It was acceptable in the eighties

My mum, a retired reception teacher, recently told me that she had been chatting to the former headteacher of a school she worked in. They are both now grandparents with grandchildren in the early stages of primary education.

The level of expectations and formalised learning methods that their grandchildren are experiencing are a world away from the 1975-2000 period of their teaching careers. They questioned whether they had done enough. As they live in the village they taught in, and have done for over 40 years, they of course know the families of the children they taught. And there are the full range of academic outcomes across them, some who have achieved highly, and some who left as soon as possible. So whilst it didn't seem to have had any noticeable impact (after all every other school would have been teaching in a similar way) they wondered what would have happened had they pushed us more.

My own experience in that primary school was one of freedom and excitement. I remember the disappointment of moving into the second class where "free play" was only one afternoon a week. Being a small school, with fewer than 70 pupils and only 3 classrooms in total, the second class was where pupils in years 2 and 3 were taught. Of the three classrooms, two were "mobile" buildings, the other a leaky Victorian school room. There was one set of toilets for the school which you had to go outside to access, and the staff-room was essentially a shed which always smelled of cigarette smoke. It sounds like post-war Britain recovering from the blitz, but this was about 1986.

Homework was limited to times table tests and the occasional list of spellings to learn. I have vague memories of my second classroom teacher shouting "P-E-O-P-L-E" at me but many more memories of sewing (I was terrible), going out to find field mice in the Kent downs and, depending on the season, either manufacturing itching powder from the hips of flowers that grew on a playground tree or chasing each other with squashed damsel fruit, both knowing that the chaser won't actually go through with the threatened smearing. Oh and the IRA style balaclava hat which was very much in at my school.

By the time we reached the third class the actual "work" started. This seemed to be mainly working our way through Scottish maths scheme booklets. My main memory of these is learning the word "Hogmanay" but as for the actual maths I don't recall anything being taught in anywhere near the fashion it is now. Yes sometimes the teacher would tell us something, write a bit on the board and would making sure we knew what we were doing, but nothing like my daughter has now in Year 2.

At some point in what would now be year 5 I moved to a more urban school. I went from being one of three people in my school year to one of thirty (so still not a huge school). I remember being put on a table with the year 6 people (two mixed year 5/6 classrooms) and being shocked that they didn't know the alphabet. They had already failed the Kent Test (11+) and called me "boffin" (in a friendly way) for my alphabet skills. Had they been let down by the system? Probably? Do children get to 11 nowadays without interventions to give them these basic skills?

My final year of primary saw me and two other boys pass the 11+, and then effectively be left to our own devices from then on! A succession of changing staff members and supply teachers allowed those who had passed the 11+ to effectively do as we wished as soon as we'd finished our set work. This normally resulted in us furiously working through a work sheet for about an hour, copying something from the board and then being free to amuse ourselves from about 11am each day.

The school library was our playground, with no staff supervision. We devised codes, left clues for each other to follow, had free reign over the school computer where we worked out how to edit the names of characters in the text based games (and found it hilarious when 'Mr Bumface' appeared). Neglect? All I can say is that my friend who loved making codes and clues is now a high ranking policeman and I work with computers for a living (though sadly clients don't like me adding "Mr Bumface" into their systems).

So were we let down? Perhaps it is true that those from educated households, with plenty of "cultural capital" will do well however they learn. Or perhaps it doesn't actually matter what we learn just that we are interested in learning? I certainly have no complaints, the freedom to set my own timetable is one I cherish to today. But were those without the parental and social structures (gone on then, and genes!) I had helped sufficiently? Is there a middle ground that would allow more freedoms to be given to schools to educate children without crushing regimes of accountability yet ensure that all children come out with a decent basic standard of education?