English schools are just really strange aren't they?

[emkana]

At an age when my nephew in Germany is only just starting to learn to read my dd's here wrote diaries in the style of Samuel Pepys. My nephew is adding up numbers to together make up to twenty, my dd knows all her times tables to twelve. But then when it comes to secondary it all seems to change? English schools really slow down, and by GSCE stage the demands aren't very high at all?

Erm, my ds is doing GCSE revision at the moment and I'm afraid that the demands aren't actually the piece of cake the media would have you believe.

He's at grammar and predicted to get mainly As but they aren't going to be handed to him on a plate, he does three hours revision every day in addition to the school day (more in the holidays), and it isn't easy stuff, certainly I wouldn't fancy doing it myself.

Emkana, wait till you have a child doing GCSEs and then come back and say that.

The range of skills and information they are expected to acquire is huge, and the whole exam/coursework combination very relentlessly rigorous. My dd1 is predicted all A* and As, but my god she's worked for it. The range of knowledge they have is far greater than anything I had at the same age - I got straight As at O-level, but you could do that pretty much by memorising material and reproducing it in the exam. You couldn't do that at GCSE, there are a huge range of tasks requiring different skill sets.

There is plenty of scope for GCSEs to be improved and reformed, but it's certainly not a walk in the park.

Actually, your post has made me quite cross.

Oh no sorry don't be cross, I am very happy to be corrected and take it all back, shouldn't have believed the media hype, apologies.

emkana - I think your observations are valid. The English education system is rather strange when compared to other European countries. And whilst is works well for many children, it also lets many down.

Whether we start 'formal education' too early is often debated on Mumsnet, with strong views on both sides. From my perspective - it's what English dc's are not learning in their early school years which is the concern: All those social, life and learning skills which other European countries seem to give greater emphasis.

I must admit I agree with emkana to a degree. My DS started school at 4, my german friends DD didn't begin until 7, prior to that she had been in a play based nursery; very hot on social/life skills.

Both average students, by 9 they had a similar range of mathematical knowledge, could do mental maths, multiplication, division etc. My DS had no academic advantage over her DD, despite the three year difference in starting formal education.

From a personal perspective I would have preferred the European system for both DS's, especially DS2.

I'm much fonder of a later start (so much so that I engineered this for ds).
Start later, teach faster.
I can't believe on here when people are worried about their 4 yr old not being able to write well, or read the required words.

Prefer the uk system. DS's boss's ds was born a few days later than DD. He started school 2 years later in germany. He found it a nasty shock as he had gone from playing all day to a very formal setting. Uk system was much more gradual introduction to formal learning.

have a pie :D

It tends to even out later. In the UK 50% of chidlren don't get 5 good GCSEs at gradea C - A and a C is so easy and low grade that it' s virtually a fail anyway. So it's not that the GCSEs are easy but that so many chidlren can't manage GCSEs.

I think that it is much more sensible to delay formal education-seems to work well in countires like Finland.

It suited ds1 to start formal learning when he did. So right now I'm glad they start when they do in the UK.

But when you actually talk to German parents about what their dc are doing at the ages of say 4-7, a lot of them are quite dissatisfied with what is on offer. Kindergarten (which covers KS1 in the English system) is pretty much free play, with very little directed educational content. But when they start school, they're sitting at desks from day 1, doing proper work. There's very little differentiation, little acknowledgement that children may have very different starting points, and in most areas, by about Y3, huge pressure to get good grades in order to get a grammar school recommendation.

The nice thing about the English system when it works well, is that the formal content can be gradually increased year by year, starting from a play-based but educationally structured curriculum in the nursery, up to something much closer to a formal classroom by Y3. There is no equivalent to that in Gm - you're either running around kindergarten playing in the sand, or your're sitting at benches in rows, listening to the teacher.

The important thing to remember in all these cross-national comparisons is that 'school' in the UK is by no means the same thing as 'school' in German. When they shudder at our dc starting at 4 or 5 they are imagining putting little tots to sit at desks in rows doing maths off the blackboard and formal dictation. When UK parents say they'd like to delay school entry, they're still envisaging a gentle start, which in the main is not what is on offer in Germany. So the whole comparison is actually pretty meaningless.

I think things do slow down between Year 7-9. There's lots of evidence which suggests children deteriorate by a year in Year 7. Then suddenly you're back into ticking boxes and meeting targets getting coursework done and GCSE modules achieved. I think some of the GCSE work is really too easy but it's harder to get As and A*. There is a lot to juggle though at this level. I think students tend to find that A Levels are again a massive jump up from GCSEs. I teach lot of students who come in with As and Bs and are amazed when they're only getting Cs and Ds at A Level.

