UK education system bottom ranking

[coulis272]

So I have a question

Is the education system in the UK really that bad when compared with say the likes of Spain, France, Italy, Greece etc? I have had several individuals from these specific countries say to me that they absolutely abhor the schooling system here and the children learn absolutely nought. How there is far more actually taught in said countries and you would have a child of the same age know four or five times what a British child would know.
What do you all think?

It has a weird knock on effect though because of the way secondary admissions works. I think you’d have to impose it nationally if you were going to do it.

And then we’d have to have a huge argument about which language we were going to make compulsory. I don’t think there’s an obvious choice in the UK.

If two MFL were taught to every child in secondary school, which language they learned in primary would be less of an issue.

That would be what I’d do Maria. One prescribed MFL from ks 1-3, then a second one from yr 7 where the school can offer whatever they’d like.

It’s because the government keeps messing around with education and won’t fund it adequately.

if you see a lawyer in one of the countries listed, they would know all there is to know about the law

The only way that would be possible is if their national law is really simple.

And large schools could offer a choice of MFL2

Bottom ranking on which data based measure?

The most recent PISA where they took the average score for reading, maths, and science had:

13. Germany
14. UK
15. France
16. Italy
17. Greece

Re Law - ever hear the phrase Jack of all trades, Master of none!

In France my DD1 is having her first national tests this year at 14. Equivalent of GCSEs, but no choices everyone does the same subject tests. There have been zero tests to see how the school/child is doing. So far there has been zero teaching in order to pass tests. Which seems like a good thing.

They seem to know quite a lot. 4xDC at a v highly ranked school (based on the exam she does this year) 99% pass rate. They all seem to be better at settling down and getting on with it than I ever was. What I have noticed is it's a bit less liberal education than the UK. None of her friends seem to think they are of a different gender than birth gender etc but fair amount are bi or gay.

In the primary of the school they learn English from age 3 on a daily basis. They do English at collège for 3-5 hours a week. Choose an extra language at 11 (Spanish, German, Chinese) further choice of an extra language at 14.

What is the social status of these people?
You need to keep in mind that well educated,academic able and orientated , ambitious people will have a much higher view of their education regardless of where they are from, and that's without taking in consideration how different the UK education system is to other countries. My country is well behind the UK in the tables , but my experience is that we learned more and better than in the UK. I'm obviously fluent in at least two languages. My general culture is pretty good and varied. My Maths skills are rusty but not bad at all.
However there are many more that are completely illiterate or simply left behind,for whom school was just a stop gap to a job,many that didn't even consider high school ,much less University. Yes I was tested on the Canterbury Tales when a lot of people in the UK can't even point my country on the map but that's by the by.

My country's system had it's failings (probably still does) and the UK system also has many things wrong with it. At the moment I even dare say it's not fit for purpose,but that's not the fault of the teachers or schools. As far as I'm concerned it's focus is to drag kids along as long as they show "progress" and if the curriculum is bonkers or not enough progress is shown (because you might have a y3 kid with the ability of a y1 kid in mainstream) then it's the teacher's fault.

From what I can see teaching in England seems to be in order to pass a test.

Other European countries have tests, too, but the aim of learning is not to pass a test but to gain knowledge. Massive difference.

@Acopyofacopy I wonder if that's because those countries also test a lot more, so by the times the "big" ones comes, kids are used to answering a certain style of questions,write a small essay,show working when needed etc and have a good(in theory) "exam" ethic and behaviour. Whereas here you can't just plonk a kid in front of a paper every 4 years and expect them to pass .

Lawyer here. A lot of European countries have a lot of generalists, that's true. I think it is because most other European counties tend to have smaller firms than we do here, so people have to cover more practice areas so that if a client comes in they can get all the advice they need there. In the U.K. we have some monster firms and people specialise more. I've worked outside the monster firms and specialise in three areas (all types of litigation). To a continental lawyer, I'd be a specialist. To someone at a magic circle firm in London, I'd be a jack of all trades. English law is hugely respected worldwide, so we must be doing something right.

No coulis. Decent lawyers don’t know everything about the law in other countries! We have the best educated lawyers here. Many overseas jurisdictions base their laws on ours. Their lawyers train here. Solicitors who are in small practices are more likely to be a “jack of all trades” but others specialise and barristers certainly do. This gives the best service to clients because the law is vast and they need to know a section of it very well.

We educate pretty well at the top end but as numerous threads show, we don’t care about MFL or anything that our DC find difficult. We allow our children to avoid these subjects and so do the schools because their exam results look better!

A poster on another thread is saying that her DS didn’t do a humanity at GCSE. That’s not an all round education and neither is specialising at y9. I tend to think there should be a greater breadth of subjects continued in the 6th form too.

