Choosing your secondary school

This is the time of year when the tours around schools have either happened or are happening. The schools put their best shows on and they spend money and time making themselves as appealing as possible. It's all show and most of it goes back into the cupboard at the end of the evening; I know, I did it for nearly 30 years.

So how do you really know what is going to be the best place for your child to go, and how do you know whether they will fit in, settle, learn and succeed? How do you use the Open Evenings to inform you rather than flatter you with the glamour and panache?

To be able to make decisions you really need to sort out what you are deciding upon; what are the criteria you are looking for. Think about it, no child is the same and you are looking for a placement where they will be able to maximise their potential; if they are in a place where the style of teaching and routine does not suit them, will they make it?

So here are a few categories to think about;

• what type of learning style does your child have? Does he like quiet, small classes or is he/she happy to be in the crowd and taught in large groups? (some schools teach lessons in groups of 80 so be aware and ask)
• is your child sporty? Ask whether there are facilities for a child who has a speciality in say cricket or tennis. What opportunities are there, what clubs are there for a sporty child to develop that side of their skills range?
• Is your child academic and after the after school clubs such as Chess or Science? Ask whether these are on offer and to what year groups - some are restricted to certain year groups so it is worth knowing.
• Does your child flourish in the Drama department? If so does the school do any drama productions year 7 pupils can get involved in? Is there a strong drama department and does it offer more than just the drama GCSE?
• Does the school have a policy of streaming or banding or what to separate the weaker ones from the quicker ones? If not does it teach in full mixtures where they are all taught at the same time and the work differentiated afterwards? If this is the case, would this style suit your child or would they respond better to a class where all the pupils are about the same skills level? If that's the case then a fully mixed school would not necessarily work for you.
• What are the results like in the various departments? How many pupils make it to the top grades and what is the most common grade they achieve? Not all departments do as well as each other, its dependant upon the staff and facilities, so ask and make sure the ones where your child is good will get the opportunity to get the good grades.
  How many of the pupils get more than the statutory 5 GCSEs at grade C or above; after all you want to aim for higher don't you?
•  What happens to those pupils who are very gifted in a subject, is there somewhere for them to excel? If so how does it work and how has it helped the pupils who have gone through it already?
• Is there an A level component to the school and if there is how many courses or on offer? If they only have a few subjects it may be worth thinking about college unless the choice is OK for your child. 
• Do they have a connection with a local college and if so how does that work? Do they have courses available for year 11 to go to study at the college? If they do what subjects are these?
• What type of GCSEs do they do? Some now do the iGCSE, this is worth checking as this is far harder in many ways and is a good course of study. Really stretches them and prepares them well for the A level courses which follow.

 So there are a few criteria to think about and look for in the school; what about the availability of food at break time and at lunch time? What about trips to go skiing or going to nature reserves, do they do trips and if so when do they do them and for which years?


Don't presume this will all be in the prospectus because it wont. Remember, that is a sales document and will have been put together to show the school in the best light it possibly can. The pupils you will see on the night will be the best they have and the staff there will have created the exciting demo's and experiments from their own battery of things that doesn't necessarily happen every day.


So armed with your ideas of what it is you want to now about, the last and perhaps most important factor is whether your child really likes the place. If they do, find out why and listen to the things they say. It is likely they will be won over by the hype, so make your judgements carefully and don't presume your 10 year old knows all the answers which, lets face it, will effect the whole of its life.

And the scores are in......

What a wonderful time for so many pupils in Kent; the scores are in and many are wandering around with big grins because they can go for the grammar they had wanted.
I have had such pride in watching the students I have taught collect their results and smile with satisfaction as they have found out they have passed, some finding they have enough get to the most selective grammars in the borough. To all of you, can I say here, just how proud of you I am and how pleased I am to say, "YES!" and sing the opening lines of the song, Congratulations.

