I’ve just been reading a news article on Raising Kids - Do Kids Start School too Early?
Well my view on that is yes, but what really caught my eye were the comments by Steve Sinnot of The National Union of Teachers and the Goverment respectively.
Uniquely, England is a country where testing is used to police schools and control what is taught. “I call on the government to initiate a full and independent review of the impact of the current testing system on schools and on children’s learning and to be prepared to dismantle a system which is long past its sell-by date. Steve Sinnot to Reuters
We make no apology for our focus on school standards…The reality is that children spend a very small percentage of their time in school being tested. The Government defending its current stance
I agree with Steve, the current set up is dissatisfactory for pupils, teachers and parents. Children may only spend a small percentage of their time being tested, but what about the preparation time for those tests. I’ve been to school (not that long ago) and I remember big chunks of the school year taken up with test preparation. In high school the whole year is geared around prelims, standard grades or higher exams.
Education, Education, Education they cried, well lets see some action then, because all is not right with the current setup.
8 Responses to “Education, Education, Education”
An interesting post Littlemummy. When my daughter started school in January aged 4 I wasn’t happy at all. I thought it was way too early. Initially her experience at school confirmed this - she had trouble getting dressed for PE, found the noisy dining room difficult to cope with, and it was all quite distressing for both of us. However just a month later she is well settled and I would definitely say in my opinion kids do not start school too early. IJ is loving the learning and doing extremely well. The environment suits her really well. However when it comes to testing schools place far too much emphasis on this, especially the preparation time. It’s a shame. We never had that when I was at school and we all did really well. There was not the pressure there is today and I believe kids should be kids. Childhood is precious.
I think it’s really interesting how governments decide what’s best for our children’s education.
Living in the States now where there is no National Curriculum but each state and within each state school boards and districts that do things differently I am amazed at how comparisons are made and to what standards. Just talking among girlfriends around the country with kids in the same year as mine the diversity in expectation is scary for someone that’s used to a bit more standardization.
Testing is a real problem for teachers who have had their hands tied and many their pay linked to it ( performance related pay etc) Testing is a one of the reasons many people in the US homeschool ( although not the only reason)
Interesting points Rosie, especially as you’re going through it now.
I’m not sure if it’s more that I think the education should be less formal - at least until age six or seven, perhaps with a shorter working day until that age too.
Melitsa - I actually quite like the idea of non-standardized education, wouldn’t it mean that skills were more varied amongst children, rather than the ‘one size fits all’ mentality?
I’m not sure what to think yet about non-standardization in education. The jury’s out on that one with me.
We’ve not been in this system long enough to really comment on the differences.
I agree the one size fits all it not beneficial but what’s good is know which general direction you are going in. I think this is what I’ll need to learn to do here. What concerns me the most is if you are in a state where their idea of good for a X aged child is at an F level and another sees B when it all comes together for college applications my child had only access to work upto F level and has no chance of college. Of course it’s never as easy to say F and B level, but I hope you get my point. If I remember rightly this was something Oprah brought up on one of her Education programs.
Loved the post.
Yes Melitsa, that would be the concern…there’s no easy answer.
I’ve had odd reactions from people when they found my kids don’t attend preschool, it used to be an issue of money for us with the oldest kids but then when I saw that they were just as prepared for kindergarten as the children who were in preschool and that it didn’t seem to make any difference in their abilities I decided not to do preschool with any of the kids. It’s not that I think it’s bad necessarily, my niece for example does it to help her speech development which makes sense to me, but I don’t think earlier education is necessarily the answer.
Interesting Michelle, do you do any homeschooling in place of preschool - or do your children pick up the basics naturally?