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Gove on a mission to restore times tables: Primary schools told to return to traditional values

June 11th, 2012 FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda

  • Primary schools will have to teach foreign languages
  • Reforms are designed to improve basic literacy
  • Gove says system lacks rigour and means pupils enter secondary school without basic grasp of three Rs
  • Latin and Greek could be taught from age of seven

By
James Chapman


PUBLISHED:

07:04 EST, 10 June 2012

|

UPDATED:

18:35 EST, 10 June 2012

Times tables are to be put back at the heart of the curriculum for children’s first years at school for the first time in decades.

Education Secretary Michael Gove will this week tear up the rules governing what must be taught at primary school amid growing evidence that British children have slipped behind the rest of the world.

Mr Gove is insisting on a return to traditional values in the classroom so that youngsters have a far better grounding, particularly in maths and science, by the time they go to secondary school at 11.

Education Secretary Michael Gove will this week tear up the rules governing what must be taught at primary school

Education Secretary Michael Gove will this week tear up the rules governing what must be taught at primary school

Like generations who went to school before the 1970s, times tables up to 12 will have to be known by age nine under the new curriculum. Currently, children are given until age 11 to learn up to 10 times 10.

Children will be made to learn how to calculate using decimal places and fractions, a key preparation for algebra.

By the end of primary school, pupils will also now be required to confidently ‘read, write, order and compare numbers up to ten million and determine the value of each digit’, or its place value. The current National Curriculum expects pupils only to ‘show understanding of place value up to 1,000’.

Learning a foreign language will be compulsory from the age of seven, while children as young as five will be expected to learn and recite poetry.

There will also be a fresh focus on spelling and grammar.

In science, there will be a return to the basics of physics, biology and chemistry, more practical experiments and a focus on the biographies of celebrated scientists such as Charles Darwin and Carl Linnaeus.

The new curriculum, seen by the Daily Mail, aims to bring British primary schools to the standard of the most rigorous education systems elsewhere in the world, including parts of the US, Hong Kong and Singapore.

In Government proposals schools will be expected to teach children how to calculate using decimal places and fractions

In Government proposals schools will be expected to teach children how to calculate using decimal places and fractions

Despite record spending under Labour, children’s grasp of the ‘three Rs’ fell between 2000 and 2010. The average score for seven-year-olds at Key Stage 1 in reading, writing and maths combined fell over the decade.

Shockingly, one in three leaves primary school unable to read, write and add up properly.

The latest Key Stage 2 results show that 33 per cent of 11-year-olds fail to achieve the expected standard in reading, writing and maths. That means 183,000 children left primary school without the required understanding of the three Rs last year.

More than 40,000 11-year-olds are going to secondary school with the reading age of a seven-year-old.

WHAT WILL BE TAUGHT IN PRIMARY SCHOOLS

  • AGED 5: Simple words such as buzz and panda, learning poems off by heart

  • AGED 7: Correct use of apostrophes, the first words of a foreign language

  • AGED 9: A spelling list of 91 words including separate and particular, apostrophes in plurals such as men’s and boys’

  • AGED 11: Correct use of punctuation including semi-colons and dashes, speaking sentences in a foreign language.

Ministers say Labour’s own primary
curriculum review was a ‘total disaster’, and proposed replacing
traditional subjects such as history and geography with ill-defined
‘areas of learning’. It was due to come into force in 2010 but was
halted by Mr Gove.

Now, new
draft programmes of study for maths and science will be published by the
Department for Education this week, following a report by an expert
panel.

Mr Gove says the rules will ‘restore rigour’, essential if the nation wants to remain competitive in a world dominated by technology.

The changes, he argues, will help raise standards and ensure all children have a good grasp of the basics, equipping them with the knowledge and skills to succeed.

The new requirements in maths are described as ‘much more challenging’ than the current National Curriculum.

As well as the new emphasis on the learning of times tables, it stresses the importance of pupils becoming fluent in mental and written arithmetic. There is also a greater focus on ‘number bonds’, simple addition and subtraction facts that pupils are taught to recognise and use instantly – for example, 9+9 = 18 or 16-7 = 9.

Pupils will be expected to be able to add, subtract, multiply and divide decimals such as 32.4 or 4.78 by the end of primary school.

This is a significant increase in challenge from the current National Curriculum, which does not cover multiplication and division of decimals until secondary education.

The Government is publishing the draft programmes of study for an informal consultation. Ministers expect there to be debate around what is appropriate at different ages.