I would also like to say well done to those who may not have passed but have improved their scores by such a large amount they are being moved up sets now they are in year 6. Even if you do not pass the 11+ the work will not have gone to waste and your overall performance in all subjects will have improved. Well done, and enjoy being one of the ones in the top sets when you go to the secondary school!
I won't have a role call of all the names of people who have passed and studied with me here at jobell tutoring, that is up in my Quiet Room, and I wont mention the names of the ones who improved their NFeR scores by over 8 points, but safe to say I am proud of you all and most of all I want to say.......

GOOD LUCK IN YOUR NEW SCHOOL!!!!!!!

What is a tutor?

When a child comes to see a tutor it is important that they do so willingly. To make a tutor time interesting therefore is the most important aspect after deciding exactly what it says the child's needs to learn. One of the easiest ways to make it pleasant children is to create an atmosphere in which they feel at home. A place where they go to study after school, which is neither home nor school, it is something halfway between the two.
The responsibility therefore, for the tutor is to make sure, that the atmosphere fits the bill.
One thing that I have always playing in the background is a radio, quietly tuned in to a local radio station which plays music. If it plays a mixture of modern and may be the last 10 years of music, then the child is attaining the sort of sounds it is most likely to hear in the home. At the same time it is different from school, which is invariably silent.
The next difference is the layout of the room. I am lucky enough to have a dedicated road but many tutor is do not have this luxury, and adapt an area of what is quite often the dining room, into an area where they work with children. So how do you make it not look like a house, not look like your home, but make it homely enough not to be a school?
I use my office. In it there are desks as you would imagine. There is also a filing cabinet and a very large storage cabinet, again as you would imagine. There are also computers, albeit laptops, and the layout of the room is such that on one side of the room there are two desks put together with their own chairs, and on the other side a much larger desk which is invariably cluttered with 'my stuff'. On the walls are postcards, all of which have been given to me by past students, showing all the different places they have travelled. So it is pretty much a classic office; simple, functional, and to the point. But, they have learned to associate this room with fun, excitement, challenges, being stretched, and new things they've never seen before.

I am often asked the question, can anyone be a tutor? And on the surface I can imagine people would think oh yes, anyone can do that, after all, all you are doing, is sitting down with one child, and showing them how to do something.

No! That is not being the tutor.

That is being somebody who does the work for them. In fact, that isn't much better than some of the not so well trained TAs I have seen in some of the school's, when I have gone round doing assessments on support and facilitation.

So what is a tutor?
• A tutor is somebody who knows the subject well, and has at least 15 different ways of explaining the same thing, without at any time doing the work for them.
• A tutor is someone who has access to different ways of approaching a subject, being through games, the Internet, books, pen and paper, apparatus, and just general chalk and talk.
• A tutor must be someone who can listen through what the child is saying and hear exactly what the child is struggling with.


I will give you an example. A girl sat in the class that I was observing. She seemed to be struggling with the work she had been given. She looked at it and played with her pen, but at no point did I see her create an answer for any of the questions. The teacher, being a little bit twitchy because there was an official visit in the classroom observing her, bustled over and asked what the problem was. Being flustered, the teacher wasn't hearing through what the child said, “…but I can't see it!"
The teacher kept re-explaining and re-explaining in exactly the same way each time until the child with great frustration, said," you don't seem to understand I just can't see it!"
Now you have probably guessed the problem was she literally could not see the page because she had a bad headache and it was making her eyesight blurred. The teacher being flustered by my presence was unable to hear through and ask pertinent questions like why can't you see it? If she had followed through logically, she may have got to the root cause. She may not, but what the child said was misinterpreted.
Now this is a very obvious example but it gives you an idea of how children can say one thing, and as you are probably aware, can mean something totally different. This is very true in education, and a tutor must be very aware of this, because it is something that I believe tutors should be able to access; the true area of where the child is struggling. Not, ‘but it can't do algebra’, more that it may not understand the concept of replacing numbers with letters. Not, that ‘it can't do long multiplication’, but that is multiplication tables aren't sound enough for it to move on and use them in a more complex format.
That is what you employ a tutor for.

