UK education; what is the REAL problem?

[Isitmebut]

First of all let us first establish that there is a problem, despite a huge investment by the State that more than doubled the education budget from 1997 and borrowed huge amounts of money on ‘the never, never’, to build/improve schools via he Private Finance Initiative (PFI), that will annually eat into the Education budget for decades to come.

“England’s young adults trail the world in literacy and maths”.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-24433320

"Young adults in England have scored among the lowest results in the industrialised world in international literacy and numeracy tests.

A major study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) shows how England's 16 to 24-year-olds are falling behind their Asian and European counterparts".

England is 22nd for literacy and 21st for numeracy out of 24 countries.


And just to confirm that our school leavers international test results are not a statistical quirk, and that they are indeed NOT ready to go out in the world to make their mark, for year after year the CBI (and even supermarkets) having been pleading with the government to ensure that our children leave full time education, fit for employment purpose.

“More than four in 10 employers are being forced to provide remedial training in English, maths and IT amid concerns teenagers are leaving school lacking basic skills, it emerged today.”
www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/9322525/School-leavers-unable-to-function-in-the-workplace.html


Now while I kind of understood the pro EU Labour’s motives in relaxing the teaching of foreign languages, as it both boosted school leave tables and their objective was to boost inward economic migration, not give our children opportunities to work abroad – but how can we allow millions of children, go out to a world needing an ever more semi skilled and skilled workforce, without even the basics in English and Maths?


The Unemployment figures of under 24 year olds from 2004 on highlight two major points; using the May to July quarters in each year, we can see that in 2004 we already had 580,000 under 24’s unemployed. But during what we was told was an economic boom, by the pre crash 2007 high, that figure had reached 711,000 – and by the 2010 general election, a few years into the recession, Labour passed over to the coalition 921,000 under 24-year olds unemployed – a national scandal.


And by putting the CBI reports, employer anecdotal reports on migrant education skills/motivation, and the international literacy and numeracy league table evidence TOGETHER, we have a failed a whole generation of our children.


And don’t take my word for it, when a troubling report discloses many of our young feel ‘they have nothing to live for’.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-25559089

“As many as three quarters of a million young people in the UK may feel that they have nothing to live for, a study for the Prince's Trust charity claims.”


So what ARE the problems, nature, nurture and/or the wrong teaching methods – where the combination of a Labour government and Left Wing educationalist were a toxic mix?


This article a while back by the respected Max Hastings on a report by Miriam Gross, published by the Centre for Policy Studies, makes interesting reading.
www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1296126/Ideologues-illiteracy-MAX-HASTINGS-terrible-damage-wrought-schools-Left-wing-educationalists.html


I may not agree with everything Michael Gove suggests, but what is clear is that for the time spent in full time education, those under 24-year olds education was not working for them and the facts, figures and results PROVES that – so Gove has to both challenge and make changes to the ideological bent of the educational establishment. IMO.

[TeacakeEater]

Also looking into the thinking behind CfE, it was put forward as a way of engaging those for whom traditional academic education wasn't working. It appears to me to have ignored the more academic.

[Isitmebut]

Teacakeeater….although I went to an inner London Comprehensive School, I wanted my children to have a good grasp of European languages, so we nearly wept when we got our children into a great State school that not only excelled in languages, but offered the International Baccalaureate as an option to children – 6 subjects, 3 above A levels in standard, 3 below – and I could see the advantages of the rigour of the subjects that had to include maths, English and at least one European language.

Furthermore, as a non political diploma whose standard never dropped and recognized as an exam of excellence by nearly every decent university in the UK, Europe and America, and I know for a fact that it prepared children far better for university, unfortunately not via my children, who wasted the opportunity. A friend of ours girl went to Warwick to do applied maths degree and as she took Maths Higher in the I.B., twiddled her thumbs for the first year, as the A level students caught up to the I.B. level.

My children at least came out with a working knowledge of 3 European languages, one did Russian, but what I noticed was my eldest needed B’s and C’s to do the Higher or Lower I.B. subjects of her choice, my youngest several years later, needed A’s or strong B’s to do the same exam.
www.ibo.org/diploma/

For years now I have keep hearing of plans for an English I.B. ‘lite’, I don’t know where we are now on the if and when, or how good it would be, but based on what I saw, I’d be in favour of the more rounded education for as many as could do it.

[Isitmebut]

Re the following, to make myself clear, the A's B's and C's were GCSE's.

"My children at least came out with a working knowledge of 3 European languages, one did Russian, but what I noticed was my eldest needed B’s and C’s to do the Higher or Lower I.B. subjects of her choice, my youngest several years later, needed A’s or strong B’s to do the same exam."

[Chippingnortonset123]

We gave up on public education and went private for the sake of the dc. I suspect that we are not alone.

