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?

There is also a bit of an obsession with STEM in the UK right now. I was very academic (but also creative, which was poo-pooed and I was told to "do it as a hobby") and was completely oversold STEM as being some super exciting career in a lab or some sort of high-tech workshop like in James Bond. Being 16 I didn't realise that most likely I'd be stuck in an office staring at code and datasets.

A lot of STEM jobs are corporate, office based, and quite dull.

I'm quitting my job to follow my passion of becoming a dressmaker after hating every job I've ever been in, and feeling like an idiot because I hate the sound of programming, data, accountancy, teaching, actuarial, finance and consultancy. Maths degree seems a bit of a waste of time now!

There is also a bit of an obsession with STEM in the UK right now.

Have to agree with that. Schools and Uni's really push it, but there doesn't seem to be enough jobs that actually require it. Time and time again at Uni open days, the Physics degree subject talk goes on about all the exciting lab and research work they do and then a later slide shows the career destinations as being merchant banks, lawyers, accountants, etc!

Definitely agree about STEM. It's not a bad thing to learn about but there dont seem to be an awful lot of jobs in it at least in the UK.

@FieldsOfWheat
Of course I did. I just think it was a complete waste of time.
History and geography were extremely redacted and reinvented to fit the party narrative. Art was not taught at schools beyond kidnergarten, being considered a capitalist excess that could lead to political dissidence, freedom of thought and awful deviations like that. There were dedicated "art schools", with heavy emphasis on social realism as the only righteous way forward for a Soviet artist.
Please don't take it as a personal offense, but I think your mum could be looking at the past through rose-tinted glasses.

You won't understand the history of racism, feminism, world wars and reasoning behind employment law, politics, why things are how they are.

Nor would you even if you did take History unless the school actually taught a wide range of historic topics at school. At my son's school, they were obsessed with wars. Year 7 was 1066 etc, year 8 War of the Roses, year 9 was Henry & Elizabeth and then GCSE years were 4 topics being Richard & John/Crusades, Warfare through time, Middle East, and Hitler/Weinmar. All heavily war related. In five years, they never even mentioned the industrial revolution, racism, feminism, empire, etc. The head of dept was obsessed with war, he ran a wargaming club, went to battlefield re-enactments, etc and planned his teachers' work programs around war. I really can't understand how that can be allowed (it's not as if he was a good teacher!).

It's not a bad thing to learn about but there dont seem to be an awful lot of jobs in it at least in the UK.

There ARE a lot of jobs requiring Maths and computing skills, and that will only increase over time with ever increasing computerisation, automation, cyber security, robotics, machine learning etc where suitable candidates with necessary skills are in very short supply in the UK. Trouble is that we're years behind other countries who take Maths/Computing more seriously and are generally a long way ahead of us, so we're on the back foot. We're certainly training too many people in chemistry & physics as the skills we need are highly specialised, so we need more very specialist chemists/physicists and far fewer "general" graduates. As for "tech" side of things, that's not really moved on, neither in schools nor Unis - even in Uni labs, there's still "manual" woodworking and metalworking going on - whilst 3d printers, laser cutters, etc are sat shiny but unused in the corners (just like most school tech labs) and only used by the "higher" students doing more specialist things.

On a practical level you do need to do further study after uni which not all families can afford, especially if it's uncertain whether there will be a well paid job at the end of it. It's not the be all and end all.

@SIlvercuckoo - what decade was this? Her experience was in the 80s which might be different to yours.

@Kazzyhoward - I guess it depends on the teacher. In GCSE we did the Cold War, Depression and the New Deal, Civils Rights movement and WW2. Before that it was the Victorians, Tudors, etc. In AS level it was a module on Russian Revolution then a super dull British module by a posho teacher about Disraeli and the Corn Laws. I got quite a good knowledge of 20th century social issues through GCSE, but A level was a total waste of time!

I know that automation/programming/robotics are very in demand, but it takes a certain sort of person because a lot of these jobs are dull, and liking maths does not automatically mean you like programming (I sure don't). Again, it's like being mis-sold PPI. In the adverts you see a bunch of people in lab coats gawping over some cool robot cooking spaghetti - in reality you're sat in a basement with a bunch of guys who eat lunch at their desk debugging some paragraph of code.

My job was sold as "saving lives, developing new medicines with cutting-edge stats" when in reality I sit in 3-hour long meetings discussing whether to swap out a word in a sentence, and re-running the same bit of code 10 times to figure out how to get a spanning header in table.

I am so relieved I am having a career change in something I actually enjoy. I would never push my kids into STEM just because of the money/job opportunities. I would ask them - what would you be happy doing 9-5? Hairdressing? Gardening? Coding? Great.

