'Parent Power' campaign to withdraw children from school on May 3rd for a day of 'fun learning' gathers support

Let Kids be Kids is a social media campaign by parents who intend to withdraw their children from  school on May 3rd in protest against the SATs and the impact that the new tests are having on their children, as well as a more general protest against the government's White Paper on education.

At this point it is impossible to say how much support the strike call will have but it is certainly a concern shared by many parents as well as teachers.

22,000 have signed their petition to Nicky Morgan LINK

We want an end to SATs... we want our kids to be kids again.
We're encouraging parents to show Parent Power by keeping their children off school IN SUPPORT of a SATs boycott on TUESDAY 3RD MAY.

Why is this important?

We're a group of Year 2 parents who've had enough... enough of endless testing, enough of teachers not being trusted to teach, enough of an Ofsted driven, dull, dry curriculum aimed solely at passing National Curriculum Tests (SATs).

We want our kids to be kids again and enjoy learning for learning's sake not for Ofsted results or league table figures. Bring back the creativity and the fun - say goodbye to repetition and boredom!

In May, children in Year 2 sit a whole week's worth of exams.. these children are 6 or 7 years old!!! All year their curriculum has been centred around comprehension and arithmetic in order to pass these tests. Outdoor learning has decreased, childhood anxiety has increased, games have been replaced with grammar, playing with punctuation.

Parents all over the country are joining forces on 3rd May for a day of fun learning out of school to show support for a SATS boycott and a return to teacher led assessments which value individuality and creativity in the school setting.

The video above was recorded at yesterday's Parents Defending Education launch

https://letthekidsbekids.wordpress.com/let-kids-be-kids-events-happening-on-3rd-may/

https://www.facebook.com/parentssupportteachers/?fref=ts

What a creative curriculum can produce

Chalkhill School prepares to celebrate the opening of the new park

 Jean Lambert's statement that the arts, humanities, physical education and citizenship are as important as English, Maths and Science LINK in the primary curriculum made me reflect on my experience at Chalkhill Primary School in Wembley where I am Chair of Governors.

The plans to build a new park close to the school presented a great opportunity for work across the curriculum. More than three years ago children were involved in submitting  possible plans for the park with ideas for the kind of equipment that should be installed. They had to think about provision for all ages and safety issues.

The School Council got involved when plans for the park were delayed. They wrote lettes to local Brent councillors, e-mailed them and spoke to them face to face to urge action to complete the park, emphasising how important it was for children on the Chalkhill Estate to have somewhere safe to play and the importance of exercise and play in adopting a healthy lifestyle.

When  completion neared they were again involved in putting forward ideas for the opening ceremony and pupil delegates went to one meeting where activities, within budget constraints, were planned. In School Council they came up with the idea of a Junior Friends of Chalkhill Park to litter pick and take care of the equipment. Within th school there was a competition to make posters to urge the public to look after the park, pick up litter and clear up after dogs. The best of these were placed on the park notice boards.

For the opening ceremony the children and staff worked with Mahogany Arts to create carnival costumes, the staff steelband rehearsed, a pupil samba band was formed, Bollywood dances created and the school choir chose pieces to sing on the day.

Meanwhile Year 3 pupils collaborated with the Brent and Kilburn Times  to produce a page of the newspaper about the park.

The pictures below give some idea of the results of all this work.

Education: The battle of the Michaels about control, curriculum and creativity

Michael Gove's ideas on education and schooling have been taken on by two other Michaels this weekend. Michael Rosen's You Tube interview goes to the heart of the issues around competition and curriculum while Scottish Education Secretary, Michael Russel, demonstrates the dialogue with teachers that is entirely missing in England. LINK

SCOTLAND'S Education Secretary Michael Russell  has accused his Westminster counterpart of running a school system in England so centralised that it rivals the control of teachers during the Cultural Revolution in China.

Scottish Education Secretary Michael Russell addressing the AGM of the EIS teaching union in Perth yesterday Photograph: Alan Richardson

Russell's comments, during a speech to the annual general meeting of the Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS) teaching union, follow an attack by Westminster Education Secretary Michael Gove on the Scottish school system.

Gove, who was schooled in Scotland, accused the new Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) reforms of lacking rigour and urged Russell to remove the "Nationalist blinkers", and learn from what he described as an international trend in education towards more testing.

