DISADVANTAGING THE DISADVANTAGED

Anna is to start her free state nursery place the first week of January next year. As is the case in the UK free nursery places are offered to all three and four year olds. They are meant to complete a year of ante-pre-school, and then a year of pre-school and then they start school around the age of five. The cut-off point for school starters in Scotland (not England) is January 1st. If you are born after January 1st you can start school in August of the year you turn five. If however, like Anna, you are born a week too early at the end of December, you have to start school in the August before you turn five. This wouldn't offend me if she was then allowed to start her ante-pre-school year with all the kids who she will be going to school with, but because the government only provides nursery for three and four year olds she misses two whole terms of her ante-pre-school year disadvantaging her and all the other youngest school starters - those who could probably do with the most help if they are to start school at 4 years and 8 months. Given the only two criteria for receiving your state nursery place are that you are toilet trained and can talk by your third birthday, I see no reason why Anna couldn't be given a place from August despite being two - she has been potty-trained since her second birthday and can talk very clearly but instead I have to keep her home five extra months disadvantaging her educationally. It's just not fair for the littlest ones.

FIRST STEP TO INDEPENDENCE

Today Léon went to school for the first time ever. The induction process began a few weeks ago with parental meetings which I have been attending and trips by his teacher to his nursery, but today was his own first trip into school as a class to meet his teacher in situ and his classmates, not all of whom attend his nursery. We dropped him at the school gate at 9-30. Many of the children looked somewhat apprehensive clinging to their mums and needed coaxing in. Léon stood beside me till he saw they'd to line up in the playground. He ran in. The head teacher gasped as he almost knocked her over galloping through the gate. Wow this one's enthusiastic, she commented. We went to the dinner hall for a talk and waited nearly three hours for him to return. When the dinner hall door opened most kids ran to their mums' arms for a hug of reassurance. Léon, too ran towards us. I bent down for him to throw himself into my arms. He stopped, put his head close to mine and whispered Do you have money for me mum? I'm just gonna go get myself a school lunch! He seemed more confident than I had been expecting. Did that make me feel proud or sad...? So off we went to buy school dinners. I watched in amazement as somehow he managed not to drop the tray of food onto which he'd heaped a bowl of chicken noodle soup, 4 meatballs, mash, turnips, a box of raisins, a carton of apple juice and a tub of ice cream, not to mention a knife, a fork and two spoons. I didn't know my wee man was capable of walking so far balancing things - he never seems to manage it at home. He sat down and ate the raisins, then took a spoonful of the soup. It was too hot so he ate the four meatballs, followed by the ice cream, then the mash and then a bit more ice cream and finished up with the chicken soup, an efficient if interesting way to eat. He seems to have survived and enjoyed his first step towards independence.

INTERESTING CULTURAL DIFFERENCES

We all have our preconceived notions of other cultures and on the whole I imagine many Brits think Scandinavians are probably less uptight, sexually speaking, than our fellow countrymen. It is a shame very few Brits read Danish, because this article would make even the most liberal fall off their seats in surprise!
Can you imagine a biology teacher in this country asking the 15 year old boys in his class to spend their morning break in the loos providing sperm samples for them and their classmates to examine under the microscope in class? I think not! :-D

TIME TO MODERNIZE?

Charlotte's French homework tonight was to draw a family tree. Obviously given our French background, this would have been possible for her despite the only vocabulary on offer being mother, father, brother, sister, grandmother and grandfather. But given at least 25% of the kids in her class would have needed to know how to say 'step mother, step father, half sibling, step sibling, step parent's mother or father etc etc , it is maybe time for a rethink of such exercises. By the time Marcel reached p7 at least half his class had divorced parents. Charlotte, of course, went about things unconventionally. She first said she couldn't do it so would base it on a fictional family. She then decided to base it on me, but realized I had no sisters so she would prefer to use herself given she has both brothers and sisters. She drew herself, Anna and the boys. She then drew me and labelled me as her mother. I asked if she was going to add Thomas labelled Mum's husband, then add André and his Chinese wife. She said no, her page wasn't wide enough, so she added an unnamed father beside herself, explaining as she went along that if she drew the hair very short it wouldn't be overly obvious if it was Papa or Thomas, and then proceeded to add Thomas's parents above the 'father'! Confused? You will be after this episode of Soap...

