Maths, English, Science. And the entire unwritten curriculum some children are expected to master just to get through the school day.
Maths. English. Science. PE.
And apparently, an entire additional curriculum in reading social cues, managing uncertainty, controlling impulses and knowing when a joke has stopped being funny.
It’s a fairly ambitious workload for someone who still needs reminding to bring their drink bottle home.
When we send our children to school, we know what they’re supposed to be learning. There’s a curriculum, a timetable and usually an impressive number of emails explaining what’s happening throughout the term.
But there’s another kind of learning happening alongside all of that.
Nobody calls it a subject. There aren’t any textbooks. And there’s certainly no helpful revision guide.
Yet some children spend an extraordinary amount of their day trying to master it.
Welcome to the unofficial curriculum
Let’s take an ordinary Tuesday.
8:45am. Arriving at school.
For one child, it’s unpacking their bag and finding their friends.
For another, it might involve working out whether yesterday’s friendship disagreement has blown over, adjusting to a different teacher or worrying about an activity they know is coming later.
9:30am. Classroom learning.
The lesson is English.
But alongside comprehension and spelling, a child might also be working on remembering instructions, filtering out conversations, resisting the urge to interrupt and figuring out how everyone else seems to know what they’re supposed to be doing.
11:00am. Recess.
A break, apparently.
Except there may be an entirely different set of expectations to navigate.
Who can I play with? How do I join in? Was that comment a joke? Why did everyone laugh when he said it, but get annoyed when I did?
11:30am. Back to class.
The timetable says Science.
Unfortunately, the brain hasn’t necessarily finished processing recess.
And so the day continues.
For many children, these moments are manageable, even enjoyable. But for others, particularly those navigating ADHD, autism or anxiety, they can require significant effort.
Not because they’re incapable of learning the rules.
Sometimes it’s because the rules are constantly changing, rarely explained and apparently everyone else received a copy.
The subject called fitting in
This is one I understand particularly well.
I’ve watched how much a child can want to be part of the group, while simultaneously finding the group one of the hardest places to be.
Wanting to be funny. Wanting to be liked. Wanting to join the conversation.
And sometimes getting it spectacularly wrong.
The joke that was funny five minutes ago suddenly isn’t. The rough play that looked acceptable when someone else did it becomes a problem when you join in. The comment intended to make everyone laugh has precisely the opposite effect.
Then comes the familiar conversation about making better choices.
And of course, children need to learn about boundaries, respect and the impact of their behaviour.
But here’s what I’ve started to question.
Are we sometimes correcting the outcome without teaching the skill that was missing?
If a child struggles to recognise when a joke has gone too far, telling them not to do it again doesn’t necessarily help them recognise that moment next time.
If they find it difficult to join a group, telling them to make friends isn’t particularly useful either.
It’s a bit like telling someone to improve their French by speaking better French.
Technically correct. Spectacularly unhelpful.
What might help is working through the actual situation later, when emotions have settled.
What was happening before the joke? How did the other children respond? What were the signs that things had changed? What could you try next time?
Not as another interrogation.
As a chance to learn something that other children may have picked up more intuitively.
And sometimes the support needs to happen at school, in the moment, rather than relying on a child to remember a conversation from the previous evening.
The subject called keeping it together
There’s another part of the unofficial curriculum that can be particularly difficult to recognise.
Self-management.
Sit still. Wait your turn. Listen carefully. Ignore distractions. Don’t interrupt. Stay calm. Be flexible. Concentrate.
All perfectly reasonable classroom expectations.
But imagine having to consciously work at several of them, all day.
For a child with ADHD, managing attention and impulses may require considerable effort. For an autistic child, navigating sensory input, unexpected changes or social expectations may add another layer. Anxiety can make uncertainty and the possibility of mistakes especially difficult.
These experiences vary enormously, and we can’t assume what’s happening inside a child simply by observing their behaviour.
But we can recognise that the effort required to meet an expectation isn’t necessarily the same for everyone.
A child who remains seated throughout a lesson might be working far harder at that than we realise.
Another child might manage beautifully for the first three lessons and struggle during the fourth.
Not because they’ve suddenly forgotten the rules.
Perhaps the demands have accumulated. Perhaps something upsetting happened. Perhaps the task itself is harder.
Or perhaps they’re simply having a difficult day, as we all do.
The important thing is not to settle too quickly on one explanation.
And then they come home
In our house, the transition from school to home can be quite something.
After a particularly demanding day, recovery might involve a darkened room, the fan going and absolutely no interest in discussing anything with anyone.