My STEM grad friends are accountants, bankers, actuaries, consultants and analysts. Most of them say their jobs are super dull/not really helping anyone but they do it for money. Not something I want for my life personally.

My STEM grad friends are accountants, bankers, actuaries, consultants and analysts.

The irony is that you really don't need good STEM skills to be a bog standard accountant or banker or consultant. Basic numeracy is absolutely fine. Actuaries and analysts are different - they need far better maths skills, but more along the statistics & probabilites route rather than circle theorums & differentiation! At one of the Uni open days, they were saying the entry requirement for a STEM degree was A*AA and saying it leads to the likes of accountancy etc., but then in the accountancy subject talk, they were wanting ABB for the accounting/finance degree which they said leads to the likes of accountancy etc! You have to wonder if they've got so much funding and grants for science degrees & research etc they have to try to attract people into the course, even those with no intention of a scientific career.

Thing is, the analytics jobs really vary. You'll see a job advert for "analyst" requiring knowledge of complex methods/software, but the vast majority will be doing bar charts and scatter plots in Power BI, which I could have done as a summer job in sixth form.

My job is a statistician - you need a masters in Stats to get it - I do things more complicated than percentages maybe once every few months. Same sort of story for many of my friends. They get advertised a job in data science/stats/analytics and end up doing basic summaries (mean, percentages, bar charts). No-one needs a degree for that!

Then again it's the same for most things. Nowadays jobs like the police are requiring degrees, just because they can. Soon you'll need a Phd and a postdoc to be a barista at Starbucks.

Then again it's the same for most things.

Certainly the same in my profession - accountancy. The vast majority of what I learned/exams, I havn't used at all. Then, as years pass, things change anyway, so what you learned and didn't use is useless in future jobs when you need it, so you have to learn again anyway. The real "learning" comes from practical experience of actually doing the job under supervision.

I've actually told me son that if (a big if) he wants to be an accountant, then the best way is to get a trainee/apprenticeship, so he'll not only get his professional qualification sooner, he'll also have his practical experience by the time he's passed all the exams, so will be a fully qualified accountant with practicing certificate far sooner than someone who went to Uni.

It's something that the Unis don't make clear enough, that a degree, even a specialist accounting degree, doesn't make you a qualified accountant - you come out with you degree but still have to do a few years of the accountancy bodies exams. At a Uni subject talk last weekend, there were a couple of prospective students who were asking the lecturer during the talk about it and just couldn't believe you only start your proper accountancy training once you've left Uni, even on an accounting degree course.

It's something that the Unis don't make clear enough, that a degree, even a specialist accounting degree, doesn't make you a qualified accountant

Yes - even though I have a 4 year maths degree and most analytics jobs will be quite straightforward (something I could pick up on a training course), they all require software I've never used so I got rejections. They're actually more aimed at Business and Software grads. I actually have no idea who is using stuff like Python/Spark/Hadoop/BI at uni! Maybe if more companies offered training & apprenticeships to graduates or school leavers, they would have more luck filling these jobs than requiring very specific knowledge/experience that most people don't just get out of Maths and Physics degrees.

I think on-the-job training should be the way to go for most jobs. You don't need 4 years of super abstract theoretical knowledge unless you're going into academia. Then, if someone spends 6 months at a job and realises they hate it, it's less of a loss than spending 4 years on a degree to then realise you hate the job options. Either that, or our degrees should be more broad a-la America. But asking for degrees for all jobs nowadays is ridiculous. They're even doing this in creative jobs. It's going to be much harder to have a mid-life career change if you need to spend 40k and 3+ years on it!

A recent report by the Social Market Foundation found that the number of STEM jobs in the UK is expected to grow at twice the rate of non-STEM jobs between now and 2023.

Jobs working at supermarkets or in factory assembly also grew heavily at one point. Doesn't mean I would sell them to my kids as "life goals" and a fulfilling and brilliant career, because from my experience it's anything but.

Either that, or our degrees should be more broad a-la America.

My son has stumbled upon Natural Science degrees. He was really struggling to make any kind of decision about choice of degree. He was being pushed by the school to do a STEM (before that they pushed him to do science A levels) but in his heart, he is more interested in business/finance/economics, yet his best subject is Maths and the school has offered no computing/IT teaching at all. So, quite a mismatch and he really hasn't a clue. The more Unis he went to, the more confused he got. But like I say, talking to one tutor at an open day, the natural science course option was mentioned and he's now done a lot more research - some unis do it, some dont and the variety/options varies enormously between unis - some have specific pathways with only certain subjects allowed but others will basically allow anything that can be timetabled for, some allow lots of flexibility to change mid course, others don't. Quite a minefield but at long last, he's got something to really look at in depth, rather than a scattergun approach. So, yes, I agree, more general/broad degrees would be a brilliant idea for kids without a specific direction in mind.

