As someone who has tried to plan a coherent PSH(E)E [at one point it was Personal, Social, Health and Economic Education] I fully agree. There isn't enough time in the curriculum to deliver everything properly. You end up shoehorning things together that don't really fit, or it gets a one off lesson. Often PSHE is delivered by a random assortment of teachers who's specialisms are elsewhere, so it doesn't always have the impact you want.
Though I think this highlights another issue with adding it to trying to shoehorn it in. If it's just naturally part of an activity, the pupils get to actually do it. If it's to fit into an hour's PSHE lesson in the middle of the school day, is it really feasible to take pupils down to a bus stop, get them all to buy a ticket/scan their pass on the bus, travel a couple of stops to see how to know where to get off, wait for a return bus in the opposite direction, do the same again, etc? With catching a train, getting a class of 30 children to buy a ticket somehow and the scheduling of the train services would be even more challenging, except perhaps those whose school is outside an Underground station somewhere fairly central. Doing it in a classroom would be half-baking it.
It's probably about 40 years too late for that, far too many of the current and upcoming generations of parents would barely have a clue themselves.
No, you literally have to teach children everything. A friend of mine complained, that his 10 year old son could not take the bus. He could not take the train. He had to be driven to school. He did not have the skill, to make his own breakfast. After, speaking to other parents, he concluded that this was normal. He felt that in our time, we were pushed too hard. Perhaps, the schools could teach the use of public transport. It only takes one or two good educational videos.
But why? Schools have an already-oveloaded* agenda: OFSTED policies changing,
Nice to hear from you. What the children have not learnt, they must learn as adults. I feel sorry for them. They are the ones that will struggle.
Kids are capable of figuring some things out for themselves. An example for me was how to use public transport. What does need to be taught has to be done by both schools and parents. Schools can't teach everything, there isn't enough funding for that or hours in the school year. As for your earlier example of a 10 year not knowing how to use a bus, why didn't the parents teach him? You may think of this as harsh but its not the schools responsibility to teach kids absolutely everything.
And their parent(s) has the time, ability and the responsibility to teach and guide their children about all those life skills. It's known as parenting.
Learning begins at home though.
There are all sorts of things children might do one day. Should schools cover every single eventuality. Schools should stick to the core subjects and ignore all the mumbo jumbo.
I would argue that I'd rather the school teach children all of the above over what date the Battle of Hastings, the name for a bendy river was. As someone who volunteers teaching basic finance in schools it's clear that some children don't have the access to good financial information at home.
There's a "life skills" place in one of the former tobacco bonds in Bristol. Year 6 classes go around and are given practical examples of rail safety, electrical safety, gas safety etc.
Yes, this seems to be a similar type of place.
Really I felt quite radicalised about this idea when my daughter was born. We went to the antenatal classes and were fully prepared. It was extremely worthwhile but it was also not cheap or accessible to everyone.
