OECD Study puts England at bottom for Maths and Literacy

[missinglalaland]

A major study by the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development puts England's 16 to 24 year olds at 22nd for Literacy and 21st for Numeracy out of 24 developed countries. Ouch!

What can we do to fix this? More money? Less permissiveness? Sorting by ability? Different teacher training? Longer school years? Different methods?

[wordfactory]

When the first Blair administration came in, I, like many others, was entirely behind his education x 3 initiative.

I thought that education must be the key to improving the life chances of the disadvantaged.

Then I had DC of my own!

Immediately, it became apparent to me that school can never really solve the problems in society. Children are a product of family. This is where they receive their real education. School is just one resource.

Thus, it came as no real surprise when the Sutton Trust confirmed that social mobility had decreased under the Blair administration despite the initiative.

If you ask schools and teachers to do too much outside their primary function, then their primary function will be diluted. You therefore actually provide less 'education' to those that actually need so much more of it.

Counter intuitive, but there you go.

[rabbitstew]

Well, that's not going to get any better, given the huge pressure to make "childcare" cheaper and cheaper so that people can afford to go out to work. Well educated people do not tend to go for low wage jobs.

[Bonsoir]

Absolutely, wordfactory. And the same mechanism operates within families: if parents spend too much time working outside the home and outsourcing childcare, the ability of those parents (however educated) to bring up their children to their own standards will also be diluted.

[rabbitstew]

Maybe people are beginning to realise that bringing children up to be considerate, polite, thoughtful, well socialised, articulate, competent, well adjusted, well educated and independent adults is actually quite a labour intensive and skilful process.

[Bonsoir]

I think it is still a minority obsession, rabbitstew

[rabbitstew]

I suspect you're right, Bonsoir.

[wordfactory]

Bonsoir I think that may be true of advantaged families.

But disadvanatged families? Will their life chances be significantly worse because their parents work?

I grew up in a disadvanatged family and to be honest more hard cash would have improved things greatly.

[Bonsoir]

It depends on the nature of the disadvantage. I'm not at all convinced that hanging out with a lot of other DC from disadvantaged families all day is better than hanging out with your family, providing your family cares about your progress.

[Bonsoir]

Basically, I think that incentivising (or coercing) caring families to outsource childcare against their better judgement is not necessarily to the advantage to families - only to state coffers (and only then in the short term - but hey ho who cares about the long term, the PM and his cronies will be long dead).

[rabbitstew]

By outsourcing childcare, are you not also losing skills to the general population? Hence more and more work for schools as they try to cover skills and attitudes families used to have the competence to instill in their children, themselves.

[rabbitstew]

Sorry, I mean, are the general population not losing skills!...

[Bonsoir]

rabbitstew - yes. But we are living under some great collective denial that parents actually teach their DC anything much at all, hence the widespread social acceptability of treating parenting as some kind of hobby for the weekend.

[missinglalaland]

Nodding my head vigorously while reading bonsoir and rabbitstew's dialogue.

[purits]

But we are living under some great collective denial that parents actually teach their DC anything much at all, hence the widespread social acceptability of treating parenting as some kind of hobby for the weekend.

Not at all. Children learn by example. They can spot the falsity of 'do as I say, not as I do'. (Do well at school and you too can ... stay at home and change nappies) I didn't need to be with my DS 24/7 to teach them things. I employed childcare staff who were carefully interviewed to ensure that they reinforced my beliefs and ideals. Please don't try to pretend that SAHP have a monopoly on teaching morals, manners and etiquette.

[rabbitstew]

I don't think Bonsoir is a stay at home parent?

[rabbitstew]

And lucky you, purits, that you had the money to go out and find yourself such competent "childcare staff."

[purits]

Lucky? Yes, but sometimes you make your own luck.

[rabbitstew]

Ah yes, of course. Sometimes you do and sometimes you can't. But who gives a toss about anyone else, anyway?

[Kenlee]

You know something its great to be rich. To afford the things you want to buy them at a whim. To be able to send your children to the most luxurious private schools.

Although being rich and buying in the best means nothing to your child. I know parents that work from 8 in the morning to sometimes 9 at night. In which their child as part of efficient child care policy is tutored from the time they leave school till the time their parents come home. They do get good results. They can't think for themselves nor can they fend for themselves...In most cases most will have maids to follow the child to and from school.. Then to the tutorial center.

The child is devoid of any family love. The only thing that is talked about is results. NOT how to be a good person. NOT about if they were happy and certainly NOT about being well mannered.

My firm belief is that if you are there no matter how thick you are your child will do well at school. Spending that one hour at a table doing the homework together. To encourage them to think and do it themselves. This not only creates social cohesion in the family it also builds respect and trust. If you give them time at home then they are less likely to rush off to join a gang to gain acceptance. They already have acceptance at home.

Its not about you knowing and teaching ....Its just you being there. I could not read or write Chinese when I arrived in HK. I never learnt. I now can safely say I have primary 6 Chinese as I sat with my daughter and she taught me. Did she do well in her Chinese NO she didnt. Did she pass yes she did. I did get a tutor in but she enjoyed working and teaching me. In the time slot we had she will tell me about her day and we would comment on her behaviour and what she could or could not have done differently.

