How would you reform Secondary education

[CurlewKate]

If you had a free hand? I would get rid of all state selective and faith schools and introduce a new admissions system based on ballots and fair banding. And I would introduce an extensive school transport network. That would be my starting point. I haven't yet worked out the details for children who genuinely can't access mainstream education, but I do think that most can with proper support. Which will, of course, be in place. This needs more thought and input from experts once My Glorious Reign comes into effect.
I would also have rigorous and regular inspections. Free school meals for all. BTecs or some similar system will be given the same weight and value as GCSEs and A Levels.

Maybe you underestimate how well the exams prepared you. We tend to take for granted that which is in our skillset. Of course there are other skills that are important to have to deal with the big bad world but a lot of this is not for the classroom. Many come down to social skills and how your parents prepare you. Innate emotional/social intelligence, hard work and resilience are probably the biggest factors for success in the real world - and a peppering of luck of course. However, dealing with pressure is also important and our public exam system does help to develop that.You can say anything is open to abuse but, once again, a public exam system mitigates this to a great extent. Compared to CAGs and TAGs year it is a reassuringly fair and transparent process.

Oxbridge do not rely on exams alone in their selection but they clearly think they are important or they wouldn't have further selection exams such as STEP and LNAT. Whatever methods you deploy as a structure, interviews are inherently somewhat subjective. The pressure of public and selection exams pre-Oxbridge helps a lot in developing the person to cope with the academic pressure once they are there. I cannot imagine doing an Oxbridge degree without some experience of that.

Why ?

I would
Pass maths if it was based on real life.

I never passed as forced to learn info I could never understand.

I don't want to be an engineer. If I wanted to be I'd try to learn it.

Let me learn something I want to learn. Then I will do well.

This poster clearly states that the suggestions in their post pertain to a 'farm school for kids with sen or high levels of anxiety'.

So not mainstream provision, but a specialist setting for learners whose disability or medical condition might otherwise prevent them from attending school altogether (there is a national shortage of specialist school places and children with anxiety are the ones at the heart of the current terrible situation where tens of thousands of young people are unable to attend school regularly).

Definitely not the 'triumph of low expectations' but the insights of a person who, I suspect, has some insight into SEN and anxious learners who struggle in mainstream settings.

Thank you everyone! I naively assumed that I would be able to come up with a perfect education system based on all your ideas- but to looks as if there are as many priorities as posters. Maybe it's not as easy as I thought it was......😉!

Just goes to show how difficult it is. Many of these suggestions would have been awful for my kids. Fundamentally I think we need to get past the one-size fits all idea & acknowledge that if a child cannot cope or thrive with this "one-size" system then it is the system that is the failure and not them.

@HeBeaverandSheBeaver My DD would have loved the farm school.

However I think children do need to be exposed to and encouraged to work at things whether that is algebra, languages, or something else. If they don't, they won't have the opportunity to come to like things or even a basic appreciation they exist.

My DD missed GCSEs, but her life was enriched by seeing Macbeth and AIC which we did in prep prior to pandemic. I also know someone who did classics at university, but who ended up as a Doctor. We mustn't cut off routes too young, we already specialise earlier than many other countries

I'd teach language and harder maths upto a basic level

But when it gets to the point that it's clear the child can't do it and it ruins their self esteem then they should be allowed to opt out. Say year8?

I would have loved to drop French and harder maths and do more art history or science even.

Exams are NOT a level playing field
I’ve taught both exam and coursework based qualifications for 16-18. Students who do coursework consistently get a lot more UCAS points than students who do exams, despite having lower ability. This is not a one off, it’s happened consistently over years and years.

Exams don’t reflect ability because they’re too stressful and affected by anxiety and pressure and other life events. It’s particularly a problem for students with neurodiversity. I’ve regularly seen students have to resit because a traumatic event occurred shortly before their one and only exam and it ruined their performance. I just don’t think assessing performance on one single day is fair or reasonable.

I guess it is deciding when to drop out, and who decides.
At DDs school the real strugglers didn't do French, they did extra English. DD2 was not quite bad enough. French was a waste of time for her.
However French didn't click for DD1 until the end of y8/early y9 - she went on to do 2 MFL for GCSE.

DD2 is yet to pass maths, but algebra is one of her better topics!

Well what I take from
This is that education needs to be more child led.

Not adults deciding every step

Sounds good. (Your first few paras)

OK, so between teachers; to what end? League tables do nothing which a rigorous and constructive school improvement protocol couldn't do. Apart from naming and shaming schools and setting in motion a reactive cycle of pupil migration, loss of trust (and funding) and creating 'sink schools', of course.

League tables do not exist to be in any way supportive of good education and attainment. Continuous engagement in a school improvement process ‐addressing aspects of school improvement and outcomes for all learners across the board- does precisely that: finds the key areas for improvement and impact and works with schools to implement (remember, there are always identifiable areas of improvement even in the most illustrious education establishments), for the benefit of all children and young people.

My DC attend a school with a fantastic academic record, yet EBSA, EDs and self-harm are rife among the student population. I attended a meeting at school during exam time this spring and walked through corridors where some students had exited the exams and were in distress and tears, one being attended by the school nurse as they wouldn't stop banging their head against the wall, while a member of staff kept saying "You've worked so hard for this. Just calm down and you'll be able to go back in."

Exams and league tables are part of the systemic toxicity which feeds a mental health crisis in schools. Daffodil, Labrador and I have all experienced education at secondary level without this ridiculous level of pressure and turned out well. It's not necessarily.

