**This week the article and the podcast contain extremely important information. If it were me, then I’d read the article (20 minutes) and listen to the podcast (1 hour).
The Plumley Pod:
https://rumble.com/vm4dmi-episode-2-of-the-plumley-pod.html
Hello everybody!
Today I’m going to be dealing with THE BIG ONE.
I’ve had more emails of concern about this part of home education than any other… and it’s *not* maths! It is, of course, “the curriculum.”
Now, before I dive head-long into the murkiest of murky topics, allow me to carve you up into roughly three groups.
Group 1: is those parents and grandparents who are educating very young children.
Did you know that in Germany children do not start formal education until they are 6 years old? Whilst Sweden and Finland start mandatory education at 7 years of age, and the evidence shows that starting school younger DOES NOT increase academic - or health and wellbeing - outcomes.
Here is a link to a brief article that was published in the New Scientist back in 2013:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22029435-000-too-much-too-young-should-schooling-start-at-age-7/
The key point is that children should be playing not ‘schooling,’ and perhaps more surprisingly, that it is harmful to begin formal education too soon.
A 2002 study, “demonstrated that, by the end of their sixth year in school, children in the US whose preschool learning had been academically directed, achieved significantly lower marks compared with those who had attended play-based programmes.”
The UK education system was designed in 1870 to get women back to work, not because it was beneficial to children to be sent to school from the age of 5! They don’t tell you that in GCSE history now, do they?
The fact of the matter is that both Finland and Sweden out-perform the UK academically AND in terms of child well-being, despite children not starting school until age 7.
It gets worse/better depending on your perspective, as the article goes on to say:
“In New Zealand, several key investigations compared children who started formal literacy lessons at age 5 with those who started age 7. They showed that early formal learning doesn’t improve reading development, and may even be damaging. By the age of 11, there was no difference in reading ability level between the two groups. However, those who started aged 5, developed less positive attitudes to reading, and showed poorer text comprehension than those who had started later.”
“Further research exploring the relative reading achievement of 15-year-olds, across 55 countries, found no significant evidence that an early start brings later benefits.”
I think it’s fair to say that the UK government/deep state have little to no regard for either your child’s academic achievements, or their physical and mental well-being.
So, my advice to parents of little ones, those under the age of 7, is to focus on play, sometimes structured play, but never-the-less play, play, and more play.
Play does not mean buy and give them expensive toys to play with - I find the more expensive the toys, the less creative the play. When I was growing up, we had hours of fun with a dressing up box (from items of clothing bought from charity shops) and cardboard boxes - the bigger the better.
My siblings and I are considered to be highly creative adults and all of us have gone on to do better than our parents: economically, academically, and in terms of health and wellbeing.
Group 2: is for those who are educating in the 7 to 14 years age range
I will discuss this group shortly and at length, as there are infinite possibilities for curriculum design, and the most fun shall be had! This group has time on their side which is excellent for both the teacher and the learner.
Group 3: is for those who are educating Year 10 and Year 11 students
This is the most problematic group and it isn’t for the reasons you might think. Most parents of students who are 15 and 16 years old, are frightened of not being clever enough and/or not having broad enough academic experience, to cover the 8 to 12 subjects that GCSE age students tend to cover these days.
The thought of teaching calculus, followed by: French, Chemistry, and Physics is enough to send most parents into a melt-down. Whilst I appreciate that some areas of some GCSEs are academically challenging, it is actually not beyond most parents with some help and support from teaching professionals.
However - and this is a BIG PROBLEM - the real question is how will home-schooled children actually sit their GCSE exams?
I’m a GCSE Mathematics Examiner and even though I’m classed as an expert examiner with over 5 years of experience, I haven’t marked papers for two years now… because there have been no papers to mark!
Despite news reports of “record exam results,” be under no illusions - no independent, professionally marked examinations have taken place at either GCSE (16 years) or ‘A’ level (18 years) for two years. That’s no summer 2020 or summer 2021 examinations. None. Instead “teacher assessment” and exam board “moderation of teacher assessment” has taken place. From my perspective as a private tutor, former classroom teacher, and GCSE Maths examiner, the results are absolute garbage. They mean next to nothing.
Here’s a link to a piece I wrote on the 14th of August called: “The Great British Exams Scandal.” I strongly recommend that parents of students in years 10 and 11 read it. As well as those who are already thinking ahead to the problem of examinations.