[GoodnessIsThatTheTime]

In Australia teachers don't have to continually track, assess, set targets etc. You can just choose what you fancy teaching... and teach it. To a certain extent.

Children start school at 5 or defer to 6.

This is quite different.

[flatpackhamster]

SarfEasticated

I work in a big multinational company and we employ lots of young graduates. Their written English is often poorly spelt, vocabulary limited and general knowledge sketchy but they are amazingly self-assured and very good at thinking creatively and strategically. Our educations were vastly different (mine was late 70s early 80s traditional and 'academic') but they have a confidence and self reliance that friends of my generation just don't have. Academic achievement doesn't always mean success in the workplace.

I see that at primary level - children who are confident and up for anything - but utterly uneducated and ignorant. It's as though Labour decided to copy the motivation of the private school system without copying the intellectual rigour.

[CouthyMow]

Forago has a pertinent point. In the last 15 years, there have been over TWENTY new housing estates built in our town - it has more than doubled in size. Yet just ONE school has been built, that takes 60 pupils per year...

For September 2015, our town will be 121 Secondary places short, and 157 Reception places short.

They are talking about sending 4yo's THIRTY MILES AWAY in taxis that the parents can't accompany them in to attend school, rather than build enough schools to cope with the population boom.

There are NONE of the existing primaries that are able to expand any further than they already have, due to site limitations.

We were being promised a new 4-18 school for September 2015, that would take the Secondary overflow and 60 out of the 157 Reception students, but it was to be a Montessouri free school, and it appears the backer may have pulled out, if not, then the school is almost certainly delayed, and will not be open for September 2015, they haven't even broken ground yet...

It's a stupid situation.

[Isitmebut]

Solopower1….I’m sorry to appear to be picking on you, but you are just offering excuse after excuse on the facts, what teachers want to do, what constitutes a ‘rounded child’, and whether the teaching profession WANTS to go with Gove or not – but the evidence is overwhelming, so the attitudes of all parents, children AND the teaching establishment HAS to change, the future of society and this country depends on it.


So while you pooh, pooh, a credible international comparison, this to me after our children being well over a decade in education is beyond even my disbelief.


And before you blame everything like Playstations, that are priced using £9.99 e.g. £299.99, where a penny change is the default answer – how the hell can schools allow pupils to leave school at Primary level, never mind Secondary education, without such BASIC knowledge?


“A study by Nationwide finds that more than half of secondary school pupils struggle to work out change in their heads, prompting claims that maths lessons are leaving them "unequipped for everyday situations"

www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/10631728/Pupils-cannot-count-out-change-due-to-poor-maths-skills.html

“One question involved asking them to calculate the correct change from £100 if they had bought shopping totalling £64.23, but more than half – 52 per cent – gave the wrong answer. It emerged that more than a quarter were more than £1 out.”


The teaching establishment can no longer defend the indefensible - so has no right to 'push back' at any changes they call Tory ideology, when their own ideology has been tried for 13-years and the results are for all to see.


Basic standards has to rise, rather than the next Labour government again threatening the Private Education sector in order to take on their governmental responsibility at the State level - in effect trying to lower the level of the UK educational playing field - as those international league tables will continue to tell the real story.

[GoodnessIsThatTheTime]

I agree that it has to change, but the direction Gove is pushing is just going to make things far far worse. It's bizarre. Instead of looking at countries that have got it right (Scandinavia, perhaps Australia, etc) and adapting some of their methods, treatment of teachers and children, we go in the oposite direction.

The more pointless paperwork that is demanded of teachers proving what they are about to do and then hours proving they have done it, for each lesson, each day, if they actually had time to get to know the children and enjoy teaching that would be great.

I wouldn't object to higher standards of entry (and corresponding pay). Lots in my previous state school I taught at were Oxbridge and/or masters graduates. However with 50% of teachers leaving within 5 years they will have to seriously incentivise teaching to get good graduates to stay!

[CouthyMow]

Isitme - there will ALWAYS be those who are destined for those low- paid, low-skilled jobs, because somebody HAS to do them. It doesn't matter how much you push some children, they just may not have the intellect to gain higher grades.

Intellect is pretty much fixed, you will fall somewhere on the bell curve. That means that you can be in the middle, where it may be possible to get C/B at GCSE's, you can be at the too end, and sail through with a clutch of A*'s, or you can be at the bottom end of the bell curve, and work your bloody socks off for a G grade.

Only to get disheartened because you have put your all into an exam, scraped a G grade, but because it is not a C grade, you are told that you have to resit that exam. Why? To satisfy the school's need for you to get a C for their league tables, especially if that is in a Core subject.