SCOTTISH STATE SCHOOL OF THE YEAR

I was pleased to find this article about Marcel's school in the press the other day. Hope they keep up the good work! :-)

HOME ECONOMICS THEN AND NOW

Here's a photo of my little brother at the age of 12. Derek started high school as I entered my 5th year. He got double home economics twice a week. Eighty minutes of sewing that made me laugh, and eighty minutes of cooking that tested my ingenuity... He used to stand on the main stair case and wait to pounce. He was quite small at 12 so could hide behind other pupils. Just when I thought it was safe, a little voice used to squeak: Do you want to taste my onion soup? ... my coffee buns? ... my soufflé? etcetc You don't want to knock their confidence and you don't want to be nasty when your sibling is actually being nice to you for once, but those five words Do you want to taste... used to strike terror into me. As you can see, his coffee buns weren't the most appetizing. His onion soup was like hot dish water with a raw onion floating on top. I soon attempted to find a way to the top floor, avoiding the stair case! I tried being early or late to classes just so he couldn't find me. Although his initial culinary adventures were pitiful, he soon learned the talent of gourmet cooking and these days I actually look forward to a dinner invite! Although school didn't teach him to cook, it at least tried to make him rustle up some real food.
I was discussing cooking lessons with a friend the other day. Marcel hasn't started cooking at school yet but given he cooks an evening meal for six of us every 5th day or so (as does his nine year old sister), the calibre of the lessons didn't really worry me. My friend's son is also 12 and has already started cooking at school.
The first problem these days seems to be the lesson length. They have fifty minute periods and don't double them for cooking. Secondly, of course as always these days, is that the first fifteen minutes are then taken up with all the usual health and safety bullshit. With less than half an hour left once you consider the tidying at the end, they have no time to teach them anything that will be remotely useful for life.
My friend's son's first cooking lesson was called 'How to make an empire biscuit'. This is a bit basic (more what I'd expect Pudge to be doing at nursery) but if they had actually taught them how to do that, it wouldn't have been a complete waste. It turns out that they didn't have time to bake the biscuits and let them cool enough to jam and ice them. They had these 12 year olds simply take two digestives from a supermarket packet, jam them together and spread ready-made icing on top. If it wasn't so tragic, I'd laugh.
Giving them the benefit of the doubt my friend assumed they were trying to gently break in those who had never cooked before. The second week's lesson was entitled 'Homemade pizza'. She figured that at least might come in handy one day if her son goes away to university. But no, poor Gordon trudged home this time with a slice of cold toast with ketchup and grated cheese on top, wondering if he was going to have to live with his mum forever or die of starvation at 18. His mother is now teaching him to cook herself.
You do have to wonder in this age of ill health and obesity, if this really is the best our schools can manage. Personally, I'd rather Marcel did no cookery than this useless nonsense!

PARANOIA - THE KILLJOYS ARE AT IT AGAIN

My local nursery, which Léon attends, runs what it calls helper mornings. Every Wednesday since Charlotte was there and possibly longer, each room (containing 50 kids) has allowed two relative helpers to come in and enjoy a morning with the kids. They sign up in advance, so there are never more than two adults and they come in an help the (approx) 7-8 members of staff in each room. Helping means reading the kids a story, or painting with them, playing with lego, singing, sitting around taking part while the kids discuss topics they are studying. Helping doesn't mean being alone with the kids, it doesn't mean taking them to the toilet or out alone for a walk in the woods. It doesn't mean strapping them all into a bus and taking on them for a drive to the local lake.
Many mums, some dads and quite a few grandparents volunteer and the two weekly slots are always full. The kids enjoy it, the adults enjoy it. Six months ago when Thomas's parents were over, Brita signed up to take part. As a minister, she had often worked with kids and was curious to see how nurseries function over here. The kids got to see someone exotic and strange. She got to see the workings of a Scottish State nursery - a win win situation.
But as usual, it was too good to be true. This week we received (completely out of the blue) a new directive from the council. This scheme is being closed down immediately and reopened only to relatives who hold full disclosure certificates - you know the usual police, criminal etc checks you need to be a teacher or childminder. I have no issue with teachers being subjected to criminal checks once to spend a lifetime alone with our kids but forcing Grannies to undergo criminal checking to spend 2 hours supervised with my child is the kind of overkill that will simply mean the Granny won't do it, and the child will miss out on that wider, richer life experience. When are we going to get things back into perspective in this crazy country?

