OT: Kids test answers

Is your area one of economic depravation? Mrs_D states the majority of her year 3 have division by 2 and 10 sorted.

Summat in the water?

You got that engine in?

Lee D

You mean basic literacy skills like spelling insistence correctly?

:-)

Martin

You've forgotten that the original reason for the testing is that teachers were making such a monumental balls up of teaching fundamentals that literacy and numeracy rates were even lower than the parlous state they are in now. Certainly , in the late 60's /early

70's when I should have been taught my tables, it was not considered PC to do so, and my dad did it instead. Now, under the new forced curriculum, tables are de-rigeur again. On literacy, the reintroduction of phonics after years of the hieroglyphic decyphering look-say system have not yet been properly felt, and many teachers are blinkered to the system, because it smack of learning by rote, which for some reason is verboten, despite it working for things like - tables...

Please show the benchmark that says "creckle" is acceptable for "correctly" for example. It looks more like the hopeless group was left, well, hopeless, rather than corrected and trained.

The non-curriculum system heavily de-emphasised spelling and grammar - it was more important that "children express themselves" The new system should be designed to give kids the basic toolkit to build on.

Steve

Whereabouts are you? Sounds like Lincolnshire.

Stuart

What I find a whole lot more worrying is come the secondary education examinations these kids will get a grade other than fail and thanks to new policies another two years to continue to ignore taeching staff. We don't really have a government just an overpaid advertising agency with nanny fundamentalist tendencies.

Derek current figures for 10 Downing Street press corps is 236 how much do you want to bet they are not on minimum wage?

Hehe, well I know that in my skooldaze I was a daydreamer (still am) so the teachers used to punish me by.... making me stand in the corner and stare out the window! Heaven for a daydreamer.. While others were learning how to write I was gazing out the window dreaming of being a superhero (still do).

Mind you in the scottish schools I was educated in until the age of 11 we were taught spelling and punctuation by repetition, and when I moved to England I could spell, punctuate and do fractions in my head and was a good 2 years ahead of the english pupils I was put in with when it came to maths and english lessons so got moved to all the top sets and was still bored. My older sisters were the same, the methods worked well, don't know why they changed them.

Not being a kid or having any kids makes it hard to judge what schools are like nowadays but when moving from Scotland to England the difference in education was pretty stark. At the time I thought all English kids were thick ;-) While my spelling and punctuation isn't as good as it used to be, me and those I was educated with in Scotland are still loads better than those of a similar age educated in England. Just better methods I reckon.

From the original post it does look like the pupils in question were those who just don't seem to learn, there were plenty of those around when I was at school, they spent their time in the "remedial" department which seemed to consist of playing computer games and making cups of coffee in classes of 5, but most of those in it struggled with that. It must have been hard to make progress with them.

Fair comment, I suppose we ought to know whether the answers were accepted ? Ya noe worri meen.

Steve

Well they've listed 3 not two as asked for but I shop for milk by colour rather than reading the label. If they change the colour I'm quite likely to get the "wrong" milk, this applies to many things bought regularly. It's the overall package colour/design not the words that get it lifted off the supermarket shelf.

Two listed good. Is that really a wrong answer though or a badly worded question? It shows the child knows that fresh milk needs to be kept cool and what happens to it if you don't.

Ah, a problem with comprehension/spelling.

Year 7 is 1st year secondary. H&S being what it is these days I suspect that *is* the correct procedure in school. Badly worded question.

At that age this is very worrying, either the child as learning difficulties and if that bad should not really be in mainstream education or there is something severly wrong with the previous school.

Agreed, what has the feeder Primary/Infants school being doing for the last 6/7 years FFS!

I'm very fortunate that my two kids are bright, learn well and enjoy school. No.1 Daughter's reading target for the end of Year 6 is 6A, Writing, Maths and Science are all above 5. Son, Year 4, has targets in the 4s, I don't think he had a 5.

I don't like formal testing as such but you do need some means of making sure that the children *and* teachers are learning and teaching to produce the best. Just letting things drift along without some form of measurement is not an option I'm afraid. What do you suggest as an alternative means of measurement that can be applied on a national basis.

