By Gavin Mackintosh-
The sorry state of primary school education in the UK has been touched in this site a few times.
Since then, the eye of media.com has been contacted by parents praising our coverage and asking for a campaign about he topic.
Since then, the eye of media.com has been contacted by parents praising our coverage and asking for a campaign about he topic.
They could approach s hills themselves with their issues, so why don’t they? 29 year old Sharon Holmes from Beckton in London told he eye of media.com ” teachers don’t have the answers because they can only offer what they have. ”
“Alot of primary school teachers don’t know how to raise the standards because they were not pushed at all themselves at primary school. You can only offer what you have , and the reality is that only a handful of students who come out of primary school have the required ability and seriousness to take secondary school seriously. They are pampered here.”
“I look at my nine year olds English homework and it is simply kids play. Of course , my son is a kid but I expect him to be able to be given homework that shows he can understand what is read in a book thoroughly and show he understands it. The testing is not solid enough and the homework does not develop the child well enough” .
SLOWLY
Primary school students in the UK are generally believed to be brought along too slowly. Not enough of them know their time tables off by heart and their English is too weak despite most of them being born in England. Research over the years show our primary school children to be trailing their European counterparts in maths and English, and this has to be embarrassing for the country.
OFSTED REPORTS
A number of Ofsted reports in the last year has shown improvements in many primary schools in he country, but the eye of media.com can reveal that our own ongoing research shows this improvement to be insufficient. Primary school students are still underdeveloped in comparison to heir peers in Europe and many other parts of the world.
They are only children, some may say, but children today are he adults of tomorrow. The attitude of most children to their studies in secondary school often depends on their background from primary school . An influential role inevitably comes from their family background and home environment , but the school has a large role to play in the development of a child.
The joy of learning needs to be returned to schools , with children being motivated to learn efficiently and properly. It is the duty of teachers to develop primary school children in a way that prepares the otherwise academically weakest child for the seriousness that secondary school is supposed to be.
Exposure to good and interesting literature books should begin from primary school , the aim being to train and exercise the analytical and expressive ability of children even before they enter secondary school.
GRADES
Most primary school children in the uk are not graded, but classified into tiers if top set, middle set and lower set. This stratification can serve to limit the potential of some children by making some resigned to an inferiority self perception, whilst making others unduly complacent.
They should be graded but taught that children learn at different places, so as not to feel inferior if they struggle to make good grades. However, a graded standard should be there for them to aim for.
GUAGE
The annual 11 plus exams on the UK which qualify successful students for grammar schools are a useful guage. Those who can pass them have generally been prepared well, but there areang who fail them who are still unwilling victims of an inadequate primary education system. Primary schools should train their students as though they all want to have a grammar school education, even if the children or their parents are not so bothered.
. The reality is that alot more children do not even attempt them. They spend too much time on facebook talking nonesense or playing games on expensive phones they are fortunate to have because if the different times we live in.
BALANCED
It wouldn’t matter if they were balanced in their use of their time. Children deserve he best gifts their parents can afford, but it may better for them to earn those gifts by preparing for the challenges of teenage years by developing their brains a bit more before they enter secondary school.
With better training for primary school children, they will turn out to be more capable students in secondary school, and more rounded adults in later years if they maintain the good benefits from their education.