So you have a tutor.
• What is the atmosphere like at the place your child attends? Is it like a halfway house or is it something else?
• Is your child happy to go there each week?
• Does your tutor break through your child issues, quickly pinpointing exactly where the problem is and giving both you and the child methods of how to eradicate the issue?
• And most of all does your child like to tutor, because if the child doesn't like to tutor, it doesn't matter how good the tutor is, the child will never get as much as it can do from that tutor because there will always be a barrier of, “I don't like them!"

Gaining independant sight

Whilst away in Spain I watched film about a man who had lost his sight by the time he was three years old. When he was in his 30s he was given the opportunity of having an operation which would restore his sight, and after some deliberation he decided he would have a go. As his surgeon said, ‘what have you got to lose’? Interestingly enough he has a lot to lose, and it wasn't until he gained his sight he realised just how much there was he was losing.
One of the first things he realised was he was completely disorientated. He had developed a feeling world in which he could sense rain, size of buildings, position of doors, and other essential things that helped him get around the world. He had no sight and yet he had a rich imagination one that had been fuelled by all of the explanations he had been given by sighted friends and family. But the question here is whether the actual sights live up to the expectations he had inside his non-seeing brain?
When he first opened his eyes, he would have been as a newborn child, with no idea as to what was a face, a body, an apple, or any other object that was in the room at the time. Imagine seeing movement for the very first time. He had no idea of depth of field because he never had to have knowledge of it, and yet the sighted world presumed, wrongly, that now he has his sight everything was fixed. It wasn't. He had gained a sense and in many ways he had lost his others. They were still there, and he could still access them, but this new sense, sight, was interfering with his original brain processes. He was disorientated.
So we present our children with new situations and we wonder why they are disorientated. We give them new hurdles to climb such as 11+ examinations, GCSEs and so on and we wonder why some of them are drawn towards this new experience, some of them hope it will go away, and some of them just accept it and plod on through.
I looked into some early research into corneal replacement surgery and the restoration of the sight in people who had become blind. The first surgery to be recorded was in the 1950s and this was on a subject who when he first saw for the first time, felt really disillusioned and let down by the whole experience. In fact he became so overwhelmed by it all he believed it was the worst thing that ever happened. Now in those days, psychologists were few on the ground and he didn't get the support that really and truly he needed, and as a consequence he found the adjustment to this new world very, very difficult.
If we return to our children for the moment and think of how they adapt, then we can see a potential parallel. We give them new experiences to give them a wider experience base but we must also remember to give the correct psychological backup to make them feel safe secure and inquisitive. If we wrap them up in protection, when do they get to experience the full force of what they will have to live in? When will they have t adapt to a new set of senses they had been protected from. I realise this is a tenuous link but there is one here. The man in the film had been ‘protected’ from the need to understand large aspects of the seeing world and he operated very well in it. He was then thrown in and told to cope. For the first few months he didn’t and that’s a rational 30-something man. Protect our children too much from the world and we are denying them the development of their full set of senses too.