TEACHING METHODS

Readers of my blog will have heard me rant more than once about the standard of language teachers we use in our primary schools. Today Charlotte came in with a prime example... Sheepishly she asked me during her homework tonight: "Cul in French is kinda like a rude word for bum, isn't it? That's how everyone I've heard talking French uses it..." 'Of course it is' - I replied - 'it is the equivalent of arse in English'. "I knew that", she said, "but my teacher says it means neck". Being a native to French Charlotte couldn't even make the obvious Scottish phonetic leap from cul [ky] to cou [ku]. To her, despite her being much more reluctant than Marcel to vocalise her French knowledge, there was just no similarity at all between the two vowels that in Scottish English completely merge. When are we going to realize that pronunciation actually matters and getting teachers this bad at French phonetics is helping no one?

A WEE UPDATE

As I mentioned when Marcel started high school last month, dealing with a bilingual child isn't easy when the second language spoken by the child is one that the school teaches at beginner's level. Marcel's school has taken him out of all beginner's French lessons now and he has one-to-one tutoring with both a French native speaker teacher and with a fellow pupil who is in 6th year studying for her advanced higher. They have now assessed his spoken French by interviewing him several times in French but to get a real feel for his language level they are making him sit mock Intermediate exams over the next few weeks. Yesterday he scored 100% on his first attempt at an Intermediate 1 so next week he's getting to try Intermediate 2. Given Marcel is bilingual (surprisingly) largely because of me and not because of his father who, not being linguistically minded has never seen the need to speak to him constantly in French, I have to say I'm feeling very proud today :-)

HOW TO FEEL OLD

Tonight I noticed Marcel's new school was having an open night. Given it was due to last nearly 3 hours, I figured it might be interesting to pop along and see how secondary education has changed since my day. Although I have many friends who are high school teachers, I have not really set foot inside a high school since I left back in '85 and most of my career has been spent dealing with the high end of the dictionary ranges aimed more at universities and professionals. Would education have changed any since my day?
It was all a bit of a culture shock. I now know why spelling words like promethean board trips off Charlotte's tongue as easily as black board had done in my day.
The first thing I was surprised by was the emphasis on Internet and the ability to work remotely. By the time they had shown me the work available online, I was beginning to wonder if we were close to the beginning of the end of schools as we know them. Of course for the likes of chemistry, going into school is a necessity but from what I could see, their school website was so interactive, the less practical subjects such as French or Maths could almost be done from home these days! Marcel would just love that - sitting looking at me all day instead of leggy , blonde 12 year old females!
The next thing that struck me compared to my day was the emphasis on building pupils' confidence and self-esteem in a way that positively differed from my day. When I was at school there were some wonderful, nurturing teachers, but there were also the nasty, evil old buggers who took great pleasure in singling out the 'thickies' and publicly humiliating them at every opportunity. Several teachers tonight explained in detail their techniques for getting a measure of their pupils' overall comprehension without the children being aware of their peers' answers in any given question.
The sheer scale of teaching had changed since my day too. The high school I attended was one of the largest back in the 80s but Marcel's felt more like a university department with large lecture theatres and its own 'campus cop'!
I will be logging in to look at the actual work he's being given to see what that's like too (and trying desperately to remember what I learned all those years ago in comparison.)
In general I think I started the day out feeling a bit tired (as usual these days) and ended it feeling positively like a dinosaur.

LANGUAGE LEARNING

I know I'm getting to be a grumpy old cow but I really despair in language learning for English native speakers - it's like we haven't the first clue how to go about it.
In my day, they didn't start you till 12 and only the first two years were compulsory - therefore the vast majority left school knowing nothing more than Je m'appelle Betty. They've looked around Europe now and concluded they start languages earlier so sing a song or two with the kids in French or Spanish at nursery and then start basic languages at five. Great, or so you'd think. Schools, the lucky ones anyway, have specialist teachers for specialist subjects like music. You couldn't possibly teach a kid guitar if you didn't play guitar or read music, could you? But a foreign language is in no way specialised so it is apparently perfectly ok to use teachers with no French to teach French. Of course they follow a course so they are a few steps ahead of the kids but they haven't the slightest idea about how French is spoken in France or how to pronounce it properly so your half way decent high school language teacher is now faced with kids turning up on their doorstep with poor French pronunciation and archaic grammar all in need of undoing. Worse still the kids who are actually gifted enough to learn languages are immersing themselves in this pidgin nonsense when using a specialist language-qualified teacher would be so beneficial to them. I thank heavens I can teach my kids languages rather than leaving it to the crazy school system.
Ok, I'll get back off my soapbox now and go to bed.

