Gender balance and education

I was browsing some local seminars recently, trying to better myself or something, and I spotted one regarding gender and primary education, supporting different outcomes for boys and girls and how to better encourage them to reach their early potential While I'm not sure I'll make it to the event itself, it got me thinking.  A dangerous habit, I'm sure you'll agree.

Thinking back to my own school days (in black and white, obviously) I attended two different primary schools, as we moved house when I was 9. Across these two schools, and probably somewhere around 15 primary teachers I encountered, there was only one male teacher.  Both schools had male headmasters, but only 1 actual, teaching children every day type teacher.  Squeaky's school is a little better. The head is male, there is one male teacher in the juniors department, but shock of all shocks, there is a male teaching assistant, who is actually based in Squeaky's class!  I know!  Hold the front page!

Yet when children move from primary to secondary education, there is a sudden and dramatic increase in the number of male teachers.  In my secondary school, the entire art, design & technology, science, geography and music departments were male.  Languages, RE, PE, and English were a mix of male and female teachers, and history, maths and home economics were all female.  And we had a male head teacher and deputy head.  Something of a balance shift there, I think you'd agree.  And looking in the other direction, there were no male staff at Squeaky's nursery at all, and I have seen otherwise educated and well balanced people say they would not send their child to a nursery where there were male staff!

Obviously I'm not saying my school experience was exactly the same as everyone else's.  Aside from anything else, I went to Catholic school, so there was the added bonus of nuns and the occasional priest added in to the mix, but looking at the friends I know in the teaching profession, the gender balance seems to remain in favour of female teachers at primary level, and male at secondary.

I should not be trusted with MS Paint. Fact.

On that basis, I had a quiet word with a friend of mine who works as a lecturer in a university.  She tells me that in her experience the balance is slightly different in Higher Education, where many of the people delivering the lectures are female, but the majority of senior staff are male. So, many students will see more female staff than male, but the reality is there are more male staff, who don't bother themselves with such trivial things as students.  This actually reflected my own university experience, but I had put that down to being in a small college, and studying a touchy-feely female heavy course.

What does this actually tell our children?  That women, and girls, can only learn so much? That their education levels are less important than their brothers? That they have less knowledge to share?  I hope not.  Women are, in family life, pushed into a nurturing role as a result of the whole pregnancy, giving birth type scenario. But why does that have to carry forward into education? Squeaky's teachers are not carrying her in their collective wombs, I did that bit.  They are filling her head with knowledge, ideas and ambition, and women have just as much of that as men.  Squeaky certainly has it in bucket loads, and is a veritable sponge to every piece of information that comes her way.

What am I trying to achieve here? Nothing really, I suppose, aside from venting.  The government are hardly going to sit up & take notice of this little corner of the blogosphere, and I can't change the past. But Squeaky's still quite fixed on the idea that she wants to be a teacher when she grows up, and I'm going to to my best to encourage her to be what she wants to be, and achieve all she can, no matter who or what tries to stand in her way.

What was your experience? Please do tell, I'm intrigued.

Further Adventures In Welsh

I've written in the past about our adventures in learning Welsh, and the difficulties we face in supporting Squeaky's education in a language that we don't speak ourselves.  It's not like learning a language

in secondary school where children have the skills to research, practice and learn independently, Squeaky still needs those around her to reinforce what she's learning, and that's really difficult when you don't have a clue.

Her pronunciation is getting better through repetition, and she's been introduced to a few new songs at school, with greater or lesser degrees of success.  Her latest song however, made me laugh more than maybe it should.

Mr Hapus had a wee, had a wee, ha ha!

Mr Hapus had a wee, had a wee, ha ha!

The internet comes to my rescue at times like this, and apparently what she should be singing is 

Mr Hapus ydw'i, ydw'i, ha ha!

(pronounced roughly Mr Hapus adoo ee, adoo ee, ha ha)

Or in English, Mr Happy is my name, is my name, ha ha! Almost to the tune of If you're happy & you know it.  Not that you'd realise, because right now, Squeaky is not going to be setting the next series of the X Factor on fire.  

