To think the British educational system is all wrong?

[CookiePlough]

It seems like the aim is to make adults out of children as soon as possible rather than allowing them enough time to just be kids.

My main issues are that 1. kids start school way too early and 2. spend way too much time in school.

What is the purpose of a 4 year old child learning to read and write and do addition and subtraction? How does this help the child either in the present or in the future when they are an adult? I can see that 4 year olds are clearly capable of learning these things and of course being able to read or do simple arithmetic is not a problem. The problem is what are they missing out on in order to learn these skills? In my opinion they are missing out on playing. Unstructured, self determined playing. You can learn academics at a later age but you can't really make up for not getting enough playtime as a child. However, this wouldn't be a problem if the school day wasn't so ridiculously long. There just isn't enough time to play after school. There is no time to go anywhere after school (eg the park), for playdates, for any play that takes longer than an hour, to do extra curricular activities (without missing out on Unstructured play time) or anything else. Everything has to be done on the weekend but then when do you have time to do things as a family?

I understand most kids have 2 parents working full time so kids need to be in some sort of childcare setting but even nursery is preferable at thst age to school as there is more unstructured play and more adult supervision. School requires much more in terms of social skills, resilience etc. Which kids,should learn but not by suddenly being dropped in it.

I'm just ranting because I'm tired and upset rather than explaining my points properly. And it's not like I can change the system. I just feel so sad that kids are missing out on being kids. It's not the worst childhood obviously but it's also not as good as it could be.

Oh I am sure that the population would be delighted to see their houses massively devalued?? Negative equity on a national scale?

No, prices fall.

But then everyone who has a mortgage at all is in negative equity (unless they are in the final 10 years)

No one can move house

The other things I would do are to introduce basic numeracy and literacy tests for 15 year olds, that have to be passed before you can leave school (with appropriate SEN exemptions). Make employment laws much more attractive for employers to take on young staff with on the job training across all sectors.

Then reintroduce university grants (not loans) for tuition and maintenance for a restricted number of places, based on academic standards. Universities could recruit as many students as they want, but those who don’t reach the standards for grants would have to pay for themselves.

Alongside this I would like to have something like the Dutch system for supporting those who, for whatever reason, did not succeed at school but could be helped as younger adults, in a much more flexible setting, to reach their potential and go on to have useful and satisfying lives.

So rich kids can go to university as they fancy but poor kids have to be smart?

doenst sound very inclusive 🙁

I find the 45% getting grade 5 or above in English and Maths statistic depressing. We are literally setting up the majority to fail.

A basic pass/fail numeracy and literacy test, like Functional skills, would be better. Concentrate on these basic skills before the more complicated stuff.

But at what cost does that school get good ‘results’? And those results are such an arbitrary measure of success. They may open doors for a small number of individuals but again at what cost?

I agree that it isn’t clear cut. There is no clear answer to how to improve the English education system. It involves so so many factors that have barely been touched upon in this (& many other school-related threads on here). Not only is ‘control’ a factor but so is the outdated curriculum of course and deeper more philosophical issues such as its role in our capitalist society, the COL crisis, the deepening class and wealth divide and increasing numbers of families living in poverty. There is so much to unpick that I agree merely pointing to the Scandi model is too simplistic. We need to be asking what would be best for English kids.

I think a lot of this- and it bleeds into the university discussion- centres around what we as a society want from education.

Basing everything around jobs and workforce preparedness means we want a nation of employees. There is some merit to this as we need employees, but we also need people to invent and lead and be entrepreneurial

the big risk in such a classist society as the uk is if you don’t developed those skillls with the support of a state education, those skills will be held by the elite as eton will certainly not be churning out employees. Therefore you create a modern version the lord and servant society.

gatekeeping university is going back to exclusivity and constraining social mobility. You might not like thousands of 18 year olds going to university but it is a powerful tool for social mobility. And for that children need to be given the opportunity for academic achievement, not divided into “academic and manual” as per the old grammar system (and as suggested earlier, they do in Germany)

“Reset the economy by restricting mortgages…” wouldn’t reset house prices. It would just mean that the average person wouldn’t ever be able to afford to own a home.
It wouldn’t make houses affordable for everyone. It would never happen, never mind overnight.

I quite like the German system

They have 3 different type of secondary schools.

Gymnasium - academic route
Gesamtschuler - somewhere in the middle
Technischer - technical schools more focused on trades

It means that those who are not that academic can go to technical schools where they learn core subjects but instead of other subjects they are very unlikely to ever need they can do building or plumbing or car mechanics

You can switch schools so the decision made at 13 doesn't mean you can never change schools but it means that learning is more tailored to interests

The German system was condemned by the UN for entrenching social inequity.

It's not the less academic who go to technical schools, it's the less well off. Somehow, wealth buys access to the academic routes. Same as in England where kids on free school meals rarely get into grammars.

i completely agree. I can’t imagine a more inequitable system. It’s a terrible idea

There is no British education system.