SENSE IS CREEPING BACK

One problem with having a bilingual child arises when the second language the child speaks happens to be the most common foreign language taught in schools in the country where you find yourself living. Had Marcel been bilingual with Danish like Anna, I would not have a single worry, but learning French before English means that the French lessons his nursery and primary school insisted on giving him were 99% meaningless. His primary dealt reasonably well with issue by letting him become teacher's helper using him as a facilitator between his classmates rather than making him roleplay Je m'appelle Marcel or J'ai un frère et 2 sœurs. I had been a bit worried about what was to come next. Given he needs to sit in a French class for the next four years, minimum, I had visions of them trying to teach him to conjugate avoir, while he sat on his mobile downloading music, being thoroughly bored. Worse still he could encounter one of the archetypal middle-aged French teachers who hadn't set foot on French soil for thirty years and who would nit-pick his idiomatic French slowly trying to force her 1970s version down his throat. I was apprehensive about what they'd do to my wee boy. Would they appreciate his fluency or simply clamp down on his less formal than textbook speech? He left out the French textbook the class will be using on the couch on Wednesday night. I was horrified. By the end of it, they were still in the basics he could have down from his buggy as a two year old. I decided to phone school and arrange a meeting. However, I was more than pleasantly surprised on Thursday when he returned home. You forgot the French book, I told him. Oh, I won't be needing that, he replied. Today my teacher took me aside and interviewed me in French and said she'd deal with me quite separately from the rest of my class, she's French herself and can see that this would be pointless for me! Phew! Sense is creeping in for once.

GET OUT YOUR HISTORY BOOKS

What are they gibbering about? Here is a draft proposal for a very radical new way to approach higher education.... eh???? Except it is the system I went through uni with in the late 80s!!! Good old Maggie phased out students grants in my 2nd year at Glasgow uni and a student loan was a new-age idea that hadn't yet been invented. My God - who would think of lending students real money? - they'd just drink it away! We we lucky if they let us have a current account and cheque book back then! We had no fees to pay but no loans, no grants and no bursaries. We had to live at home if possible because paying for accommodation was more or less impossible unless your family was well off and when you had to live abroad for several terms you simply had to work to pay your accommodation. You left uni with a degree and no debt though you may have spent many evenings on beans on toast or sleeping on a friend's floor for want of some money. So where's the 'radical'?

EDUCATIONAL DILEMMAS

A new dilemma of this recession struck me the other day.
The last (tiny by comparison) recession took place at the end of the 80s and wasn't accompanied by the same credit crunch. Back in the 80s the student grant system had just been phased out and although loans were coming in, tuition fees weren't. Student life was poor but generally didn't leave you up to your eyeballs in debt.
In the last few years England has introduced student tuition fees. Scotland hasn't yet but students still need loans and proper summer jobs to make ends meet. Of course in a credit crunch with graduate jobs at the end of degrees much less guaranteed than before, students are finding credit much harder to come by. For that reason they are even more desperately in need a summer job than usual if they are to contemplate paying next term's fees. But of course companies are in such dire straits, they can't even pay their employees. Bucketloads of those are being made redundant so there won't be many advertising for casual summer workers, will there?
Are we about to see students dropping out en masse? I wonder if they will appear in the unemployed statistics if they do, or if, like school leavers, they will be hidden in some government-created grey area.
And of course once students stop being able to pay their fees, I guess unis will stop being able to pay their staff... The word snowball springs to mind, despite the current heatwave.

A WINNER

Since starting Hazeldene nursery on his third birthday, Léon has been more than happy, always running in without a backwards glance. It seems such a bright and happy little school. This week we're all celebrating. Hazeldene became the first school in the West of Scotland at any level to receive 5 'excellents' in its HMi report! Both the Herald and the Evening Times are singing its praises. Moreover, it is apparently one of only two in the whole of Scotland to ever have received top marks. What more could you ask for? Once again any doubts I ever had about moving to the suburbs simply for schooling have been left dead in the water.

UK UNIVERSITIES

It suddenly struck me the other day that this economic crisis will be interesting to watch from a higher education perspective. Already lecturer friends of mine have been complaining, or even resigning because of the 'dumbing down' of the current university courses. A professor friend said to me just last summer, and I quote 'You have no idea how well educated you are compared to today's kids - you'd get a PhD instead of an MA at your level these days'. When I asked why the courses were being made easier, he told me they had to be seen to be giving out a reasonable number of good degrees to attract funding and to attract foreign students who were bringing a lot of money into the universities. Often though, the foreigners were too poor at English to obtain the degree they came for so pressure was being put on the university 'not to put off the foreigners'. Now, look at it in this economic crisis. I presume student loans are harder to come by because of the credit crunch. I also assume unemployed struggling parents will be finding it hard to lay out thousands of pounds to allow junior to go to uni. Foreigners however will be rubbing their hands together because the UK currency has become a joke. Foreigners will flood into the universities taking up the cheap places our kids can't afford, the degrees will need to suit their needs and once they are educated - let me guess - will they stay here or will they go back home where they can earn twice as much? Hmmm - hard question! Well done Gordon - looks like you wrecked the higher education system in the UK too.

