Sixth form students unwilling to do 30 mins revision a day

[Blandmum]

My class,most having failed at least one modular examination outright told me today that 30 minutes revision a night is unreasonable, 'What if we have something else to do?'

Dur??????

You did it your way and failed, and what does this tell you children???????

Lazy little devils.

I'm even helping them to sort out a timetable FFS!

Times have changed - children rule! -

Jennypog - what is CGP?
(have been out of school for a while - may have missed something very obvious!)

OMG!! Well, that's their look out isn't it!!

Blimey, I did way more than that coming up to my A levels!

There is certainly an "easy money" mentality, but I have a slightly longer-winded view as well.

We have a relatively good job market, and a minimum wage. Also the most visible "high achievers" in the media are people who either are dumb, or emulate it very well.
This leads to an impression by kids that not only can they get an OK job with little effort, but more dangerously that good jobs are either impossible to get (like footballer), or aren't worth the extra effort.
With all due respect to MartianBishop it's hard for teachers to show a good example here.
Teaching salaries aren't so wonderful that they can point to their education as a way to money.

I get accused on MN of focusing on money too much. Artifact of having grown up poor I suppose, but "job satisfaction" is a hard thing to impart to teenagers.
I see wages as an objective measure of respect. Our culture does not respect education very much.

Kids do understand respect. By the time a kid hits A levels, they know they're not going to be David Beckham, and I'd press the point that there is a wide range of levels you can end up in.

In the employment section of this site we see horrible liberties being taken by employers, typically on people who also are badly paid.

Small example, I'm terrible about security passes, they have short and painful lives. Every security manager at the banks I've worked at will sigh and say "oohh Dominic", and hand another out. One made up a batch.
But at one of the banks I've worked at I read that cleaners on a fiver per hour were being charged 20 quid for ID cards, not just when they were lost but merely to start work. Allowing for tax, that's more than half a day's pay.
They'd never try this crap on more valued staff.

Education can get you the ability to fight a crap boss on a more equal basis.
"Freedom" is the ability to walk away, and make choices. My education has given me a lot of options, not as many as I'd like, and several times I've made horribly wrong choices, but "horribly wrong" in this context has meant not getting rich, rather than losing the house.

Again, with respect to MB, she's not the right member of staff to do this.
There ought to be better careers education, and it ought to be a more hard line job. Someone needs to explain to kids the consequences of their choices.
To do this, careers teachers need to knoew this stuff, the statisitcs and trends ion the labour market. But most of all they need to have the force of character tp push kids hard about the shape of their lives. This is one to one in a way that is quite unlike the standard lessons that MB teaches, and I guess any attempt to try this in a lesson context would compromise the learning process.

Sorry, CGP are the people that produce those really cheap and funny revision guides for schools - I can't remember what it stands for - continuing something or other. If you search for CGP it comes up with their website.

They are brilliant though = I bought a full class set of GCSE revision guides for £35 recently. I set the class revision each night and then used the questions at the end of each unit to test them. The students were really pleased to have some help with their revision, because they are a bit lost sometimes and don't know how to do it.

We run careers sessions at our college and we usually find that the only question that kids are interested in is how much money will I earn. However, I discuss this with them because they need to know that although big money will sustain them, by the time they reach 40 they may be ready to throw in the towel through utter boredom. We talk about job satisfaction and how sometimes it is good to feel that your job is worthwhile even if you don't earn megabucks. However, I teach business and I find that students only do this subject because they think that they will be the next Richard Branson. Of course, kids are naive, weren't we all. We just need to support them to find their own way in life, even if sometimes they make mistakes. I feel that education is to give kids choices in life, which, lets face it, if you fail everything, you simply don't have.

Looking back on my wasted 6th form years I wish I'd actually been made to take a year out after GCSE's to go and work (I did have a saturday job) then gone back to do my A Levels - I think I would have knuckled down more or possibly not gone back at all instead of just going with the flow and staying on because all of my friends did. I got 9 Gcse's (A-C) but just lost all motivation during my A Levels, I really don't know why.

It's interesting that JennyPog talks of well paid jobs being boring. Certainly there are some dull well paid jobs and some interesting badly paid ones.

But in the main, I've observed a good correlation between "interesting" and well paid.

Of course interesting is a subjective term, and the accountants I know all seem pretty happy with their work.

I think work experience is for many kids sends entirely wrong information. Easily the single most common form of work these days involves sitting at a computer screen, which is hardly a spectator sport.
Drop a kid in most offices of any kind and it must look stupefyingly dull, and well yes it certainly can be.
But education buys you options on picking a less dull job, or at least the ability to leave the worst kind.

Of course I agree with MB's OP, don't mean to suggest otherwise, my only point is that nothing has changed as much as some would like to believe. We were told we were 'expected' to do 3 hours/night and we all nodded in agreement, little creeps that we were, but very few of us did. Though admittedly we didn't have course work.

A full day of 9am to 4.15pm may not be a full 'work' working day but it isn't far off. And free periods are usually spent studying. Then home say at 5.30pm, evening meal and back to work at 7pm. Then 3 hours work and before you know where you are it is bedtime. This imo isn't healthy and is often counterproductive. I did an MSc and couldn't work evenings because of having a baby, but I tell you, the next day I functioned a lot better than all the bleary eyed people I had left slogging all evening. It certainly wasn't having a restful evening with a baby but it was a break. I solved problems that would have taken me ages with a stale tired brain.