I know Welsh isn't deliberately full of words that sound to the untrained ear as though they are bathroom related. But when you're teaching to a bunch of 3 & 4 year olds, to whom bodily functions are the most hilarious thing imaginable, there's not much that's going to convince them that they shouldn't be singing about toilets, or having a wee.  And to be honest, here's times where I'm no more mature either. Many pop songs sound better if you substitute heart with arse, or I think so anyway. Think about Billy Ray Cyrus (just for a minute!) Achy Breaky Arse is a whole lot funnier.

Talking to a few other mums, it seems that Had A Wee is quite a common misunderstanding of the song, and will pass in the same way as all the rest.  I'm just intrigued as to what bathroom related misunderstanding Squeaky's going to come home with next.  And how to keep a straight face when she sings it at the top of her voice in the supermarket.

Living with a MAT

It was parents' evening earlier this week at Squeaky's school.  Yes, the same school that she only started going to, for 2 hours a day, at the start of September.  They don't waste time.  Aside from the shock to the system that a parents' evening bears no resemblance to the concept of "evening" as understood by any other part of civilisation, starting as it did at 3.30pm, I was looking forward to it.

Squeaky gets regular homework, roughly every other week, which I do my best to help with - though google did come to my aid when I was faced with a circle map, a concept I'd never heard of before.  But the school also run a monthly family challenge called Family Values, and I was hopelessly confused by it, so I wanted to ask some questions about that.

Well, anyway.  Squeaky's teacher is lovely, we had a comfy seat in the staff room & she proceeded to tell us that our precocious little madam is, well, just that, in not so many words.  Apparently she's smarter than the average Squeak, and they want to put her on the More Able & Talented programme (MAT).  At 3.  Having only been there 7 weeks.

Not this sort of mat
Image courtesy of  John Kasawa/Freedigitalphotos.net

Well, obviously we already knew she was a small genius, what parent doesn't?  But it's rather nice to have it confirmed by someone who knows about these things.  It's such a cliché of parenting in the internet age, every Mumsnet/Netmums member's child is reading War & Peace at 2, and composing symphonies over their home-made sugar free baby led weaning flapjacks.  And I'm secretly Kate Moss.

I loathe competitive parenting.  I've agonised over telling, well, anyone about this (and was beaten to the decision by Squeaky Daddy who posted it as his facebook status within half an hour).  I've told people I trust, but there's no way on this little green earth I'm mentioning it to the mums in the school gate queue.  After all, all I know of their children is the few minutes a day I see them outside the gates, I don't know how easy or hard they're finding things.  Wouldn't it feel terrible if your child was falling behind at a young age, and someone was bragging about their tiny overachiever?

So, once they go back to school after half term, Squeaky will have her own Play Plan, designed to give her some extra challenges & extra stimulation to move her forward & reach her potential.  It's something I think is very positive - the same terminology is used - Play Plan, Individual Education Plan, for children with additional learning needs at either end of the spectrum.  I'm encouraged by the recognition that smart children need support as well as those who are struggling.  It didn't happen in my day (old fogey that I am), I remember being bored rigid by the school's choice of books for me, reading Judy Blume books long before I was old enough to understand what periods were, and effectively being left to self-teach in maths because I was working a full term ahead of the rest of the class.

So wish us luck, we've got a challenge ahead of us.  Keeping Squeaky motivated, maintaining the momentum from school, and just trying to keep up with her.  I'll do my best to record what life is like in the MAT programme, or at least as much as Squeaky will tell me of it.

Learning Welsh

Despite both Daddy & I being from the West Midlands, we live in the South Wales Valleys, and as such we're governed by the sometimes strange rules laid down by the Welsh Assembly Government.  Education is a little bit different in Wales to the rest of the UK, it's an area where the Assembly have devolved powers to make their own rules.  (Oddly, since I started mentally writing this post yesterday, the AM with the portfolio for education has resigned, and been replaced by my local AM, Huw Lewis, so education's been very much in the news here.)  One such rule is the compulsory inclusion of Welsh language in the school curriculum, right from the Foundation Stage.

In fact, BEFORE the Foundation Stage.  Squeaky starts part time at the school nursery in September, but Welsh has been included in the things she's been learning in the preschool class at the day nursery she goes to now, for at least the last year.  Neither Daddy nor I speak Welsh at all.  I can recognise a few written words from signs & that, and answer the phones at work with a chirpy "Bore Da! Good Morning!", or a slightly less chirpy "Prynhawn Da! Good Afternoon!" because I'm less confident of my pronunciation of the latter (and I just had to look up the spelling)  This is making things tricky when we try to support Squeaky's learning.

