To tell you that factual recall wont get you very far in your GCSEs and ask you what you think schools should be teaching that they are not

[stripybluesocks]

I keep reading about how schools need to adapt the curriculum to modern life and stop making children simply learn facts they can look up anyway. And read posters bewailing the fact that children should be learning how to analyse and evaluate more, as it is more useful in modern society.

A lot of parents don't seem to realise that factual recall is a very low level skill that won't get you very far in GCSEs at all - probably a few 3s and 4s, maybe the odd 5 if you are very very lucky.

Higher level questions require planning, application, analysis, evaluation and all the skills parents seem to think schools are ignoring. All this is taught from primary onwards. Many exam questions contain stacks of data that students are required to manipulate in many ways.

But yes, some factual recall is also required - students need to know the basics and understand the main concepts, or they wont be able to look up anything, because they wont know where to start, or what to believe!

I keep hearing suggestions about what schools should be teaching, but really, they are not very practical or useful suggestions- still keen to hear them, but dont be offended if I disagree with you

I like a lot of this, I do agree broadly.

English lit does give those who fail English language an English GCSE though, and much of what you suggest is already covered in citizenship.

Hyperthermia and sterilising water all well covered in science

“What the examiner expects to see” or “how the examiner expects this to be expressed” are also facts.

Recall of those facts in addition to subject matter facts will get you there. Tho I confess both of mine has a sprinkling of 8s among the 9s.

In my subject (MFL) I find that students these days don't do nearly enough rote learning. They are so used to being able to look up anything they want at any time that they don't value actually knowing things, and find it annoying to have to commit things to memory. It's impossible to speak a language by just looking things up.

Also, as has been pointed out, schools and teachers don't get to decide what is taught. The government does that.

I also find it really odd when people complain children are wasting their time in school by learning things they can just look up anyway... and then enthusiastically suggest other things they should be taught in school, which they could just as easily just look up anyway. Why do you think it would be easier to learn cooking by searching online than it would be to learn physics?

Schools exist so Govt can control children.

Schools exist so Govt can control children.

So do you think that schools shouldn't exist? What's the alternative? And if there were no centralised or regional control of schools at all, how would you ensure that children were getting a decent education of any kind? I mean... there's a lot wrong with the education system, but I don't think that means we shouldn't have one!

Go back to the system before Govt entered the market and made a near monopoly.

Will be much cheaper now with tech.

They can do it in the slums of India (James Tooley “The Beautiful Tree”). We should be able to as well.

Yes Gove increased the knowledge and at the same time they made them all skills heavy. You have to understand it to apply it, even with rote learned answers markers can see whether they get it or not.
Rote learning is not great but at the same time you should know all your times tables and spellings by year 4, just you just actually understand why the calculations work through number bonds and understanding what multiplication and division are, that they are opposites.

The Worry pre 2015 was labour dumbed down education so much to lie in the league tables you had things like btec it being worth 4 gcses at grade C when it really was more like one short course gcse at c. The skills curriculum led to lots of student led lessons where their discussions were rubbish because they don't understand the subject to be able to discuss it. Uninformed nonsense in history because they had no chronological knowledge to analyse.

Hard agree about people saying proper academic knowledge can just be looked up but first aid and other basic parenting should be taught. Er no, you as a parent teach cooking, washing, hygiene and other non specialist basic skills. School is for academic subjects delivered by an expert so you understand the norms and values, history and science, how numbers work etc.

As a teacher I love the current maths GCSE and A-level content. I love the fact that GCSE maths has a non-calculator paper as it requires people to be able to really understand numbers. Of course, to really improve at maths it is important to learn certain equations, which is why it is great that current GCSEs make students do this. This also gives more and more people the opportunity for STEM degrees or the ability to pursue maths at the highest level. Getting rid of course work has also made GCSEs more equitable. We are testing what children know, not what their families know.

That was such a wishy-washy answer. If you are a gate keeper to change on education no wonder it is so rigid. It's a complete computer says no response. If you genuinely wanted change (which you don't) you would encourage ideas, and consider how you could potentially implement them (obviously funding is prohibitive to most but still)
I have 4 children (aged 27, 18, 16 and 13). Between them they have gone to 3 different high schools.

Not one of them has learnt to cook at school. Let alone healthily.They have made a between them about 12 dishes, half of which have been cakes/puddings.
They have not had a clue about mortgages, pensions, bank account savings, budgeting, how to negotiate a higher wage, basic business finance.
Fixing basics around the house: how to use a drill, how to change a fuse, how to use the stoptap, how to put up a shelve, unblock a sink, etc. Repair a seam. This will save them £1000s over their lives. Especially in my area where many adults don't have these skills to pass on and environmentally has a huge impact.
Calling mediation or relaxation woo says a lot about your inability to understand clinical trials or know best practice in how to deal with the mental health crisis in young people with long-term tools.
I could go on but know you don't want to hear anything just want to knock things down.

You realise most people don't have these skills to pass on. Because we weren't taught them....

I actually think GCSEs are basically
just factual recall. They definitely can be revised through memorising and regurgitating in the exam to get top grades. A levels require more thought, and then degrees really show up those who learnt by rote earlier on.

What do I think schools should be teaching?