In the years prior to 2020, home-schooled students would register in January/February of their 16th year to arrange to sit their GCSE exams that summer. They would register for all of the subjects they intended to sit, and would simply turn up on the correct days in May and June to sit their exams at schools, colleges and other exam centres that accepted “external candidates.” This is the same system for adult learners who need to sit GCSEs.
However, as no fully independent, public examinations took place in 2020 or 2021, this left home-schooled children in the mire.
Nowadays, there are two ways of home-schooled students achieving exam results without sitting exams. Seeing the writing on the wall, one strategy adopted by some parents was to enrol their home-schooled children in a local school around December time, they then sent them in for some classes (only the ones they were studying) and then teachers were able to submit “teacher assessed grades/levels” for their children, and they were subsequently handed GCSEs accordingly.
The advantage of this is that when you enrol your child in a school, a fully-qualified professional will assess them and give them a reasonably accurate grade/level. In any case they will generally “mark up” rather than “mark down,” their own students. Teachers’ pay is now based on performance, or rather, the grades/levels of the students they teach.
This option may well be a “hell no” for many of you this academic year, for obvious reasons - namely, can we be sure your child will be allowed to access the school building without submitting to state-mandated medical interventions? I include mask wearing and test-taking. Let us not pretend that both of these things are harmless to children. They most certainly are not. The way it is going, I think it unlikely that unvaccinated children will be treated the same as vaccinated children in the majority of schools in the very near future.
Even if your son/daughter goes to a school that doesn’t overtly discriminate against those who choose not to have state-recommended, or state-sanctioned, medical interventions, you cannot guarantee that all members of staff will treat your son/daughter professionally.
My experience of working in Primary and Secondary schools up and down the country in the noughties and beyond, is that unprofessionalism - even amongst teachers - is rife. At the very least, the majority of teachers these days take their politics and their Politics into the classroom with them.
When I went to school, I had no idea how my teachers voted, nor did I know their ethical or religious beliefs. Back in the ancient 1990s teachers facilitated learning in the classroom rather than using it as a soap-box opportunity to indoctrinate children into their way of thinking.
There are still some great teachers who know that their job is to teach how to think, not what to think, but they are much rarer these days, and worse, many teachers who spout their ideologies everywhere are oblivious to what they are doing. That is to say, they are unwittingly spreading their beliefs and of course this is equally inappropriate for student/teacher relationships.
So, if the ‘send them to school from December to May’ is simply not an option for you, then you are left with the Russian Roulette option of ‘tuition centre assessment.’ This year - against my advice - one of my home-school families sent their eldest son to sit FAKE exams, marked by FAKE examiners at a local ‘community education centre.’
My student sat three past exam papers, all from different years, and they were marked by amateurs. They then looked up the grades somehow (it is impossible to accurately grade/level exam papers from three different years), and essentially guessed at the boy’s level. They reported this FAKE grade to the exam board, and the exam board handed my student a grade that he would never have achieved in a set of genuine GCSE exams.
I’ve been involved in GCSE maths exams one way and another since 2010 and I’ve never seen a less accurate result for any of my students - even across whole year groups.
I suspect this was not an isolated incident.
I am also very sorry to report that I have seen no indication that exams will return in summer 2022. None whatsoever. In fact, I am deeply suspicious that the GCSE examinations will never return.
Why do I think this?
Three main reasons:
1. Examinations are expensive. Now that the public have accepted fake exams, why spend the money on something that’s good for children?
2. There will be a cohort of parents that scream blue-murder that their children have to go through the “trauma” of sitting real exams when the past two years of children have been given a free pass. (This is a monstrously mis-guided attitude and the article I wrote - link above - explains exactly why proper exams are VITAL for your children).
3. The exam board have been trying to recruit me for two years to tutor mathematics on their ‘national tutoring programme’ which to the best of my knowledge did not exist prior to 2020. Why are they wanting examiners to become tutors? Is that because exams are now extinct?
So, I acknowledge the complications for parents of students in years 10 and 11 and I sympathise greatly with your predicament - I wouldn’t want to have to make a decision as there is no ‘good’ option, and that’s putting it as well as I am able.
However, I simultaneously challenge you to think about the purpose behind GCSE qualifications. What are they for?