I also have a maid but she is there to clean the house but not my daughter's room. Somethings are best left fir them to do themselves.

[stringornothing]

Kenlee you are awfully close to implying that if children do not do well at school or get into trouble with the law then that can only be because their parents didn't care for them or spend time with them. Are you absolutely sure that's what you mean?

[Kenlee]

Its not inherent that they will but Yes it could be one of the factors...Although it is not all encompassing.

It would be nice to rule out that factor....before we move on to investigate other factors.

But Yes I do think being with your children and taking an intrest in them does actually help them at school. It also In my opinion foster closer ties with the family. Thus reducing anti social behaviour.

[Squiffyagain]

Kenlee, your comments are whimsical to say the very least. The relationship is between wealth and educational advantage, not between SAHP and educational advantage.

The Sutton trust spent a long time trying to prove the opposite and published a large report purporting to show this. It was published 2 or 3 years back. But when you broke down the detail of the research it showed a very clear statistical link with wealth - the children of working parents who were themslves highly educated performed the same as or better than the children of SAHP, both groups doing statistically better than the children of working parents from a lower educational background.

Also, if you look at the actual data in the detail of this report (not the headlines in the papers) there is a stronger link between wealth and performance in the worst-performing countries (us, Germany, UK) than in the better performing countries - you can see it clearly in the gradients on the diagrams on socio-economic relationships, which once again underlines the Uk problem around accessing the best opportunities/harnessing social mobility.

In the local indie school (and, incidentally, the local boys grammar) the kids do very well indeed, despite the initial indie school intake being non-selective. But the overwhelming majority of families at the indie have parents who both work (they have to, to afford the fees) -something like 12 mums out of every class of 15 (including the early years levels). It is exactly the same at the grammar (full of the kids of vets, doctors, and similar professionals). At the the secondary it is uncommon in a two parent family for both parents to be working. Have asked a teacher at the school about this before and she estimates that 75% ofbkids have a mum who is a SAHM (i think she also included in that figure mums with part time, child-friendly jobs) Also, the difference in the % of free school meals between the grammar and the secondary is huge. So wealth is clearly sifting at a very early stage, whereas dual income households do not appear to be effecting outcomes (although any fool knows that working and not being hands-on in helping teach kids is clearly far worse than either of these in isolation).

So, at 11, the kids have been sifted (one group by money and not IQ or SAHM, the other two groups by IQ and/or involved parenting and not by SAHM), after that the attainment gap grows despite the quality of the teaching (I'd say the quality of teaching is possibly poorer in many subjects in the indie school, but that's a very biased viewpoint). There's a huge US study that I can't be arsed to dig out that shows that this is pretty much driven from then on by peer pressure - where it is culturally cool to be clever kids will over-achieve relative to their innate IQ, and where it's not cool to be clever, they will under-achieve. Class sizes might play a part, sure, as might political tinkering, but attitude drives everything. Whilst it might be nice to live in Zenia's world where the indie kids must inherently be cleverer than other kids, its simply not the case. Nor is it the case that SAHM will by definition drive your kids to success. The problem is how you raise standards across the spectrum and at the same time flatten down the socio-economic advantages that are frankly a very ugly aspect of the more developed societies (and I am quite aware of my massive hypocrisy in taking advantage of a flawed system for my own kids)

Regardless of all the gross generalisations we make in threads like this, this is a fascinating report when you look at the detail, and I really hope a team of people in Whitehall spend a long long time looking into it.

[Kenlee]

I don't find it whimsical in the slightest to know that a child that has a parent to support them would be far better off than one that isn't. It doesn't really matter what IQ level you are at as long as you have the means to attain. That is where I do agree. That the well off seem to have the advantage. Although I think its quite ludicrous to assume that all rich children will automatically be little Einsteins and have the moral character that befits our society because their parents throw money at them.

People like to make a big deal about the rich and the poor as the only reason why our socio depraved economically disadvantaged are where they are at.

I think it is a lot more complex than just having money. I don't really need an expensive study to come to that conclusion . You will find that there are many kinds of poor. There are the poor that want out of being poor and you will find that their children often do well. As the parents install that the only way out is education. If you want to stereotype these would tend to be the immigrant families. Did you report ascertain how many disadvantaged children from these families actually got educated and went on to success.

Obviously we also have the Chav population who tend not to care about their children. In fact many are children themselves.

What has your reported suggested to do with our dysfunctional poor. I have was always taught not to be jealous of another persons riches but to see by what means I can acheive the same effect.

btw do you have a link to the report its seems quite interesting...

[Bonsoir]

"Kenlee, your comments are whimsical to say the very least. The relationship is between wealth and educational advantage, not between SAHP and educational advantage."

That is not a universal truth. Different correlations exist depending on the country/culture. In several European countries their is a strong correlation between SAHP and educational advantage.

[wordfactory]

Which countries Bonsoir?

I thought the countries who were at the top of the table had very few levels of SAHPs?

The research in the UK shows quite clearly that the most influential factor in a child's educational attainment is the education of the Mother. This is absolutley not connected to whether she works or not.

The second greatest factor is wealth. Cold hard dosh. The wealthier a child, the higher their educational attainment (though there's a saturation point).

Since most families obtain wealth by working...

I know someone who is doing research into this issue as we speak. The results should be extremely interesting, I think.