Should we care that 50% of state schools didn't produce any medicine applicants in 3 years?

I still see no evidence for the assertion that people with arts and humanities degrees from Cambridge will accrue more skills which are useful to them than people with STEM degrees from Imperial?

I would say though that teaching of sciences in schools is often not great. I know several science teachers, teaching science up to A'level who do not hold a degree in science, but have qualified as science teachers after doing a 9 month subject knowledge enhancement course before starting a PGCE. I also know several science teachers whose subject knowledge is stretched to the limits by the current A'level course and who are intimidated by the brighter students. Now, I realise this does not apply to all science teachers and there are some excellent ones out there, but whilst I was lecturing we would frequently find students with apparently good A'level grades had not grasped some basic concepts in chemistry before they arrived to us. It is simply not feasible to undo all the damage caused by inadequate preparation for university level study during a 4 year course.

It is very much the responsibility of schools to talk to pupils about making the right decisions for their future, be that choice of GCSE and A-level or work experience or extra-curricular. It is quite wrong to think that children should be expected to take sole responsibility for research into those decisions on their own.

Advice that everyone should do at least 1 science at A level whether they want to or not, that anyone capable of getting decent grades should do triple science GCSE whether they want to or not, and that arts or humanities A levels restrict opportunity (a viewpoint recently voiced by the sec of state for education) is not so much indifferent as blatantly wrong headed.

To bring it back to medicine - obviously prospective doctors should go to medical school. Equally obviously everyone who wants to do medicine and is good enough to do medicine should be supported in their ambition whatever income bracket their parents occupy. But if half the state schools in the country are sending kids to medical schools, as a proportion, that's fine. Every school in the country doesn't have to send kids to medical school for there to be enough doctors. And this continual placing of medicine on a pedestal as the only subject worth applauding or worrying about is ludicrous. If we didn't have enough medical students to fill the places, that would be a problem. But we do. There are other fields (some scientific some not) in which ordinary but talented kids are experiencing far greater barriers to participation and those are the ones we should be more worried about if our goal is a society which offers equality of opporutnity to everyone with the requisite talent for whatever it is.

Talkin - geography degrees (depending on the focus) are clearly increasingly important to the well being of society. It's a terrible shame that many kids will not get the opportunity to study geography after Y10 because of the emphasis on chemistry, physics and biology. DD1 is doing Geog AS and loves it. DD2 won't even be able to do geog GCSE and it's a real shame. I think, anyway. DS preferred to do computer science and that's fine because it was his choice.

R Euphoria
When I was at Uni there was the running joke that Graduate recruitment forms for engineers were multiple choice - because they could not string a sentence together.
That was in the mid 80's

AllMimsy
I did a Geography degree. Because I liked Geography and was good at it.
I had no idea what I wanted to do after other than not work in an office.
FAIL
I'm an accountant now
BUT
Accountancy A Level and Degree are actually impediments to being a good accountant because they narrow the skill set.

The barristers on both sides in a recent court case I was in had not done Law as their first degrees.

Some professional careers are best done as a second degree after a subject you love as your first degree.

oi Greengrow, where are you?, I'd be interested to know what you are getting your kids to do

Medics are different as its more a vocation than a career

neither of my kids are planning to follow either DH or I into our income paths calling them careers would be a tad arrogant IMHO

Rabbit, do you think those STEM grads who can't write would have been able to write better if they'd done an English or History degree? No, they would have simply failed their courses, because the ability or inability to write is developed at a much earlier stage in our education system, before we specialise. They are the people who in previous generations wouldn't have needed to write because there was plenty of manual work to go around. Certainly our education system needs to improve on multiple levels, to address the changing needs of our society.

On your second point, by definition, we can't all be elite ... society needs people to work in shops, sweep floors, test computer software and perform routine clinical tests, and, ideally, to find happiness and fulfillment doing those roles, whether it be at work, or outside of it through other interests they can afford to pursue.

Ultimately something needs to be the decider of who does what. Currently the decider is self-indulgence, indifferent advice, naivety and ability to pay. Instead it should be employer-led demand and performance-based selection ... so that those that want to do psychology or journalism have to prove they're better than the many other kids that want to do the same, or else choose something else.