I think the whole system is out of date and needs a complete overhaul.

@Kazzyhoward, that sounds like a really good option.

I liked pretty much everything at school (bar sport, eugh) and had a really hard time picking A-levels let alone degree. I liked art, textiles, maths, chemistry, history, psychology, design tech and was considering law as well.

Nowadays we are living longer and it's becoming a lot more common for people to have several careers. We are defo forcing kids into certain paths too early and I agree that degrees with more flexibility & options should be the norm.

@Kazzyhoward is absolutely right. There are a HUGE number of jobs requiring maths and computing skills. It’s probably the fastest growing job market in the UK but we have an enormous skills shortage (which the government are trying to address).

Anyone who thinks there aren’t many jobs requiring maths and computing must live in some strange, parallel universe.

Anyone who thinks there aren’t many jobs requiring maths and computing must live in some strange, parallel universe.

No-one's said there aren't. I'm just saying that a lot of them are sold as very exciting when actually they're very boring and not something I would ever push my kids into.

Also, a lot of them need only a basic understanding of maths and very specific knowledge of certain software and programs, which would be more suited to on-the-job training rather than pushing people into maths and computing degrees. Someone I know hires for a software company, and finds that what computer science grads learn has little relevance to software development. Most of my degree (maths/stats) has nothing to do with my job (stats) which is mostly reviewing documents and programming basic tables even though they have the audacity to ask for a Masters. The only jobs that really "use your degree" in the case of maths and physics, is academia.

Anyone who thinks there aren’t many jobs requiring maths and computing must live in some strange, parallel universe.

I think it's the way that science and engineering is parcelled into STEM along with maths and computing. From what I can gather, there are relatively few jobs in some areas (such as chemistry, physics, certain areas of engineering and biology if you're not on a medical degree).

The number of jobs for maths/computing graduates just continues to grow, almost exponentially and shows no signs of stopping. But that's not to say the degrees themselves are particularly useful/relevant to the jobs available.

I think you are looking at this from a very utilitarian point of view.
I didn't use my maths degree in my work (software development), but I believe I was a better software developer for having spent 3 years 'training my brain' to attempt to do university maths.

It was the intangible stuff that helped. The different ways to look at problems, to know when to give attention to detail and when (in the words of my director of studies) to 'not worry about the 2s' but focus on the big picture. The learning to be methodical, logical, precise and to know what I knew and know what I didn't. Also learning that creative approaches are sometimes needed.

In a way, the maths was just a means to an end.

I really agree with what a poster upthread said about our children in the UK being made to ‘specialise’ so soon at A level. I do, however, think the push for STEM (especially for girls) has been long overdue and hugely necessary. But what I think happens - and is hugely detrimental to cohorts ongoing - is the idea that STEM and arts subjects are mutually exclusive. In the age of AI we desperately need multi major degrees more common in the US. It’s all very well being able to code but HOW we think of the box to apply code to solve problems, create apps etc is something that the lateral thinker will excel at. I always found it interesting that Mark Zuckerberg majored in both classics AND computer science at Harvard. We need this duality of thinking more than ever, and it’s something that could be applied across both state and private school sectors.
We also need to stop thinking university is the be all and end all. Grade inflation here is making recruitment a nightmare. And Oxbridge is no guarantee - only recently my DH chose a non Oxbridge state educated candidate over what was on paper an Oxbridge shoo-in candidate; he felt the former thought differently, creatively and saw things from a fresh perspective.
Which means while the state sector is struggling, essentially great thinkers are great thinkers and they will shine, somehow.
Anyway, that’s what’s i hope. 🤞

But what I think happens - and is hugely detrimental to cohorts ongoing - is the idea that STEM and arts subjects are mutually exclusive. In the age of AI we desperately need multi major degrees more common in the US.

Yes! About Mark Zuckerberg, I also read somewhere that Steve Jobs took a course in typography/calligraphy and said it was what enabled him to make the iPhone stand out.

People are multifaceted. So many of the kids at my school were both academically smart and super creative, and come A-level the creativity gets shut down as they get told to do maths and 3 sciences.

Very interesting topic OP

However there is a slight imbalance here and why we can't always get everything right. I lived in a small country town with some excellent primaries but didn't offer wrap around care so if both you and your husband needed to get to work by 0900 and collect at 1515 it wasn't possible. Child care was limited. Just one secondary which has gone up and down over the years. Or grammars and state schools 20 miles up the road which meant DC being on a bus for a large part of the day. People don't have much choice in the country. As for home schooling - that's either for people who can afford a SAHP and the consequent penalties for pensions etc. I wouldn't have been adequate as a homeschooler post 7 years old despite an Oxbridge degree.