• Privacy policy
  • T&C’s
  • FAQ
  • Meet the Team
  • About The London Economic
  • Advertise
TLE ONLINE SHOP!
NEWSLETTER
SUPPORT THE LONDON ECONOMIC
  • TLE
  • News
  • Politics
  • Opinion
  • Business
  • Sport
  • Entertainment
  • Film
  • Food
  • Lifestyle
  • Property
  • Travel
  • Tech/Auto
No Result
View All Result
The London Economic
  • TLE
  • News
  • Politics
  • Opinion
  • Business
  • Sport
  • Entertainment
  • Film
  • Food
  • Lifestyle
  • Property
  • Travel
  • Tech/Auto
No Result
View All Result
The London Economic
No Result
View All Result
Home News Education

Secret Teacher – Never Mind The SPaG Bollocks

Up and down the nation, parents of children aged around 7 and 11 will be doing battle with the horror that is SPaG tests – or, to the uninitiated, Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar. Large numbers of children are arriving in school so much further back in their development than they were 20 years ago – […]

Joe Mellor by Joe Mellor
April 6, 2016
in Education, News

Up and down the nation, parents of children aged around 7 and 11 will be doing battle with the horror that is SPaG tests – or, to the uninitiated, Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar.

Large numbers of children are arriving in school so much further back in their development than they were 20 years ago – many have speech problems, many aren’t toilet-trained, many have never held a pencil or pen or been read a story before they arrive in school.

Yet now these kids, along with all those who are “in line with age-related expectations” (lovely phrase) have SPaG to contend with. SPaG is a load of educational jargon which kids are forced to learn. Yet, because the powers that be have no gumption, these new terms have been thrown into the curriculum with no thought at all. Spelling is taught in a far from uniform way across the country, and this is a problem which needs addressing. Many teachers, unfortunately, are not great at spelling yet are responsible for teaching spelling patterns. Punctuation knowledge often comes of reading regularly, but, alas, many children are not read to and do not read for pleasure. They see it as a duty to be done for school, nothing more. Since many children do not speak in full sentences, they cannot write in full sentences – something the government has not yet picked up on.

Kids currently struggling heroically with the SPaG tests at Year 2 and Year 6 can rest easy – nobody uses these terms in real life in the known world, ever; terms like modal verb, fronted adverbials, antonyms and determiners. As the great Michael Rosen has proven many times recently, even the official guidance is contradictory and contains many grammatical errors. People with linguistics degrees that have learnt several languages have never needed these terms. Yet the government decree that 7- and 11-year-olds should know them.

This is all completely wrong-headed. Throwing in lots of totally unnecessary technical jargon that does NOTHING to benefit the children’s writing will simply turn children away from writing. Even much of the guidance for teachers to assess their writing is based not on how interesting, lively or enjoyable to read it may be (what used to be called “composition and effect”), but based on dry, pointless terms. So a child may write a thoroughly dull piece of writing, yet score highly because it is technically proficient. Such an approach stifles creativity, making writing dull for children to do and dull for teachers to read.

That the government have put a whole new curriculum in place, testing the current Year 6 children based on years of content they haven’t covered in previous years shows how laughable their thinking is. Whereas sensible thinking would have rolled it out from reception class upwards to see if it worked, or done some trialling across a few schools first, this of course would have led to feedback from everyone saying it’s insane.

Having suffocated the teaching profession with bureaucracy, unattainable targets and the lamentably inept, inconsistent and inhuman train wreck that is Ofsted, the government have succeeded in removing most of the joy from teaching.

RelatedPosts

Remainers urged to identify as ‘European’ in upcoming census

Scotland splits from rest of UK with ‘substantial reopening’ from late April

Johnson ‘very optimistic’ restrictions will be lifted on 21 June

Queen’s relative jailed for sexually assaulting guest at his Scottish castle

Now, by putting in meaningless jargon with a soullessness the USSR would be proud of, an obsession with testing and preparing for testing rather than inspiring creativity and a love of language and learning, they have taken much of the joy out of education for the children – worse, often replacing it with a sense of failure at 7 and 11 years old.

The only people who have benefited from this affront to English are the ones paid to make up the tests and curriculum. If the voices of dissent don’t win and these ludicrous tests go ahead, in case you don’t do that great – it’s not you that’s failed, kids. It’s the grown-ups.

Sorry, parents. Sorry, kids.

Since you are here

Since you are here, we wanted to ask for your help.

Journalism in Britain is under threat. The government is becoming increasingly authoritarian and our media is run by a handful of billionaires, most of whom reside overseas and all of them have strong political allegiances and financial motivations.

Our mission is to hold the powerful to account. It is vital that free media is allowed to exist to expose hypocrisy, corruption, wrongdoing and abuse of power. But we can't do it without you.

If you can afford to contribute a small donation to the site it will help us to continue our work in the best interests of the public. We only ask you to donate what you can afford, with an option to cancel your subscription at any point.

To donate or subscribe to The London Economic, click here.

The TLE shop is also now open, with all profits going to supporting our work.

The shop can be found here.

You can also SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER .

Support fearless, free, investigative journalism Support fearless, free, investigative journalism Support fearless, free, investigative journalism

Subscribe to our Newsletter

View our  Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions

Trending fromTLE

  • All
  • trending

What If We Got Rid Of Prisons?

Stress, fear and homelessness: The threat looming over families confronted with eviction

File photo dated 07/11/03 of a prison cell.

The Other Prison Pandemic

Latest from TLE

Image by AdobeStock

Weather forecast, alerts and UVB index for London, Wednesday 24 February 2021

Lucky Numbers and Horoscopes for today, 24 February 2021

Euro Millions results Tuesday 23rd February 2021

thunder ball results

Thunder Ball Results, Tuesday 23rd February 2021

About Us

TheLondonEconomic.com – Open, accessible and accountable news, sport, culture and lifestyle.

Read more

Address

The London Economic Newspaper Limited t/a TLE
Company number 09221879
International House,
24 Holborn Viaduct,
London EC1A 2BN,
United Kingdom

Contact

Editorial enquiries, please contact: jack@thelondoneconomic.com

Commercial enquiries, please contact: advertise@thelondoneconomic.com

SUPPORT

We do not charge or put articles behind a paywall. If you can, please show your appreciation for our free content by donating whatever you think is fair to help keep TLE growing and support real, independent, investigative journalism.

DONATE & SUPPORT

© 2019 thelondoneconomic.com - TLE, International House, 24 Holborn Viaduct, London EC1A 2BN. All Rights Reserved.




No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • News
  • Politics
  • Opinion
  • Business
  • Sport
  • Entertainment
  • Film
  • Lifestyle
  • Food
  • Property
  • Travel
  • Tech & Auto
  • About The London Economic
  • Meet the Team
  • Privacy policy

© 2019 thelondoneconomic.com - TLE, International House, 24 Holborn Viaduct, London EC1A 2BN. All Rights Reserved.