Nice people thread part 3- Nice as pie

SingleSue

silvercar wrote: »

All this testing.:(

The analogy is to fattening pigs for market. You can weigh them every day, but unless you feed them up in the mean time it won't make much difference. If you concentrated on the food and less on the weighing apparatus you would get better results.

Editted to add, that is not a dig at Sue's kid, who is clearly doing very well, but at the system in general.

I suppose it depends on the child, middle son thrives on knowing how well he is doing and by doing tests to prove it (although he doesn't like the tests themselves), it is almost like who has got the biggest nether regions for him :rotfl:, whereas youngest cannot cope with tests of any sort and it has a negative impact on his education when he knows there are tests coming up..so much so that he cannot learn very well.

Had a long talk with eldest last night, he is really struggling with English Language AS and has lost all confidence in himself, he is even talking about dropping it. He is still enjoying English Literature, philosophy and film studies but he is concerned that his loss of confidence will start to bleed over to these subjects.

Being the eldest, I really don't know what to advise or what to say without either bruising his ego or his confidence any further.

Grr, sometimes this parenting lark is blooming awkward and confusing.

lostinrates

michaels wrote: »

Except that in Wales where they dropped the SATS soonest educational standards have fallen compared to England which does not just seem to be a coincidence.

How do we know education standards have dropped and not just exam performance?

I compare dh's secondary education and mine and I think his was better in many ways better. He had very little testing though. The final exams are a bit random, they find out some weeks before which subjects of those they've studied they'll be examined in.:eek:. Being self starters was vital (shorter academic days with more emphasis on self study at home)

One of the things I really, really hated about A levels was when you asked ''why'' the answer was ''its not on curriculum, you don't need to know that''.:mad::mad::mad: Of course I do....to understand it not just memorise it.

Davesnave

michaels wrote: »

Except that in Wales where they dropped the SATS soonest educational standards have fallen compared to England which does not just seem to be a coincidence.

Hard to say. Much of Wales is very rural, and it seems to me that rural schools, left to their own devices, tend to slide into a certain amount of complacency. SATS, and more particularly the League Tables compiled from them, maybe focused attention on those schools and forced them to up their game.

From articles in the paper here in Devon, it seems that there have been quite a few primary schools put under special measures in the past few years, despite being either in relatively affluent places or areas where poor child behaviour isn't likely. No doubt SATS results alerted folk, but it would have been the inspectorate who ultimately decided to impose that sanction.

As someone used to working in a well-run, city primary school, I can say that the initial introduction of SATS was not detrimental, but when we were later pitched headlong into league table battles with our neighbouring schools, common sense and good intentions seemed to go out the window. I was happy to leave Year 6 and take Year 4 where the pressures were less and learning was still fun. Later, when meeting my old Year 4 pupils as a supply teacher to Year 6, I was also depressed to see how a diet of non-stop, SATS- based cramming had changed them. The social atmosphere among the older children and their attitude to school was often seriously wanting.

I left teaching in early 2007, but the winds of change were already sweeping through our school by then, courtesy of a new Head who seemed to appreciate that, whatever the results - and they were OK, but not outstanding - the kids urgently needed a change of emphasis.

I know today the place is buzzing again and overall a much nicer environment, but the test results, when I last looked, remained much as they were in 'my' day.

lemonjelly

some good/interesting news:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-12503052

vivatifosi

lemonjelly wrote: »

some good/interesting news:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-12503052

Interesting article, thanks Jelly!

I'm not surprised to see so many children's authors in the list, though Daisy Meadows is a pseudonym, so its cheating a bit. Because of that I'm surprised not to see Adam Blade on the list as that follows the same pattern.

The most popular books - in my library anyway - over the past year I would say are:

1) The Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer
2) The Millennium series (Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, etc) by Stieg Larsson
However because neither author has written many books they won't appear in the top authors list and Larsson has sadly died.

Swimsuit is popular in our library, but I wouldn't say it is the absolute best mover. Lee Child's 61 Hours is one of the most popular at the moment, over the course of the year the most popular may have been Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel.

Sorry, I love talking books!

GDB2222

Davesnave wrote: »

Funnily enough, "You don't fatten pigs by weighing them" was a favourite saying of the Head I enjoyed working for, until illness forced his replacement with someone less resistant to pressure from outside influences.

His other favourite was, "You can't make an omlette without cracking a few eggs." This was a reference to the fact that whatever changes a school initiates, it won't make all the parents happy. He was a guy who took bold decisions and then accepted the flak.

Out of interest, was his illness stress-related?

lostinrates

vivatifosi wrote: »

Sorry, I love talking books!

Never apologise.


I adore children's literature. I can't imagine a library shelf complete with out, for example The Little white horse and the Narnias. I keep thinking I should try more Fantasy books written for adults to try and refeel that feeling of wonder and rapture of a child reading about magic ....but the ones I've tried just lack that simple pure possibility and I just haven't felt ''caught'' by that genre..so badly I want too (some things work...can't remember name of either book or author at the moment but I enjoyed a book about a world where people had various colour blindness...what a feeble attempt at one line synopsis!)

tomterm8

Try terry pratchett, LIR, I think you might like him, although it's not likely to give you that "eeling of wonder and rapture of a child reading about magic" which you want. I don't think anything can do that... we are jaded old people now

lostinrates

tomterm8 wrote: »

we are jaded old people now

I don't want to be jaded.

silvercar

tomterm8 wrote: »

we are jaded old people now

I don't want to be old.