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?

Frogs - I agree.

I did MFL for my degree and feel passionately that the whole way we teach and approach languages in this country needs a radical overhaul.

Because generally speaking British adults' competency in MFL is so dire, it simply isn't normal for children to hear them speak and thus to see it as an important skill.

But it's not really an important skill cumbria. English is a universal language and yes english is an important skill if you are not a native speaker. But you can quite happily get through your life without ever having to speak French or German. I didn't do French at school just German. I very rarely in a position where lack of french has caused me a problem. I have rarely ever had to use my german. I did once have a conversation in a bar in Crete watching a The world cup match between England and Germany DH never did german at school and has worked regularly in germany over the years without a problem.
If you are not a native english speaker then yes having english as a second language is important, and also I suspect most european children are immersed in english from a very young age. We spent a few holidays in Holland and there was a lot of english on TV, even Dutch groups like Chipz which were aimed at tweenies sang in english, my dd has some of their cds.
My DCs learn French, Italian and German between them, but they don't ever have an opportunity to use them. Italian may be the exception as we have a big italian community in our area. Unless you spend a lot of time really surrounded by the language it is difficult to get to a good level of the language. I could speak greek as a I child, I can't remember doing so and can't now because I have not had to use it since my nan died when I was 9.
I wish in many ways my dcs were taught latin at school as I do think it would have probably helped them with their english, rather than some random language they will probably never need to use in their life.

So MFL is not an important skill to acquire because we don't really need to speak other languages, because everyone speaks English. Riiiiight. I think Bruffin has just illustrated why MFL is so undervalued in UK schools.

Obviously you can get by without speaking another language. You can get by without a knowledge of history, of literature, or of classical civilisation for that matter. I don't have any practical application for my o-level Geography knowledge of escarpments and terminal moraines, or all that business about the periodic table and atomic bonds. And I doubt many people other than maths teachers regularly need to solve simultaneous equations in their daily lives. So we could probably scratch all those sections of the secondary curriculum which don't come in handy for adding up your supermarket bill, working out your tax return, filling in your census form and earning enough to keep a roof over your head.

If you're going to look at it in purely utilitarian, Gradgrind terms, then most of the stuff in the secondary school syllabus is not really that useful for most people most of the time, apart from maybe ICT and food tech. But school syllabuses aren't restricted to supplying people with skills that they will use in their daily lives, they are structured to provide a broad introductory knowledge and insight into a range of academic disciplines which will give them a starting-point for discovering what they're good at and what they enjoy, and also give them at least a passing experience of the vast body of human experience and learning. People don't just learn a MFL so that they can order a beer at a bar in Spain, because the Spanish barman almost certainly speaks English. They learn a language in order to get an insight into how language works on a wider level than just English, and also to give them the opportunity to gain deeper insight into other cultures, countries and literatures. And if we want to add a utilitarian angle to it, it bears mentioning that UK businesses are snapping up people who can add a decent competence in another language to their skillset, because it enables them to communicate with businesses in other countries on a completely different level than if they expect all forriners to just man up and speak English.

Sigh. Obviously there are some dc who are struggling so much with basic maths and English that there is a good argument for exempting them from the wider reaches of the full curriculum. But for everybody else, we rightly assume that they should be given the opportunity to learn a full range of subjects which provide at least the basics of an all-round education, of which having some familiarity with another language is an integral part.

Most empoyers know decent scools make chidlren do a foreign language and the universities always required it. many employers are 40+ and will think needlework GCSE child is a bit thick; French, German etc must be quite clever (as you need do learn qutie a lot for a language) so most decent schools in effect make chidlren do a GCSE language and always have. Until I came on mumsnet I didn't even realise loads of chidlren didn't do a language at GCSE.

