every week. Both my parents were artists so I always paper and paints to work with. We visited museums and places of historical interest and read up about the places we visited. I remember at one parents' evening at my grammar school my mother shocked my form mistress by telling her "You see the trouble is the school doesn't teach her the things she want's to know" True enough, it didn't. Unsurprisingly having a mother who is a research scientist has helped my grandsons no end. Nothing like having some dry ice to experiment with at home.

Sad indeed- but a very interesting subject all the same a decade later, even more so.

And no wonder so many teachers are leaving and not being replaced.

Mamie

Blimey! Glad I am still saying the same things in 2022 as I was in 2011. ?

Yes, true Mamie - but a bit sad too.
It would be nice to think that 11 years on there had been some improvement.

Kirkcubbin the distribution of intelligence follows the traditional bell curve, most in the middle with outliers either end.

Children not only vary in intellectual capacity they also vary in dexterity, physical aability and a whole range of different skills.

We also have children whose learning ability is such they are not capable of holding down jobs. My niece is learning disabled and autistic. She lives in a sheltered community where she can develop the limited skills she has to her maximum and form part of a community of learning disabled and fully abled people.

For those, the maajority we need a range of opportunities that makes the most of the skills they have, whether manual or mental.

Blimey! Glad I am still saying the same things in 2022 as I was in 2011. ?

Is there any truth in the idea that statistically a certain number of children will never be able to keep up because of limited intellect?
If so more opportunities should be available to train them in some other skills.

…. Which begs the question why gransnet hasn't closed the thread?

Jangly left the building in 2011

Many teachers in the 'poor' areas are some of the very best in the profession. GIving so much more of themselves and so much more time.
Many of them doing upto 70 hours week as well as supplying (out of their own pockets/purses), so many of the items that they use as a resource.

Many - in addition, also help to run breakfast clubs - sometimes even providing the food for that themselves.
It is likely to be the more career minded, more lazy teachers who choose to work in easy schools in excellent areas.

No way do they have to provide food for their pupils, or sort out the washing of uniforms, and paying out purchase resources for their lessons.

I think you’re being unfair, yes. Having worked in an area where children have illiterate parents and grandparents, and arrive in school unable to string a sentence together (literally) I can honestly say that some children and their teachers are playing catchvup from day 1.
There are some outstanding teachers out there, but they are not miracle workers. You have to take a child from A to B. You can’t rush them though to C because they need B to understand the next step in C.
Experience taught me that it takes 2-3 generations of good teaching to bring family literacy up to a high standard. Sadly the sorts of governments that we vote in now don't understand or allow for that.

Mamie

I think you are right Baggy; poverty and lack of parental aspiration are two of the biggest factors in educational under-achievement. Sadly, to these factors you can often add poor diet, late nights, chaotic home lives etc and these things are very hard to overcome. In my experience you often find some of the most gifted and effective teachers in the most challenging schools, but this is not to say that there isn't also often a problem with recruitment and retention, especially of senior staff. So yes, Jangly, I think you are being unfair. Of course, there are schools who do better than others in overcoming under-achievement and there is still lots of work to do to help schools improve, but there are no easy solutions.

Thank you ,you have said all I would have. I have worked in deprived areas and upwardly mobile ones the difference is very marked.

but many parents disapprove of the regime at Michaela and the attitude of the headmistress.
it is run almost on military lines; silence in the corridors etc.
that was the norm when i went to school, but it is seen as too restrictive now.
the parents who disapprove of those methods obviously will not send their children there.
i think it is popular with those of caribbean descent where schools are stricter.

The attitude of the head does make a huge difference; when you look at the results of Michaela School with a catchment area of really deprived children the achievements are staggering. But I think they do attempt to involve and educate the parents too. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michaela_Community_School

Wonder where the original posters are now?

jangly Bringing up a child is a partnership involving parents and school and if children from disadvantaged homes arrive at school without the numeracy and literacy skills that children from better off homes have, they start at a disadvantage and have to do a lot of catching up before they can even reach the standar other children reach before they start school.

