What do we hope children will experience and achieve during the primary years? We want them to develop an interest in literacy and numeracy and ensure high achievement in these areas.Linked to this is the extension of interest and curiosity of the immediate environment and the wider world. Then to make sure that there are opportunities to be creative, original and to use their initiative, and because we hope for lifelong learning, that there is an enjoyment of learning.

You may already have created a slightly different list, but there may be some general agreement of these aims. Inevitably the broad objectives lead to the subject areas of English, Mathematics, Science, History, Geography, Design and Technology, Afrikaans, Zulu, as well as Art, Music, and Information and Communication Technology. However, there are many forces at work within primary education that have created barriers to the achievement of those aims and the distribution of the subject areas. Indeed it could be argued that those forces have reduced the children’s education to a more rigid and limiting primary school career. These effects include target setting and testing, prescribed literacy and numeracy hours, the expectations of high schools and mandated curriculums.

Assessment and targets

Target setting and testing are an inevitable part of everyday educational life. Nevertheless, assessment is an important component of the educational process, to determine the progress being made, to enable the teacher to consider what might be provided to support further learning and to form the basis for communication with parents and others where appropriate. However, assessment often becomes the primary focus within the teaching and learning process and a child’s ability is often based on the results in assessment tasks rather than the capacity to convey the information covered.

Literacy and Numeracy Time

When literacy and numeracy become the clear focus of the primary school years, the subjects are often allocated the prime learning time early in the school day. Such an organisation acts as a limitation upon the wider learning possibilities of the school day. This creates a narrow and predictable structure for the first six or seven years of the chance time at school. None of this would appear to encourage an interest in and enjoyment of learning for life. Successful class teaching is to be discursive, interactive, well paced, confident and ambitious. However in the modern classroom with the focus on assessment and testing, there is a real danger of an overreliance on textbooks and worksheets and of transmission teaching with some children left behind during the class session and others coasting.

The proposed narrowing of the curriculum is a cause for concern for many teachers. With the reduction in time for the creative and artistic subjects, originality and use of initiative will be lost, and children will be expected to work almost entirely with tightly controlled content provided by the teacher and a sustained commitment to an area of work.

I have suggested that assessment and testing, the focus on literacy and numeracy, high school expectations and prescribed curriculum may create barriers to the achievement of the broader aims of primary education. Children in the foundation years of primary school need to be protected from the worst excesses of the above.

It is somewhat ironic that when our future may be dependent upon adults who are creative, original and able to use their initiative–as well as being literate and numerate–that primary schooling may be restricted to the development of those qualities. Perhaps the inclusion of enjoyment into the promised school education will help resolve these problems. Certainly, it is time to reflect upon the current changing nature of primary schooling and to take steps to modernise the provision that for the 21st-century.