Every Parent Matters

By Alistair Owens keen2learn

The best people to manage a situation are those on the ground, at the sharp end of operations. Teachers are therefore eminently more able to use their operational skill and judgement to maximise school performance than a remote theorist.

The National Curriculum has been played around with for all of its 22 years existence. Results published in April 2009 show we are failing badly in the educational standards at primary level in maths and English; the essential bedrock that influences attainment in secondary education. Although the rate of improvement in numeracy and literacy shows a marginal improvement over last year the rate of improvement is slowing. The numbers being left behind are massive. Can we continue to fail 160,000 11 year olds – a quarter of the total are still missing the target?

Teachers are locked into targets that see some of the brighter students abandoned in favour of addressing the needs of the struggling children. Hardly an altruistic move when the motivation is primarily the need to move the overall numbers up.

We are in the midst of a national financial crisis that bears similar markers. Although the jury is still out, the economic collapse was heavily influenced by government policy to get banks to invest in social markets and areas of risk to improve performance. The judgment of the banks became clouded by people in high places who knew little about the operations at the sharp end. Stressed bankers took risks in order to meet targets. Incentivised by greed the odds were too high and beyond the expertise of many individuals. The resultant spectacle of the banks and the system as we know imploding did little to instil confidence in the hierarchy.

Are we seeing the corollary in our education policy? The fun has gone out of schooling, SAT’s and GCSE milestones, the measure of educational standard, have burdened the “Best years of their life” designed to nourish a lifelong quest for learning. Yet some success stories are around.  A top performing school in Bradford broke free and introduced “brain breaks.” A combination of fun and exercise to encourage learning has been a great success. The teaching resources are there they just need to be released. Let the profession responsible for the results use their skill and judgement to achieve success.

Children who see education as a fun activity thrive. Putting fun learning back into the schooling process is not taking some easy route. Managing the process needs skill and energy, but the results can be extremely rewarding. There is another hidden asset. Engaging parents in the process at home is vastly easier with educational games than conventional exercises.

Homework in this form can also be seen as enjoyable and as children spend 85% of their waking time outside school could capture a huge and predominately untapped resource. The homework process seeks to get children to practise the lesson content. This improves learning retention and gives children the experience of working without the teacher around, an essential feature when considering SAT’s and GCSE exams.

The choice between a tedious text book exercise for homework or an educational game played with family or friends… humm let me think.

Who would want to be Ed Balls the education secretary? Sorry, the Secretary of state for children, schools and families (DCSF). Maybe therein lays the answer. This hugely diverse role fails to mention education in the title, yet it is education that will set the future course for the UK, and it is in education where we are failing, badly.

The debate into statutory assessment tests (SAT) has become acrimonious. The secretary for the DCSF wishes to change the format and add to the list of already abandoned tests. The reaction at sharp end in teaching is unequivocal. One teachers union bearing the substantial title of The National Association of Schoolmasters and Women Teachers ( NASUWT) claims they will strike if the tests are abandoned, another The National Unions of Teachers will strike if they remain. Ed Balls states he is “caught in between a rock and hard place.” But also caught in the middle our children anxiously await sense and reason. It’s their future we are mucking about with.

The demands of society and the global economy are evolving dramatically during the schooling journey of any child. Apart from tweaks to the curriculum, the standard of learning achievement has failed to match the pace of change. The system has certainly failed to track consistently with developments in technology. Advances in nearly all avenues of modern achievement have been largely unmatched in the field of education. Our systems and procedures continue to fail children at primary level delivering an almost impossible catch-up challenge to secondary schools.

The current debate centres on the SAT’s. Ostensibly tracking the achievement of a child and a key measure of the effectiveness of the teaching resources, they unfortunately follow the twists and turns of many target driven corporate objectives, and fraught with an unhealthy degree of manipulation. Critically, teaching capacity has been focused on the “teach to test syndrome” where children are groomed to pass tests at the expense of a wider broader based education that would enthuse both children and teachers alike. The desire to inflate achievement has taken the fun out of learning. Maths games and English games to stimulate educational interest are abandoned in preference to test drilling exercises.

The current debate concerns the removal or rescheduling of key stage 2 SAT’s taken by 11 year old’s. In view of criticism of the testing versus teaching focus this seems a good move, but as ever the devil is in the detail. Unleashing a knock on problem of additional bureaucracy and work load has created the rift within the teaching fraternity. Testing at primary level is essential to identify potential performance at secondary, as without this secondary schools initially run blind with each years intake. The new scheme requires this to be completed when the child is ready rather than at set times. Teachers state this will cause a massive increase in workload and create even further disruption and depletion of the educational resources.

