Rory Edwards is a local parent, teacher of 28 years and a school governor. He offers us an insight into certain dilemmas parents might face throughout the school year.
Those in education circles have been waiting for the recent White Paper from the government, this outlines what schools will have to focus on for the next few years. I thought it would be good to do a small piece about this as it will affect not only yourselves as parents but also if you work in education.
The 32.5 hour week: Whilst there are many schools that already have a 32.5 hour week or more (the equivalent of 8.45am to 3.15pm), many teachers, including myself, think that schools will end up adding any extra time to break or lunch. In many schools, this will lead to more behav-iour problems in the extra time where children are not supervised in the same way as in a les-son. These are the times when children have to self-regulate and we know what happens when students get bored!! It is difficult to add on the extra time evenly to lessons, 30 minutes shared between 25 lessons isn’t practical. For parents, if a school does have to change its hours, this may mean changes to practicalities like drop-off, pick-up or after school care for children. It will be interesting to see how schools end up dealing with this but encroaching into teachers’ planning and marking time will not be popular!
School Targets: By 2030, primary schools will need to have 90% of pupils achieving the ex-pected standard in reading, writing and Maths (we’ve often joked about what a government would do if the pass rate ever reached 100%). For secondary schools, the national GCSE aver-age grade for English and Maths is to increase from 4.5 to 5. My fear is that this will lead to more testing of pupils, who, lets face it, already have enough assessments. My other concern here is that other activities and interests will suffer – if a school is trying to reach a higher target, would after school activities end up being after school English and Maths practice? I certainly hope not but I can’t see another way at the moment.
Attainment Interventions: Many teachers I know are confused about this one. The first line is as follows: schools will be required to inform parents if their child is falling behind in English and Maths, and detail the progress they are making. Maybe I have misunderstood but don’t teachers do that already? Usually in the form of reports, parents’ evenings or the occasional phone call home if things are going really badly. This also happens with other subjects as well, not just English and Maths. I may be missing something here but I guess we’ll have to wait and see if schools do anything differently.
Ofsted Inspections: School have been told that every school, even outstanding ones, will be inspected by 2025. I know some schools that haven’t been inspected since 2011 but sadly, be-ing inspected (or the constant thought of being inspected) has a negative effect on staff. Whilst it doesn’t happen to every teacher, imagine that the person teaching your child is on edge all day rather than being their normal selves, waiting for an inspector to walk into the classroom. The tension eventually gets to the children receiving the education and they don’t get the best educa-tion on those days.
There is much more to the White Paper than I have put here and I have only just scratched the surface of the 4 sections above, there are arguments both ways of course.