Are state schools beyond help?

[user1480880826]

I see so many threads on AIBU about state schools. There seem to be issues with teachers (specifically the lack of consistent teachers and number of supply teachers), kids behaviour not being dealt with, lack of resources, cost of having to subsidise underfunded schools etc etc.

Is the state school system really as dysfunctional as it appears on mumsnet? Should I be saving up to send my kid to private schools? You don’t see parents coming on here and complaining about their private school.

For those of you with kids in state schools, would you send your kids to private school if money wasn’t a problem?

This isn’t taught any more. ICT was binned.

What?!?

The amount of hours I wasted at school sat in a classroom making writing bounce up and down in Powerpoint!!

Sorry but I did a maths degree and things like machine learning & cryptography are final year modules! Not a GCSE!
Basic concepts and principles can be introduced at GCSE level, why not (machine learning is not even maths, strictly speaking). What I am against is teaching probability at school level.
However, on threads like this there is always confusion between "online safety" and "cybersecurity".

DH is a teacher in a core subject in a "good" school. Y8 has been in permanent cover all year. The same will happen again next year as they are still a member of staff down and aren't recruiting as there are too many teachers at the top of the pay scale and there's not enough money for one.

DS goes to an "outstanding" school if you base it on its 10 yo Ofsted report. It's not outstanding though. It just has excellent GCSE results because parents pay for tutors. In reality, it has a drug problem (kids smoking weed on site on sports day), zero or inconsistent behaviour policy (gives out detentions for being late, but attempted rape or holding another student at knifepoint isn't dealt with at all).

If I had the money, I'd put DS in a private school in a heartbeat.

This is the future we need to be working towards, so that the majority of capable/behaved pupils can progress at their own pace, leaving teachers to deal with the minority who are struggling or disruptive and to deal with the things better suited to "class" activities like science practicals etc.
Yes, we don't need teachers who know what they're doing to be properly trained to teach their subject specialism.
We need compliant robot kids who can work through prepared systems, whilst a teacher patrols and only concerns themselves with disruptive students and the less able.

Who needs teachers when you can plug kids into computer software?

Of course schools can afford glue sticks as well as laptops.

You really haven’t been paying attention have you?

Silvercuckoo why are you against teaching probability at school level?

As a scientist who does a lot of public outreach work, it would make my life a lot easier if people had a better understanding of probability. Even if just understanding medical tests and why, for instance, "doubles your risk of cancer" doesn't necessarily mean a huge risk if the initial probability was really low. Or putting online anti-vaxx propaganda into context: "yes there are small risks to getting your child vaccinated. But there are much bigger risks attached to not getting your child vaccinated." Not to mention the fact that it might help people to realise the extent to which gambling is always stacked towards the house. Oh, and scatter plots. I'd love people to understand scatter plots, so that when the Daily Mail reports "scientists show men and women are different..." this means a tiny difference between the means of two populations with very large internal variabilty, not "all the men over here with this characteristic and all the women over there with that characteristic..."

I can't see why you wouldn't want to teach a bit of probability theory and statistics. It pops up in so many practical applications that for me it's under the heading of "basic life skills to negotiate the modern world."

@NotMetExpectations, yes I totally agree!

Like when people hear "significantly different" they think very different rather than, a small difference that is statistically significant.

Or see a graph with 2 correlated things and say "see! X causes X!"
www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations is a good laugh

Youreallyhaven’t been paying attention have you?
I have, and have even looked in detail at the financial circumstances of the schools that are of interest to me.

A silver your expertise is needed in those schools around the country that can’t afford to open 5 full days a week then. Jess Philips MP would be interested to hear your solution as her boy is one of those affected.

Kazzy but you do understand that your boy doing an OU module or you doing an accountancy course is different to a class of 30 Y9s being told to study for their maths GCSE online, right?

@NotMetExpectations
I could probably write a book on this topic, as it is my favourite pet hate, but to summarise:

1. probability is the area least understood by the school maths teachers to be explained correctly;
2. good understanding of probability can only be built on a solid mathematical foundation (at a minimum - after the measure theory).

Teachers are working with some highly engaged parents, who wish to stretch their children.
Teachers are working with parents who have no heating, no food and the child hasn't eaten anything hot all weekend.
Sometimes this is in the same school. Sometimes this is in the same class.

I know of a school that is currently collecting for foodbank. Some of the other parents will benefit from that same foodbank.

Some parents work all hours and would use after school club until midnight if they could, so parents fear sending their child to school as the child's uniform has not been washed, as the child has not been washed, as running a washing machine or heating water costs more money than they have.

Some parents have very, very, limited English and some are university lecturers, in the same school, in the same class.

The education system is not dysfunctional. It is seriously underfunded. It is where the nation parks all its issues. If you are considering sending your child to private school imagine giving that same money to the state school your child attends.

I think we'll have to agree to disagree then.

(1) makes sense a bit... but many maths teachers will be specialist mathematicians (not all, granted).