I think they should be teaching children how to learn. How to memorise and recall information, and how to apply that fundamental knowledge in a variety of different situations. Once they can do that, they can then start to question, evaluate, and draw their own conclusions. For instance, you can't decide where a living organism fits into the plant or animal kingdom until you have memorised some scientific facts. You can't question whether a duck-billed platypus is a mammal or not until you can remember the definition of a mammal.

Learning your times tables off by heart does two things. Not only does it enable you to recall and manipulate those numbers when answering mathematical problems, it also causes physical changes in the brain. Once those neurological pathways are there, they're there. The more often they are used, the stronger they become. They can then be used when memorising other things, such as the parts of a flower, the periodic table, the planets, Shakespeare's Sonnets, whatever.

Teaching kids to question everything and to have an enquiring mind is great. But if they haven't been taught some facts and figures first, they might as well be pissing in the wind.

I think that some students will benefit from the current curriculum but some may not. I think it’s hard to create an ideal for all.
I did GCSE’s many years ago (I went straight into work as my parents at the time didn’t feel that university was something you needed to do unless you had a career path mapped out) but I do remember thinking that I wish someone had taught me more about life skills such as taxes, pensions, budgeting

Another poster also mentioned things like health and fitness which I think is so inportant. I hated PE at school but really wish I knew then what I know now about how beneficial it is to stay as active as possible

The one important thing that a child needs to learn (especially today where all information is at our fingertips) is HOW to learn. And in my view, it helps if they have a LOVE of learning. Sadly school as is, just kills that for most kids.

School in its current iteration just spoon feeds mostly facts and asks the students to regurgitate said facts in a test. SO outdated.

Yes people need a basic level of literacy, no one disputes that, but most of today’s curriculum (particularly since Gove touched it in 2014) is pointless. (Ex teacher and home educator here).

If it was up to me, children would learn basic literacy and basic maths, some basic scientific concepts, critical thinking skills, how to debate properly and not just ‘pick a side’, how to negotiate and get along with others, how to research information and sift through the crap online, how to manage money and taxes, how to create and build with their hands, how to cook & eat healthily, how to keep fit, how to analyse information and ‘read between the lines’, how to follow your passions, how to find things out, more digital and IT skills, how to care for oneself and liaten to your body and your instincts. I could go on.

As many posters have pointed out, unless you have a passion for geography why do you need to know about ox bow lakes, map coordinates and local land use. Unless you have a passion for art why force people to draw and paint, it wastes their time and is defeating to their morale. I could go on.

School is only tailored to the academic. I’d say 70-80% of children/teens would benefit from more practical skills. They could go on to have a more productive fulfilling life rather than being defeated by being forced to learn.

GCSEs do require recall but they also require an understanding of exam technique and what the examiner is asking. My eldest struggles at the moment as he is dyslexic, so he is top set maths and science and bottom set English. But he is very testable so I think he will do fine. Shame he will be told his whole school career that he is a failure because schools calculate target grades on SATs and CATs but that's another issue.

Yes I wish my dyspraxic child could drop art. It's really unimaginative in his school. 4 terms of drawing when you have poor fine motor skills isn't good for self confidence.

Not one of them has learnt to cook at school. Let alone healthily.Theyhave made a between them about 12 dishes, half of which have been cakes/puddings.
They have not had a clue about mortgages, pensions, bank account savings, budgeting, how to negotiate a higher wage, basic business finance.
Fixing basics around the house: how to use a drill, how to change a fuse, how to use the stoptap, how to put up a shelve, unblock a sink, etc. Repair a seam. This will save them £1000s over their lives. Especially in my area where many adults don't have these skills to pass on and environmentally has a huge impact.
Calling mediation or relaxation woo says a lot about your inability to understand clinical trials or know best practice in how to deal with the mental health crisis in young people with long-term tools.
I could go on but know you don't want to hear anything just want to knock things down

All of these things are down to the parents, not the school.

If you have an issue, take it up with the government.

Possibly it's to do in being given a broad based education, even if that does not ultimately result in GCSE grades.

@smilesup all of your list is parenting. It is you that has not taught them cooking or DIY. Why have 4 kids if you think school should teach them basics skills? I'm utterly agog at your answer tbh. And if you don't have the skills all the things you mentioned are quite low level stuff that is easily self taught by YouTube or how to for dummies. Which is not really possible for complex academic subjects. Also if they at mid 20s don't understand Mortgages I really don't think teachers can help with that.if we did teach it it would take maybe half of one lesson, 20 or 30 minutes, what is there to understand? Compound interest from yr7 or 8 maths. Struggling to find 30 mins of content tbh!

Is it really true that intelligence isn't memory? I'm sure in a minority of cases it isn't, but thinking about the many intelligent people I know (in jobs like hospital consultancy or structural engineering, able to discuss subjects they've not studied ever or for a very long time such as politics or art, able to form and articulate their own opinions on new subjects) they all have very good memories.

Yes but you mean actual long term internalisation of facts with a full understanding in order to use them. Which is what teachers and exams are looking for. Most posters are talking about a shallow memory maybe from cramming revision where you don't really get it and assuming everyone else did that too.

Nationally- 40% of 16 year olds have not achieved either English or maths and will have to retake this in post 16 provision which a 20 odd% pass rate. That should tell us this is not working.

remembering back to my GCSE’s a long time ago, in certain ones ie history, geography, RE I remember factual recall served me very well. I actually remember thinking at the time that it’s not really a test of intelligence but more a test of how much information you can cram into your head.