Better to have 10k elite psychology graduates than 100k mediocre ones. If you're going to be mediocre at something, then at least make it something that is useful.

I have read it all now. Hindley YOI In Wigan is providing an Education , that is better than many Secondary Schools. The OFSTED report stated that teaching was Outstanding and that behaviour was "Very Good" . What that says about some mainstream secondary schools , I dread to think.

It does though reveal that the lack of standards or the aspirations of students can partly be blamed on the schools themselves.

In my profession we are seriously concerned about the number of STEM graduates who can't write to save their lives, and who lack forensic analytical skills. This is becoming a serious issue (for us). Not just in this country, either - I'm part of global profession wide initiatives to try and address the issue.

But I return to my main point which is that the elites don't see their role - or their childrens' roles - as filling the gaps presently open in the machinery of the economy or being back-ups for those positions. Their expectations don't just include high salaries, they also include fulfillment, being allowed to choose their own path (self determination) etc. They don't see themselves as drones to be deployed - this week we need chemists, so kids will study chemistry whether they want to or not, whether they are even going to be any good at it or not; next week everyone has to code, the week after it's engineering and sod personal preference. They see themselves as people with a variety of skills and abilities, and a wide range of ambitions. It amazes me that so many ordinary people like us are happy to play their game and for our kids to do the same, and regard ourselves as economic units and nothing else. Like I said - there is a difference between living and existing. The elites expect to lead lives, they are pushing the rest of us towards mere existence (in service of their fulfilling lives).

titchy, there are probably lots of more clued up/better connected students who do know that a law or psychology degree needn't be viewed solely as the first step on the way to a professional career in the law or psychology. However, I really do think many students don't grasp that while they're at school/sixth form college. They want the security and status of a professional career and they believe that they must start studying Law, Psychology, Accountancy or Business Studies as early as possible and keep on going over the same stuff through GCSE, A level and degree course to get to the end goal.

In fact, it is often better to avoid specialising like that until much later as the broad knowledge you get from a wider range of GCSEs and A levels and a non-vocational degree subject are valued very highly by potential employers. That's the message that doesn't get through to young people from families with no background in the professions/academia/any graduate level work.

I used to work in a role that involved a lot of contact with new or recent psychology graduates. What I saw over and over again was that they had taken Psychology A level, enjoyed it, got onto a Psychology degree course and then spent years (in some cases 10 years+) trying to get onto clinical psychology training, which is NHS funded and where places are very limited. Some of them actually said to me that if they'd known how hard it would be to reach that goal they would have chosen something different in the first place.

titchy no, it doesn't assume that - psychology and law useful for all kinds of general roles such as management and marketing, and those should of course be factored in to the required numbers. However, STEM subjects are also useful for general roles too - more STEM grads are needed in teaching, politics, journalism, and management etc etc.

I agree STEM and arts can co-exist happily - but the balance of numbers in each camp still needs to be addressed through the education system.

That assumes of course that the ONLY reason for doing Psychology or Law degrees is to become a Psychologist or a lawyer, which I'd argue isn't the case at all.

A few vocational courses do have limits (medicine, dentistry, teacher training, pharmacy was going to have but doesn't currently) to how many graduates are churned out.

I wholeheartedly agree with your earlier post mimsy - it isn't an either or - STEM and the arts can and should coexist happily alongside each other and a state of mutual respect.

The problem is that HE funding is being driven by student-demand, rather than employer-demand.

On that specific point, I agree, seeingthrufog. Psychology and law are amongst the most popular degree courses in the country and I do think a lot of that is because many young people assume they will automatically progress to jobs as lawyers and psychologists without grasping that getting onto postgraduate training in those fields is very, very difficult - far fewer places available at that point than people with the relevant UG degrees. I wonder if as many people would take those subjects if they fully understood the career structure.

AllMimsy, we can afford the arts/humanities, but we can't afford to churn them out at the rate they're being churned out at the moment, to the detriment of STEM subjects. The problem is that HE funding is being driven by student-demand, rather than employer-demand.

