Are our Ed. results REALLY the 'worst in Europe' or do we measure by a different yardstick?

[miljee]

I often wonder whether, when you read screaming headlines about our dire educational standards in our rather combatative and confrontational press, we are really seeing the truth or whether it's just that we British like to air our dirty laundry in public? I'm thinking about things like football hooliganism- how many of us thought it was just us? When in fact a lot of Italian teams, for example, have similar if not worse problems but their press see it as a matter of national pride NOT to publicise it? Ditto racism, didn't we all think only us nasty Brits were racists- but we only got to hear about simmering problems in The Netherlands, for instance when the problem got too big to hide!

I wouldn't for a moment suggest that our standards are brilliant but ARE they so very different to much of the rest of Western Europe's? DO we measure like with like; or perhaps for example, all of our children against the select, academic few from France? I recall when that report came out about UK teenagers being 'the worst in Europe', the press pitted 14-15 year old British DCs from what looked very much from the lower end of the social scale at an inner city comprehensive with smart, well dressed articulate (in ENGLISH) 17-18 year old German DCs standing in front of what could only be a smart, upper class type school, (fine old well maintained building) to draw their conclusions!

ARE we doing our DCs down?

If our schools are so bad, why are so many foreign students coming to our schools? Good independents are attracting students from all over the world. Top English schools are thought to be amongst the best in the world. Top universities are in the top rank (Cambridge = 2nd in world to Harvard). There are plenty of excellent state schools too.However, the press love to give our education system a bad press - next month's A2 results will be covered by the press with the usual carping criticisms. Yes, there are problems but there are problems in other countries too - Germany being a notable example.

Ooh a favourite rant topic of mine.
My children have been at school in UK, France and Germany, and my preferred systems are France, UK, Germany, in that order.

UK teenagers are the worst behaved, sorry. The German ones may have looked like a smart, upper class type school, they were probably normal working class kids though, standards of behaviour/dress are so high here.

UK schools are v good, imo, the biggest drawback is the sharp difference between the best and the worst. They score highly though on support for single working parents, support for bigger families and support for foreign children integrating into the UK.

German schools are dreadful, I am sorry to say. They try to squash all sorts of different families into getting the same results as the Perfekt German Family, with 2 parents, 1-2 children, stay at home mum, monolingual German speakers. If you don't fit this pattern, then you will suffer, unless and until you conform.
I could go on for hours, as we are a foreign, single parent, famille nombreuse, and my children are rapidly being shovelled towards the rubbish heap, as we cant compete with the PGF on their own terms. I cant wait to get back to France, where my children flourished in the ed system.

going outside europe a lot of people say how wonderful education is in india and south east asia, but the kids do a lot of rote learning and later on do not think creatively or outside the box. Many of my colleagues had their earlier education in asia but came to uk for university and were glad they did and felt they had the best of both types of learning

I had anecdotally heard the same about French school where every child's handwriting is practised until it all looks identical, for example- that certain elements in France were suggesting that their system taught rote learned facts, facts, facts but the resultant child was unable to 'think outside the box' (I hate that expression but it seems apt here!). I think that here in the UK we do try and teach DCs HOW to learn rather than the facts they HAVE to memorise, which is perhaps why 'the system' sets the academic, bright high fliers 'free' whereas the rather less bright and motivated might benefit from rote learning basic facts- like how to multiply!- rather than sitting bored through the 'whys' of maths?!

I worked with Finns for 6 years and they were unable to "think outside the box" either.
They were extremely good and efficient at what they knew, but as soon as something diffent came up they were incapable of coping with it.

miljee - I think their writing is so similar because their exercise books have precise lines, one for the height of the small letters, one for the height of the t's and f's and one for the caps.
My children came out with similar handwriting (though messier), but they weren't forced into it.

What did concern me slightly, was that during dd1's third year in the school, to my knowledge she had never written a single sentence that she had composed herself!
Fortunately, she was already writing poetry at home - this was probably down to the copious amounts of beautiful french poetry that she had learned off by heart.

I found it relatively easy to make up what I thought were the deficiencies of the french system. The german one, I find very difficult to work with. I dont even understand where they are coming from half the time.

The reason I still prefer france to the uk, is because I dont want to get trapped in the sink school/house price premium /good-schools-no-jobs rock and hard place. As a single parent, my chances of winning that particular battle are low.