Deferring education

[Canopus]

Did anybody here deliberately defer educating your children until they started school?

[Brook]

Canopus,

 

In what way do you mean?

I ask that because we educate our kids from the minute they are born.

Do you mean their ABC's etc.. etc..?

 

Sorry, I didn't get the gist of the question.

 

Brook

[adamsmum]

mine all went to pre school but K got told to leave he wet himself and showed no interest in others. W wont send baby

[Canopus]

What I mean by deferring education is deliberately not teaching things like reading, writing, maths, and general knowledge at home until your kid starts at school or nursery.

[smiley]

I didn't have much choice Canopus!

 

My son was so interested in letters and numbers etc, that i did have to help him understand - or else he would go on and on and on!

 

I never pushed him and only ever 'taught' him when his interest was there.

 

I did worry that it may make his first few years of school very boring - which i think it has. He simply knows it all allready.

[bid]

Well, I don't know if I fit completely in with your idea, Canopus, but this is my approach...

 

I have 4 children, and I believed in leaving them more or less alone when it comes to 'learning'. I have always avoided 'educational' toys or reading schemes (shudder!).

 

This is what I did: I surrounded them with books and read to them all the time, but never 'taught' them to read. They also saw their parents reading all the time. Same with numbers...I would count out bricks, sweets etc, as part of every day life, but never 'taught' counting. They all have free access to paper, pens, scissors, glue, and we often make things together, but never as an educational thing.

 

They could all count to 10 or more when they went to school, knew most letters and could write their name. The older three learned to read in a matter of weeks once they started full time school, and have had their noses in a book ever since! The littlest starts full-time school next week, and is more or less where they other three were at that stage.

 

It worries me when I hear mums at school talking about reading schemes, etc, and I also disagree with home work at Primary school and all SATs!!

 

I know I'm a bit anarchic, but I think children should be left to play when they are little, and have free access to stimulating things but otherwise left alone.

 

Mine all went to Nursery, by the way...but certainly the one the three little ones went to was very 'low key' on 'teaching' things.

 

Bid

 

Hope this hasn't come across as too smuggy Everyone has their own ideas...

[Suze]

I,m with Bid on this, when they were small thy learnt lots of things from me, but I never specifically set out to coach them before school.I don,t agree with the homework /SATS either.A reading book and spellings per week is enough.But my eldest 2 get work sheets, maths /english aswell .

[lindy-lou]

i do agree with you bid,ive more or less followed the same lines,but i do play educational games with india and actively help her to understand letters and numbers,she's 3 and can count to 20,has known the alphabet since 18 months old and can verbally spell her name and has just started to write it,i wouldnt say ive done a great deal in actively educating,like you say its mainly learned through daily living,if kids are spoken to about numbers and letters all the time then it becomes a normal part of life,like breathing,no thought to it really.i dont do the rigid sitting down and practising til its perfect sort of educating,i wish it could be easier educating her in other ways rather than academically,it would give me more satisfaction to see india playing appropriatley with other children than reading a book anyday.

[asereht]

I agree with bid but K picked up the books I had in the house and just started reading when he was 3 .

We thought he was guessing but when we realised he wasn't we didn't push it or make a big deal -just left him too it .

 

Theresa

[Canopus]

My parents taught me things at home from the minute I was born. They didn't push me or use any particular curriculum or teaching resources, but let me take my course. Teaching was done at times when I was interested rather than long formal sessions. By the age of 3 I could read complete sentences, write semi cursively with a pen, do sums including multiplication and division, count coins, and use maps.

 

When I started nursery I was found to be far more advanced than the other kids. Some of them could hardly talk and none of them could read anything other than simple words on flashcards. Other kids were learning to count up to 10 when I was talking about square roots and number sequences. My parents found out that the majority of other kid's parents had deliberately deferred reading, writing, and maths until their kid started nursery and informed it was a common practice back in the 1970s.

[Valiant_Skylark]

Canopus,

 

That's interesting because my sister and I were children of the 60s and I have heard a similar tale from my mother.