I also feel very strongly that teenagers need to learn other life skills apart from formal academic and 3 hours work every evening leaves no time for that at all. They might even find out what they want to do with their lives and then have the incentive to get their ar$es into gear.

I am playing devil's advocate here to some extent, but I do believe we have to understand the bigger picture a bit more and stop polishing the halos of the swots because we don't actually know where it gets them. A friends son got 8 (I think mostly maths) grade A A levels and of course got to Oxbridge. He was home within a few months never to return as he couldn't take it. Now he sleeps all day. As far as the school is concerned he is a success story but in fact they failed him. Education is about more than academic certificates if it doesn't give you the skills to live life it is pointless. And if it leaves no time to develop the skills on your own it is a sad state of affairs.

Nuff said, my ds would be amazed to hear me saying this!!

Organising yourself is a life skill. Bring able to do something on your own is a life skill. Taking responsility for yourself is a life skill. Doing jobs to a timescale is a life skill e.g. paying bills.

These things are not separate from academic life. We call it the 'hidden curriculum'.

And with all due respect Dominic, you are living in cloud cookoo land if you think there is enough money in the system to pay for careers teachers to do the sort of job you envision. I work at a huge FE college. We don't have anyone who does that sort of job, and we are facing reducdancies as the Govt keeps on cutting funding. Out of necissity, the teachers end up shoring up the gaps.

My Dad taught me how to draw up a revision timetable - it ain't rocket science!

Slug's right that I'm being unrealistic. I was talking of how should be, not how they are.

Problem with the way education budgets are managed is that it's easier to cut stuff like careers. But for society as a whole, ie the people paying for it, careers as as source of motivation, and for helping kids make better choices has huge payback. To leave it as a cinderella subject not only denies kids opportunities it means that the economic payback for the economy is hugely reduced.
Careers could be part of slug's "hidden curriculum" but as a non measured output I fear it will inevitably be relegated. Also very few people have had the breadth of experience that allows them to speak with authority. You could train all staff, but that sounds horribly expensive and hard to do well.

It's not about training staff. Most of the people I work with have had more than one career. I've done everything from events management to fundraising via horticulture, care, retail and the Inland Revenue. It's about time. Teachers simply do not have the time, given all else they have to do, to teach students the basics of personal responsibility.

One year, just before OFSTED came to call on us, I did a calculation with one of my classes. We worked out, based one incident per lesson x 12 lessons per week x 24 weeks (to that point) that they had been told 288 times (as a minimum) that they had been told to turn off their mobile phones in class. In fact, the incidence is much greater than that, as usually it takes 3 or 4 incidents before all the mobiles are switched off.

Now that's one simple instruction and these were 18 year olds. One simple instruction that is part of the published classroom rules anyway. If it's that difficult ot drum one simple, consistent instruction into their thick skulls, how much effort do you think it takes to work on the concept of revision? I've drawn up revision timetables with my students on numerous occasions, it dosen't mean thy'll actually do anything.

You can lead them to education, but you cannot make them think.

Quamglewangle, you obviously don't know my school kids. For most free periods are either spent dossing in the common room, or they go home. We finish school at 3.00, most will be home by 3.30.....at the very outside 4.00, not the 5.30 you suggest

and Three hours a night? I suggested 30 minutes per subject, which makes 1.5 hours. In reality the kids I teach could have got home, had a cuppa and finised the work by the time you think they will get home.

Can you write to the parents and outline your expectations so that you can at least get some support? Or is A-level too old for that?

Slug I've had several careers as well, worked as a chemist, journalist, programmer, banker, trainer, builder, and even sold stuff to the government.

But I don't fell qualfied to be a careers teacher, though it might be a good foundation. The sheer number of different jobs means there's huge swathes of job I can't even guess at how they fit an individual.

Are you allowed to confiscate mobiles ?
Seems to me that would cut their use pretty sharply ?

I am going to raise it at the next sixth form P/T meeting science teacher.

Re careers teachers . Round with us these don't really exsis any more . there is a separate government organisation called conexions which is supposed to sort out this kind of thing.

In practice, in our area unless a child has SEN, or some bahavioral/social issues, they get very little support and/or advice from conexions

You can confescate mobiles, but remember that these days you will probably have to spend 5 minutes getting it from the kids, with a mouthful of arguments thrown in. Multipy that by 5 or 6 and you have a wrecked lesson. Sometimes they just refuse and say you have no right, not helped when their parents back them up, even though they are banned in school for everyone except staff and the sixth form

You can confiscate mobiles, DC, but the kids are pretty quick at putting them in their pockets as you approach. It is virtually impossible to coerce a child into handing it over in this situation.

We have a school rule of no mobiles on during lesson time, and it works pretty well. You can follow up with the sanctions policy without actually getting the phone and turn a blind eye/deaf ear to any use during lessons. Then come down hard on them with their tutor and head of year. It works pretty well.

Ah, but have you been a teacher?

Everyone thinks they know exactly what it is like to be a teacher, because they have been a student

Everyone knows we just pitch up and talk for a few hours

Everyone thinks they know exactly what it is like to be a teacher, because they have been a student

Everyone knows we just pitch up and talk for a few hours

If that lockets!

It is so darned easy I don't understand how there is such a shortage of qualified teachers

MB and lockets, I completely agree. Teachers have it so easy. I should know - I helped out at Brownies once!

LOLOLOL!

that takes me back. How many years ago was that thread????