Which can be mildly disappointing when you’ve spent the afternoon wondering how school went.
“How was your day?”
“Fine.”
“Anything interesting happen?”
“No.”
“Who did you play with?”
And apparently, that’s enough questions for one lifetime.
I’ve learnt that the child who comes home isn’t always ready to pick up where family life left off that morning.
Sometimes they need quiet. Sometimes they need movement. Sometimes they need to be left alone for a while.
And sometimes the story of what happened at lunchtime emerges hours later, usually when I’m doing something completely unrelated.
It can be tempting to interpret that need for space as avoidance or withdrawal.
But I’ve come to see it differently.
A child can have a successful day at school and still need to recover from the effort of having it.
That doesn’t mean every difficult afternoon is caused by school, or that children should be excused from all responsibilities.
It means recognising that the capacity available at 3:45pm may be very different from the capacity available at 6pm.
And planning accordingly.
So who’s teaching these subjects?
This is where I think the conversation needs to change.
We spend a lot of time telling children what we expect of them.
Be respectful. Make good choices. Be resilient. Work independently. Manage your emotions.
But how often do we stop to consider whether we’ve actually taught the specific skills those expectations require?
Not in theory.
In the messy, unpredictable situations where children are expected to use them.
Take the child who repeatedly gets into trouble during group work.
Rather than simply reminding them to cooperate, we could look at what makes group work difficult.
Do they struggle when roles aren’t clearly defined? Do they interrupt because they’re worried they’ll forget their idea? Does disagreement feel like rejection? Are they unsure how to enter the conversation?
Each possibility suggests a different kind of support.
And that’s the part I find important.
The same behaviour doesn’t always have the same explanation. So why would we expect the same consequence or strategy to work every time?
One small thing worth trying
If you’re regularly hearing about the same difficulty at school, try looking at it as an untaught subject rather than immediately treating it as a behaviour to correct.
Start with one recurring situation.
Perhaps your child struggles to return to class after recess.
Instead of asking only why they won’t settle, consider what that transition involves.
They may have to stop an enjoyable activity, leave an unresolved social situation, move from a noisy playground into a quieter classroom, remember new instructions and begin an unfamiliar task.
That’s quite a lot of switching gears in a few minutes.
Then ask three questions:
What is the child being expected to manage?
Be specific. “Transitions” is broad. “Stopping a game without knowing whether they’ll be included again tomorrow” tells us much more.
Which part is actually difficult?
Ask your child when they’re calm, and compare observations with their teacher. You might discover that the difficulty isn’t the change of classroom at all. It’s what happens immediately beforehand.
What could we change or teach?
Perhaps it’s a predictable way to finish the activity. A clear first instruction when they return. Help resolving playground disagreements. Or practising what to say when a game ends unexpectedly.
Try one change, observe what happens and adjust from there.
The aim isn’t to explain away every difficult behaviour.
It’s to identify something we can actually do about it.
Because “try harder” isn’t much of a teaching strategy.
Perhaps we need to rethink what a good day looks like
I want my child to learn, develop friendships, become independent and experience the satisfaction of overcoming challenges.
I also want school to be a place where those things are possible without constantly feeling as though they’re getting something wrong.
Those aren’t competing ambitions.
We can hold children accountable while recognising that some skills require more explicit teaching.
We can encourage independence while providing support.
We can have high expectations without assuming every child will reach them in exactly the same way.
And we can celebrate a good school day while remaining curious about how much effort it took.
Because when a child comes home having completed their Maths, English and Science, they may have spent just as much energy on the subjects nobody mentioned.
And unlike fractions, those subjects don’t always come with a worked example.
Research & Further Reading
This article draws on lived experience alongside research into executive functioning, social communication and the experiences of autistic and ADHD children.
Explores the cognitive skills involved in attention, inhibition, working memory and flexibility.
Examines the effort involved in navigating social expectations and concealing differences. This study concerns adults, so its findings shouldn’t be assumed to apply directly to every child.
Australian information about autism, education and support needs.
Explains the framework for reasonable adjustments and educational participation for students with disability in Australia.
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Coming next in The Bits Between the Bells
Part Two: Apparently, Recess Counts as a Break
Friendship politics, unwritten rules, playground misunderstandings and why the part of the school day designed for a break can sometimes be anything but.
The Bits Between the Bells is a five-part series from The Wider Table exploring the parts of school life that don’t appear on the timetable, but can make an enormous difference to a child’s experience.
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