 

My mother taught my sister to read and write etc, as a matter of course, before she went to nursery. When my sister got to school she was way ahead of the other children (including being bi-lingual). My mother says the teachers "told mum off" for teaching big sis and advised her not to teach me as "otherwise we have nothing left to teach your daughters".

 

I was then left more or less to my own devices, in comparison with big sis, but I picked most subjects up at school very quickly. Most of my time in infants and juniors proved to be a bit of a waste of time, IMHO, with abysmal teaching which today would border on neglect of the children. Indeed, the SATS results of my old school were, one memorable year, 17% pass rate. Ouch... not much changed then?

 

I came into my own at senior level and above, but had to more or less teach myself to make up for my poor primary education. Both the academic and social "education" were "very poor", by the way. Hmmm.

 

The sad thing is that my mother was the daughter of a Headmaster in her home town in Germany. My Grand-Father, Great-Grand-Father and Great-Great-Grand-Father were all Heads too. I realise now that they taught my mother using techniques which are touted as "new" by those who try to sell programmes for dyslexics/dyspraxics. My mother taught these without thinking anything of it. Needless to say, my mother is a bit disillusioned by the advice she was given all those years ago. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, and, in retrospect, we should have gone our own way. My mother was a wonderful teacher.

 

I'd say now, "Go with your intuition on this one". If a child is keen to learn and progressing, then sod those who try to put you off. If you are not enjoying learning and it is verging on "hot-housing" and is "unsustainable" in the long run... then change your methods and go try something else for a while. Don't forget that our kids are not the "bog standard issue" and it may be inadvisable to insist that they are treated as such simply to fit the child to an inflexible education system.

 

VS xx

[neda]

I was really interested in this post. I live in Scotland and children normally start school around the age of five. But if they turn 4 before the end of February, they are allowed to start school in the August. Children whose birthday falls after February then need to wait to August of the next year when they are nearer 5 and half.

 

Anyway, my little one is currently being assessed and nursery said they didn't think he would be ready to go to school and he is a young one anyway so should hold him back, at the time did think they were maybe right. They have since moved him classroom and he has come on leaps and bounds to the point where I think he needs the extra stimulation of learning at school as that seems to be what has helped him in the new classroom, got a feeling that he was bored in previously classroom. Obviously I will need to discuss this with the nursery, but I will be registering him with the school in January so that he can start in August.

 

The thing that worried me the most is that when I spoke to the head teacher of the school to explain about son's problem and I may need to defer him after registering him, she advised me that children whose birthdays are in January or February shouldn't be allowed to start school in the August as they are emotionally too young and this is the advice she gives to all parents, let alone parents of children with problems. How can she make this call without even meeting my son, she is unaware of how he is in nursery or what his stage of learning is? I just thought it was a bit of a broad statement to make.

 

I myself do much the same as bid, I count out blocks, going up stairs etc.... but I do not actively teach him, since changing classroom he has started counting up to 15, attempting to write his name and recognises his own name when written, I would have thought he is at the same stage educationally as my other two were when they started school and feel I'm going against the grain by registering him. But I can't help but think as his mum I know him better than anybody else and it is the right thing for him.

[Canopus]

What I want to know is, if deliberately deferring education until nursery or school was commonplace, was it just a cultural thing or was it recommended practice?

 

When I was about 1 year old my GP issued my parents with a hard hitting statement not to teach me anything before I started nursery school. The reason was that it would be a disadvantage to be academically advanced as the state school system offered no facilities and no resources for clever kids and they would be become bored and frustrated with the system. My parents ignored the warning and were surprised that a GP could even come out with statements like this. The teachers at nursery never informed my parents about deferring education or that they shouldn't have taught me to such a high level for my age. Neither did the nursery teachers advise my parents whether it was necessary or even appropriate that I should attend nursery at all.

