Facilitating subjects scrapped by Russell Group universities

[Mygoodlygodlingtons]

"Announcing its decision, the Russell Group, which is made up of 24 universities, said the list of preferred A-levels had been “misinterpreted” by students who mistakenly thought these were the only subjects that top universities would consider."

//://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/may/23/russell-group-scraps-preferred-a-levels-list-after-arts-subjects-hit

[IrmaFayLear]

I was wondering about that. The syllabus teaches about the Two Party System in the UK etc etc - well, I don't know if the current situation is a blip, but at the moment it is an interesting (or confusing!) question to answer.

[stucknoue]

The problem is, even with the list, those without parents who know the system are picking the wrong subjects eg the person above who mentioned doing both economics and business studies that overlap a lot, or those not doing maths for actually most degrees maths is good (well maybe not fine art or English)

[Xenia]

Maths is certainly good for those wanting to read law as are lots of other subjects from French to History and English Lit.
Also people need to look beyond university and think about the people who will be checking theri CVs who may be old fashioned, prejudiced against A levels that were not around in their day or whatever.

[Piggywaspushed]

errol, I think you have misunderstood me. Some of the most impressive minds I know are mathematicians and we absolutely need mathematicians in society (the most thoughtful and highly informed teacher of staffroom is a very articulate and eloquent mathematician). However, what I'd like is people doing maths for the love of it and not purely because of earning potential! I'd be really sad if students only chose things because of money , but I have found maths students do tend to be more capitalist in their leanings anyway?

I was objectively saying (whilst saying that maths is certainly very academic) that maths doesn't promote discussion and debate (at school level : they sit is silence working their way through problems ; admirable concentration. And so adding maths to history and English adds a another string to the bow but that subjects such as politics and film are underrated because 'broadening minds and cultural experiences' isn't massively valued in education.

And, yes, I have seen the maths syllabi : DH is a maths teacher...

I do know lots of maths people do read and do enjoy culture. But on another thread a mathematician said they didn't 'do words' which rather supported that binary idea.

I absolutely agree with you that we should move away from these binary distinctions but I am afraid the 'cult of STEM' is rather leading to that with many 17 year olds A Level choices, along with the removal of ASs.

To repeat : I think ALL A Level subjects are worthy of study.

On a side note , my DS finds the politics spec disappointingly narrow and boring. He is still going to do it at uni though.

[Piggywaspushed]

Can you explain why maths is good for Law xenia. Am not disputing this ; have just always wondered . When I was at school , science and maths people were encouraged into medicine (this was a v traditional Sottish school) and Arts people (again very binary : no one mixed subjects!) to the Law.

[Piggywaspushed]

Excuse typos : someone I haven't spoken to in 20 years just phoned me so I was a bit distracted!

[Shimy]

Probably high logical reasoning ability would be useful in Law.

[Piggywaspushed]

Agreed. Although my friend who did a conversion course (and is now a top corporate lawyer) from a Eng/history degree said it really was all just learning facts, facts, facts. She was 9still is) a proper workaholic, so I decided the main requirement was probably a desire - or at least willingness- to stay up all night reading arcane documents! I certainly never recommend Law to anyone at school who is a bit of a fly by the seat of their pants type.

[ErrolTheDragon]

Piggy - I think you've moderated what you said before, which was 'tests the mind but doesn't broaden it'. Do you agree with me it does 'broaden' it, along a different axis to other subjects?

I may myself have mentioned in the past myself something to the effect that I don't use words when I'm doing maths. And of course, there are extremes - the dyslexic mathmo and the wordsmith with dyscalcula. Most people are somewhere on the plane in between - some are all rounders, some aren't much good at either.

Not all motivations have to be totally pure and unworldly. While studying a subject for the love of it is ideal, my guess is that there are many students who don't have a particular 'passion'. In which case, choosing subjects rationally - including a realistic assessment of how they may impact future employability - is no bad thing.

[HollowTalk]

I taught in a sixth form and was often horrified at the advice given by some of the lecturers as to what choices should be made - every single one of those lecturers had been to a crap university themselves.

[Piggywaspushed]

Yes, I think I am idealistic errol ! Employability and high pay are not, though, the same thing!

I didn't moderate - honest. I just reexplained. Yes, I would never in a zillion years do maths myself : but would also never discourage anyone. Interestingly, I find the teachers most inclined to discourage students from doing maths and Languages A levels are the teachers of those subjects.

Related article today , this time about EBacc

schoolsweek.co.uk/revealed-the-three-inconvenient-truths-about-the-ebacc/

[ErrolTheDragon]

Employability and high pay are not, though, the same thing!

True, but the employability (in 'graduate level' jobs) stats tend to show a similar distribution.