The league tables are not a good idea. Of course the selective grammar school is going to be top, the near by co-ed is going to be lower. The cream has been taken by the selective school but that school could still be a very poor school as far as getting the best from the children is concerned and the co-ed a much better one. There is some new "value added" rating now that appears to be a much better method and, in theory, reflects the ability of a school to actually teach it's pupils rather than simple N passes at grade X in subject Y.

Our local primary school was like that. So I pulled my two and spent stupid amounts of money driving them to a private school miles away every day for the next decade.

Now I'm still broke but they are quite well off.

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

nigelH

On Nov 14, 11:35 am, "Dave Liquorice" wrote: There is some new "value added"

If the intake is crap, and they add a huge amount of "value", the output might still be crap. There has to be an absolute measure too. One of our current problems seems to be a lack of expectation from teachers that a kid is " only working class", so can't be expected to succeed.

Steve

So you seem to be saying that it is possible for all children to reach the highest standards in the same time frame? That simply stating a an absolute makes it possible to achieve that measure? That taking a child from a very low standard to a much higher one, but one which is still lower than your "absolute measure" is worthless? I've worked in a number schools that encompass all types of school (independent, state, Grant Maintained, grammar, comprehensive, secondary modern, boys only, girls only, mixed, day and boarding) and I have never encountered a "lack of expectation" from any but a tiny minority of the teachers with whom I have worked.

Stuart

Here here!

(School governor, Husband of a teacher and dad)

Lee D.

In another newsgroup I'm in some chump was saying that there's nothing special about anyone, and that the only thing that differentiates any one of us from someone like a top class F1 racing driver is work work work and that we could all be that good if we tried... I suggested that he was proof that this was untrue, but I'm not sure he understood.

I did'nae noe u wuz geordie leike Derek cunning linguist

yes, most kids expect they are going straight into a food factory, or pick veg all day

yes

no, too much school life, not enough home life at the mo....

-- "For those who are missing Blair - aim more carefully."

To reply direct rot13 me

bURRt the 101 Camper

200TDi Disco with no floor - its being fixed at last! 200 TDi Disco, "the offroader" 1976 S3 Lightweight

Soylent green is people!

I suppose some "long pig" might liven up the menu.

I was listening to some programme or other a while ago on 't wireless set and it was claimed that immigrants aren't really taking jobs from that many unskilled people in the market, the majority of them are taking the kind of jobs that teenagers would do during holidays and weekends, e.g. restaurants, strawberry picking, working in service stations etc. They're comin' over 'ere takin' our kids jobs etc ;-)

But higher quality crap which must be better?

But not the headline one IMHO. I might be biased having just done the which secondary school? selection routine. The current headline N passes at grade X is useless for that but I wouldn't be at all surprised if most parents go by that rather than what we did. That is school visits and reading the last Ofsted reports. The "value added" rating confirmed our opinion of the schools abilties to actually educate (or not) formed from the visits and Ofsted reports. This did not tally with the Passes/Grades rating.

"One" as in personal one, your school or "one" as in national? I don't see it at our Primary school and don't expect to see it at seconadry next year either.

Ian you mean as in Work- the inability to complete simple tasks correctly Work- fear of and related absence from any area containing a quantity of Work- a four letter word relating to tasks that somebody will do if they are left long enough. If you work in any industry you have to have experienced these folk if not turn up with a loaded truck in some of the 'employment' areas round Liverpool and watch the bodys who are expected to unload melt away faster than David Copperfield could make them disappear in his wildest dreams. Derek

On or around Wed, 14 Nov 2007 18:18:53 +0100, Stuart Gray enlightened us thusly:

Is that news to anyone other than government depratments?

no, it's not, but you have to be very careful that because the child "only" gets to grade D on an absolute scale, despite starting at the equivalent of X, their achievement is not regarded as poor, compared to one who started off as an E and achieved a high of B.

The first child has made enormous improvements form a very low starting position, the second hasn't really done all that well. But in a system that grades people according to achievement, the second one has a higher number, and looks better.