Thus some alternative measure of a child’s performance system is essential. Ironically the SAT key stage 2 replaced the 11+ which had the same function in 1987. Some improvement. Ed Balls says he does not want to rush into any decision. Perhaps this will give him the opportunity to listen to the guys steering the boat. Teachers have profound knowledge of what works and what does not in their own environment. Surely they should command the solution rather than costly bureaucrats whose theory appears to fail. In view of the cut backs in education wasting valuable resources in an in fight is not the way forward and would avoid the leviathan drawback of the National Health where managers now outnumber doctors.

Ed Balls has the unenviable task of sorting things out. Decisions taken now have an implication for generations to come. Daunting perhaps but he also has the opportunity to evolve an educational programme that could be the envy of the world. We are not alone; most English speaking countries have similar issues with schooling. Ed Balls could stand high as the first Minister to evolve a new educational policy that is fit for purpose for the next 20 years. We would all dearly thank him.

Children in the North East of England are being given free bowling sessions in a scheme to encourage them to attend school. Six primary schools will take part in the reward scheme introduced by Stockton Council’s School Attendance Team. Children must have 100% attendance each half term to benefit from the opportunity.

It is an indictment of our schooling system that children have to be incentivised in this manner. The attendance reward offered being outside of school holds a clear message. Why do children abhor school in the first place? Perhaps the lesson content, skill of the teacher, teaching resources and curriculum conspire to turn education into a slog.

Cllr Alex Cunningham of Stockton Council said: “Poor attendance at school is clearly detrimental for children where it affects their level of educational achievement as well as their social and emotional development.”

“We are keen to raise standards in Stockton and children respond well to praise and rewards and I’m sure they will be striving to shout their name out at registration every morning knowing they have a target to achieve.”

But are we just treating the symptoms and not the disease? Certainly children need to be motivated which includes what they are taught and the way they are taught. A considerable number of teachers are highly inventive, therefore surely they should they be encouraged to develop lesson content, style and rewards that interrelate with education. A trip to a bowling alley is certainly rewarding but it could be more educational. I recall winning a prize for attendance at school. I was granted an extra 20 minutes playtime on the day of the announcement. I remember it vividly, the initial pride was quickly offset by the fact I was the only child to gain the award. 20 minutes on your own in a deserted playground lacked appeal and the following teasing in the class, plus having to catch up on the missed 20 minutes of the lesson conspired to make this a one-off award.

The thought was there but the reward inappropriate. Perhaps the incentive offered by Stockton could be attendance at some form of educational games. These could amalgamated with other councils into local, regional and national events with increasing level of content, perception of value and incentive to achieve.

The actual lesson content could be revisited to ensure a level of entertainment and fun is present, overcoming the attendance issue. Enthralling children is an art; to maintain the momentum is a huge task. Lessons hold huge potential to develop educational content that is intriguing, entertaining and functional. Seeing lessons as fun would be a huge influence on children to attend. If a central reward is needed maybe the event could be designed by a team of games designers and TV directors to develop a national Educational games event with the kudos that all children would aspire to. Maybe attracting international figureheads, pop stars, entrepreneurs and inspirational figures would inspire and encourage children as the ulterior motive such that attendance at the event would be a significant reward. In the meantime six children from Rosebrook Primary School, in Stockton, will be the first to benefit from the attendance scheme, receiving a free bowling game. It’s a start that could precipitate a whole new approach

Alistair Owens educational games

Educational games, toys and puzzles are being used to overcome one of the biggest drawbacks of teaching; how to quickly grab the attention of the class at the start of the lesson. Boys tend to take much longer to settle down and some children are notoriously late. Ten minutes of the class can be lost before teaching really gets going. But now there are options.

A daily dose of maths computer games can boost maths attainment according to a study carried out in Scottish schools.
Learning and Teaching Scotland (LTS) – the main organisation for the development of the curriculum – analysed the effect of a “brain training” game. It also found improvements in pupils’ concentration and behaviour.

Less able children were found to be more likely to improve than the highest attainers and almost all pupils had an increased perception of their own ability.

LTS worked with Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Education and the University of Dundee to see if the pilot results were replicated on a wider scale. Researchers found that while all groups had improved their scores, the group using the maths game had improved by a further 50%. The time taken to complete the tests dropped by five minutes, from 18.5 minutes to 13.5 minutes. The improvement in the games group was double that of the control group.