GCSEs, are the evidence that the young person concerned is ready for the world of work and/or further education. Chiefly, GCSEs are your ticket to Advanced Level (‘A’ Level study) and the sole purpose of ‘A’ Levels is to get you into university.
What’s the point of going to university?
Since Tony Blair invented degrees for dish-washers back in the 1990s this is an increasingly important question. People used to go to university for two reasons: number 1 to get a degree that will enable them to enter a profession such as; law, medicine or teaching. The number 2 reason was to have a jolly good time - a kind of rite of passage, an opportunity to grow up away from the family nest.
However, if your major concern right now is having sovereignty over your own body, and assuming you want the same rights for your children, there are some obvious problems.
Should vaccine passes be rolled out in the UK - and they will be as they have been in France, Germany and Italy - then do you expect your son/daughter to be allowed to study at university? Assuming they are, do you think they will be allowed inside a courtroom, classroom or operating theatre without one?
I know these are not nice questions, but I’m a practical person.
“Plan for the worst and hope for the best.”
If you have a son/daughter in year 10 or 11 then I strongly recommend that you and your husband, or you and your wife, sit down and have a really, really long hard discussion about what the future will likely be. Finding some kind of consensus between two parents before you find a good time to sit down with your teen, is preferable.
I won’t say any more on this topic for now, however I will be holding an informal conference on this topic for all interested parties. More details on that will be out soon.
BACK TO GROUP 2!
Thank you for your patience, at times I will address the groups separately, however I know that many parents of younger students are already beginning to note down the permutations of possible future outcomes.
For those of you who are home-schooling 7–14-year-olds, we have time. Lots of things could happen between now and GCSE “exams.” The good guys could win, in which case we could design and deliver amazing education for all who want it, and we’ll be streets ahead as we started ahead of time. On the other hand, we might be living in the mountains wishing we’d spent more time learning how to darn old socks and start fires without matches! (Yes, I also have lots of ideas concerning maps and compasses, outdoor cooking, and hunting).
However, what is important right now is that day by day we engender; engagement, enjoyment and effort from our sons and daughters. Notice I didn’t mention progress. Progress comes as a result of; engagement, enjoyment and hard effort. Not the other way round. If you focus too much on ‘progress’ you’ll mess everything up.
“Keep your eyes on the target, not on the prizes. Those who hit their targets with the most accuracy and consistency WIN the prizes!”
Regarding curriculum design, you already know the two most important components: Maths and English. You know these matter the most, not only because they are correctly called ‘core subjects,’ but also because you use these things in your everyday lives as adults.
For now, ensure that you pay good attention to creating English lessons that focus on at least one of the following:
· Speaking: (vital, but oft over-looked skill). Students can be given time to research, write, rehearse, and deliver a presentation.
· Reading: you read, they read, you ask questions to probe comprehension.
· Writing: creative writing can be short stories, a dairy entry, a scene from a play, a comic strip or instructions that teach someone ‘how-to.’
· Grammar exercises: (see last Thursday’s email, or click below to get started).
· Spelling: the good old-fashioned spelling test is about way more than spelling! It encourages private study, memory, dot-connection, and much, much more.
Also create maths lessons that enable your child to MASTER and I do mean MASTER the fundamentals:
· Add
· Subtract
· Multiply
· Divide
· Mental arithmetic
· Multiplication tables up to 12 x 12 (at least)
· Square numbers up to 15 x 15 (at least)
Now, I know I’ve just triggered absolute panic for some of you but, RELAX. I’m a mathematics specialist, and all of you will become absolutely amazing at the above basics, of that I can assure you.
Materials to start you off on this will be out on Thursday!
You may think “my 12-year-old can do all that already…” in my experience it is extremely rare these days for students up to the age of 16 years to be able to do all of the above flawlessly.
“In maths, we don’t practise until we get it right, we practise until we can’t get it wrong.”
This works for lots more than just maths too.
If your son/daughter really is a maths whizz TEST THEM. Get them subtracting decimals without a calculator and do not worry about “the method we do at school,” it’s probably modern garbage like ‘the grid method’ - I’ll take that apart for your pleasure (and relief) on Thursday.
Seriously, many of your youngsters will need some de-programming. Maths has lots of ‘new methods’ which work in the short-term but not in the long run.
