Draft new national curriculum

[Amber]

I don't think it should be down to an individual teacher to decide that he or she is never going to teach long division to any of their pupils.

Why not? This goes to the nub of the problem really, and that is that teachers are not trusted in this country to do the best for their pupils. Surely the purpose of primary school is to instil a love of learning and an academic curiosity in children...it almost doesn't matter what you teach them as long as they are able to access the rigours of the secondary school curriculum when they get there. And have not been turned off the whole idea of learning, more importantly. Decent literacy and numeracy skills (though I prefer to say English and Maths- what happened to oracy, and to listening skills; or to the bits of maths which aren't about number?) are obviously a given, but who decided that children of 6 need to be able to use a division sign? Why 6? All children? Why? Why do we trust politicians to decide whether to teach a subject rather than teachers? Who decides that the solar system is more important than the capital cities of the world, or indeed, that children should not be taught about poverty or child trafficking; economics or natural history; food hygiene or nuclear fission?

One possible answer lies in teacher training...we don't invest much in it so can't necessarily expect all teachers who come out of it to be top notch. But if we think politicians, informed as they are by 'evidence' provided by expensive consultants looking for quick and cheap solutions to perceived 'problems' are any better than teachers at deciding what should be taught, then we are deluding ourselves.

[yoyo123]

well, if we remember the famous " all children to be average or above" I think that says it all

[moved]

The curriculum is due to be implemented in September 2014, as the SATs take two years to prepare I assume they will first be tested in the summer of 2016, although the BBC did say summer of 2015!

[yoyo123]

..about sums up the BBC's maths knowledge

[2childmum]

I trained to be a teacher before the National Curriculum. We covered Psychology (child development, the nature of intelligence, behaviour management etc) Sociology (can't remember much about that), the history of education, Curriculum Design(there are more ways to design a curriculum than coming up with a list of objectives to write on the board!) and Philosophy(what is education, what is creativity etc). We also studied different approaches to teaching different subjects and studied our own choice of subject alongside students doing degrees in other things (in my case Human movement studies, music, theology and Russian studies). We then decided ourselves what to teach, based on our knowledge of children's development, curriculum design, individual subject knowledge, individual children's needs, and what came up in the classroom on any given day ( I remember a great 'off-the-cuff' day all about moles, prompted by someones's grandad bringing in a mole he had dug up in his garden and dumping it, in a cardboard box, on my desk!). I ended up in Special Needs teaching which was totally child centred, not curriculum centred.

I could not go back to teaching now.

[yoyo123]

I did a PGCE in primary later years 18 years ago.

half a day on SEN in a huge sports hall, with 3 other courses, everything else rushed past . I spent most of my time frantically trying to remember how to bowl a cricket ball and how to use modroc, it took me at least 4 years to be able to teach and breathe simultaneously..