On Your Marks

On your marks
Jim Sweetman reports on the changes to education that parents of primary schoolchildren
are starting to encounter.
New governments spend children who did best were not national literacy and numeracy
their time saying what they plan the cleverest but those who strategies will bring changes to
to do and preparing the legisla- realised a test was taking place. the structure of their school day
tion to make it happen. So it is The results are important to and their lessons. The national
only now, after a year in office, schools because there is a curriculum has been changed so
that Labour is beginning to strong emphasis on trying to that there is no compulsory list
make its mark on schools in measure what schools add to of what must be taught in sci-
ways that directly affect parents children’s performance. ence, design and technology,
and children. Comparing a baseline assess- history and geography. The sub-
Parents with very young chil- ment with a set of key stage 1 jects will still be taught but
dren are coming to terms with test results at age seven will given less attention to allow a
free nursery education for all give a “value-added” measure new – and much increased –
four-year-olds. The biggest of the work of a school. Parents stress on reading and basic
change is that the education au- can easily see that if children maths. Each of these should be
thorities are responsible, so all give an average performance on taught for around an hour a day
the information should be avail- baseline assessment but above with lots of formal class teach-
able through primary schools. average at key stage 1, the ing – led by the teacher from
The choice of whether to take school will appear to have done the front – followed by group
up the offer from there, or of- its job well, but if parents prac- work.
fers from state-run nurseries, tise so that their children do un- The changes are intended to
independent nursery schools expectedly well on baseline as- raise national standards of liter-
(there may be top-up fees!) and sessment, the opposite effect acy and numeracy over the next
playgroups is up to parents, so occurs! four years to the level of our in-
it is important to plan ahead. From all the announcements, ternational competitors and
There have been murmurs that many parents may be expecting every local authority and every
some primary heads will only to find their child in a class with school will have its own targets
guarantee school places to par- fewer than 30 pupils from to meet to make this happen.
ents taking up their offers of September. Whether that hap- Experience shows that bright,
nursery places – but they have pens depends partly on luck and outgoing children have little to
no right to do this. partly on where you live. So far, fear. However, the challenge for
Once a child is in primary about half of all local education the teacher is to make space for
school, the new baseline assess- authorities have been given the average and below-average
ment looms. This is a simple funding to achieve this. Some pupils, for those with special
test of reading and maths car- are moving quickly; others have needs and those who are natur-
ried out by the reception class been much slower. The Govern- ally reticent any shy about
teacher. Parents are asked not ment has made plain to local speaking out. Skilful teachers
to practise for this or even to authorities that they must not can do this well but many
tell the child what is going to reduce class sizes in popular teachers may struggle at first
happen but natural human schools by limiting choice and with a new programme and
competitiveness and the desire diverting children to unpopular changed ways of working.
for one’s child to make a good schools with places available. Homework is another new
impression will probably en- The cash must be used to concern for the Government.
courage many to do the oppos- provide more teachers and The fact that 70 per cent of chil-
ite. more classes in successful dren in their last year of
Interestingly, when such schools. primary school do less than half
tests were introduced in the US, For children in primary an hour’s homework but watch
researchers noticed that the schools, the introduction of the well over two hours of televi-
sion a night has to be a concern
for parents, especially when
there is research evidence that
the pupils who do most home-
work are those that do best at
school. It is likely that the Gov-
ernment will publish guidelines
on homework later in the year
but, in the short-term, it ex-
pects to see many schools ask-
ing pupils to do more from
September and trying to involve
parents in their homework pro-
grammes.
Jim Sweetman
Guardian Education
19 May 1998

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