Terrible education system

[Onand]

There appears to be a few threads on the joys (lol) of teaching and it’s got me thinking about the UK state education provision.

The state of the UK education system for the vast majority (not private or grammar schools) makes you wonder if it’s terrible by design, or underinvested deliberately. Who would want millions of academically engaged and culturally enriched students who are then impossible to bamboozle and confuse with their ‘politics’.

It makes you wonder if that’s the reason education is so poorly funded and the curriculum so cumbersome and outdated. Teach them just enough to get by but not enough to go beyond unless they are naturally curious and gifted….

Oooh I love a good conspiracy theory. WEF taking over the World and ‘you will own nothing, and be happy’!

But I honestly think it’s because we have had a long line of corrupt, self serving governments since Blair who make sure their own kids are fine and aren’t that bothered about yours. Say what you like about Thatcher (and my family had an awful lot to say 😆) but we had free music lessons in school, youth clubs and a choice post 16 of YTS (youth training scheme, which my electrical engineer brother did) or A levels and university (me).
Blairs children went to state schools… Brompton Oratory and Sacred Heart… two of best schools in country at the time… Think I read that the daughter is a barrister like mum, eldest is a multi millionaire filling the hole in apprenticeships (created by his dad insisting people go to university). Don’t know about youngest. All nepo children so didn’t matter where they went.
Health, education and defence should not be run by any organisation that has to be voted in/out every 4 years.

Rant over 🫢

Not completely accurate - most of the states have an element of parental choice in secondary schooling - but accurate enough, and what's worse, there are often systemic perceptions that children from immigrant families aren't 'grammar' material because of presumptions that their parents won't be able to support their learning.

(Also, these days what you call 'technical' and 'vocational' schools - also not strictly accurate, as all schools provide most subjects including English, science and history and/or geography; it's more like the different levels at GCSE - tend to be rolled into one. You can access apprenticeships, further ed, and some forms of higher ed from these schools, so they're not exactly dead ends, but most MC parents will be very invested in getting their dc into grammar)

Exactly.

If you have a weak leadership team then you find it filters down to the teachers and then the children.

School who have strong leadership and clear enforced behaviour policy you have a better school.

I really don't know why you think this would help. The government would then have to fund all school places - and rich parents would top up poor education via paying for tutors.
All our local government free schools are fantastic - unfort its a postcode lottery.

I think it's fairly up to date. I almost had a heart attack when I was invigilating a history exam last summer and they were answering questions about 9/11!

That's just idealistic. If private schools were abolished in the UK, the super wealthy would either just send their kids to boarding school in Switzerland, the US etc. or pull them out of the system entirely and home school them with private tutors.

Ultimately, all children who require a 1-2-1 need to be in a special needs school. All children who have been diagnosed with a special need, need to be in a special needs school. We need a lot more special needs schools and for them to be funded correctly.

This would lower the financial burden on schools, the social difficulties on teachers and the education burdens on children who are able to learn in these environments.

IMO, it is the elephant in the room that nobody wants to take responsibility for.

If it has not already been said, there is no UK education system.

England has one. I agree, it is getting pretty extreme and oddball.
Wales has different curriculum and priorities.
Northern Ireland has similar curriculum, but different priorities.
Scotland has different just about everything about education.

So the OP's question is false.

Ultimately, all children who require a 1-2-1 need to be in a special needs school. All children who have been diagnosed with a special need, need to be in a special needs school. We need a lot more special needs schools and for them to be funded correctly.

There also needs to be an understanding that special needs doesn’t mean academically unable. Special provision where I am doesn’t accommodate children who have complex needs but are academically able so my DD either goes to mainstream which would be utterly unsuitable or specialist provision that can meet her developmental needs but won’t teach her to even Nat 4 (GCSE) level. So she’s in a school she can cope with and I’m paying for tutors to teach her to exam level, but many parents don’t have the funds to do that.

YANBU OP - State Education is being shafted by people (Tory politicians) who don't use it and would sell it to their mates or shut it down tomorrow if they could. They don't believe in State Education.

I teach loads of kids with diagnosed special needs who don’t need to be in a special school. One of them just got accepted to Cambridge!

Well put, ypu saved me the trouble of formulating a reply.