SUCH AMBITION

Dunce
Originally uploaded by Drumaboy

So because kids are too badly educated to write something intelligible, the solution is to not make them write anything? How exactly can English language be tested in a multiple choice manner? Of course money comes into it too. They can't afford to pay intelligent markers on their budget so they want computers to mark the exams. The English must be so proud of their educational system!
The first time one of my kids sits a multiple choice English exam, remind me to emigrate.

A POINTLESS PIECE OF HOMEWORK

No sooner do I praise the education my kids are receiving and the school goes and gives them something I have to complain about! Typical!
Marcel was given this proofreading exercise to do as his homework this week. I have absolutely nothing against proofreading as an exercise for an 11 year old boy. It will instil both good spelling and attention to detail in him. But look at it:

• Sean and Josie stood stil.  Just a momment erlyier a fox had crosed the
  parth, stoped and shakern itself.  Then it sliped quiertly away.  They
  waited in silense hopeing to sea it agen, but eventuly relised it must
  have herd them.
  
  Wen they reterned to the car park they sore a notise arsking visters not
  to disterb the creaters who might be breading at this time of year.  "I
  hope we didn't wurry that buteaful fox," said Joise.  "I'm shore we
  didert," replyed her frend, "but we'll go now and leave all the animles
  in piece."
  

This is completely pointless for a Scottish child. All these ridiculous 'r's added in that they would never have even considered adding meant it was way too simple for him. Spelling 'sure' as 'shore' and 'saw' as 'sore', given they don't sound at all alike with our accent, meant he didn't even realize what word was intended! If you want to check kids can spot spelling mistakes, remember where they are from and how it would sound if they read it aloud.

ARE YOU SMARTER THAN A TEN YEAR OLD?

Occasionally my kids watch Are you smarter than a 10 year old, another piece Noel Edmonds drivel. I have actually sat down and watched this one with them despite my strict I will not waste a minute of my life watching inane TV quiz shows rule. The reasons I have found myself watching this are disbelief and curiosity. The show divides the questions into topics and ages - you get an 8 year old English literature question, a 6 year old geography question, a 10 year old history question etc. My kids, who are top of their class here in Scotland, sit unable to answer 90% of the questions - in fact, in general the only questions they can answer are maths and spelling. This puzzles them, but it doesn't puzzle me. The questions, designed to mirror the English curriculum, scream out the horrors of education system they are currently using south of the border. They ask very narrow, very specific facts that you either know or don't - they have nothing to do with being smart or not - they simply have to do with learning nonsense parrot fashion for no particular reason. For example, when my kids study poetry at school, say Wordsworth's I wandered lonely as a cloud, they read a poem and analyse the alliteration, the metaphors, the way language is used, the imagery, all at an appropriate level for their ability, regardless of their age. It seems, if Noel is to be believed, that in England you learn the facts - you might be asked the type of flowers Wordworth mentions in the first stanza (daffodils). Knowing whether it is daffs or roses does not increase your intelligence one iota, but that knowledge gains you a point in their exam and league table driven system so the whole country is teaching inane facts of this type so the kids can pass the exams. They have lost sight of the fact that passing the exam isn't the point of learning - it's better to learn to think but skip the silly meaningless facts. Today's Independent explained the end point on that educational track... Is that really what the UK wants to fill 80% of its youngsters' minds with? My kids do look very surprised when I cry with joy at their inability to answer any of the English curriculum questions - they haven't quite understood the implications of the two systems yet.

NURSERY BOY

Léon was 3 on Monday which means he now qualifies for a free nursery place. Some councils still make kids
wait till the first day of the next school term which would have been January but here under East Renfrewshire's rules, he can start this week. That sounds good in theory but given all 3 year old places are 12-45pm - 3-45pm, they don't make life any easier for the working parent, especially if you already have a school pick up at 3pm and 4pm.
Anyway it is free and I am on maternity leave so we'll go with it.
This week he's painted, played with water, done some singing and played outside so he seems happy, though I think his new routine is a tiny bit tiring, so far. At snack time, which I sat in on yesterday, I was sure he was going to fall asleep into a plate of melon... but I guess he is just a little guy.