I've said many, many times that we should use something like the existing 11+ as a "bench mark" for basic literacy and numeracy . Once you pass, at whatever age, it's the gateway to starting GCSE etc courses and, if very late, the gateway to leaving school to education or college etc. Along with that, scrap the "year by year" progression in secondary schools and get pupils moving "up" according to ability, not age. So, the struggling/weaker students stay at a more basic level, doing basic skills, but the higher performing students move onto GCSE/A levels etc at a pace that suits them, even if that means taking the external exams earlier than normal. Really no point trying to teach Shakespeare or other "wordy"/essay subjects to kids who can't read nor write. No point in teaching trigonometry or physics to kids who can't add up! If pupils are struggling with basic literacy and numeracy, then spend all available time on that, not on languages, sciences, humanities, etc that they're not capable of.

@Zoflorabore if you haven't already, apply for EHCP. My daughter was only diagnosed at 14, after crashing out of education through burnout. No education for years 10 and 11 (the LA alternative provision was awful and made her anxiety worse), she's now sitting 5 GCSEs in a 1-2-1 tuition centre with the aim of going to college in September. If this hadn't been approved, she'd have done online such as King's or Minerva.
There are options out there but as a parent, it's left to you to research what your child needs and find what will be suitable and argue with the LA for the funding.

But at what cost does that school get good ‘results’? And those results are such an arbitrary measure of success. They may open doors for a small number of individuals but again at what cost?

@picturethispatsy you hint darkly 'at what cost'. What is the cost? People have been trying to tear down Michaela for years but I've not noticed any particular reports of it ruining young people's lives?

The German system separates too young. In Finland they separate at 16, the student's choice whether to go to academic high school, vocational high school, or do both at the same time (though the work load must be massive for that, takes a very dedicated student) and they can switch if they want or do one after the other (one of my vocational school classmates did that). Much better that way.

That's what happens in the UK at 16.

But in the UK you specialise long before 16, for gcses, which isn't good in my opinion. And post-16 you specialise even further whereas here you carry on all the major subjects until the end in both streams (but to different degrees of depth), even music and art not just core subjects.

In my opinion, there is far too much rigidity and focus on "scaffolding" in UK primary schools. It limits creativity and doesn't support any kind of individual thought. The huge push on grammar (fronted adverbials, really?) and ever-changing maths strategies are confusing for children who don't naturally thrive in academics

This is absolutely right@MooseBreath ! I thought the scaffolding was too much in primary schools (because the children don’t learn anything, they’re just spoonfed and copy largely) but was shocked at how much it was used in secondary schools. Can none of those children write an essay by themselves? It seems to be used for everyone and everything - far, far too much.

I also agree about the grammar. It’s all for show. The children know the term “fronted adverbials” and others but they lack true understanding of grammar, and their writing never starts to flow naturally or develop. Which, of course, is probably why they all need scaffolding 🙄

This is typical of the whole approach to education: superficiality. Skim over lots of topics, spoonfeed them grammar terms, make 6yr olds learn Maths terms like ‘commutative’, keep them at school for hours, make them wear blazers, etc - but despite all these showy things, the children aren’t actually performing that well. It’s all superficial to plaster over the failings.

I would say I had similar amount of tests in Poland at that age. Once we got through a big topic (e.g. Greek Mythology, reptiles or structure of an atom) our knowledge was tested. In case of Polish it was usually in a form of an essay written in a class, in other cases it was more test/exercises based. It's not that complex, children have books for each subject and one can easily grasp what needs to be studies for a test and it encourages regular learning.

If pupils are struggling with basic literacy and numeracy, then spend all available time on that, not on languages, sciences, humanities, etc that they're not capable of.

So my child with significant numeracy issues would never do history, languages or science, despite strong literacy skills. She wouldn’t be exposed to arts and humanities? Instead she’d spend all her time focusing on one subject that gives her significant levels of stress and no sense of achievement?

Poland also scores extremely high in PISA global rankings- top 3 for a long time
iirc. Believed to be related to the absolute sky rocketing of Poland in every way in the last 30 years. 30 years ago the education system was as poorly performing as the rest of the ex soviet block still is.

The educational powerhouse of Europe is actually Estonia.

Estonia was the top performing European country in the 2022 PISA, with Switzerland, Finland and Ireland not far behind.

Importantly, not only do the Estonian pupils have high results at the top end, they also have high results at the bottom end. In other words, the system gets the best out of most learners.

The Estonians don’t begin formal schooling until age 7, but almost all young children attend two years of kindergarten where they learn approximately the same thing as our 5-6 year olds in a playful environment. All pupils have free school meals.

The education system is built from the bottom up, with individual teachers and schools having a great deal of autonomy.

The country is not rich and teacher pay is a problem, but the teaching profession is considered prestigious. Teachers have excellent academic qualifications. Classes are small and good teacher-pupil relationships are a high priority. Most schools have a psychologist and/or a counsellor in house.

Pupils take 9 or 10 subjects at GCSE. I don't think that is a lot of specialisation.