Finding a tutor

It is that time of year again. The children had nearly finished their summer holidays and there is this mad panic to find a tutor. But what sort of a tutor do you look for? How do you know whether the tutor is going to be any good full? How do you know whether the tutor is going to benefit your child?
Finding a tutor is a minefield, and there are plenty out there. Some have come from teaching, some because they have worked with children in other ways and feel that they would enjoy the giving back to more children. Others do it because they enjoy it, but which ones are going to be good for your child and which ones are going to know the most important aspect of tutoring; how to teach, what to teach, what your child needs, and how to convey to your child in the most exciting and enjoyable way.
I was talking to a mum the other day who was going through the 'hunt the 11+ tutor' process. As she so rightly said to me, it is an absolute mine field out there, but what do you do, it would be so easy to pick a name out of the book, but does that mean he or she will be any good for my son?
She related a story to me about a study centre in a local town. As she said, it may have been suitable for some children, but for her son really didn't work. She spent a lot of money, but her son gained very little, so there is another aspect we have to consider and that is value for money.
So what questions do you ask a tutor who you are anticipating using in some way or other?
Well, that will depend upon the subject all subjects you are hoping will be taught to your child. If you are after a practical subjects such as dance, piano, guitar, or any other such skill, then one of the things that you will automatically look for it is appropriate qualification. When you are asking somebody to do a similar job but in maths, English, primary education, GCSE, or even a level why should you not ask for qualification here? If somebody is going to teach swimming they have to be qualified to teach swimming, so to teach maths would it not be sensible to choose somebody who is qualified to teach maths? My first question therefore would be to ask what sort of qualifications this person has that makes them suitable for being a tutor and not be afraid to ask for those qualifications. I have been tutoring for five years in Kent, but I taught in full-time education for nearly 30 years before that, and I taught maths, science, and curriculum support at both primary and secondary levels. In the last five years of teaching I also took on teaching English to GCSE. Does this qualify me to teach French? Well no! But I am qualified to teach the core subjects. What do you'll tutors say when you contact them, have they experience, and will that experience be commensurate with the learning styles of your child? And that is the second question I would be posing to a would be tutor some might child.
I have met many a teacher who has one way of teaching and that is their only style, they have an unbending way of speaking to children and if the child does not understand then the child is lost. Would it not be better therefore for your child to go to a tutor who has more than one way of teaching something? One aspect of education that I worked in, was the teaching and development of teacher skills, especially in the area of developing different techniques for different ways of teaching. And how varied is the way in which they use equipment, games, the computer, the Internet, and other ways of teaching something? There is nothing more boring to a child that continuous pen and paper methods.
So we have looked at two aspects, qualification, and that doesn't necessarily mean they have to be a qualified teacher, the variation in teaching style, but what about the success rate?
If you are going to a tutor to support such examinations as the 11+, entrance exams, GCSE, A-level, would it not be a good idea to have some idea as to how successful these students have been as a consequence of working with the tutor?
When asked this, I am always very proud to say that I have over a 90% pass rate at 11+. Does the tutor you are looking at have similar percentage pass rates? Has this person being recommended to you? And if so why would they recommend it?
I have recently been told that the reason I am being recommended is threefold; I have good pass rates, I have a wide variation of styles which make the children enjoy their time with me, and I am well-qualified. Does the tutor you are looking at have the same recommendation?
As I have said earlier, finding a tutor is a minefield, and in this day and age with budgets being so tight, it is even more important to find someone who is truly good value for money. And this I would suggest is the last question to check up upon. How much do they charge? Once you have an idea of their prices, check, what do other tutors charge? What are people in the area willing to pay? What seems to be be about right price?
I know I could charge a lot more than I do, but my ethos is, I wish to help as many children as I can, and want to set up a long and lasting relationship with the child and the family. Does your prospective tutor had a similar set of values? Or is it truly an industry, where they are only in it for the salary?

Some good places for useful math at primary level

www.mathplayground.com

this website has a section labelled videos and another labelled worksheets. Both of these sections are superb and well worth the exploration. Subjects to explore would be as follows;
• fractions
• decimals
• percentages
• money
• ratio and proportion (video 1 only)
The worksheets are split into grades, and for our age group we want the one at the bottom, called grade 3, 4, and 5. I would suggest you use the ones where you have to ‘fill in’ as these ones will be marked for you. Do the ones labelled #1 first and then move onto #2. They are excellent as a reminder for those who can already do the sums and as a teaching aid for those who are unsure. Supporting videos are available and do show excellent methods which are acceptable in this country.

http://www.elevenplusexams.co.uk/revision_aid_download.php

This is a superb website and has lots of practice for those who are sitting the 11+. I have used a great deal of their stuff over the years and use their computer based programmes in the lessons. The work now produced by a section called Chukka is excellent and I would suggest the ‘once a day’ worksheet. It takes about 5 mins and is a good way of upping the speed of the basic Numeracy.