 

I found infant school to be a total waste of time. I learnt virtually nothing and the work was both tedious and trivial as well as lacking variety. I would probably have enjoyed today's curriculum better because it covers stuff like science, technology, computers, and history that were never taught at my infant school. All I ever did was reading, writing, arithmetic, and a few art lessons now and then. The quality of teaching was abysmal with the teachers preferring to just act as class supervisors rather than actually teach the kids. I became bored and frustrated and often got up to mischief yet the stupid teachers couldn't work out why.

 

I might be biased in my views, but I feel it is the moral duty for parents to educate their children from the minute they are born. I might have been clever for a 3 year old but I certainly don't consider myself a little Einstein. My parents only went to secondary modern schools and left with a few CSEs. They didn't teach me anything particularly technical or out of the ordinary. Just everyday basic skills. I am thoroughly against the idea of deferring or even retarding a kid's education until they start school or nursery on the grounds that they won't fit in with the system although other parents may disagree with me.

[Valiant_Skylark]

What I want to know is, if deliberately deferring education until nursery or school was commonplace, was it just a cultural thing or was it recommended practice?

 

 

I don't know. Perhaps we will never know?

 

All I know is that I have a sense of being severely let down at primarly level by an education system that knowingly encouraged "dumbing down" for those of us who came from a "poor" background, but might have done better in a more stimulating environment.

 

In the event, my break came with moving to the ex-Grammar school that my sister had attended as a fully-fledged Grammar school. Funnily enough, only one other child from my Primary made it to this school. The difference in ethos was... well, fantastic. I loved (and appreciated) every moment of my time there. I no longer had to distract myself from interminable boredom and neglect.

 

Iwas definately "in the wrong room" with the educational/cultural policy of my primary years. I craved education and was starved. How sad I feel for those wasted years.

 

Incidentally, I was also, to add insult to injury, made to repeat Year 2 and in doing so lost my earliest friends as they moved on to junior school. The reason? I had been in a class a year ahead of my "correct" school year and "policy" said that I must be in the "correct" chronologically-determined school year before transfer to junior school. Period. No appeal allowed. I died inside that year that seemed to be repeated word for word... and switched off, going through it on automatic. How I hated "Those Who Made The Decisions" then.

 

Of course, I eventually made new friends but the loss of my old friends (including my first boyfriend [Ahhh]) is still there.

 

VS xx

[Canopus]

I don't know. Perhaps we will never know?

 

All I know is that I have a sense of being severely let down at primarly level by an education system that knowingly encouraged "dumbing down" for those of us who came from a "poor" background, but might have done better in a more stimulating environment.

 

I think there was significant variability in primary education back in the pre National Curriculum era with some schools - and possibly LEAs - teaching to a higher academic level than others. However, there wasn't much "intelligence gathering" done by the state in the pre National Curriculum era so it is almost impossible to make any accurate comparisons between different schools and LEAs. It wouldn't surprise me if deliberate "dumbing down" was more commonplace in the Labour run metropolitan LEAs in the north of England than in the LEAs for the suburbs and shires. This should be taken as a specific instance rather than a generalisation. I did my KS1 in a primary school in Rochdale LEA that forced me to write ball and stick and even had videos with an animated pencil. I moved to a Primary school in Hampshire for KS2 that taught cursive writing from the outset and didn't use any videos.

 

Incidentally, I was also, to add insult to injury, made to repeat Year 2 and in doing so lost my earliest friends as they moved on to junior school. The reason? I had been in a class a year ahead of my "correct" school year and "policy" said that I must be in the "correct" chronologically-determined school year before transfer to junior school. Period. No appeal allowed. I died inside that year that seemed to be repeated word for word... and switched off, going through it on automatic. How I hated "Those Who Made The Decisions" then.

 

This is very strange. How on earth could a school put you into the wrong academic year in the first place? I think there was a time when those with August birthdays were at risk of being in a different academic year depending on the LEA but it doesn't explain this one.