[ErrolTheDragon]

The EBACC is too blunt a measure, isn't great for kids with asymmetric abilities, and is exacerbated by the changes in GCSEs leading to fewer subjects being taken, which inevitably take a toll on the non-EBAcc subjects.

Even worse when schools make additional subjects mandatory - eg both English language and literature, RE in some. Quite why that isn't grouped with history and geography is a mystery.

[Piggywaspushed]

The Lang Lit thing is to do with buckets...genuinely an education term.

Plus, if students only did English Language on the new specs, my God, they'd be boooooored. We do always have to teach lang and lit as one subject with the same amount of time as maths and science (in fact, science often has more time) so it's not really much of an argument. My DS's school forces gets them all to do RS. He is actually good at it but, goodness, it clogs up an already full revision schedule.

EBacc is a very blunt measure. But schools who ignore it ignore a whole 'performance measure' which is a risky strategy unless they are very comfortable with the reasons.

[IrmaFayLear]

The thing is, ideas that start out as a good intention go awry. SATS were originally conceived to make sure that teachers were concentrating on the 3Rs as so many kids were turning up at secondary school illiterate and innumerate. Some people do not remember the bad old days when no formal English was taught as it was considered stifling of creativity or some such.

And the EBACC was to make sure schools were not trying to sneak up league tables by urging kids to do "crappy" GCSEs instead of traditional ones. MFL is a funny one, because we get half of MN beating their breasts about the dire state of MFL and how there should be provision to take three in every single school (where are theses teachers, pray?!) and the other half of posters wailing that their dc is being forced to take "unnecessary" French and how cruel it is.

[Piggywaspushed]

Trouble is what the EBacc squeezed out was not the 'crappy'' GCSE equivalents. They actually post date EBacc introduction (eg the famous EDCL).

And I am not remotely convinced that that is why SATs were introduced! They were introduced is that there were measurable accountability measures at each educational stage : hence why they went with so little fuss at KS3 which has become the wasted interim years of education, sadly. (another unintended by product of a decision, I guess).

But the MFL thing seems absolutely unresolvable to me! The EBacc didn't help. Not sure what will, if anything.

[ErrolTheDragon]

The Lang Lit thing is to do with buckets...genuinely an education term.

Please can you educate us as to its meaning?... whereas I can usually find definitions via google I suspect that one wouldn't go well!

MFL is a funny one, because we get half of MN beating their breasts about the dire state of MFL and how there should be provision to take three in every single school (where are theses teachers, pray?!) and the other half of posters wailing that their dc is being forced to take "unnecessary" French and how cruel it is.

And some of us can do both simultaneously! One size doesn't fit all.

[Piggywaspushed]

The buckets thing is very complicated . It's to do with Attainment 8 and Progress 8 . I think this probably explains best why Eng Lit matters so much :

www.teachers.org.uk/edufacts/progress-8

[LolaSmiles]

errol
There are 'buckets' for measuring progress. Think of them as slots so there is a maths slot, an English slot, an ebacc slot etc. Whichever options a student selects goes in the relevant slot.

So, for example, many schools won't make a student who has low maths/English (think ks2 levels) sit an MFL course and they might be steered away from ebacc options. When schools do that they are accepting they will get penalised as a school for that child having 0 in that slot, but it was the right decision for the child.

English and maths is worth double, but students have to have language and literature for it to be double weighted (otherwise schools would probably axe literature for all but their most able and drill for a language exam in y10).

Someone might be along to explain it in more depth.

[Piggywaspushed]

Although it doesn't state that the best of Eng and Eng Lit can be counted in the first (English) bucket. This is another important. factor as many students do better in Lit. I think I am correct about that - but tbh, buckets and P8 and A8 confide most teachers, too!

[Piggywaspushed]

or confuse even !

[Xenia]

Maths and law - just it is a good hard academic subject, that's all. You problem solve in a sense as a lawyer and on a law degree, but you also need very good written and spoken English so doing the harder essay subjects at A level and perhaps a language can be good. I have been involved with quite a lot of programmers and also inventors where science A levels can be useful too - in my last firm they even recruited people with biotech PhDs who after that qualified as lawyers because the pay was better and they were few and far between but very helpful at explaining the science to the clients.

It is very hard to generalise across all careers.

[LolaSmiles]

They do piggy. For all many of us thought the changes to literature were awful, I've certainly had to eat humble pie. I much much prefer the new literature course.

[ErrolTheDragon]

Schools have been making English literature compulsory long before attainment 8 or EBAcc were invented. Did anyone doing o-levels back in the day not do it?

[ErrolTheDragon]

Xenia - presumably there are areas of law where a lot of the evidence is based on science and/or numerical data? Some of that may be more arithmetic than 'maths' I suppose.