Yes, but "doing a language" at GCSE level in an English school is not necessarily the same as learning a language in another school system. I have recently come back from Spain where I was pleased to find that the Spanish I learnt at school during three years in a Swedish school, as my third foreign language, is still good enough 30 years later to enable me to communicate with the people I meet, to follow a guided tour and
to read a book. And it was not because we had lots of exposure or language exchanges: I never once met a native speaker during my years at school, there was no internet and no Spanish on television. But expectations were high: it was assumed that after 3 years we would be able to travel to Spain and start speaking. Or pick up a novel and read it.

Dd has now studied French for 5 years and last year her French teacher informed us that she thought the imperfect tense would be too difficult for most of the pupils (in top set!!!) to master, though she reckoned dd might just manage it. A GCSE in one foreign language is compulsory at her school, but noone seems to have the expectation that these students will get to the stage where they can actually do anything with the language.

Having said this, not everything is less advanced in dd's English school: she certainly seems to know more maths than I did and they do far more work on oral and written presentation, which has got to be a useful skill. Perhaps the truth is simply that no school is perfect- and also that some skills are more important in some cultures than in others.

From what I have seen from a 15 year old german exchange student, they are (certainly in the gymnasium or grammar equivalent schools) ahead of our students in most areas (not just languages, but maths and science too), and this isn't just one bright student the actual lessons she attended here were a long way behind what she would have been doing at home (teachers had to give her A-level maths material in year 10 for example).

I do agree that GCSEs aren't all that demanding too - I suspect that as germany has maintained its tripartite education their exams are more geared to the more able students in the gymnasiums and are probably more akin to our old O-levels, if they do exams at that age (frogs I don't know how you can think GCSEs are harder, I'm struggling to think of a subject that even might be as difficult - English is about the only one I can come up with). That said, I think overall I prefer our system that caters to everyone rather than going back to grammar schools countrywide.

As a Dutch person, I am quite amazed with the English school system (is there a system?). Some things I love, others I like less. In The Netherlands there is a lot of research into starting early/late and all the brain research confirms it is better to start reading later, as it is just no use to cram things into a brain it will not get. (e.g. word sequencing) and there is a lot of research pointing into the direction that starting early might even encourage dyslexia. (interestingly this sort of research is little known in the UK, I guess you get the answers to the questions you/politics ask) What I see from my DS here, he is now quite ahead compared to his cousins, but I also know that once they start reading, they will progress in 4 months to the level he took 3 years to achieve. I am all for less formal education at an early age, stimulating creativity, independent thinking, social skills, which apparently develop best at this young age. At the same time the brits are very good at catering for more able children, as of course some children's brains are ready at age 4, and they get really bored in Dutch schools. They Want to read, and I even know some schools that actively discourage this, as it is too much trouble for the teacher. All systems come with good and bad things, just steal a few things from other countries and keep your good things.

As a Scot reading the education threads on MN I do think the English education system is strange. Our system isn't perfect either but I think both countries could learn a lot from each other without having to look abroad where there are different cultural factors.

The English system seems very segregated to me. There are some excellent (mostly grammar) schools which are more like the private schools we have up here. So I think the system works for you if you can access this creme de la creme. Scottish schools are a lot more egalitarian. There are no league tables and everyone goes to their local school, bar a few placing requests. Also we just have denominational and non-denominational schools not all the chaos that seems to come from the church schools down south.

In the later years I think that doing fewer 6-8 Standard grades (and intermediates) is better than doing 10+ GCSEs and that 4-6 Highers is better than 3-4 A levels. Although I do think the 2 year English course is preferable to the 1 year Scottish course.

We also have more flexibility with year 1 starting dates, that you can defer if you are born in the youngest 2 months. However, in practice this has just moved the goalposts.

Having gone to a presentation on the Flemish system by Flemish sixth formers to help them with their English, there are marked differences in their system. They are effectively put in a stream at 12/13 for technical, vocational or academic, and you don't move between them. Tough shit if you are late developer academically then!

Their uni system is also interesting - lots of students live at home and attend a localish uni and it's 500 euros a year, or so one told me. I'll be looking for Flemish unis teaching in English for ds!