[Valiant_Skylark]

Hi Canopus,

 

I was born, bred and schooled in the Shires, I'm afraid. The school I went to served a very poor "council" area though. At that time, I'm told, "address" (ie catchment area) determined the school to which a child went. Indeed, one girl's parents had to move house in order to get her into another primary when she was badly bullied at the school. That's all I know.

 

As for being in the year "above", I was a September born and started infants proper (reception) as a 4 year old. This meant that I was 5 at the start of year 1 and 6 at the start of year 2. I had done Nursery somewhere else from age 2. I believe I was allowed on because I was "ready" and nobody really worried about it until someone somewhere noticed, at what would have been transfer time, that I was "too young" to go up, based on my birth date. That was it and was held back.

 

Similarly, at 'O' Levels, several girls and I were "ready" to take our exams early... but were not "allowed" and the Head quoted problems with "policy". We were allowed to start studying for 'A' levels early, so, for example, I took 'O' level maths a year after I actually gave up the 'O' class and move in with the 'A' level class. We were allowed to take 'A'levels early and then rather than take further 'A' levels I went on to just do a "part-time" Upper Sixth, whilst gaining practical work experience for my degree course.

 

The year after I left one girl did get to take her 'O's early, but we never found out how she swung it!

 

My parents were wary of challenging any of these decisions, particularly my father, as they were both immigrants and there was a lot of anti-foreigner feeling about so soon after the war. It was a case of "keep your head down and don't draw attention to yourself". His view was that England was doing us a favour by having us at all - Who were we to criticise?

 

VS xx

[pumpkinpie]

Its sad how insecurities of how the education system treats us has such a profound affect on peoples confidences even as adults.

[Canopus]

As for being in the year "above", I was a September born and started infants proper (reception) as a 4 year old. This meant that I was 5 at the start of year 1 and 6 at the start of year 2. I had done Nursery somewhere else from age 2. I believe I was allowed on because I was "ready" and nobody really worried about it until someone somewhere noticed, at what would have been transfer time, that I was "too young" to go up, based on my birth date. That was it and was held back.

 

It intrigues me how something like this happens? To the best of my knowledge, it is impossible to enter Y1 unless you are 5 years old before 1st of September that Y1 starts. I know somebody who wanted to enrol their kid in Y1 when they were only 4 years old because they thought they were too advanced for reception class but they couldn't because it isn't legal.

 

Nursery and reception education are not required by law and the enrollment policy for nursery and reception education classes varies from LEA to LEA. I had a full year of nursery and a full year of reception with a summer birthday. My brother has a summer term birthday and only got 2 terms of reception. My sister has an autumn birthday and got 3 terms of reception.

[Valiant_Skylark]

I doubt situations like mine happen often these days either. Sorry I can't cast any more light on why things happened as they did. Rest assured it was many, many years ago! Those who were involved have probably passed away by now!

 

My own son was born, prematurely, in August, being due in September. Despite his problems, he found himself in the school year of his birth date rather than his due date. He always struggled to keep up and I found myself trying to get him put in the year below to ease his stress. We had no joy and were told, "Someone has to come bottom". So I've seen the other side of the coin, as it were, too.

 

Another person I know, who had a premmie son in a similar situation, simply decided to home ed rather than put an arguably disadvantaged child into a school year that he would not have been in had he been born full-term. This child eventually went to school at junior level, I believe, though I'm not definate on that.

 

I have come across twins who were "kept back a year" at my son's old infant school because they were deemed to be "immature" (according to the mother). Similarly, my son worked alongside a 9 year old "Year 2" at infant school, so I know there must be some flexibility within the system somewhere. I don't know anything more about the background to these cases, so I don't know what law was applied. I'd just be guessing.

 

Has any parent reading this had a child entered in a mainstream infant school at an age either below or above the "norm"? How easy was it to agree this? More importantly, did it help the individual child involved? In the long run, did it "matter"?

 

VS xx

[Tez]

When I was at Secondary School during the early 1970s my best friend was in the year above her chronological age. Her father was in the RAF and she had been educated extensively abroad prior to Secondary School and had already covered the material being covered for her age group so the school agreed to her skipping a year.

