Cookery, textiles, Chinese, German- all gone !

[shortsighteddecisions]

In the last five years all of these subjects have been removed from my kids state secondary school

How sad is this?

Sad but not as sad as the school my friend used to teach in. Over the course of three years they lost all Spanish and German, French past GCSE level (nigh on impossible to get the minimum 25 pupils to sign up), Music GCSE and A-Level.
When our comprehensive system is good, it's often very good. When it's bad, it massively disserves children in terms of breadth and depth of teaching.

Our secondary have never had Chinese and it used to be they offered the brightest students french and German/Spanish on a rotation (so two MFL) until gcse options were taken. Now German is no longer an option and Spanish is only taught at gcse level, not before.

Textiles is the smallest gcse class but catering is over subscribed every year. I Imagine it is very Costly though. They have a TA in the lesson to help with prep and the cost of equipment etc must be more than in say, maths, where it’s just books.

Music is the next smallest gcse class. I think that shrinks every year as the cost of peripatetic lessons Increase for those under gcse age. To pay £250 for the year for trumpet lessons (or whatever instrument) is a lot for families around here. Years ago it was free and the school had a full class and a massive orchestra/wind, string and brass groups. Really sad these subjects aren’t given more priority.

Really sad for all these subjects and kids

Many classes now provide'online' books- must be really hard for kids to learn from (especially without tech)

Why are parents not complaining?

Our school have just spent a fortune on air purifiers and co2 monitors due to covid- beyond speechless

That is dreadful! Our comp offers three modern F languages, a termly rotation of textiles/cooking/DT, weekly music and drama, an amazing of range of sport and extra curricular (robotics club/musical drama, theatre club, 3 orchestras inc a chamber one)
I think the biggest educational outrage is how varied comps can be - I would pay £5k a term for what we are offered.

Ours is a highly sought after selective (grammar) -💩

They may have dropped German as German specialist language teachers are fairly hard to come by. (Wasn't the case in my friend's school, that was a pure money-saving exercise).

German has declined massively everywhere.

Chinese had a bit of a "moment" about 10 years ago and people have since lost interest; partly because those who had a go at it realized just how hard it was likely to be to actually get any good at this language, and partly due to the geopolitical situation. I can get by in Mandarin and it makes me sad to think that I'll probably never go to China again; it's just a bit too scary these days.

I think it is finances they have an excellent teacher

@shortsighteddecisions

Really sad for all these subjects and kids

Many classes now provide'online' books- must be really hard for kids to learn from (especially without tech)

Why are parents not complaining?

Our school have just spent a fortune on air purifiers and co2 monitors due to covid- beyond speechless

Damn the school for trying to keep children and staff healthy and in school, how dare they!

Yes German is in serious decline as an MFL specialist whose specialist within that is German I am not happy.

At my old school half the year did French, half German, now no German. And in my city a couple of years ago there was only one post-16 provision (out of about six or seven) where anyone was taking German A level.

DS1 is 22 and in his GCSE year no one did textiles, as so few chose it, tho it has reappeared I believe.

Thanks everyone who has replied on topic

carrieblue won't keep the kids or teachers safe if they keep turning them off because they keep beeping- which is what they have been doing- but that is another thread!

What else can they do? There’s no money from government to improve ventilation. Besides, the cost of monitors or purifiers isn’t going to pay for a qualified, experienced teacher of anything.

Our secondary cut a language in order to ensure viable GCSE groups. They'd previously offered two different second foreign languages to the top sets, but that meant that there weren't enough doing either to generate a viable GCSE set. By only offering two languages altogether, they have a sporting chance of having enough for a reasonable size GCSE set in the second language.

By the way, O-level music didn't run for my year because there weren't enough takers. That was (obviously) some time ago, and back then there were FREE instrumental lessons available. Not getting enough takers to make a subject viable is not a new thing.

My school (teacher) has lost, in the past 6 years:

• French and all Community languages at every level
• all traditional DT subjects. Dont even have rooms for textiles and food any more
• traditional music GCSE and A Level (now RSL)
• drama GCSE and A Level
• school productions
• dedicated pastoral support staff for each year group
• careers advisor

My department is smaller by 6 members of staff than it was 10 years ago, which means we are unable to offer any of the small group intervention, literacy etc that we did when I started. I will NEVER forget the meeting where our head told us we needed to start the redundancies process.

A combo of woeful, prolonged underfunding and a result of the "cult of STEM". Cheers Tories.

And yet food is the subject that people shout needs to be taught. Should be a priority.

@Evvyjb

My school (teacher) has lost, in the past 6 years:

• French and all Community languages at every level
• all traditional DT subjects. Dont even have rooms for textiles and food any more
• traditional music GCSE and A Level (now RSL)
• drama GCSE and A Level
• school productions
• dedicated pastoral support staff for each year group
• careers advisor

My department is smaller by 6 members of staff than it was 10 years ago, which means we are unable to offer any of the small group intervention, literacy etc that we did when I started. I will NEVER forget the meeting where our head told us we needed to start the redundancies process.

A combo of woeful, prolonged underfunding and a result of the "cult of STEM". Cheers Tories.

STEM may be a ‘cult’ but 30 years ago university physics departments were closing all over the place. There’s still precious little funding for most science departments in schools, and science (and maths) are permanently derided by most along the lines of ‘I hated that at school’ which really doesn’t help with perception amongst most students. School funding is woeful across the board and we do ourselves no favours in division.

And yet still our children are lucky enough to be amongst the most educated in the world. Imagine a parent in Afghanistan reading this thread.

@shortsighteddecisions

Ours is a highly sought after selective (grammar) -💩

With a low incident of children on pupil premium, which in turn affects the finance allocated. The grammar local to us is the most significantly underfunded if the area.

That is really dangerous and sad. I love foreign languages, shame about the culling etc.

@grafittiartist

And yet food is the subject that people shout needs to be taught. Should be a priority.

I think there are serious problems with the food curriculum. Years ago, it got made part of technology, and the curriculum got fitted into a "design and make" model to fit with the rest of technology, which skewed the subject horribly. It's also constrained in many schools by happening in one hour lessons.

DD didn't cook very much in her two blocks of cooking in KS3 - undercooked muffins, undercooked brownies (because even when you're told to arrive with the ingredients weighed out at home, one hour is not long enough), fruit salad, burgers (which came home raw without any cooking instructions). It beats me that they don't teach them to do some quick meals, which would be more useful - omelette, stir fry, pasta, etc. That might encourage them to carry on cooking at home, and they might be more interested in continuing in KS4 too.

Agree- an hour is far too short. Particularly when lots of kids can't tie an apron up, or have no experience of washing up for example.