This thread is so inspirational but sad, can’t stop thinking about kids I know being horrifically failed, not because of the fault of the teachers

I’m not sure that league tables are effective at monitoring good teaching. In a previous school I worked at, we were continually bottom (or second from bottom) in the league table, but the teaching was excellent. The catchment was totally diverse and transient though-very few of the pupils who started in reception, ended up in y6, so ‘progress’ was being measured for entirely different children. High levels of children were SEN, EAL, PP, LAC, with parents in prison or with addiction problems, lots of social care involvement. Yet another school I worked at, with children who had hardly any of these problems, with children who stayed from YR-Y6 and had very involved parents, got very good results in league tables and great ‘value added’, but a lot of the teachers there, were pretty mediocre.

Back to basics.
All classrooms calm, settled and involved places. Behaviour in schools is mental.
All pupils follow simple basic rules that allow for calm and safety within the school environment.
No phones.
Basics have to be there before learning is even looked at.

We have got to move away from teachers having to tolerate poor or aggressive behaviour (from both pupils and parents) and being told that it’s their fault for not being engaging enough and just forcing them back into the classroom.

@HeBeaverandSheBeaver

More lessons that are fun. Drama art music pe

What about the kids who don't like the non structured lessons like that?

From my school days, I hated those as they were usually doss lessons with poor behaviour and no "end result" in that there was usually no homework and no end of year tests etc.

I'd go the other way and allow pupils to opt out of that kind of lesson, which in my case were fertile breeding grounds for bullying etc.

I far preferred structured lessons, preferably with a strict teacher who could control the class, etc.

Different kids have different preferences and different ways of learning. We need to give more options so that pupils can find what works for them and can choose the subjects/learning types they prefer.

Get rid of the "one size fits all" approach which has clearly failed as can be seen from the current state of education after decades of trying to fit square pegs in round holes.

Howard Gardner himself said he didn’t intend for his research into learning styles to be adopted by schools in the way it was. Yes, VAK went out of the window years ago because the truth is that most people learn in a variety of ways, so giving them the label of visual, auditory, kinaesthetic learners was counterproductive.

Pointless trying to teach algebra to a kid who doesn't know times tables nor prime numbers and struggling with the basics.

Pointless trying to teach a foreign language to a kid who can barely read and write his native language.

Basics first.

Before going onto higher levels, more complex subjects, etc., the basics have to be there, otherwise it's wasting everyone's time and reaffirming to the child that he's thick (which he probably already thinks).

It needs to be built slowly, allowing confidence to come through. That's why I absolute detest the "year by year" system which pushes pupils through the school "years" whether they're ready or not.

Progression through school, doing different subjects, etc., should be led by ability not age.

I think that every child should be heard reading at the beginning of year seven. This could be done during library lessons - each child being called out one at a time to read to a teacher. They could be asked questions on the text they have just read and what sort of books they enjoy. I don't think year six SATS are necessarily a true reflection of reading ability and there are many children who slip through the net and are not as confident in reading as they should be. These children would then be given the boost they need. I would also make sure every child is truly confident in the basic rules of number, especially the multiplication tables. Without these fundamentals, the increasing workload and advancing levels of work will become more and more problematic.

On the other side, the arts need to be promoted far more, especially music. Classical music is almost being phased out of state schools, making it increasingly elitist. To this end, we should go back to a fairer peripatetic instrumental learning system, with free lessons and the option to borrow an instrument to see if a child takes to it.

When people say "one size fits all" what do they mean? The current exam system?

Personally I regard it as:-

Poor provision for those at each end of the academic ability spectrum, i.e. those at the bottom who really struggle where the year by year school system is simply too fast for them and those at the opposite end who aren't stretched and get bored by the slow pace of the year by year system.

Lack of choice due to the very limited number of subjects available, very limited number of sports/games options available, limited choices as to exam options (must choose one subject in each block so, say, have to do a language and can't do two humanities kind of thing). Basically, the scope and breadth of their education is limited as to what others think is best for them rather than what they want to do.

But yes, the exam system too. I far preferred the old system of O levels alongside CSEs rather than the one size fits all system of the combined GCSEs.

And finally, the complete lack/absence of technical/manual skills on offer at the typical comp. Woodwork and metalwork "teaching" really has barely changed in 40 years and is still looked down upon, not taken seriously etc. Today, it's as true as it was 40 years that the only pupils who do well "making things" are those who have a father/grandfather/uncle with a workshop in their garden shed, which is where the real creativity and skills are learned, i.e. actually doing it, being inventive, etc. The school idea of spending an entire term making a wooden fish followed by a term making a metal trowel is woefully inadequate in nurturing interests/skills in manual trades work. For GCSE the majority of the marks available are theoretical based on the research, drawings, exploration of materials, etc., so basically still academic so not good for less academic pupils who'd rather spent two years actually making stuff rather than creating a written project folder!

Agree that GCSEs in more practical subjects still seem very academic, especially with the reformed GCSEs. A BTEC level 2 certificate would be more useful and give an idea of how BTECs work before 6th form.

The Btecs are being replaced by T-Levels ( or they were going to be before the election) they are also more academic, and require work experience which, again, is not offered in the volume required for the TLevel. I hope the new government takes a look at these and either makes them far more like Btec or leaves the Btec alone.

For clarity through, not the Level 2 qualifications. T-Levels are Level 3.

(One side effect of T-Levels is you used to be able to jump out of Level 3 Extended Diploma after 1 year and still get a Certificate (a bit like you could get AS half way through A level). You can't do that with T-Levels.)