Now, I’ve touched on the scary stuff, it’s time to think about the good stuff. It’s unnecessary to put huge amounts of effort into planning PE lessons (trust me, PE teachers don’t!) If you are the kind of family that takes regular walks, jogs or plays football in the park then great - that’s two hours’ worth of education per week you don’t need to spend an age prepping.
Same goes with cooking, sewing, art and music. Be relaxed about these subjects and again they account for around 2 hours per week each. You could take care of cooking (now called “Food Tech”) by facilitating your son/daughter cooking the family meal once per week.
With regard to music, if someone in your family or close circle of friends plays a musical instrument, get on it!
How many people will be able to play proper musical instruments and actually be able to read sheet music in as little as five years’ time?
There are massively important links between the following subjects, I call them: the 3Ms and these links are important not just academically, but also socially, physiologically and psychologically. I strongly encourage that you introduce your son/daughter to all of them:
· Modern Foreign Languages: French, or German, or Italian
· Musical Instruments: especially ‘proper’ instruments; piano, guitar, flute, clarinet, trumpet etc.
· Martial Arts: any, so long as it is a member of the national governing body of that particular martial art. There are a LOT of fake clubs about, so please do your research and ask if you are unsure.
These subjects go hand-in-hand with mathematics and a whole host of other amazing skills and experiences.
Plus, it can never be argued that these are not prime examples of high-quality education. Real education is mind, body, and soul.
I’m not going to say too much about ‘timetabling’ as I will do a whole article on this, however because I know some of you need to know now, here is what I would start off with:
4 x 45’ sessions per day (the 5th session, if any nosy-parker asks, is: ‘PE’, ‘Cooking’ or ‘Citizenship.’)
Two of these should be English and Maths (except on say Fridays).
The other two sessions per day should be a selection of at least one from my 3M’s (MF Languages, Martial Arts and Musical Instruments) and the other from: cooking, sewing, art, woodwork, geography…
Please always keep in mind, especially in these early days, that no one is going to come to your house to check whether or not little Jonny has covered ‘hanging valleys’ or the ‘cross-stitch.’ Treat these subjects accordingly and as for, dare I even write them, hiSTORY and sCiEnCe… well, we’d better discuss these at length another time for obvious reasons.
ABOVE ALL: DO NOT STRESS ABOUT THE NATIONAL CURRICULUM
Private schools mock and ignore it, I had an insanely successful classroom teaching career by completely ignoring it, and even grammar schools (technically state schools) ensure their students have completed it by the end of year 9… even though there are still two years to go!
The National Curriculum was written by bore-o-crats, uh, sorry, ‘bureaucrats’ and is not especially user-friendly. Many professional teachers have trouble interpreting it accurately - this doesn’t necessarily make them bad teachers.
You may have heard of a fancy term called ‘schemes of work’ - these are school interpretations of the National Curriculum and vary WILDLY from school to school. Some are amazing and some are dire, it’s a lottery. In addition, just because a school’s English department has an awesome scheme of work, it doesn’t prevent the French one from being truly appalling.
All these things they never told you about schools…
The bottom line is, use your common sense. You know what is needed to have a successful shot at adulthood. Schooling is to prepare young people for adult life - evidently, it has been failing for a very, very long time.
Want instant proof?
Check out the number of ‘adults’ walking around Tesco’s with filthy rags on their faces because their television told them to.
Where did they learn to do that? School. Seriously, brain-washing begins in schools!
Once upon a time, the National Curriculum was supposed to be in place to ensure all state school children were adequately prepared for adult life. It may have worked once, though that’s debateable, but it clearly is failing now.
You will notice there is no blockchain on the National Curriculum and yet we’ve all been told it is the future of the internet, right? Proves my point, neatly!
If your child is interested in computers, then some time each week spent formally learning blockchain is 100% legitimate education. The key is to ensure that computers aren’t the only things they learn how to operate!
I will be in touch on Thursday with materials for mathematics, again focussing on how you can create and teach topics to your children.
You should also seriously consider coming and joining us for Teacher-Talk Thursday (19:30 - 21:00, UK) there were some excellent conversations last week and some really intelligent questions. I was impressed at the standard.
If you sign up to join in, you will be able to access all previous threads and read any conversations you missed.
All for now, I’ll see you Parent-Teacher champions on Thursday.
Sarah Plumley
Thinker-Teacher-Truther