I think a lot is expected at primary level although lots of children don't achieve the targets but then at many secondary schools kids get lost and find it easier to coast or get away with very little until Year 10. It's a shame. Perhaps partly because there aren't exams which is a bit sad.

"I think that it is much more sensible to delay formal education-seems to work well in countires like Finland."

I worked for the largest employer in Finland in their uk branch for 6 years. I worked with highly educated Finns and I really wasn't that impressed with the results of their education system.

I think the way foreign languages are taught (or not!) in the UK is pretty rubbish. We didn't start til 11 or 12 and then it was soooooo dull, who feckin' cares about all the different rail cards you can buy in France? I got A grades (A* not invented) in 2 MFLs and my language skills are woeful, but my parents have some French and Spanish friends and their kids were all able to hold a conversation in English by the age of about 13.

A french or spanish teenager is going to have a lot more exposure to english through pop music/films etc than a english teenager is ever going to have to french or spanish.

Agree with bruffin about the English language for non-English mother tongue people. For non-English speaking people, English is the obvious choice as second language. What language, redvelvet, do you suggest English DC should learn? French? Where is that spoken? German? where is that spoken? Spanish? Where is that spoken? What language do Europeans use as the lingua franca when they meet up? English usually. English is everywhere so it is much easier to learn. Even if they don't consciously learn it, they learn the words to pop songs. It all helps.

I was just going from newspapers bruffin-they always make the Finnish system sound superior. What makes you say that? (not knowing any Finns myself)

They were excellent at the narrow field of their job, but were robots who couldn't multitask. The english staff were far more flexible and able to cope with most things that were thrown at them. They were lovely people and I reallly enjoyed working for the company but it was very frustrating sometimes.

That is interesting bruffin-we have been told how advanced they are, particularly in Maths, for so many years- that I have tended to take it as fact.

We really fail at language teaching, I work for an international company and all the staff all over the world speak English. The English staff on the whole barely manage two words of French or German, let alone Chinese or Russian! In fact, our German SAP expert writes better English reports than a lot of the English staff.

Also, I, my older brother, and my best friend went to the same Grammar school in the 70/80's and we did O levels. What my nieces and my friend's children are doing now at GCSE is a piece of piss compared to what we did (all 3 of us agree), especially Science.

I'm sure that is just because most of the world speaks English. e.g. If we had songs in French every day and French TV programmes we would be much better at picking it up.

I think it is language teaching I was thinking of a lot, as I used to teach german myself. Aged seventeen we studied Hamlet. Aged seventeen, my pupils were struggling to put a simple German sentence together correctly.

Emkana, language teaching is a whooooole nother animal. I have noticed the contrast too, vis a vis my Gm cousins dc learning English and contrasting it with my dc's ability in the foreign languages they learn. There is no comparison in terms of ability to actually use the language in context, but I think the reasons are complex:

1. General exposure to the target language: children/teens in other European countries are constantly exposed to English via MTV, films, football and general cultural imperialism
2. There is a cultural expectation that adults will be able to speak English at the very least in addition to their own language. And that means 'speak' in the sense of 'be functionally competent in' rather than 'ransack your brain to try and remember the Y8 lesson in which you learnt how to order a pizza'. English kids just don't hear English adults using other languages in the same was as eg. Gm kids will hear Gm adults using English
3. The way langs are taught: huge generalisation, but in the UK MFL are taught (if at all) in order to pass a GCSE in that language rather than to attain functional competence. Not the same thing at all, and there's a lot of teaching to pass the test which doesn't really help in terms of using the language in a real context.
4. Grammatical complexity: actually, English is a relatively easy language to learn to a basic level. Becoming fully fluent in idiomatic English is extremely hard, and passing for native harder still, but because of the relative lack of inflections and rules on word order, you can learn quite quickly enough English to say useful things. Whereas in more inflected languages the processing load is much greater, so it needs more work to produce a basic comprehensible communication
5. National characteristics: English people tend to be quite self-conscious and reluctant to embarrass themselves, so as a population they are probably more hesitant about just opening their mouths and saying things unless they're completely sure it's right. Huge generalisation, I know, but still some truth in it. Many other cultures are more thick-skinned about making mistakes, which at least means they'll give it a go.
6. Age of learning: in the UK we don't start serious language learning (primary MFL is mickey mouse unless you're at Ecole de Wix or somewhere) until dc are 11, just as they're getting all pubertal and self-conscious about making fools of themselves. 7yo kids would be much more likely to get stuck in, but primary language learning is non-existent in most schools, and even if they notionally do some, it's more a taster than meaningful learning.

Can you tell I feel strongly about this?