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>>I was in my pre-judiced (sic) way trying to find out just how inefficient they >>could make it. >>They've done an amazing job. >>As a parent I would like to be able to see what they're meant to be teaching >>my kids and its pretty much impossible to find out. >>Surely they could have a web page with a course/stage matrix table with >>clickable links to the course requirements (and all the specious metadata) >>The course requirements should then be in small bite sized blocks of simple >>HTML that a teacher or parent can then copy and expand on to create 'lessons' >>and tests that could then be published (shared) on a WIKI (or similar) by >>registered teachers and accessed by parents/carers. >> >>I could then, after a few clicks find out what my kids are meant to be >>learning rather than finding out how (if the teachers could even control the >>kids) well meaning the whole thing is and how we go forward and all that >>pathetic setting of boundaries etc is done. >> >>Sometimes you cant see the wood for the trees - this time you cant see the >>wood for the sawdust.... The curriclum as a whole is available online for you to view. This has little benefit however as it is down to individual schools to develop their own material to cover the curriculum. Schemes of Work are also available which give teachers a head start but in my experience a lot has to be re-hashed to fit how the school is approaching things - makes it useless to all but the laziest teachers. The latest government edict is that the curriculum should be taught in a more holistic way in the form of themes which include cross-curricular topics (ie. a scheme of work which covers colouring in shapes counts for both maths and art tickboxes). With this in mind, a lot of schools are now reviewing their current approach and looking at developing a whole new one. There are commercial companies supplying this market with shrink-wrapped material (for about £8-9000, as I understand) but my school at least is looking at building their own from scratch. To be fair, there is a LOT of material out there for teachers from central government, LEA and peer supported. The difficulty for most small schools (especially primary schools where there is no streaming) is that most teachers need to write a number of schemes of work for each topic they teach due to the wide range of abilities in the class (ie. Gifted & Talented, "normal", "divs" and SEN) Most schools/teachers should be able to provide you with a list of topics that they will be teaching your child that term Martin -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html