How classrooms could go back to the Fifties

The Department for Education will consider the public response and redraft the programme before re-publishing it later in the year for a formal consultation. The final programme will be introduced in  schools from September 2014.

Simon Walker, of the Institute of Directors, said: ‘The UK faces a challenge in education which it is currently failing to meet. We cannot duck the question – a world-class education system is vital to the UK’s long-term economic competitiveness.

‘Our curriculum, teaching and qualifications must be a match for the best in the world. However, international comparisons with high-performing countries have made it manifestly clear that we need to raise the bar.’

But Chris Keates, of teachers’ union the NASUWT, said the Government’s intention to ‘impose a highly prescriptive programme of study on teachers’ would ‘shackle their professional discretion’.

They are part of moves from Mr Gove
to return to the traditional principles of the three Rs while reducing
the time spent on other school subjects.

Students
will be read poems by their teacher and be expected to learn and recite
them from Year 1, which they enter at five years old.

Children
in the next year will have ‘to build up a repertoire of poems learnt by
heart and recite some of these, with appropriate intonation to make the
meaning clear’.

Primary
schools could offer lessons in Mandarin, Latin and Greek as well as
French, German and Spanish. Foreign language learning is currently only
compulsory in secondary schools, and one in 10 primaries offers no
language training.

The move is an effort to arrest the decline in the number of students taking foreign language at GCSE.

43 per cent of GCSE pupils took a language in 2010, compared with 75 per cent ten years ago.

The previous Labour government ended compulsory language learning after the age of 14 in 2004.

Nearly 40,000 11-year-olds every year currently leave primary school with the reading ability of a seven-year-old.

Here’s what other readers have said. Why not add your thoughts,
or debate this issue live on our message boards.

The comments below have not been moderated.



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At least Gove is one of the few Ministers actually thinking and doing the job that WE are paying him for. One problem he does not seem to have foreseen……. someone will have to teach this to some of the people calling themselves ‘teachers’ first!

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AT LAST! It has taken nearly fifty years for the penny to drop since they meddled with the “old” educational system. It will take at least a generation to turn the situation round so let’s get started.

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Mr Gove should spend a month working as a TA in a ‘satisfactory’ inner city primary school. He just might then come up with some really constructive and sensible ideas.

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The teachers have already started wimpering.

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Oh look – surprise surprise – the teacher’s union is against these changes. Now who would have anticipated that? ==== Chris Keates, of teachers’ union the NASUWT, said the Government’s intention to ‘impose a highly prescriptive programme of study on teachers’ would ‘shackle their professional discretion’ ===

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Let’s remember we live in 2012 and what we teach our children needs to be relevant. Our future needs thinkers, inventors, problem solvers and people who can communicate on all levels. How does a rigorous curriculum based on knowing but not necessarily able to apply knowledge, contribute? frustrated teacher, Hants
– planetmog, Lee, Hants, 11/6/2012 05:36
We listened to your lot in the 60’s and look where it got us. Mr. Gove’s plan is to ensure a sound base from which the child can then expand into a wider field of study. You can’t run before you can walk.
Just give the plan a chance and don’t start knocking it until it has been tested. Excuse the old
cliché but I came from a poverty- stricken background and thanks to grammar schools I managed to
pull myself out of the mire, so to speak, and had a fairly successful career. I managed to attain a BSc and BA in Classics owing to an education based on solid foundations . Then the ‘ trendies’
came in and ruined everything

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As the son of a serviceman, I went to eleven schools in eleven years, starting in 1953, and still managed to leave, aged sixteen, with five acceptable ‘o’ levels for a flying commission with the RAF. Later, I enjoyed a career as a pilot with the RAF and civil aviation. I would never have managed that without a sound primary (and secondary) education received in the fifties and sixties covering the basics. Mr. Grove is right.

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Let’s remember we live in 2012 and what we teach our children needs to be relevant. Our future needs thinkers, inventors, problem solvers and people who can communicate on all levels. How does a rigorous curriculum based on knowing but not necessarily able to apply knowledge, contribute?
frustrated teacher, Hants

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Gove seems to forget that today’s curriculum is much wider than the 50s one, not least because modern children have to learn IT skills. When does he imagine all this is going to be fitted in?

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If he is that worried why doesn’t he get stoped all the ‘non pupil’ days at schools. Teachers have too much holiday and then add inset days etc. to it.

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