http://www.coolmath4kids.com/

you want a place where the children love to go and play the games and yet learn at the same time? Then this is it! All of the activities have some mathematical base to them, even the jigsaws I promise you. If you are a parent of an 11 plus candidate then this is certainly the place to rest and play. The games cover all aspects of math including spacial awareness. Warning! some of the games are compulsive, especially things like Bloxorz or Orb2.
There is a very good section on basic arithmetic and some games which compliment it. Have a good look yourself before you ;let your child loose; it maybe the last time you get a chance to get on it yourself!!
Teat the jigsaws as a way of developing the spacial awareness needed in the non-verbal reasoning paper. It helps them recognise shapes, spot connections, understand how colours will flow so it also works to help develop processing skills.

an excellent web site

How many of you parents have found this web site www.miniclip.com/games? It is really good and has a large number of puzzles which will keep most of the family occupied for hours. I would recommend Block Drop and Red Remover as 2 games which support math learning for year 5 and 6 pupils but that doesn't mean it isn't fun for the adults too. I ended up cracking them both, but it took me 'til 1am!

Teacher or parent? Games for those moments of indecision

We want to support our children but at the same time we don’t want to end up being yet another teacher. The way we were taught isn’t necessarily the same as they are teaching now and we don’t want to confuse them with our methods. After all the reason they came to us in the first place is because they are already confused.
Having worked in education for over 25 years, I have found various ways of having fun with children and at the same time teaching them skills and techniques which have come from them. If you would like some of these games boards then email me and I will send you a copy of two or three which I, and the children, have enjoyed playing with.
So what can we do with children when on journeys or at times when they have to be occupied and quiet?
One my mother used to do with me was to guess how long a minute was. I was to be quiet and work out what felt like 1 minute, 2 minutes and 5 minutes. It not only helped me stay quiet but it also taught me to gauge time, a skill much needed in this world. She would also do it with distance; how long will it take us to get to …. if we keep driving at this speed…if we keep walking…
Another way to keep their minds working is to use the alphabet as the foundation of creating lists of words which are all linked by their type. For example, animals could be; alligator, badger, cat, dog, elephant and so on, until they get to zebra. This could be played in turn so each person has to come up with one for a specific letter. The trick here is not to give the child the answer but to give them a clue which will help them find the word in their head. In school one of the most difficult thing to get children to do is to write using the whole of their word knowledge. Games such as this help them revisit their internal vocabulary list and as with most things, the more you use it the easier it is to access it. I have used this game with Christmas words, animals, countries, towns, people’s names, Easter, and of course to revise subjects.
The alphabet can also be used as a way of developing really long sentences, another skill children have to develop. An example of this would be; a bold, courageous, dog edged fiercely, growling. It gets children to use descriptive words more and again accesses their vocabulary bank as well as extends it because of the words they hear others use. In games like this it is always a good idea to have an adult playing as well.
A lovely one many of the children enjoy is the wandering story. This can be done on a computer, which increases their typing skills, or verbally, which increases their ability to communicate clearly and fluently.
On a computer start a story with three sentences you make up. The child then does another three sentences which continue the story. This you do back and forth until a plot begins to develop. If done without any comment between you it is amazing how much skill starts to pour out onto the page. I have done this with children of all ages up to 13 years and the results have been amazing.
Imagine this translated into speech and you have story that becomes told. These can get really exciting and it’s amazing how quickly the children become engrossed in it.
Packs of cards have always been an excellent tool for basic maths. Take out all the picture cards save the aces and read these as 1. Now split the pack between those who are playing the game. The aim is to continuously add together the cards as they turn over one by one. If you make a mistake, you have to pick up the pile of cards and start again; the aim is to be the first one with no cards left. Try it this way for subtraction, but make sure you feel confident about it too. Again no picture cards start with the number 250 and as you turn over a card subtract that from the total. An example would be 250 – [10 hearts] = 240-[7 clubs] =233 and so on. Again a mistake means you pick up the pile and the winner is the first one to get rid of all their cards.
Another way to use cards is to do multiplication. Take two cards from the top of the pile, turn them over and multiply them together. This concentrates on the simple times tables 1 – 10 and is perfect for any Primary pupil.
So there are a few ideas to be going on with and I will add more as time goes on. If you have any ideas you think would be good on the Blog, email me your ideas and I will include them here. Let’s face it; we have children because we want them not because we fancy becoming teachers when they start school. So let’s stay their parents, enjoy them and leave the hard task of teaching to the teachers!

