Key Stage 2/National Curriculum

I have been privileged to gain a first hand experience of the key stage 2 curriculum in my voluntary work and find out what its all about. Key stage 2 covers years 3-6 in primary education (age 7-11) which comes under the welsh curriculum. This is Wales’ unique curriculum which sets out the foundation for what is to be taught in the classrooms involving the history, geography and culture of Wales and the locality  (BBC, 2007).

The key principles that the government aimed to achieve by bringing the curriculum into schools were:

• A sense of belonging.
• A sense of place and heritage.
• An awareness of the importance of language and literature in the history and life of Wales.
• An understanding of the creative and expressive arts in Wales.

(BBC. (2007, 09). BBC . Retrieved 03 30, 2013, from The School Gate For Parents in Wales: http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/schoolgate/aboutschool/content/curriculumprimary.shtml)

The government insisted that more emphasis should be taken on core subjects such as Welsh, English, Science and Math’s and referred to other subjects as foundation. The foundation subjects involved subjects like history, design technology, geography and so on. The criticism I would consider to be a major fault is the grading and constant assessment of children starting as soon as they enter key stage 2 in year 3. I have experience this testing whilst on voluntary work and I do not believe the children should be put through this at this critical time of their development. The government has set standards that at the end of key stage 2 children should be expected to reach between levels 2-5, most expected to be on level 4  (BBC, 2007). Linking the other context and taking them into consideration I disagree strongly with the assessment criteria in key stage 2 as children should be given freedom and should not be put under pressure at that age. The other downfall to the key stage 2  assessment criteria is that the teachers themselves do the assessment therefore I don’t believe the marking criteria would be fair as teachers could possibly build relationships with the children and alter the marks to an extent. It is a positive on the other hand that teachers do mark and assess the children as if they went to external exam boards to be marked and they come back as bad results the child would perhaps lose motivation, self-esteem and the love for learning.

 Pictures taken at Tal-Y-Copa Primary school by myself.

With my voluntary work in a year 3 classroom I was able to get a taste of key stage 2 being taught in a classroom and I was able to understand the values and the government’s aims more. The environment is more relaxed and children are allowed to socialize and have interacting times in the morning or afternoon where they discuss what they've got up to in their social life. The picture above is of a classroom display with the children’s work put on it. This is effective and this stage of their developmental process as children can see and identify the work they've done which encourages love for learning and builds self-esteem towards learning. I was also given a sheet of a planned physical education lesson the teacher had prepared where the children were outdoors rehearsing a real life scenario of being shepherds and guiding the sheep (other children who were blind-folded) back to the correct place by using a code of taping or clapping without actually communicating. This was encouraging to see that a physical education lesson had real life scenarios and could teach them the values and importance of scenarios like this rather than just playing a competitive sport such as football or rugby.