AnonyMouse_30128

I think we have to be careful here to consider the difference between exclusion ...eg refusing a child access to your setting after they have started and 'planning' as in do you have the right support services available to them? If you know that your team/support can only help x quantity of children with additional needs then is going over that number possibly detrimental to all your service users?

This is a great account of older children and reading but maybe if these children hadn't been forced to read the most appalling and boring reading schemes as youngsters they wouldn't have been turned off reading in the first place! (i am not suggesting this teacher did this ...i am just moaning about the system!) 

My boys at Pre-School are the first on the sofa 'reading'. I often have a dozen of them giggling at what they have found enjoying their time together. I rarely have boys who won't engage in story telling or storytimes. If they are so engaged at this age something must be going wrong when they get to early years in school?

As a parent of a child with dyslexia i have witnessed a child who loved stories to screaming when the school reading books came out of the school bag. Maybe we need to change the system at an earlier stage to stop this hatred and reluctance emerging.

It's so great to see schools considering transitions so carefully. Our borough is one of the few that still runs a 3 tier system and so children transfer year 4/5 and then 8/9 your article makes me wonder how on earth my children coped ! i don't think that there was much thought process at all when they started their respective year groups and the year 9 transition is a bit of a nightmare. I suspect it will not be long before our borough falls in to line with the rest of the country.

As to summer learning loss it will be fascinating to see how this cohort does. I know many of our families have done well during lockdown. They have played more/talked more/eaten better/ learnt together and developed new skills. (i have never had so many in a group who have learnt how to ride a bike!) and these new skills although not 'school' based will help them with their writing through the development of core strength or their knowledge of nature will help them with their science...etc. but i fear that schools will not see this learning for what it is as it's not been done on a piece of paper. Perhaps this will make us all rethink our strategies and develop systems more intune with the children and less for ticking boxes.

thanks for your thoughts Alice.

I wonder how much of this is us wanting to follow traditions though and keep the 'sameness' going. Are the children going to suffer because there isn't a show or an art project? These things are lovely and of course make our children's lives more interesting but do we really need them...do the children need them? Many children leave schools throughout the year or at the end of a year with little or no transition and don't appear to suffer for it as long as the receiving school adapts for them a little! It's hard to leave what's familiar of course but i sometimes think the enormous build up for months before is counterproductive. Maybe this time we have had could be used to reflect on what is really helpful for the children and we could redesign our programmes next year to put the children at the heart of the process not just because it's what we have always done? 

Interesting article Jack....it's certainly made me think ....and obviously ramble !

Thanks Stephen  lovely gesture of support .xx FM