That wouldn't affect the overall affect though. So if the "superwealthy" - less than 10% of those who pay for private schools - did as you say, the affect on the state system would still mean it would dramatically improve.

Abolished may never happen, but reducing it by 50% isn't so very far fetched and would make a big difference.

LewishamMum are you going to answer my earlier question to you: why would it make a big difference?

How exactly would the state system dramatically improve?

Twistyizzy, I’m not sure we’re going to get an answer from LewishamMumNow. It’s like those posters who say ‘bring on the revolution’, but when questioned as to what form the revolution would take, answer comes there none.

If private schools were abolished then I wouldn't just shrug my shoulders and send my children to the local comp. I would home educate one of my children and move houses to get my other two into the catchment of a better performing school. I would use my extra money to pay for tutors and other enrichment.

I think it's Gove's forced primary focus on SPAG that's created a generation of pupils who leave primary with burnout - confused, bamboozled, thinking they are stupid as none of it make sense.
I've done a science degree and I could not help my son through the maze of trying to understand relative clauses, punctuation for parenthesis, adverbial phrases in Year 2,3,4,5. He was too young and this was too much. Learning these gterms is absolutely pointless for a 6/7 year old. Pointless.
I remember when he came from Yr 1 (age 5) with homework to learn 'cvc' words. I tried to explain 'consonant vowel consonant' but it was futile - he couldn't even read yet!!

If the children don't enjoy primary they are going to be defeated by the time they start secondary.

“I don’t want a nation of thinkers, I want a nation of workers” Rockefeller or one of his associates purportedly said when the U.S. education system was first introduced in the early 1900s.

Controversial…. and he’s been called a capitalist pig so it’s probably true that he did want a nation of people educated to a certain degree but not too much so as to be a threat to capitalism.

I think there are pros and cons to a mainstream education. It’s a good thing for people to be literate and to read and have some knowledge of course but (as an ex teacher) I also think that the system doesn’t encourage critical thinking or life skills. On the whole it teaches people to regurgitate information and to pass tests. On the other hand there is a correlation between a higher level of education and higher living standards so it certainly pays to go into some sort of higher education for people (& for capitalism!).

@Barbadossunset Happy to answer, just don't spend my entire life on mumsnet.
If the sort of parents willing to spend tens of thousands of pounds annually on private schools, sent their kids to state schools, then yes, state schools would improve. They would have parents demanding they impove, voting for parties to increase funding, their well behaved well motivated kids would help the state schools too. Doh!

LewishamMum so at the moment all state school parents are a bunch of incompetents who can’t be bothered to try to improve their dcs’ state schools? Yet some rich ex private school parents will swoop in and wave a magic wand?
Isn’t this quite patronising to state school parents?
Also, there seem to be plenty of rich parents on here who could easily afford to send their dc to private schools but don’t because they are morally superior people.
Why aren’t they succeeding in improving these schools?

@LewishamMumNow I have some experience on a small scale of an influx of well off children to a rather poorly performing state school following a sudden private school closure. Rather than this improving standards for all, the result was that the education of these children suffered too. More equality I suppose in that all children received the same poor education. Why? Because one disruptive pupil in a class is enough to disrupt the education of all. There is nothing the teacher or all the pushy motivated parents in the world could do in that situation to resolve that. In that area, there was no permitted effective disciplinary system or alternative for disruptive children that worked.

Of course, these kids ended up ok because eventually most of the parents in the incoming group paid for tutors in the short term and many moved house to an area near an alternative independent school or better performing state school.

My view is that the greatest factor affecting academic underperformance in the UK in the last quarter century is parental failure and attitude. Compare the performance and educational outcomes of ethnic minority children in the UK from cultures that value and promote education above all else and refuse to accept anything other than hard work and discipline to the mass and see the difference. Friends moving to U.K. from abroad ( including from other European countries) have said to me that they are staggered by the lack of respect exhibited for teachers in the U.K. and the lack of support from parents for disciplinary measures when their child has misbehaved.

But we wouldn't send our kids to poor performing state schools doh!
I would move house to the best state school in the area as would most private school parents.
Why is it up to private parents to raise the standards in state schools? Why aren't current state parents capable of doing that? Are we magically superior to state parents?