Describing the attack as a "badge of honour", Russell said criticising the CfE was tantamount to attacking everybody in Scottish education who had been working so hard to deliver it over the past decade.
"His definition of the word 'rigour' is essentially systematised rote learning in which you politically decide the content of the curriculum and apply what one might describe as 19th-century teaching methods to it. That is not where we are going in Scotland and it doesn't work," he said.

"A lot of his approach is based on a misunderstanding and he doesn't even know how the Scottish system works. It has changed quite a lot since he was in Aberdeen."

Russell said the approach to CfE in Scotland was collaborative, which he contrasted with the top-down model in England where there has been continual conflict with teaching unions.

"Conflict doesn't work and we know that too clearly from looking south of the Border. Two weeks ago my counterpart condemned the English teaching unions as Marxist because they opposed his education reforms, but I fear even the most ideologically driven education system in the world – that is probably in the Cultural Revolution in China – involved less prescription."

The row with Gove came as Russell became the first education minister to address the EIS annual general meeting for 167 years.

This week, EIS delegates backed strike action before the end of the year to protest over their growing workload associated with the roll-out of CfE, and Russell was attacked in a number of speeches.
However, he was greeted with respectful applause when he stood up to deliver his landmark speech and only a small minority of members briefly heckled him on the issue of workload, with one shouting "rubbish" when he told them support materials were in schools.

Russell, who said later that he did not think strikes were helpful, went on to promise that "needless red tape" would be stripped from teachers' workload.

He also told the meeting in Perth that the Scottish Government would work closely with the EIS and other key players as part of a new group to identify the key issues and come up with ways to reduce "needless workload and bureaucracy".

"My ambition and the ambition of the Scottish Government is to allow teachers the flexibility to plan and deliver high-quality learning and teaching," he said.

"The Curriculum for Excellence is about freeing up teachers to deliver the best-quality education to help young people succeed in the global workplace and assisting in the development of skills. It is not about burdensome paperwork."

EIS general secretary Larry Flanagan welcomed the commitment, saying: "Much of what he had to say was well received by teachers and lecturers in the hall and we welcome his comments on bureaucracy and pension negotiations.

"Overall, although delegates clearly did not agree with everything that the Cabinet Secretary had to say, it is positive that he was willing to speak to teachers and lecturers directly and also to listen to their concerns about education in Scotland."

Challenge: I will not let an exam result decide my fate

The examination season starts soon with the Key Stage 2 SATs for Year 6 in primary schools. Here's a challenge worth considering.

Survey reveals gap between teachers' beliefs and government diktat

A newly released survey of early years and primary professionals, released at the launch summit of the Save Childhood Movement on the 27th and 28th of April and prepared in partnership with the Barrett Values Centre, has revealed an enormous disparity between the values that teachers feel are important for the education system and what is actually going on.

- While 67% of those surveyed thought that education should be child-centred as a matter of priority, only 2% thought the current system fulfilled that.

- While 60% of respondents thought creativity should be prioritised, less than 2% thought the current system supported it.

- And while 50% believed that early education should emphasise the importance of play, only 2% thought the current system did that.

- Only 2% of respondents thought that the current system cultivated a passion for learning, and 0% believed that it fostered empowerment.

When asked which words best described the current state of British education as they experienced it, the most common words were: 

focus on targets, bureaucracy, results focus, top-down pressure and adult agenda.

In contrast, when asked which words they believed should characterise education the words most commonly chosen were:

child-centred, creativity, importance of play, passion for learning and empowerment.

The gap between the values held by the practitioners themselves and those of the education system as a whole revealed a level of 'Cultural Entropy' (meaning the degree of dysfunctional or fear-driven behaviour) that the Barrett Values Centre terms "a critical situation requiring leadership changes to avoid organisational

 failure'.

The survey examined the values of 177 early years professionals including childminders, nursery and primary school teachers and headteachers, school governors, lecturers and academics and was conducted between the 10th and the 17 of April, 2013.

Wendy Ellyatt, Founding Director and CEO of the movement, shared her own deep concern about the current situation -

" It is simply unacceptable that there should be such a disparity between the values that teachers themselves hold and the systems that we are then asking them to work within. How we can expect them to be the creative, spontaneous, passionate and empowered adults that we really need around children when they are empowerment, constantly ground down by the demands of the system? We need something better and the movement is determined to help fight for this."

The movement hopes to soon extend this survey to include a much more significant percentage of the teaching profession.