(2) makes no sense to me... it'd be a bit like me saying "well, you can't teach Newton's laws of motion in school because you need to understand them as a limiting case of general relativity... and also understand that they're not really a limiting case, because the affine structure of the spacetimes is different... and to get a handle on that you need differential geometry, and while you're at it the theory of fibre bundles..." and so on. Or a linguist saying "well, you can't possibly teach children how to ask directions in Spanish to stop them getting lost on holiday, because to really understand language learning, you have to understand Chomskian linguistics, and the neurology and psychology of the developmental window for language acquisition, and...."

Or, as my chemistry teacher said to us round about age 15, "This is what I'm going to tell you about atoms now. Here's a rough idea of what's wrong with what I'm going to tell you and why I'll tell you something entirely different when you get to A level. And if you go on to degree, they'll tell you why that was a gross over-simplification, and that what's really going on is... and so on through university, postgrad, postdocs..."

Seriously, if you applied your criterion (2) to any subject, you'd end up not being able to teach anything.

Sorry, that was to silvercuckoo.

If you are considering sending your child to private school imagine giving that same money to the state school your child attends.

I’ve quite often read on mn posters saying they could afford private school but they are sending their dc to state school on principal.
Maybe, since they can afford it, they should donate the equivalent of private school fees to the state school their dc attend.

@NotMetExpectations
Learning Spanish is not a good example in this context (as it is closer to acquiring a skill rather than knowledge) but otherwise yes, you understood me correctly.
Ideally (in my opinion, of course) school curriculum should cover lots of pure maths and lots of experimental cross-disciplinary science. Theoretical physics is better left until much later too, when the student's mathematical apparatus is in a more mature shape.
To take an example from the physics course, I was taught theory of relativity as a part of my school curriculum. It did not properly click with me until the third (I think) year of my maths degree, and I was not an idiot.

Silver,

If I remember correctly, you come from a country where narrow focus on Maths / Sciences is the norm in secondary education, so the broader-based curriculum in British schools seems unusual to you.

I am very ghlad that both my children have been able to studyMaths, English language and literature, 2 foreign languages, at least 1 humanity and at least one creative / design subject through to 16, and have had the opportunity to study subjects picked from across this range to 18.

I appreciate that this gives them less depth in Maths / Sciences, but it does give them a broader education in e.g. History, Music, Art, Languages that I personally value, though you may not.

(Might my children have higher future earnings had they followed a narrow Maths / Sciences path than their current chosen directions - musician and ?designer / architect? Yes of course. Would they be more useful or valuable members of society? A moot point. Would they be happier? No)

@ItIsWhatItIsInnit machine learning and cryptography are big business these days. There are so many jobs that require those skills and they’re well paid jobs to boot. The basics can easily be taught to school kids. Where else are they going to develop an interest in such things.

All subjects are significantly harder at degree level than at secondary school level but it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t start teaching them until degree level. If we thought like that then no one would ever study maths or chemistry.

The government are trying to fill these skills gaps but they’ve been very slow to respond. There are some really successful government funded programmes like CyberFirst:

www.cyberfirst.ncsc.gov.uk/

But schools that are already overstretched and don’t have teachers that are engaged and proactive probably aren’t going to sign up to these things.

I think Cyberfirst could usefully start a couple of years younger - access at secondary age does depend either on a computing teacher OR a teacher in another subject being willing to push their pupils towards these computing curses. Generalist primary teachers might be a better option, as we're perhaps more used to directing children with particular sills / interests towards a whole range of different courses / providers (from Sport, Music or Drama through to Maths).

I don't mean that secondary school teachers aren't proactive about directing children to opportunities in their own subject areas - but with the shortage of computing teachers, it may be easier for an 'all subjects' teacher to push a primary child towards a computing course [I have a couple of current pupils who would hugely benefit from such a thing] than a secondary teacher to push a child towards an opportunity in a different subject from the one they specifically teach.

That’s an interesting point @cantkeepawayforever

@Paddington68 great post.

@cantkeepawayforever

I am flattered that you remember my position (no, seriously). Yes, I myself don't quite understand the idea of teaching humanities and languages at school, for me they are just something that you absorb naturally through... well, just living your life, reading books etc.

Really? You didn't learn humanities and languages at school?

In another thread you said you got educated in the Soviet Union. So did my mum, and she learned history, geography and German as well as art. She only "specialised" at 16+. The history and geography seemed at a much better level than I learned at school in England, her knowledge is quite broad whereas mine is very bitty.

I think it's quite important to learn history because most people will not sit down and read a history book, but without that knowledge, you won't know the context of so many social problems, why social movements are important, etc. You won't understand the history of racism, feminism, world wars and reasoning behind employment law, politics, why things are how they are.

I actually think the UK curriculum is far too narrow at 16+. In most other countries they study at least 6 subjects post-16. 16 is far too young to narrow yourself down to 4 subjects (now 3!) and if I had gone back, I would have made totally different choices.