The study also found reduced absence and lateness in some classes. Derek Robertson, LTS’s national adviser for emerging technologies and learning, said the results offered the first independent, academic evidence that this type of computer game could improve attainment when used in an educational context.

He said: “Computer games help flatten out the hierarchy that exists in schools – they are in the domain of the learner as opposed to the domain of the school. This intervention encouraged all children to engage and get success in a different contextual framework; one in which they don’t know their place.”

The educational games used in the trial were one of the growing numbers of computer games developed with education at the core. Modern technology harnessed to present a platform that is interesting and appealing to the young mind sets the challenge. A form of learning in disguise acceptable to a wide range of ability, age and both girls and boys is paying dividends in accelerating learning.

The games can be played in class and at home. They are having a marked effect in settling the class at the start of the lesson, and the number of late arrivals has noticeable reduced.

Technology in the form of a chemistry game or physics games generates  the practice activity essential to learning retention. Compared to conventional text and exercise book activity that can be one dimensional, computer games have the major advantage of capturing peer support. Children also learn from other children. How else do they pick up the detailed operation of a mobile phone? Certainly not from their parents or the school national curriculum. So the next time you see a child buried in a computer game on a PC, laptop or Nintendo take comfort this is a great way to help them learn.

Settling the class down can be eased with lesson starters; computer games that set a quiz based on the subject, or a combination of questions and clues to open the next level of the game. Some games even let the player design the next portion of the game.

The help of parents is fundamental in supporting the teacher to enhance the schooling of their children. Educational games are the easiest  entry point. Playing the same game or puzzle at home as in school is the most effective way to help. You do not to need to be proficient in the subject background and you never know how much you will enjoy the challenge.
Alistair Owens keen2learn

There is an army of five million adults in the UK that can’t read or write properly and of critical concern is this alarming number is growing. Children continue to finish their primary or secondary education unable to read or write.
The new TV documentary highlights the dilemma. Accepting the inevitable slant TV puts on many programmes to add drama, last night’s docudrama featuring a group of nine mature and illiterate students was still shocking.

The reality of this staggering statistic is a body blow to the educational standards in the UK.  We still fail to provide the very basics of education to all our children.  The TV teacher chosen to lead the recovery demonstrated passion and commitment to the role. But worryingly he was at considerable odds with the teaching resources he was advised to use.  If the reading support, including worksheets and procedures developed by the hierarchy were regarded by the teacher as complex, arduous and missing the point what hope is there it will work.

The slightly over emotional teacher, previously a musician, admitted he had never taught anybody to read in his life. Initially he seemed a strange appointment but his direct approach proved the skill of a good teacher can outweigh a multitude of ring binders of arduous theory.  His novel approach using educational games supported his passion in the role that started to break through decades of frustration and neglect. Turning reading support into fun and providing one to one support has started to overcome the many reasons for the student’s illiteracy, epitomising what good teaching is all about. Once the inertia is overcome we can expect rapid progress.

Each of the nine students had been failed by the initial schooling process. They had suffered the law of averages, inevitably casting students operating at the bottom of the class into the inevitable realm of exclusion from the lesson.  The point emphasized by the illiterate plumber set word search puzzles at school and sent home at midday.

Teachers facing the constant pressure of attaining academic targets are bound to focus on the average and brighter student to boost the score. In place of spending vast sums of money on complex procedures maybe we need to listen more closely to the operational experience of teachers. Investing in a policy where no student should leave primary school whilst failing in literacy or numeracy would deal with the problem at source. This perhaps brutal approach should receive vital direct funding where it will help give all children the best chance to thrive academically in secondary school.  The “Every Child a Reader” literacy scheme introduced by the government has to be a prerequisite in any target judgement.

The sterling work completed by the reading support organisations such as the “Volunteer Reading Help” ( primary schools ) and “Reading Matters”(secondary schools)  provide 1:1 support to struggling readers in school. Both are registered charities and reliant on volunteers. Should government funding be extended to develop the services offered by these groups? A greater number of trained volunteers to help teachers in more schools and perhaps adult classes can only help – provided they do not loose their independence.

The TV program’s refreshing angle showed the element of fun through reading games overcame many of the issues faced by the students, and that illiteracy is not down to a single cause. The musical introduction to reading skills introduced enjoyment to the process that seemed adequately to displace the complex procedures. But learning to read through English games involves teaching phonics – the sound of words – ironically where the “ph” of phonics is of course pronounced as “f” which is where we came in!