Not understanding the language ourselves though, does make it a fascinating experience, watching how her brain makes sense of and learns language.  If she hears & understands something properly, she repeats it accurately, and learns the right word.  She can count to 5 in Welsh quite effectively (and 6 in Spanish, thanks to Dora The Explorer!), and has picked up a couple of nursery rhymes.  The fun comes along when she doesn't quite hear something right.  Naturally, I guess, she substitutes in something that she does understand, whether or not it makes sense in the context of the song, with entertaining consequences.

Clap, clap, un, dau, tri,
Clap, clap, un, dau, tri,
Clap, clap, un, dau tri,
Toilet, toilet, toilet.

For the non-Welsh speakers, the above numbers are pronounced "Eeen, Die, Tree", and according to a swift google, the last line should actually be "Troi a throi ei’n dwylo", which a colleague advises me is something to do with turning your hands over & over.  I don't know.  There are people far smarter than me who can help with that one.

Yesterday, she decided to match her Spanish skills in counting to 6, by doing the same in Welsh.  As I said above, she's mastered 1 to 5 quite comfortably, but I really can't help past that, even though my train home from Cardiff Central station always goes from Platform 6.  So she went for it herself

Un  (Eeen)
Dau (Die)
Tri  (Tree)
Pedwar (Pedwaaar)
Pump  (Pimp.  Yes. Really. I know.)
QUACK

Again, a quick google tells me she was aiming for "Chwech" so Quack isn't really a million miles away, but the substitution was just so cute, and I really couldn't correct her because I wouldn't have been sure of being right.

It's quite natural, I suppose, to substitute something you understand, even if it doesn't make sense. I remember learning Spanish at school, and seeing one of my classmates write "Kettle" for "¿qué tal?", purely as an aid to her memory.  And the number of mis-heard lyrics I could entertain you with, well, that's a whole other post!

It's going to get harder as she gets older, and learns more Welsh at school.  I've thought about taking classes myself, so that I can support her education. It's not like when she's in High School, doing chemistry or something I was hopeless at, she's going to be looking for a lot more support in the early years of primary school, and I don't quite know how to do that when I haven't got those skills myself.  We're fortunate to have Welsh speaking family members living close by though, so I suspect the linguistic talents of aunties & cousins will be being called upon for the complicated bits.

Do you have any experience you can share with me, on education in a second language?  Or your own mishearings?  C'mon, spill!

Oh How Many Peas?

I'm not a teacher.  In a former life I may have been a trainer (no, not a shoe, before you start giggling), but it's one thing standing in front of a room of adults who may or may not want to be there, with my powerpoint presentation to back me up, talking about something that while they might not be very interested in, at least they're going to understand some of. It's altogether different trying to teach a preschooler.  Especially something as abstract as the alphabet.

How am I meant to get her in a receptive enough frame of mind to get A B C to stick?  The letter shapes, not the song.  Though the song is another story altogether.  Have you figured out the title of today's post yet?  Let's sing together.

♫A B C D E F G
H I J K Oh How Many Peas?♫

I shouldn't laugh, but you've got to admit it's funny, and pretty inventive.  I can see the thought process "I don't understand this, so I'm going to sing words I do understand that sort of make sense."  I do it all the time while singing along to the radio.

But there's a more serious side to it.  I've noticed for a while, and the nursery have pointed out to me now as well, that Squeaky's having a bit of trouble with her "C" sounds, mostly at the start of words.  She can say them well when she chooses to, but doesn't.  Apparently I drink Toffee in the mornings, the people over the road have a black and white Tat, and that green thing in the living room in December was a Tristmas Tree.  What's frustrating me is that if she talks about Father Christmas, or a Pussy Cat, she says it perfectly. ARGH, it's driving me crazy (or trazy?)

I've spoken to a speech & language therapist - I knew my office was good for something - and we've made Squeaky's C Box, with a load of toys & familiar objects beginning with C in it, so we can try and work on it,  but it's difficult to get her in the mood to concentrate and play along.  When she realises what you're trying to do, she starts being silly and saying things with a T sound even more, deliberately.  (It's all the more important, because our surname begins with a C, so she needs to be able to say that.)

Has anyone got any tips?