The Primary School Years.

 

When children begin to attend school they will vary by at least a full year's difference, often more, in chronological age to their peers and up to three years, possibly more, in variation to others in any learning readiness aspect we might like to try to measure.  Here is the beginning of the great myth of grade based learning, flawed at the very start, implemented into schools in 1848.  Maybe time to consider a change one might think. Such interventions as Queensland’s Prep, purported to be a Play Based readiness program, has ended as a high pressure introduction to learning which for many youngsters has had quite negative outcomes.  

Children generally turn six years of age during their first thousand days of their non-graded classroom learning phase at Junior Primary School and should be turning nine years of age during their second thousand day learning phase in Senior Primary School, which marks the end of their primary school days.

 

There was a time that children began formal education when it was deemed that they were ready.  In some countries it is seven years of age.  In New Zealand in the seventies children all began school ON their fifth birthday.  Just think your way around how you would manage that. It worked, beautifully.  I visited twenty one schools to see it in action, and am still impressed.

 

The word "Primary" is significant as following their initial burst of foundational learning the two "thousand day blocks" of primary schooling are crucial in ensuring the basic building blocks of "Learning to Learn" are cemented firmly in place.  Currently with the grade based system driven by a fast paced and unforgiving National Curriculum, with the NAPLAN atrocity, approximately 40% of our young learners is coming away with just rubble and loose stones.  Who stole the cement?  The answer to that awful question was answered in my book, and will be so again on this website.  It is not a comfortable answer for schools to address, but they have no say in the matter.  ACARA decides and the politicians approve.

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Primary schools must return to the era of child based learning, when every day every child was able to study a topic of personal interest, when excursions, school camps, real life project based learning were the norm, when teachers had the professional autonomy to pursue the learning interests of the children in their care.  What does all that compliance paper work really achieve?  Yes it's easier not to bother borrowing the school incubator, (you must have one somewhere gathering dust,) and watching the three week development of the chicks than to go through the hoops that the Minister reads every night.  Well he/she mightn't but some very highly paid "Auditor" must, or why else do teaches spend countless thousands of hours in such worthless time consuming pursuits?  Easier to shut up and use the smart board with the appropriate software package "The Life Cycle of a Chook!"  The kids can then fill in an evaluation sheet for data entry.  If you doubt my concerns in this matter go to "Managing risks in school curriculum activities".  You'll be horrified!  

https://ppr.qed.qld.gov.au/pp/managing-risks-in-school-curriculum-activities-procedure

 

If schools were able to claw back that control from the bureaucratic demands of their Education Ministers, their Regional Directors, their Principals, their Curriculum advisors and be teachers of children, on their own terms, would the world end?    If every school tomorrow took just one simple step, and refused to practise for NAPLAN,  refused to have children sit for NAPLAN, what might be the consequence?  Pearsons, the manager and provider of NAPLAN through ACARA might lose millions and millions of dollars but without NAPLAN why would we need a  National Curriculum?  If every school community was to say "Enough is enough!  Your school model has driven our kids mad, and for over thirty years, and he's still in Grade four, married with five kids and on the dole!"  maybe the world would end.  Maybe not, though it might slow down the rush to Home Schooling, Flexi-schooling, Alternative-schooling and No-schooling.  Maybe many parents might not feel pressured into paying school fees for education they were told was Free, Compulsory and Secular.  That must have been the joke of the century in the olden days.

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The six or seven years or two thousand days of primary schooling, must provide the solid foundation for further academic pursuit and mastery.  These years are crucial for the health of our children, the health of our nation.  The importance of Primary School Education has been undermined by all and sundry for many years, especially from the Secondary Education sector.  The community at large has been brainwashed into seeing the final ATAR score as the pinnacle of schooling, thus the inflated role of those holding the parcel at the end of its school journey.  The Primary School child is still malleable enough, with the full resourcing of the community, their Mentors and supportive family networks, to find the right footing to succeed,  We must treble then quadruple and double again the resourcing and support this phase of development demands.  If we think they will catch up in Secondary School we are misled.   The awful waste created by the GERM must cease for it is our children who have been driven from school, too often with dreadful societal consequences, for which we all now suffer.