To think the British educational system is all wrong?

It’s completely possible to teach to the test for GCSE English literature without the students understanding the texts or even reading the full version and come out with a good grade. A level English Literature does require understanding.

Same, I was fluent by the time I got to school. Reading has been one of the great joys of my life. My DD is the same, fluent before school. I don’t think any child has been harmed by being taught to read.

I don’t really agree with this, I got A’s in English Language and English Lit in GCSE and then again in A-level a million years ago. I remember some of the poems we read and specifically discussing Joyce with my teacher. Yes when it came to the exam I focused on that, however I was able to do it because I had just spent 2 years appreciating literature. Discussing the structure and content deepened my understanding and my appreciation.

Children who are taught well do well because they understand the content and absorb it. The coursework and exam at the end are just the culmination of learning how to read and comprehend. There are no real shortcuts here. Teaching to a test only works of you can make sure you have covered every permutation of questions.

I don’t think the education system is all wrong. It not great though. I think teachers could do with longer and better training, better pay, more respect and more autonomy. GCSEs should be scrapped as they are depressingly formulaic and take up valuable years of learning. School culture needs to be excellent as regards expectations of behaviour and love of learning. Parents need also be expected to support the system. SEN and pastoral care should be properly funded. In primary there should be plenty of music, drama and science as well as forest school. These are mainly societal changes.
I’ve observed both private and state education and much of the success of private education has as much to do with the school culture and parental and teacher expectations as with wealth or smaller classes.

It's not about their dress sense, it's about effort and respect and being able to adapt to different circumstances
They don't need to turn up to an interview in a suit and tie, but I would expect trousers and a shirt/smart top with tidy hair, despite our job being one done in trainers and polo shirts (physio).

I’ve been out of teaching for several years, but I am surprised to read teaching salaries are on a level with lawyers. I certainly wasn’t paid anything like that as a class teacher.

I interview programmers (graduate and experienced hire) and couldn’t care less what they are wearing - most so indeed wear t-shirts to interviews (except the Indians). I care about what they can do, not their dress sense.

A few younger teachers I know are quite a mixed bunch. I would say two have little get up and go. Quite restrained personalities and probably would not fare well in business. One has a maths degree from Warwick and has a very rich family. They like teaching though. Maths teacher teaches in a state 6th form and other private primary. So both avoiding behaviour issues.

Several others are born teachers. They never thought about doing anything else and their parents are teachers. Again all working in lovely state schools with limited behaviour issues.

I also think a unionized profession loses status. It’s also a profession young people know inside out having received teaching for many years. I’m not sure many like what they see. Nursing has the same problem. Both can lead to very decent salaries, and quite quickly for ambitious teachers, but young people don’t want to join the ranks. Plus all SLT in schools are teachers! They don’t have sufficient management training or MBAs. They tend to get by on the hoof. So it’s partly unprofessional!

I don’t recognise DC playing all day in YR. There are more formal reading and writing sessions. Not all DC would get a decent start at home. My DDs thrived in Y1. Depends on the child but plenty of dc are perfectly ok and enjoy school.

I think it did for a while, but I believe it was rather an effect of comparatively more difficult curriculum that stretches a lot of pupils (e.g. A-levels in maths are easier than Polish equivalent, the required list of compulsory reading in Polish is much more extensive and more international than the one in the UK), so those that are gifted can benefit rather than good overall educational system.

The tests themselves were not an issue, but the teaching assumes a lot of memorising and definitely does not leave enough space for critical thinking.

Not at all. But the exposure to the arts, languages, sciences etc would be at a more basic level that they could understand and access, rather than the memory/essay obsessed teaching that they currently suffer and because of their low literacy/numeracy, they really can't cope with. All about "teaching" at an appropriate level, and not the one size fits all that is actually aimed to fail over half the kids.

Me too. I was a bookish child, but it wasn't that unusual then (I'm 69). I was reading simple story books before I started school and could write my name and do simple sums. The weekly trip to the library was the highlight of my week.

If I hadn't started school at 5, my poor mother would have been driven demented by my constant chattering.

@poetryandwine "The country is not rich and teacher pay is a problem, but the teaching profession is considered prestigious. "

I actually think this is one of the key issues the UK has and I don't know how we can address it. Teacher pay is an issue here yes but I actually think a bigger issue is that the teaching profession is no longer considered prestigious in the way that it once was (and probably looking back 50 years at least for that). I am not saying I consider teachers overpaid or am something who thinks they have an easy life and work 9-3, but the reality is the salaries are comparable to similar professional roles, particularly outside London. They're comparable to lawyers for example, and probably work out as more on average if you consider it a pro-rata salary given the extended holiday. (Yes teachers need to work some of holidays but so do lawyers). Pretty sure it's more than nurses get which no one would say is a less stressful job and has similar academic requirements for entry. The real issue is that teaching isn't a well respected profession and which is really demoralizing when you're facing a high work load, government targets, stress (and a lot of bad managers who don't manage that well) and not getting pay rises. So people don't become teachers or leave if they have other options. We're then reliant on people who have a genuine passion for teaching and making a difference and will put up with the shit because teaching is their vocation (and you might start out with that but it's hard to maintain) or people who just don't really have many other options. And then the government feels that it can't give teachers more freedom to decide what they can teach, and parents/students have bad experiences with teachers, and then the profession is less respected and the job is even less enjoyable/more stressful and the race to the bottom continues.

