Heather Fern: Our schools fail our children because ...

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debbie
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Joined: Mon Oct 08, 2007 2:28 pm
Location: UK

Heather Fern: Our schools fail our children because ...

Post by debbie »

Heather Fern writes a piece for 'The Conservative Woman':
Our schools fail our children because they use failed methods
http://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/heat ... d-methods/
The prominence and emphasis still given to failed methods in our schools explains these results. The Times article inadvertently illustrated the problem by quoting an influential charity and pressure group ‘National Numeracy’. This charity, purporting to campaign for better numeracy, has actually previously attacked an emphasis on computation in classroom maths as boring and learning times tables as unproductive.

Surprising as it may seem, this charity is not simply ridiculed for these views because such ideas are mainstream in education. Christine Blower, general secretary of the NUT, has said that forcing primary school children to know their full times tables is unnecessary because they can look up the answers on mobile phones. In primary schools there is commonly an emphasis on understanding mathematics at the expense of fluency, even though the benefits of procedural competency are both self-evident and demonstrated through research. I saw the impact of this philosophy on my own children’s schooling, with time-consuming ‘motivational’ activities eating into their lesson time and minimal emphasis on practising procedures to fluency. Under Labour these damaging priorities were expected by Ofsted, which became the enforcement arm of progressive education.

Turning to literacy, once again the sometimes dull but necessary practice to reinforce learning was sidelined in primary classrooms where the Ofsted enforced focus was on ‘engaging’ learning activities. It was (and still is) generally parents that must supervise the most crucial learning activity of a child’s day, the reading book, a practice entirely inimical to equality of opportunity.
I'm in no doubt that the ultimate political champion in England for promoting, constantly and historically, systematic synthetic phonics is Education Minister Nick Gibb.

Nick commented years ago, however, that this is a 'cross-party' issue even though nowadays SSP is associated with the Conservative party.

I've left a comment re Heather's piece.
Debbie Hepplewhite
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