Brain development in children

The way we talk and interact with our children will affect them for the rest of their lives. It will mould them and set values and beliefs which will become the core of their being—these will either serve them well or hinder them. Which ever way they go, it is the adults in their lives which ultimately will be responsible for their well-being as they grow into the adults of the future.
A daunting prospect and one, none of us get a blue-print for when we sign up to be parents, let alone teachers, aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters etc.
How many of us have heard those immortal words from a frustrated mother, “Right, that’s it. You’re going to bed when you get home!” or, “That’s it, I’ve had enough, your not having your Playstation!”
Threats wielded from an exasperated mother which render the child in tears (most of the time) but rarely get carried through. What is going on in such a situation as this?
To understand this we need to go back to the development of the brain and how this manifests itself in the growing child.
The brain begins its development whilst the baby is not much more than a foetus. The brain is very primitive, being no more than a small bulb of cells at the end of the emerging spine. Its main function at this stage is to separate out into the main parts of a functioning brain so the emerging organs will have something to drive and control them.
By 7 weeks the main areas of the brain can be distinguished and from then to birth a rapid expansion of nerve cells called neurons takes place.
By the time a baby is born there are approximately 100 billion nerve cells! Sounds marvelous and the capacity to learn is astronomical but at birth the cells are mostly un-connected and little happens except the very basic functions of breathing, eating, excreting and movement. In fact only three parts of the brain are fully operational at this time, the brain stem, the thalamus and the deep cerebellum and until the age of three, the part of the brain which makes memory is still in its infancy of production and will not have come on line as it were and cannot make memories or respond in anything other than an instinctive way - something I find surprising, especially if you watch a baby respond to its mother or its surroundings. Latest research has found that until a child is 3 years old it only responds because it is programmed to through the most primitive part of the brain. It is a response to survival and unless something happens which is highly significant, will not remember anything from that time.
However, for a child to go on and make memories and develop ideas those first three years are some of the most important ones for opening up and laying down pathways and connections within the brain.
At the beginning I said the adults are responsible for giving the child its values and beliefs as well as a code by which it grows up and then adapts in adult life. During these first three years the type and quality of stimulation given to the baby will determine how it will interpret stimulation after that age—in other words how it will learn, interpret and act upon what it senses from the world around.
The nerve cells the child is born with develop connections depending upon the stimulation they receive. More stimulation results in more connections and the number of cells which are killed off because they are unnecessary (because they have not been fired up and tied into the network) are reduced.
What happens after the initial period? The part of the brain called the cortex begins to develop and memories begin to be laid down. The more times something is repeated the stronger the connections for that pathway become until some behaviours and actions become second nature. They will develop by investigating on their own and by copying those they trust. Slowly they will develop skills that identify them as the child of… and their skills range will closely reflect the skills of the family.
In parts of Japan, apprentices are not allowed to do anything except watch the master for some time so they absorb the actions and movements the master performs. If you watch these apprentices they are copying the actions until they have them perfectly off pat and then they are allowed to try it for themselves.
So children will copy and mimic because it is a very good way of learning. When they have reached the point where they have some attention span built into their brain function (any where between 4 and 6 years of age) they begin to explore for themselves using the blue-print provided for them by their parents. If they have spent most of their time in front of a TV then this blue-print will be very poor and their skills reduced.
When I asked a group of children to write an imaginative story few could write as if they were part of the story. They had watched so much TV they saw the world from a distance and wrote in that style. I was reminded of a phrase a colleague of mine uses, ‘having a near life experience’ and began to wonder if these children were growing up as if their lives were just that and programmes such as East Enders more real than their own lives.
So the first 3 years of any child’s life is vital if it is going to utilise as many of the nerves it is born with. By the time the excess are killed off the connections have to have been made and once gone they are not replaced.