‘Research has shown that the effect of parents and what they do at home to support learning can account for 80% of a child’s academic success. This compares to school being directly responsible for around 20% of factors leading to academic achievement’. ( PTA magazine Summer 07)

The learning triangle is carefully balanced with three equal components, teachers, pupils and parents. When these components work effectively together educational and
behavioural standards are raised and outcomes are improved. However, ensuring that the parental side of the triangle is supporting the other two sides can be a challenging task. See http://www.keen2learn.co.uk
for a range of educational games that can help

Fractions, Decimals and Percentages Are Just Coded Maths Games

I always found math to be a difficult subject to learn at school.  I put most of my failing down to the fact I sat too close to an old fashioned pot-bellied stove.  This provided a great source of warmth but also destroyed my concentration. At least I learnt to spell soporific in a written defence during a subsequent detention, but the absence of maths sense slowed the learning curve for some years. Maths was always a struggle; the pot bellied stove inflicted collateral damage but I believe the real culprit was the boring way maths was taught.

Mathematics can be described as a series of fantastic codes. Once they are broken the maths games that can be played are endless and enjoyable. The modern technique of using educational games as the base makes life far more interesting and pays dividends in the attention paid by the average child. It also allows parents to repeat say a maths game at home

Like many things in life once a code is understood the task becomes far easier. This is the case when we come across a new computer program. Initially it is hard work and intuition fights with or against the operating manual. Once mastered a host of shortcuts and shortcomings are revealed and in no time our learning curve overtakes the computer and we start to identify areas where the program could be improved.

A recent example of breaking a mathematics code appeared in the form of the crop circle in the south of England.  The intricate pattern that was pressed into a wheat field at first sight appeared as just another artistic pattern in a crop circle.  In reality it was a complex diagram that an astrophysicist decoded to reveal its meaning as a fantastic way to represent the value of pi to the first 10 significant places. Guaranteed 99% of us who looked at the crop circle failed to understand that it was a mathematics code rather than a decorative pattern.  Obviously the perpetrator knew what he was doing and set this elaborate game to challenge mathematicians.  Once the code was broken the answer was obvious.

Leonardo Da Vinci was artist and a great mathematician who used codes to set out his theories. Used by subsequent generations of scholars even today they provide educational games that require ingenuity to crack the code.  Some areas of maths have a number of different ways of expressing the same information. Fractions and percentages express similar information in slightly different form. This feature allows us to mask the details by expressing facts in a form of code.

Recently Ed balls, the schools Secretary in the UK, announced that two fifths of all secondary schools are underperforming.  He could of course have said that 40 per cent of all schools are failing which conjures up a much bigger image.  Expressing the number of schools as a fraction is code to mask the actual hard fact. He could have just also revealed the actual number, but to say that 638 schools are failing would come as quite a shock to parents of the children involved. More startling perhaps would be an announcement that there are around 1,215,000 children at these 638 schools many of whom are potentially failing at maths. That’s a much bigger number than we might associate with two fifths! Codes are designed to initially hide or abbreviate the facts. Mr Balls could be said to be masking the facts, but he has only been in the job for a few months. Let’s hope he can quickly crack the code to improve the educational performance of future generations of children in the UK.

The key to education is the ability to read. We all have different speeds of reading and learning and all too often some of us can get left behind through in the whirlwind of modern life. Busy classrooms, busy Mums and Dads can result in the struggling reader slipping behind and maybe giving up. One of the recent success stories are the reading volunteers going into schools to give one to one support to a child. Startling results have been achieved. Within 6 weeks the struggling reader can overtake the rest of the class! If all children could receive this level of support we could expect substantially improved standards. But children don’t get 1:1 support in school, it’s impractical. In an average class of 30 there just isn’t the time despite the very best efforts of the teacher.

Some support at home is essential but how do we achieve this in the clamour of an equally busy home life. Bedtime stories have lapsed over the years yet these are the lifeblood of the help to be given at home. The part Dad’s play in this role has also slipped badly over the years due in the main to longer hours worked and perhaps the grim commute. The good news is there is some great new help for the busy school and parents

Technology has spurred the development of online reading games. Using a pc, whiteboard and especially a laptop computer, children can now watch animated stories where the script is highlighted as the narrator reads the story. Children love to repeat a favourite story – now just a click of the mouse away. And by turning reading into educational games there’s some great fun in the process.

To see an example of MightyBook reading support educational games take a look here

Alistair Owens operates www.keen2learn.co.uk offering educational games toys and puzzles.