Literacy and numeracy standards

Penstemmon of course no one will dispute that, it's very obvious. But there are plenty of schools in disadvantaged areas where pupils do well, in spite of their background. It's called 'value added'. My daughter teaches in such a school and it is classed as 'Outstanding'.
Trouble is, not all schools have effective and aspirational Head Teachers and Senior Management Teams. Those who work in other fields such as Social Work will know that a good team at the top is vital.
Great schools work with parents, and while taking your point about parental attitudes, these can be changed. Not all, I agree, but enough to make the difference.
Can me an optimist, but I believe most parents want the best for their children, even if they don't know how to achieve that. Schools need to reach out to parents and work in partnership with them where possible. All too often in the past schools have thought they know best. But do they?

I ran such a school Aka.. got O/S too!

I know what worked for us and I am totally committed to all kids getting a top education.

Looks as if we're in danger of agreeing!

My point Aka was that it is not just the school's job to sort out the poverty/ disaffection etc etc but the role of central governments to properlyappreciate the issues and do something more positive about it and nit just slag of th hard working people who are there every day.

Oops! am typing too fast and making too many errors!!

The perceived decline in educational standards has coincided with the decline in social mobility in the UK. Is there a connection?

Discuss

It certainly has coincided..what we have to explore is whether it is connected and if so how can that be changed.

I think the point is that the problem is with standards amongst the pupils / young adults who are the hardest to reach. If you look, for example, at the Key Stage 2 data from the introduction of the literacy strategy, you see a rise (roughly) from sixty to eighty per cent Level 4. It then sticks at that number and subsequent rises are small and hard to sustain.
I would suggest that these are the children most affected by lack of social mobility, social exclusion, poverty and a culture of low parental expectation.
This is a crude analysis, there are obviously many children in these groups who do very well, whose parents do value education etc etc.
There is hope, the London Challenge has been very successful, for example. However, these things take time and everyone expects overnight change. To say (as Dominic Cummings said) that Sure Start was "unsuccessful" is ludicrous. How can you possibly judge that after a few short years?

Mamie I can do crude analysis too I've just caught up with this thread and would make the following points in no particular order:

we have to compare our education system globally or we will continue to languish close to the bottom of those league tables. We need to teach and develop skills that are needed now and educationalists need to listen to employers concerning those skills.

how do you change parental attitudes? No need to try amongst the parents in my orbit, they are more than involved and driven to find the best education for their children. Immigrants to this country are often an example to our home grown youth, they work hard and achieve. My thought is that we have bred a generation of lazy, work shy complacent heaps who go on to breed another round of the same.

It's interesting to read another thread on here about the tough conditions many of our generation were brought up in - given the success many of us have made of our lives what has gone missing? Is there any ambition left?

I recognise that there are many good and committed teachers around the world. I also understand how frustrating it must be to have the constant interference of various governments but right now, our system isn't working and needs fixing. Remember when Britain was seen as the sick man of Europe, foreign firms wouldn't invest here because of the union dominated labour force? Well that changed dramatically and now we need to do the same for our children to give them some hope of a future.

Rant over - off out

Sel - I am surprised that you had your eyes opened by one discussion with a disillusioned head teacher. (13 October 00;07) I found your suggestion that a return to selective education would somehow help these children puzzling.
Your post at 11.04 today states that "we have bred a generation of lazy, work shy complacent heaps who go on to breed another round of the same".
I found the way you described our fellow human beings just a bit depressing and don't share your belief that "we" have bred this generation. Yes, we have a minority of people who are not contributing, but I don't believe that describing them in such a dismissive and cruel way will help any of us. It won't help their children either.

Do you have any constructive ideas about how the children in your head teacher's school can best be supported. I am now retired, but the memory of children who arrive at school having not been fed since their school dinner the previous day, who smell of urine and look worn out is something I haven't forgotten. I don't want to get be too downbeat, but we have a government on a slash and burn approach to public services. This will impact on schools/social work services in areas of high deprivation much more than the children in your friendship group, or mine.

when when you quote my language back is does sound harsh I agree but that doesn't alter the fact that these people do exist and the problem goes on and on.

I had been reading the other thread about how materially deprived people were in the past and mulling over how things have changed. Is it because it's possible to live, to eat and be housed without working now? If parents don't have any ambitions themselves how can they encourage their children or even care. Poverty existed when I was young and in the school I went to there were children as you describe above but they did learn and no one left at 11 illiterate.

Maybe the difference too is an absence of respect for authority; we were scared of our teachers and that was a pretty good incentive to learn.

ooops I'm sorry, that post should have been addressed to Iam64 - easily confused I am

Sel - I'll have a look at the other thread, not seen it yet.
I'm not complacent about the issues you raise. I remember being shocked by the assessment of a psychologist on the father of neglected children I was concerned about. He described the man as "feckless". The use of this word was a bit of a shock, from an excellent psychologist who I'd always found constructive and creative in his assessment and treatment of individuals. The assessment took place 20 years ago and I confess I've subsequently put folks into the 'feckless' category, not out loud you understand(!) but it helped me to cut through some of the agonising about what causes such a lack of motivation and whether it's possible to encourage change in people who are so resistant. The father I'm talking about had grown up with many advantages,but a sense of entitlement outweighed any motivation he had.