For 2022 Poland is 15th in Maths, 17th in Science and 16th in Reading.

Ireland is the top European country for Reading, Estonia is top for Maths and Science.

I forgot to say earlier that the Netherlands is also strong.

Pupils take 9 or 10 subjects at GCSE. I don't think that is a lot of specialisation.

The educational powerhouse of Europe is actually Estonia.

Estonia was the top performing European country in the 2022 PISA, with Switzerland, Finland and Ireland not far behind.

Importantly, not only do the Estonian pupils have high results at the top end, they also have high results at the bottom end. In other words, the system gets the best out of most learners.

The Estonians don’t begin formal schooling until age 7, but almost all young children attend two years of kindergarten where they learn approximately the same thing as our 5-6 year olds in a playful environment. All pupils have free school meals.

The education system is built from the bottom up, with individual teachers and schools having a great deal of autonomy.

The country is not rich and teacher pay is a problem, but the teaching profession is considered prestigious. Teachers have excellent academic qualifications. Classes are small and good teacher-pupil relationships are a high priority. Most schools have a psychologist and/or a counsellor in house.

Poland also scores extremely high in PISA global rankings- top 3 for a long time
iirc. Believed to be related to the absolute sky rocketing of Poland in every way in the last 30 years. 30 years ago the education system was as poorly performing as the rest of the ex soviet block still is.

If pupils are struggling with basic literacy and numeracy, then spend all available time on that, not on languages, sciences, humanities, etc that they're not capable of.

So my child with significant numeracy issues would never do history, languages or science, despite strong literacy skills. She wouldn’t be exposed to arts and humanities? Instead she’d spend all her time focusing on one subject that gives her significant levels of stress and no sense of achievement?

I would say I had similar amount of tests in Poland at that age. Once we got through a big topic (e.g. Greek Mythology, reptiles or structure of an atom) our knowledge was tested. In case of Polish it was usually in a form of an essay written in a class, in other cases it was more test/exercises based. It's not that complex, children have books for each subject and one can easily grasp what needs to be studies for a test and it encourages regular learning.

In my opinion, there is far too much rigidity and focus on "scaffolding" in UK primary schools. It limits creativity and doesn't support any kind of individual thought. The huge push on grammar (fronted adverbials, really?) and ever-changing maths strategies are confusing for children who don't naturally thrive in academics

This is absolutely right@MooseBreath ! I thought the scaffolding was too much in primary schools (because the children don’t learn anything, they’re just spoonfed and copy largely) but was shocked at how much it was used in secondary schools. Can none of those children write an essay by themselves? It seems to be used for everyone and everything - far, far too much.

I also agree about the grammar. It’s all for show. The children know the term “fronted adverbials” and others but they lack true understanding of grammar, and their writing never starts to flow naturally or develop. Which, of course, is probably why they all need scaffolding 🙄

This is typical of the whole approach to education: superficiality. Skim over lots of topics, spoonfeed them grammar terms, make 6yr olds learn Maths terms like ‘commutative’, keep them at school for hours, make them wear blazers, etc - but despite all these showy things, the children aren’t actually performing that well. It’s all superficial to plaster over the failings.

But in the UK you specialise long before 16, for gcses, which isn't good in my opinion. And post-16 you specialise even further whereas here you carry on all the major subjects until the end in both streams (but to different degrees of depth), even music and art not just core subjects.

That's what happens in the UK at 16.

The German system separates too young. In Finland they separate at 16, the student's choice whether to go to academic high school, vocational high school, or do both at the same time (though the work load must be massive for that, takes a very dedicated student) and they can switch if they want or do one after the other (one of my vocational school classmates did that). Much better that way.

But at what cost does that school get good ‘results’? And those results are such an arbitrary measure of success. They may open doors for a small number of individuals but again at what cost?

@picturethispatsy you hint darkly 'at what cost'. What is the cost? People have been trying to tear down Michaela for years but I've not noticed any particular reports of it ruining young people's lives?

@Zoflorabore if you haven't already, apply for EHCP. My daughter was only diagnosed at 14, after crashing out of education through burnout. No education for years 10 and 11 (the LA alternative provision was awful and made her anxiety worse), she's now sitting 5 GCSEs in a 1-2-1 tuition centre with the aim of going to college in September. If this hadn't been approved, she'd have done online such as King's or Minerva.
There are options out there but as a parent, it's left to you to research what your child needs and find what will be suitable and argue with the LA for the funding.