I also think some people absorb everything around them and are very bright. My DD does and her boyfriend has exceptional knowledge. They don’t just know about their specialisms. They remember lots of information and have great general knowledge. Mostly self taught though. My DD says she finds some people very boring when they don’t have any general knowledge. They become difficult to talk to!

I haven't read the full thread. However, the OP's friends are talking rubbish regarding the quality of UK education.

PISA is an international study that evaluates education systems by looking at the performance of 15-year olds and maths, science and reading. In the 2015 rankings (the most recent available) the UK performed above the international average in all three subjects. Greece and Italy were below the international average in all three subjects (and hence behind the UK). France were very slightly ahead of the UK in reading and maths but significantly behind in science.

Canada scores well and in the case of myself (dh went to the same school) and dc x3 (all attended the same school). Assignment quizzes and only 1sitting for the final test.
It never occurred to me you need to practice.

Depends at what age you look at; our primary school children compare favourably when tested at age 11, but then by 15 we are far behind (though not bottom ranked - more like middling). The government itself published a document called 'KS3: the wasted years' in which it looked at how children tend to spend KS3 recapping things from primary school as teachers are under so much pressure to get their GCSE groups to pass (this then means the next group that come up are not prepared, so teachers have to give them all the attention and neglect their KS3 classes and thus the cycle repeats).

I remember that there was another report that looked at how we view and approach education in this country. It found that we are of middling rank on spending, middling on teacher respect, middling on teacher happiness and middling on breadth of subjects.

One commentator noted, 'and we wonder why we're middling on outcomes'.

However, the rote learning in other schools across the world, which tend to then score better on the PISA test (barring Finland), does have its drawbacks - they tend to have fewer 'soft skills'.

I did think it was funny that after all this 'shanghai maths' talk, it was discovered that one part of China's 'Made in China' plan was to ensure that its workforce had more interpersonal skills that weren't strictly academic, and that they were looking at the school systems in the UK, America and other European countries to implement this.

They've realised that having having children able to regurgitate information will not be needed in the future, with the advancements in technology, and so our children need to be able to do the things a computer can't. They've moved on, and we're still trying to emulate their old model...

Sorry for the rant Didn't realise I'd go off on one!

I think we narrow the curriculum too early here compared to other countries where they study a much broader range of subjects to age 18. I wish I'd been made to carry on with at least one science subject past 16. Our languages attainment is dire.

Having spent time studying at a European University, I would say undergraduate degrees were generally not as good as UK universities - a lot more rote learning and hardly any independent study. However, a much higher proportion of students seemed to stay on to do Masters degrees, which I think involve more research.

Well, thete is some truth to what your friends say, but only because they compare English comprehensives with European style grammar schools, and A levels with country specific versions of the IB. So yes, at a grammar in most European countries, Germany, France, Italy Grece etc, you would study all subjects until you graduate, so every pupil would have, on average, a wider knowledge that any English student who only studied 3 A levels. Obviously MFL are more important and are taught more thoroughly. Also law e.g. would be taught more thoroughly at a European university. There are generally no conversion courses, so law is on average a 5 year course, followed by further on the job training and exams, comparable to pupilage of barristers but, on average, for longer and on a wider range of areas. But I am not sure any of this makes necessarily for better prepared academics/ lawyers. In Germany e.g. all laws are recorded in a series of books that fill an entire room. A prospective lawyer has to memories all of them! It's ridiculous in the times of Google- it's even ridiculous since the invention of the printing press because even law books have indexes.
Having said all of this, the majority of European pupils don't go to grammars or universities and often receive very basic schooling with a strong vocational aspect, or actually, in many countries, drop out at high rates and remain unemployed.

If UK education is so dire, how come so many foreigners come to study in the UK ?

Talkinpeace do you mean universities? Or are you saying they come here for GCSEs?

Another bit of data: UK has one of the highest Nobel prize-winning rates per capita in the world, and is top of the table for larger countries with a population over 10M. I read this online a few days ago and checked it. So let's not carried away with the notion that there is a huge problem overall. I think our A level system is fantastic in preparing kids for study at university. I do wish there was more support for MFL and Computer Science though.

I do wish there was more support for MFL and Computer Science though.

My son wishes they'd had "ANY" support for computer science. He did quite a bit of the basics at primary school, but his secondary school only started to offer any computer science at all the year after he'd chosen his GCSE options, so missed the opportunity by a year. Any school not teaching computer studies/science is a disgrace in this technological age. It should be compulsory for years 7-9 and strongly encouraged as a GCSE option. It's his one and only regret about his choice of secondary school - but that choice was based on a lie because they were told they'd be doing the ECDL qualification in years 7-9, but the school dropped it. If they'd be honest and said there'd be no computer teaching, he'd have probably sought out a different school.