My own family history is similar to many others born in the 1940's. Grandparents who left school (if they went at all) at 11 to work in mills/pits/stately homes. Parents who left school at 14 to work in the mills but had good literacy and numeracy skills, and were encouraged by their own parents to work hard, go to night school, and escape manual work. My own parents did that, and their children were the first in our family to have the opportunity of going to university. My own children attended local schools, including comprehensive. They enjoyed school, and were never frightened of the teachers, thankfully. They and their friends are now in their late 20's, all working hard, many in professions, some entrepreneurs. I don't honestly believe fear is an incentive to learn or achieve. We need teachers who are carefully selected and trained, then supported to work creatively and inspire their pupils. Outside of school, children need to feel safe and loved in their families, and to have enough to eat, have good enough routines so they don't arrive at school late, or too tired to concentrate. The attacks on Sure Start, family support services, etc etc won't help those children, or wider society sadly.

Can I ask somebody to point me in the direction of an attack on Sure Start. I must admit to only seeing good comments and our Sure Start is highly regarded in my local area.

I am not saying there is not one, I would like to read what has been said and by whom to understand the posts.

Iam64 very interesting, thank you. I don't dispute anything you say nor do I know what the solution is. I'm not making a blanket assumption that people such as your family no longer exist but something seems to have disappeared from - oh dear, if I say 'the moral fibre of the working class' it sounds awful but hopefully you know what I mean.

I think there has been a huge shift in society and I suspect Simon Cowell, Big Brother and celebrity mags have a lot to do with it (I am sounding like my Mother now What I don't understand, when visiting other countries the young seem more immune to the siren call of celebrity and are more likely to buckle down and realise they have to work for life's prizes.

I just end up thinking that unless something does change, many more young people are doomed. Companies are already recruiting outside of this country for employees with the right skills, it can only get worse.

I know Michael Gove is considered to be the devil incarnate by many on GN but I think he actually recognises the need to change.

In the Telegraph today, Dr Tim Leunig an economic historian and aide to David Laws, the schools minister said "being white" for boys had become "the problem in schools". He also added that the education system could be described as "institutionally sexist" by failing to ensure boys are making as much progress as girls. Figures show that boys from white deprived backgrounds were now the worst performing ethnic group in reading tests for six year olds. Perhaps these comments follow on from many here today which have suggested that there is a certain demographic that don't value education, and how can you make them? It's quite apparent that there are those from different ethnicities, particularly Asians who will go to the ends of the earth to ensure that their children achieve, they seem to have it hard wired into them that it's a tough competitive world out there and no doubt they are told from an early age they will be entering global markets when they join the workforce. This has been apparent for a long time now and it was one of the things I felt that my childrens' generation (20s) should have had pointed out to them at school, but it never was.

Going back to the problem of boys generally at school, I have posted this on other threads. As a mother of two boys, I feel there is a woeful lack of male teachers. When some boys reach a certain age they benefit greatly from being around male mentors and role models, they need a more robust approach than some women can provide, I certainly noticed it with my two. Whilst they had some excellent female teachers, I have to say that there were some women teachers they encountered who really favoured the girls. In yesterday's Sunday Times there was an article titled "The Lessons our Schools Must Lean" it was mentioned that there were teachers who did not seem to like children at all, whilst that is a gross generalisation, I,and friends whose sons attended school at the same time, would most definitely apply this to a number of the women who taught our sons, they simply didn't want to teach boys, a couple even admitted it. I know in some ways boys can possibly be more challenging than girls, shorter attention spans for example, nevertheless they are 50% of the population and just as I think it's abhorrent the way some cultures seek to marginalise girls I feel exactly the same about boys.

Wow, David Laws has just announced that the way we measure attainment is going to change again. What a surprise.

In the 1960s education took a wrong turn. Many left wing educationists, saw how children from disadvantaged backgrounds did not do as well as those from culturally enriched homes (which does not necessarily equate to better off). Their solution was not to work out ways of enriching the education of disadvantaged children but to reduce the educational demands on them to build up their self-esteem because the curriculum would be less demanding and they could easily make good progress. I think the idea was that with more self esteem they would have the confidence to catch up later with more advantaged children later.

When that didn't work the solution was to say that all children were equal and dumb down, sorry adjust the curriculum, so that the more child friendly methods were used in all schools. We killed educational standards in this country with misguided kindness. How we return to the standards that many of us remember will be difficult. Currently we are going from one extreme to the other.

My DGD is 6 and her school day is one long relentless drilling of knowledge. She was learning at 5 things I did not do until grammar school, and music, art, PE and other creative subjects seem to have disappeared. In a school with a very mixed intake she is a high achiever, but it is taking its toll. She is becoming reluctant to go to school, although she is happy once she is there. If she is finding it too much, how are less able children coping for whom absorbing the whole syllabus is so much harder?

I feel sure that there must be a middle way.

I've always been a firm believer that the home has more effect on a child's education than anything else. One problem today is that, even in apparently educated and affluent families, pressure of work means the children don't have as much contact with their parents as they used to and parents who work long hours may not have much contact with schools. The result is parents leaving all education to the schools and the schools feeling that they are getting little back up from the parents.