The return of the O Level.

[hermionestranger]

Leaked reports suggest that the government is to scrap the GCSE from 2015, 2013 option takers will be the last year to take them.

I'm sorry it's the mail bug they were first on my twitter feed. I 'm on my phone so can't link properly.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2162369/Return-O-Level-Gove-shake-biggest-revolution-education-30-years.html

I find the assumption that intelligence is measured by attainment in academic subjects baffling. It turns education into yet another forum where the British psyche's need to sort people into a hierarchy finds expression, much to the detriment of education itself. It is a real pity that it can't be rephrased in terms of differing aptitudes, with no particular bent indicating superiority or inferiority.

The insistence on calling people whose talents lie in the vocational area 'less able' leaves a huge group of young people in the education system feeling that they are failures, no-hopers, losers, whereas if they lived in a place where sorting according to class wasn't such a national obsession or affliction they might look at their abilities and potential in a different light, and there wouldn't be the massive underachievement and disengagement with school that is such a huge issue in Britain.

Well said, mathanxiety - we can't all be the same but in the real world academic skills are not actually the most valued qualities. EQ as well as IQ count, plus practical skills in loadsof areas. Education should be about bringing out all of thoise. Yes, academic skills are important - but so are practical ones.

Wasn't the pass mark for boys on the 11+ lower than for girls so that the girls didn't outnumber the boys? Some of these girls shunted into secretarial college and told they weren't academic would have been in the grammar school and told they were academic if they'd been male. Which just shows how arbitrary the cut-off was, rather than measuring any particular 'academic quirk'.

But academic can also mean 'without practical use'. I think universities are a great place to study things that have no practical use however, I think we have a problem when we start to think that because 'clever' people go to university, a university degree is a necessary step towards entering the world of work.

'Vocational training' doesn't mean 'for thick people'.

Doctors undertake vocational training. They follow a course that takes as long as it takes and is designed by the industry, not some arbitrary group of subjects strung together to take 3 years.

I think that the sheer lack of options that students are told about is a major contributor to the amount of students opting for university. For example I'm sure a lot of students don't know that you don't need to have a university degree to become an accountant, for example. Sadly, this problem is only going to get worse thanks to the demise of the careers service.

Yes, but if you want to be leading equity partner at Ernst & Young on £1m a year (ie a proper accountant) you probably need a pretty good good university degree to get to first base. Students should look at the backgrounds and CVs of those whose jobs they want as it often shows the best route.

Xenia
Current and past senior partners may mostly have been the degree route, but there are a fair few Articled veterans in there
and in the upcoming range a goodly quantity who did the A level AAT ACA route ...

This 'you go to university if you're academic' is a very dangerous argument.

It infers historically that women and currently many minority ethnic groups, people from lower income families, people with disabilities, people with significant sensory impairment etc are 'less academic' and therefore suited to 'practical work'.

Ditto 'if you have a 'good job' you must be good at it'. The banking industry clearly has some very clever people in it, but overall has been pretty incompetent in recent years.

I could argue the toss with you on that one Xenia.

However, my main point is that for most professionals, their job skills come from work experience and professional qualifications, not from their time at university. I am not saying that degrees are worthless, or that some of the skills you learn whilst doing a degree aren't transferable.

Just that they aren't as valuable to the general workforce as you would think given the amount of money invested in them, the percentage of the school population who it is planned should go to university, and the number of years it takes to complete one.

Bringback, I agree, and this is where expectations and social/economic background become such strong factors.

LeQueen the skills you highlight (processing, assimilating and analysing) are learned skills. Perhaps the reason your MIL doesn't have them is because she left school at 14?

Just a thought

LeQ, a shame your MIL didn't go to art college.

I agree that those skills are skills that can be taught, but they won't be taught if the focus is on rote learning of the sort that tends to be encouraged when an Education Secretary says that science is comprised of a list of facts.

Which is pretty much what we get in the Belgian system mathanxiety. I think this is a terrible shame. They seem to be trying to bring these skills in in secondary but my dd is in a bad position either way. Her memory is such that she finds learning lots by rote difficult but as that's all she's done in primary, she is now finding the new way forward (only some teachers) difficult because she's not used to doing it.

I'm not asking you to ignore anything, LeQm though I think MammaBrussels makes a good point about the lack of opportunity post-14 being detrimental to anyone's academic quirks.

Perhaps some children aren't ready to pick a trade at 14? Because that's what we mean by vocation, isn't it? We aren't suggesting medical training at 14?

Perhaps, at 14, some children still love history and want to learn more about it, even if they aren't going to do very well at it. Perhaps they would rather do history for another 2 years than commit to learning how to be a gas fitter. At 14. I know my dad regrets his early exit from education.

I think 14 is too young -- if it must happen during the teen years, I think 16 should be the minimum age at which a child can make a choice.

I think there's an enormous difference between ages 14 and 16 in social-emotional terms and also in terms of intellectual capacity and ability to focus on the job in hand, and there is even more difference between 14 and 17.

I agree, 14 is too young to specalise and learn a vocation, but some can't wait to leave and do something they enjoy. So couldn't the vocational college focus mainly on the vocational but also continue a bit with more general subjects such as maths, English, history and science.

That's what already happens in schools. Kids at my school can do college placements part time while studying for GCSEs while in school. I've taught kids who have got a B in GCSE maths (among other subjects) while also doing a hairdressing course including on-the-job training in a salon. There are others who do motor maintenance, catering or training to be a nanny. The good thing is that it doesn't lock them into a career path at a young age, they can decide hairdressing isn't for them and continue to sixth form college to do other stuff with a load of work experience under their belt. The choice of practical courses is unfortunately quite limited but we're working on college links all the time to improve this.

Our school doesn't really offer any 'vocational' subjects at GCSE stage unfortunately. I always feel very sorry for the kids who know they want to do something practical like catering, mechanics, hairdressing, farming, etc. They know that's what they want to try, alongside the basic English, Maths, Science but they aren't given that opportunity because we are based too far away from a college for it to be cost-effective. I honestly believe that those kids are put at a disadvantage because they would be doing better if they had more time on practical subjects and less time in classrooms. Even the 'practical' subjects we offer such as PE or Technology involve huge amounts of written work which makes sure that these kids don't get the grades that reflect their practical skills as they don't have the ability or inclination to do all the write ups. So I would like to see more practical subjects offered to our kids, rather than insist they spend the last 2 years of school disrupting lessons they aren't interested in.