Losing that confidence within

Working with so many children I see the embryonic stages of that loss of self confidence.

School can be a harsh environment for some, especially if they find aspects of the curriculum difficult. All too quickly they learn their own inadequacies, stop trying and then become disaffected, bored and sometimes a problem.

Teachers are expected to prove their levels of skill by getting as many of their pupils through the yearly examinations. They have to show an increase in SAT’s levels each year and are expected to justify any failures. They attend meetings with the senior management who tell them the expected levels they should reach irrespective of the pupil’s abilities. Sometimes these targets are virtually impossible. They leave those who struggle to concentrate on the upper part, in the hope these pupils will get the grades expected.

The levels of success at SAT’s and GCSE are then translated into league tables and this in turn translates into which academic group of pupils is sent there.

It’s very much the chicken and egg—what do you tackle first? The pupil who is struggling, or the ones who are potentially bored, because you are helping the one who is struggling?

In an ideal world all pupils should be catered for and systems should be in place to nurture everyone whatever their level or expectations.

Let’s face it, as a parent this is what you would expect for your child. But does this happen? How does a child feel at 6 years of age when it has sat its first big examination and not reached the levels his or her friends have? What happens when that very same child reaches 10 years of age and has their worst fears confirmed—yes, I have failed again because I got low levels?

He/she enters senior school and is expected to work in the bottom sets doing ‘baby work’ in the hope of catching up, but knowing they wont? Where does the lack of self esteem kick in? At 6? At 10? At 11?

As I said, I work with children at both ends of the spectrum. The ones at the very top who are desperate to achieve higher because they are afraid of failing, and those from the lower sets who are already aware they are failures and are trying to lift themselves out of that situation.

My first question is, when did we, as a society decide to label these children? My second question would be why did we feel we needed to do it? And my third would be, so how do we undo the damage we have created over the passed ten years or so?

When I first began teaching there were those who found academic subjects tough. They still did them, but they also worked in areas where they could excel such as mechanics, woodwork and such and would sit City and Guild qualifications which led to apprenticeships or college courses. They had worth and would be proud of it. Some of the pupils would be excellent in sport, so would represent the school, the county or the region. Again they would be expected to do the academic subjects and work hard but they too, had areas of excellence.

In each case the child was able to prove itself and have that pride, that self esteem which allowed them to grow into a balanced and educated adults.

I met with a parent who took the City and Guild examination in Social Mathematics, a colleague and I created back in the 1980s. She loved it and was really proud to be able to say she had a distinction at both Stage 1 and Stage 2; the course was stopped by the government at the beginning of 1995 because it did not contain enough algebra!

She knew she had found the academic side of mathematics hard, but enjoyed this course, as it helped her learn maths in the world, rather than maths in the classroom. It had been accepted as proof of her skills when she applied for a job and the fact it was a City and Guild, meant the company recognised the certificates worth and value.

She was sad her daughter would not be able to do it as well. She knew her daughter would have to follow the ‘one size fits all’ route of GCSE and probably fail. The problem is her daughter also knows she has to do the GCSE and is already asking the question, ‘but what use is this when I leave school?’ I must admit I do find it very difficult to justify algebra in its purest form.

So what do we do? What do we do about these people who are leaving school disillusioned and already feeling they are on the scrap heap at 16 when they have the whole of their working lives ahead of them? How can we complain when these very same people go for anything they can get by whatever means they can get it?

The generation who spit on the streets, binge drink, run up massive debts, graffiti on walls and houses, steal cars and have whatever they want is a creation of the society we put in place. We have created the ‘testing’ society where everything has to have a number to be valid. Where and how do we give childhood back to children and self worth and self esteem back whatever their academic level of achievement?