The Welsh National Curriculum: "Look at the state of this"...

[Debbie_Hepplewhite]

Someone on Twitter has just tweeted about the Welsh National Curriculum with the comment, "Look at the state of this!"

http://learning.gov.wales/resources/bro ... y/?lang=en

So, I have started to look at the documents via the link above - and, sure enough, what I have read about language, reading and writing so far I find quite dismaying.

Rather than bang on about why I think the content and format is so inadequate, I thought others might like to look at some of the content first to see what they might think of it.

Then, we could perhaps develop a discussion about this Welsh National Curriculum - and other curriculums too.

I have been shocked already by the advent of Welsh National Schools in which, I am told, children are taught only in the Welsh language until Key Stage 2 (juniors) and then in Key Stage 2, they are taught English as if it is any other subject - for example, one history lesson per week, one English lesson per week. Is this really the case?

I ought to find out more about this because those children must be at a huge disadvantage with regard to communication in the English language if that is the case.

It's hard enough teaching reading and writing with the complex English spelling system to English-speakers, let alone children only being taught in Welsh until they are in Key Stage 2. It's not as if Welsh is spoken widely in the world compared to Spanish for example.

My understanding is that this is what's happening also in Scotland - with the Gaelic language taking increasing precedence over the English language.

What a strange world we live in - whilst much of the rest of the world chooses to teach English as an important additional language, here in the UK, Wales and Scotland look as if they are doing the opposite, turning the clock back regarding the language medium for early schooling.

We need to share a common language in order to be able to communicate and relate to people across the world.

I don't for one minute think that a common language 'should' be English - it is just looking like this is one of those languages of choice as an additional language in much of the rest of the world.

Anyway, I digress, please do glance at the Welsh National Curriculum literature to see what you think!

[davowillz]

Unfortunately the situation is far worse than you've portrayed. There are in fact lots of Welsh medium schools who teach English phonics and reading better than English medium schools. Where to start with the mess we are in?
Well firstly they got rid of SATS in favour of teacher assessment. Which was fine until they linked accountability to SATS performance, which has led to pupils with a reading age of 8 on the Salford Sentence test being awarded Level 4 at the end of key stage 2. I won't pretend end of key stage 3 results are any more realistic for the majority of schools.
So then some people had the fairly decent idea of emulating the Finnish system, and they called it the Foundation phase, except they didn't fund, train or implement it properly and so quite a lot of teachers conflated "learning through play" with, well, just play. If there was any phonics training given in the past please remember it was the Foundation phase teachers who had it. You can see what happened now already I'm sure. The pupils then went to a teacher without phonics expertise, (there are a lot of these in Wales), who was unable to get them to make sufficient progress in reading (here comes the Matthew effect!) Also teachers who did actually teach reading well were moved further up the schools to be replaced by teachers with no phonics training.
Having seen the PISA results and just about realised that maybe getting rid of SATS was a bad idea, they made the Literacy and Numeracy skills Framework and made up some more PISA style tests. To do well in these tests you need knowledge, not skills, of course. Because it would be silly to test the skills you've asked people to teach.
There is more awfulness, but now I am just too depressed.
I shall write again soon.

[Debbie_Hepplewhite]

Thank you for this information.

I had heard that there was a dreadful Year 2 national knowledge-based test in Wales that is onerous and not fit-for-purpose.

I did try in Rhondda Cynon Taf (where I was invited to do some authority-wide phonics training) to get interest generated in using England's Year One Phonics Screening Test but to no apparent avail although I'm not in touch with the RCT authority so have no knowledge of post-training developments (if any) and I have no experience or real knowledge of teaching in Wales.

IFERI exists on the basis of 'doing something' as the better option to 'doing nothing' so this is the place to explain the scenario in Wales to see if anything can be done to inform people of developments in Wales and then to try to do something about it if possible.

You are very welcome to continue to share information and then perhaps there are ways to move things forward in a more research-informed and practice-informed way.

The thing is, when what people observe affects the education of young people, you can't afford to do 'nothing' when it is blatantly clear that educational practices and decisions are not what they should be.