Anyone on here from Oz? Somebody told me that they control the supply of HE places based on demand for the associated skills, so there are far fewer places on, for example, journalism courses. However, because of that, degree-level journalism courses are highly selective, and are a more highly respected qualification as a result.

Here, there are as many places on journalism courses as there are students willing to pay for them, in the naive hope that they can then 'be a journalist'. If they were told, "sorry, there aren't any journalism places left, but lots of places on the Computer Coding course, so we suggest you give that a go" then the country might be in a stronger economic position.

We live in one of the richest countries in the world. If we can't afford the arts/humanities, nobody can. It's not either/or, we can (and should) have both. The important thing is that no child should grow up with some avenues closed off before they even start because their school doesn't offer certain subjects or has poor teaching in one or more areas.

As for the relative importance, from my reading as an interested amateur I see that right from the early stages of hominids emerging as separate from other apes we were learning to make tools but we also started at a really, really early stage to decorate those tools in a completely non-functional way. Technology and the visual arts, right from the beginning. Here's an article from the Smithsonian this month on that very point.

We definitely do need more STEM graduates, but when it comes to "saving us from our own destruction," you could argue that it's STEM people who have created the tools with which we are destroying ourselves!

RabbitofNegative, as someone with a PhD in a STEM subject from Imperial, where is your evidence that a STEM degree from Imperial will accrue less skills to the person holding the degree than an arts degree from Cambridge?

As it happens, in order to succeed in science, you need to be better than having an ability to nerd around in the lab. Being able to nerd in the lab will keep you at technician level. Those scientists I know who are successful are excellent communicators including an ability to convey their research through writing and bring able to engage large audiences at conferences.

Many comp don't offer science a levels especially physics. Some state schools do not encourage ambition. It is harder to get good grades when lessons have a lot of distruption and lack of extension.

My son dreamed of being a doctor and was told at the age of TEN that we would never get the grades. (He was on top table for every subject at primary)

Arts and humanities degrees and the skills that accrue from studying for them are far more useful to the people who have them than most STEM degrees are (even STEM degrees from Imperial are not going to be more useful to those that hold them than an arts or humanities degree from cambridge). They are also more useful to society at large. They are not, however, more useful to the paymasters who want the education system to provide a steady stream of future low grade technicians earning at best mid tier wages (and at worst lots less) in order to further the paymasters' profits.

If you can't write - and most people can't, and you can't argue, and you have no talent in an artistic area then yes obviously you are stuck with science. And if you're shit hot at science/Maths then maybe that's your calling (but if you'd actually prefer to do something else then you should). But there are way too many kids who want to do arts and humanities and would be better off in every way including financially doing arts and humanities but who are being steered away from them by the gradgrindian attitudes of those with no imagination and apparently no eyes.

Hear hear

You cannot eat books
Opera will not cure cancer

Only Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths can save us from our own destruction.

How much would authors make without the internet to hawk their wares?

And whether arts/humanities are hard or not is irrelevant. They are less useful and over-supplied.

This made me laugh out loud..

If 30 % of secondary state schools are not good enough, according to Sir Michael Wilshaw, it is highly likely the people most likely to be Doctors avoid these schools.

How ?

By being born to different parents?

I recommend all the unborn who are considering a career in medicine make sure they are born families in good catchment areas.

STEM subjects are definitely superior.

Trouble is too many folk do arts/humanities, find their skills aren't in huge demand in the workplace, end up going into teaching, and then persuade other people's kids to do arts/humanities like they did. There are too many arts/humanities graduates in teaching, and not enough STEM graduates.

R Euphoria
Too right
There are kids in DDs further maths classes who regularly get 100% in tests.
That is just impossible in English.
Because Maths and Science and Engineering have right answers allowing for the odd paradigm shift
whereas arts and humanities are shades of interpretation

It's much harder to do well in English, if you're really good at it, than it is to do well in maths, if you're really good at that. Much much harder.

See, that pisses me off as well. Arts/Humanities subjects are hard, particularly to score very high grades in. They're no easier than the sciences.