Vocal Voices

A report by the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) says that only two thirds of pupils are engaging with school work and even they are not fully engaged. There are, of course, all the reasons such as a lack of home tech, free school meals (FSM), availability of resources and so on. What appears to be missing is an appreciation of the abilities of parents to teach.

For the vast majority of us the primary curriculum should be no problem as it is not too technical or an in-depth study of a particular subject, but more a taster of what is to come. I am not saying it is easy, far from it, but I guess that most of us could cope.

Things change dramatically with the secondary curriculum as the studies drill down deeper into a subject. This, I suspect, is where a lot of us would struggle, even those of us who did get good grades at school and further education. There is a truism that most of what we learnt in school we never use once we leave and I guess that is now coming home to roost.

My bet is that many of us would look on in horror at the work being done by year 9, 10 and 11 pupils especially in subjects such as maths, physics, chemistry and other sciences, ICT / coding ....

I have no real answer to the current problem, but I do realise that children need schools and teachers in order to get on.

Being a family with 5 teachers in it, including Mrs S, I would not even attempt to home educate. I have seen too much of what it entails and I am not organised enough in myself to give a child what they need. Not even in a specialist subject although I could probably teach some level of coding.

So. Expecting all parents to suddenly step up is not realistic.

Karl and Nadine are muddling through with Amelia and as a result she's not lagging behind; also needs to be said that unless she's having a particularly bad day (she has aspergers and anxiety issues) she is expected to do her school work and she's been really good - does her lessons and has a fairly full day on the computer doing them. Both Karl and Nadine are very strict with that

BUT... a very very annoying thing is that she doesn't get feedback on the work she submits, so she doesn't know if what she's done is correct or not. I assume if it were totally wrong she would hear something, but that's the optimist in me. Amelia is a very bright kid and, together with a chap called Ollie, top of her class and she and Ollie often join up online to do the homework together. But still annoying when there's no feedback

But agree, September can't come soon enough.

Well done to Karl and Nadine with Amelia, she is one of the lucky ones. Have to say, though, that both should be pestering the school time after time for feedback. They should not let the school and teachers off the hook with this and they should make it well known that they are not happy about it. Call the governors.

They are in the top 10-15% where the concern is only slight. There is another cohort at the other end where any concern is only artificial at best, They have always been there, school or no school, and always will be: sadly. It is the bulk in the middle where the real worry is and nobody seems to know what to do. Many of the parents are not equipped to fully help out; and just about every child is now bored out of their tiny minds. The big danger, the big fear, is that many of them will already have got out of the habit of learning and it will take a lot of damned hard work to bring it back.