[katkin]

I too could read fluently before school, I'm the youngest of 3, my brother struggled with reading and I think I absorbed his reading practice, certainly I was not sat down in a formal sense and taught. My parents played endless games with us though. Word games, pub cricket, scrabble, and the usual counting out of carrots for tea, steps etc. Infant school was not pleased that I could read so I and a few others had to go to special literacy lessons with the head while the rest were taught in class. This would be in the 60s.

i was also moved up a year in junior school with a couple of others but had to repeat the year also but I can't remember resenting that - I think I had a lovely teacher those two years - man called Mr Donaldson (wonder where he is now?)

Secondary school was in a Grammar, the 11+ had been phased out the year earlier with all junior schools becoming middle schools so we did a 12+ and then 4yrs in grammar instead of the usual 5. Some pupils came from another school which though was in county was a prepschool for a famous private school so those pupils did an 11+ so in my year of 12yr old there were 3 or 4 pupils who were 11yr and remained in that year till we left. Pupils who were good at maths did their o level a year early then started A level a year early, did A level maths then AS level when the rest were doing A level. I was not one of these maths brains!! One of my friends was a girl who had come in at 11, she was a maths brain and did her O level a year early, bearing in mind she was a year younger then the rest of us meant she was doing her O level 2 yrs early at 14!

I have a friend who fought to get her son moved up a year in school and made the school do so. ( his birthday is in April) He did so did his GCSEs a year early and ended up with 13 A* and one B (food tech!!!) plus he did Russian at college as well as an extra.

So there must be room for flexibility but I don't know how you would go about it. Your child must be in some form of education by the term after that in which he is 5. Most schools now only have one intake in the Sept so this is why there are some tinies whose birthday is in Aug going in to school at 4yrs and 2days with their peer group who may be 1yr older as their b'day may be in Sept. So you can legally defer your child's education if you don't want them in too young. However some schools will not let you defer to the next year and will not keep your child's place. Then if they go in they will be expected to go into a yr1 class and not a reception class so that they then fit in the year of their chronological age. Love Kat

[Canopus]

Mixed year group teaching is supposed to be commonplace at primary schools and even takes place in some secondary schools as well. However, the kids are still in an official year group and could end up doing 2 years with the same teacher. Sometimes a kid at primary school gets moved into a class with kids that are either above or below their year group but they are not officially moved a year group. I don't think it is possible to repeat a year unless approval is given by the LEA and the parents also agree.

[Canopus]

I have discussed deferring education with a teacher who is knowledgeable about AS and she told me some quite interesting things.

 

Central government and local government never recommended that parents deliberately deferred reading, writing, and maths until their kid had started school.

 

Before the National Curriculum, primary schools set their own curriculum and taught material of the ability that most kids could handle. There were notable disparities in the difficulty and diversity of material between different schools. This was one reason for the introduction of the National Curriculum.

 

Parents who lived in areas where pre school education was commonplace were more likely to defer education than parents who lived in areas where pre school education was scarce. This was because they assumed that they would be taught stuff in nursery and reception class and didn't need teaching at home.

 

Nursery education was almost exclusively of a "free play" variety and had no structured lessons. Reading in reception was largely confined to flashcards and maths was counting things.

 

Ironically, kids who had less pre school education tended to be better at reading, writing, and maths than those who had more pre school education. Kids who had pre school education tended to be better physically. Many nursery and reception teachers preferred to develop physical skills such as throwing and catching balls, colouring in pictures, and building models rather than intellectual skills.

 

Primary school teachers during the 1960s, 70s and 80s didn't like having to teach clever kids who knew the material already. They often told parents to stop teaching their kids things at home because they will be taught them at school.

 

It was fairly common during the 1960s and 70s for one parent to verbally advise another parent not to teach their kid too much before they started school on the grounds that their kid would be bored and fed up if they knew the material already. The prevailing attitude of parents was that kids should be happy at primary school rather than be geniuses.