Children also need to have the learning they receive at school supported at home. It is much easier to do this in a home where there are a lot of books, where reading is encouraged, where parents can take children out to visit interesting places and where the parents themselves are seen reading and talking to children.

I am not suggesting that all children from deprived homes fail for lack of parental support, but, for example, many children, nowadays, come from households where English is not spoken, in others there is a negative attitude to education. Families where family life is chaotic, where there are problems with addiction and fractured family relationships are all more likely to be in poverty than in comfort.

If children however, well motivated are in classrooms where a large number of children have behavioural problems or are not itnerested, then learning is more difficult for those who want to work.

Starting to level up children's chances has to start at birth, even the Sure Start Scheme was too little too late.

This is a zombie thread resurrected by a spammer. Look at the original date folks!

jangly

*Baggy*, the best way to get rid of deprived areas, I would think, is to educate the children.

My daughter teaches in an affluent area secondary school, and believe me in the majority of cases there is little or no input from parents. They are too busy wallowing in their affluence. The parents expect the teachers to drag their little darlings successfully through the exams without any help from them.

Middle class parents are by and large no better at providing a decent home background than the less well off ones.

Education is largely down to schools and teachers. Behaviour should be down to parents. Of course you want the two to overlap and its good when they do. But teachers have got to do their job well in whatever circumstances or area they teach.

But that's in an ideal world.

I don't agree! I live in an affluent area and I've also worked for the last few years as a private tutor and occasional supply teacher. I personally know many other parents. My own children were educated in this area.

So-called middle class parents provide a much more secure environment for their children and fret about how their pre-school children are brought up. They're concerned about food and have books at home. The library is jam-packed with children on Saturdays and during school holidays, the local museum puts on activities during the holidays, etc etc and most of the children have some experience of life outside their immediate environment.

jangly

I agree it makes some difference. But its too easy a peg for teachers to hang the blame on.

I wonder if they have to settle for poor teachers in deprived areas because the best teachers can get jobs in the more affluent areas.

Who says teachers in deprived areas are poor?

I've never worked in such an area and have every admiration for teachers who have to cope with more negative attitudes and social problems than I ever did.

From the OP:

considering schools have the children from the age of three, and for six hours of each weekday

No, they don't! In the UK, children start school just before they turn five. Teaching hours are five a day.

Education is vital in the early years. if a child arrives at school with no experience of stories, rhymes and family discussion, it will be really hard for them to catch up. Sadly, if you're poor or trying to deal with issues of any kind of deprivation, you lack energy and brain space to read/chat/sing with your children. The best intervention is as early as possible, even in the cradle. Sure Start was a great development under the last government
- this is SO true borstalgran.
The first few years are critical in a child's development. I think this is well known now and uncontroversial.

Surestart was a plan that took time to bed in. I wax sceptical at first but became a champion of it when I saw how it helped transform struggling famies. It was just reaping benefits when the funding was cut. It needs to come back with a vengeance. Invest a lot when they are tiny or keep on investing forevermore I think.

Children whose parents tell them stories, and who discuss what is going on around them, that's to say, parents who use language imaginatively and creatively, give their kids the best start. Even better when there are books in the house, and a quiet place to do himework.

School can't make up for lack of home background. Rich people may be dull parents and poor people may be good parents.

jangly if you have children who come into school having had a good nights sleep in their own bed, eaten an evening meal and breakfast, and reasonably certain that when they go home at least one of their parents will welcome them, how could they not do better than a child who arrives at school after sleeping in a bed with two of their siblings, one of whom wets the bed, laid awake half the night whilst the adults in the house partied, only had two digestive biscuits from the half packet left, since yesterdays lunch, and is worried because his mum has said several times she is leaving?
The problems teachers face now are huge and the network which was meant to support the education system has gone. When I started teaching there was a school clinic to treat minor injuries and keep an eye on health, the school nurse came into school from there. There was a truant officer who rounded up missing children. There were social workers and a system for checking the health of children.
It's all gone. So schools struggle to meet the needs of children, whose problems have grown worse, with less help.
They are doing their best. But they can't work miracles.

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