Your Primary school child will thank you as a teenager for reading this.
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The Rt. Hon Michael Gove. Does anyone else see the Mona Lisa as well?
Source: Department of Education OGL Licence v.1.0 |
It will seem odd to be talking about GCSE's to parents with Primary School children but there are major changes that you need to be aware of now.
Love him or hate him, the Education Secretary, Michael Gove is impacting your child's GCSE results right now. For those of you will children in the upper years of primary school, your child is likely to be in the first waves that hits this beach.
What the reforms mean to your child:
If we cast our minds back to when we took GCSE's for a moment, you probably remember three things: 1.) Mind numbingly dull Coursework. 2.) A highly colourful, over ambitious and completely ineffectual revision plan and 3.) Collecting your results with feverish eyes scanning for A's and B's and praying not to see any D's or E's. But your child will not experience these 'joys'. They will be facing a much harder task.
What your child will most likely encounter is; no Coursework, higher pass marks and grades that will be numerical (8-1) rather than alphabetical (A*-G). With the emphasis is very much being placed on 'perform or bust' style of assessment.
"We are all worms, but I do believe that my child is a glow-worm." Click to tweet this at the Department of Education to remind them of how special your child is.
How to ensure your child is still glowing brightly at GCSE Results Day
We believe that a change in mindset is going to be needed from Teachers, Parents, Tutors and Students. We believe that as adults we all need to lead the way. I am sure many of you now take an active interest in your child's homework. But there is a dramatic drop off in parental interest in a child's homework when they reach secondary school. Why do we stop when they can read and multiply 10x10?
Don't be afraid to get involved. Your son or daughters education is far too important to be left to; politicians, schools, teachers or to the students themselves. Whilst we are not advocating you to become the archetypal 'pushy parent'. We urge you to look at their exercise books and keep an eye out on websites and blogs for education advice and not to wait until you get a concerning report card before taking action.
We have to gently start changing the way in which children are preparing for assessments. Most schools have end of year exams and the number of practice exams is likely to increase as these changes start to come in to effect. How can we help them? Rather than waiting until Year 11 to work on realistic revision plans, work with your child in Year 7.
Don't be afraid to get involved. Your son or daughters education is far too important to be left to; politicians, schools, teachers or to the students themselves. Whilst we are not advocating you to become the archetypal 'pushy parent'. We urge you to look at their exercise books and keep an eye out on websites and blogs for education advice and not to wait until you get a concerning report card before taking action.
We have to gently start changing the way in which children are preparing for assessments. Most schools have end of year exams and the number of practice exams is likely to increase as these changes start to come in to effect. How can we help them? Rather than waiting until Year 11 to work on realistic revision plans, work with your child in Year 7.
Effective preparation and execution is also going to be key. More than ever before your child's generation are going to need to have a bedrock of confidence which is built from subject knowledge. Easter should no longer be thought of as when we start revising for exams. Class notes need to be condensed much earlier to revision notes to allow more time for exam practice.
It is very likely that you will hear from many different sources about the positives and negatives of these reforms. Don't bother to engage in these discussions, the die is already cast, their fate already sealed. Let's all concentrate on helping your child achieve as much as they possibly can.
Ask us any question you have on education on Tuesday 6th August at 1pm for a special Mum's in the Know Twitter chat. #MITKGlowWorms