In response to Emkana and Hamlet - at 17 I was studying Moliere (Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme) in French, along with Maupassant, (Quinze Contes) Sartre (Les Mains Salles) and another whom I can't remember for my A level French lang and lit.

My ds (15) is doing IGCSE French next year, and only learned avoir and etre at the end of Year 9 because I made him chant them going down the drive in the morning. More rote learning of verbs and vocab needs to come back imo.

Agree with frogs re MFL.

but as far as older kids in foreignland go, for example, here in Italy, the "best" high schools concentrate on literature so, yes, they are writing essays (or rather paraphrasing -and then not always, sometimes they copy word for word- their coursebooks) on Shakespeare, Milton, Donne, Woolf without understanding diddley about what they are writing. I would claim that is true for a good 50% of the students.

I did the same as ScaryTeacher, but, as I imagine she did, the 4 set books over the 2 yrs were read in French, but discussed and written about in English, whereas here, they literally do literature from words written in caves and Beowulf through to Angela thingy-Obsession woman, in the MFL. At all stages. And they just can't do it. They don't have the language capabilities, and frankly, often neither do their teachers.

To copy and paste what I say on all the let's-start-kids-later threads, dd has 3-4 hrs h/w a night, yesterday wrote a 300 word "commentary" on a narrative piece which had to identify protagonist/antagonist/rise in story/plateau and denouement, as well as an introduction and summative conclusion. In Maths she is starting long division. She is 7 and that is the reason they start later, not because parents-know-best-formal-schooling-yada-yada.

We discussed some of the lit in French as well Bucharest, but then my French teacher was a hard taskmaster...he tried to teach us some Basque as well!

Back to the OP, another point is that we, the English (or those of us here who are!) tend to bag anything English. I smile every time I see those 'relocating to Australia' TV programmes. Without fail, amongst the marvellous attributes they peddle regarding life down under is 'the excellent education system'. It is said as an unassailable given, and accepted IN Australia as fact. But the reality is somewhat different.

Of course there are good schools in Oz (and you pay rather a lot for them AND most have a religious affiliation) but I wasn't particularly impressed by what I saw! 4 families I know here in the UK either emigrated (unsuccessfully) to Oz or spent one to two years there where all DCs went to state schools. Without a word of a lie, every single one of their DCs needed some sort of remedial help to catch them back up to their English counterparts back here. This doesn't necessarily mean the Oz system is 'bad', as much as the knowledge base the DCs are required to have to 'pass' is lower than is expected in the same subject to 'pass' here.

I have a friend whose DD will be going to the local comp next Jan (at 12 1/2). She is going into the 'Excellence in Music' programme at the school which will in effect segregate her education from that of 'non-participants'. The entry requirement is 'having participated in learning a musical instrument during their time at primary school or having participated in a choral group'. No level of expertise required whatsoever, note! Admittedly, said school also offers 'Excellence in Surfing' (really!) as another programme...

Let us ensure we measure apples up against apples, here!

Very true, erebus.

I know people who moved to NZ only to find they were 2 years ahead at age 10. They ended up emigrating back.

The later stages of high school are more advanced in the UK than in most comparable countries, for most pupils.

That is one reason why our Universities are the best in the world.

Whose universities?(sorry, darlene, don't know where you are!)

I did two languages at A Level, 30 years ago and was very good at reading and at writing about French Lit in English. In my second language I wrote about the literature in the target language. My spoken language was pretty inadequate though.

My daughter is doing AS level and has not yet read literature (except as an extra curricular club activity) as this will happen next year. I think she will be required to study less literature than I did though.

On the other hand, It seems to me she is able to speak very well, is getting a grasp of the history, culture and politics of the countries and writes essays in the target language on subjects such as the importance of the arts; the function of marriage in a modern society and so on.

I'd say she is more comfortable and able to function better in her target languages than I was.