My DD worked her socks off to gain a G grade in Maths, she has days calculus and Moderate LD's. She got the G grade in the November exams. At that point, being told that she had to resit that exam in June, as well as having to resit 6 other subjects in which she had slogged her guts out to scrape a D grade in (never going to find enough marks to get it to a C grade), she just gave up on education and has gone massively off the rails.

This obsession with league table results means that either DC's are pushed into vocational training in VERY few areas (there was a choice of three at DD's school, NONE relevant to the TRADE she was going into - what relevance do Childcare, mechanics or health and beauty have to someone who wants to go into Catering as a trade?!). The only way for Dd to get into college to study Catering was to take traditional GCSE's that included Catering GCSE.

The other option is to take the traditional GCSE's, and be put under immense pressure to resit to try to get a C grade that even the teachers know that you are just not capable of. If you have an IQ of 70, and were able to get a C grade in GCSE, it WOULD mean that the exams had been dumbed down.

In actual fact, they haven't been. And therefore, those pupils with lower IQ's are just NOT able to get a C grade, yet if they do not wish to pick from the VERY narrow vocational options offered, they have no choice but to sit GCSE's.

What would be wrong with changing the education system to bring back proper vocational colleges to allow you the option of learning a trade at 14, whilst other people sit GCSE's?

As long as it wasn't the way it was before, where the SCHOOLS decided who can sit GCSE's and who goes to vocational college, it would work. Allow the student and their parents the choice.

Irrespective of what her that child is likely to get a. C grade or not.

I had a MASSIVE fight to get the school to allow DD to sit GCSE's, because they KNEW she wouldn't achieve a C grade in a single one. But D d only needs D-G grades to get onto the catering NVQ lvl 1 course. Which I knew she CAN do.

Instead, due to pressure to achieve an unrealistic C that is PURELY FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE SCHOOL for their league table results, DD has now thrown away her entire education by bunking off, walking out of lessons, being disruptive, and getting herself deliberately put into ISO.

She has crumbled under the pressure of trying to achieve the unattainable. The pressure put on these DC's is immense. But she would have done this two years ago if forced to take a vocational qualification that bore no relevance to her future life.

It's ridiculous for successive governments to ignore the fact that there IS a place for well funded vocational colleges, offering a range of study options!

[CouthyMow]

Days calculus = dyscalculia.

[Bramshott]

IMHO:
Lack of unskilled/manual jobs so that everyone has to be "academic"
Lack of real apprenticeships
League tables and teaching to the test

The problem is not so much that education is going downhill, but that needs and opportunities are so different these days, and therefore an ability to add up, write a bit and follow instructions isn't enough any more.

[soul2000]

Couthy. As I have noted from other posts on different subject areas, your
DD is having a difficult and emotionally demanding time at present.

I am aware how hard she has had to work to achieve a G grade . However
if any education system let or lets a student,leave education before the age of 18 with such a grade, without multiple attempts to improve that grade, it would be contemptible.

I would hope that if your DD goes to college next year, the college will ensure that she continues to study maths and improves her skills.

A G grade is no "GOOD" in catering, she needs to be able to calculate costs, the right amount of ingredients learn about different cooking times and be numerate when counting stock.

Any small improvement , from a G-F would be a start but improvement is needed from there as well.

I think your DD needs to be having Maths/English lessons until the age of 18 to give her the best chance of finding employment in a "Kitchen" or any catering environment.

[Stopmithering]

1. Lies, damned lies and statistics.
2. It is not possible to isolate teaching from the society and culture we live on and blame it for all of our ills.
3. (Some) Children (can) leave primary education with low literacy and numeracy skills, meaning an incredibly tough journey through secondary education. You want change? Start at Primary level and ensure the basics are in place before it's too late.
4. Sadly, many children have no-one at home to "role-model", to enthuse, guide, motivate and praise them. Not all parents are Mumsnet parents who give a damn about their offspring.
5. Anecdotal, "my children" type evidence is not evidence. It's just anecdotes and proves nothing.
6. It's As, Bs, and Cs and GCSEs, not A's, B's, C's and GCSE's.

[niceguy2]

There's nothing fundamentally wrong with our education system. Taken as an entirety it's OK. Can we do better? God yes. Can we do worse. Again yes!

The main problem we have is piss poor expectations. It's OK for a child to get a C grade. Parents are pleased their little Johnny come home with a couple of C's at GCSE as long as he's tried his best.

Except it's meaningless in the real world. Yes he's tried his 'best' (cough). But he's being outclassed and outsmarted by the little South Korean guy who went to school for 8 hours followed by 4 hours of tutoring.

Now his job's in South Korea cos they'll work harder, longer and for less money than we expect in the UK.

There really is little point in chucking more money and more paperwork at education. What we need is resources chucked at making families realise that if we want to compete in the global marketplace then the only way is to raise our education levels. And for that it starts at home from an early age. It's raising your kids so that they expect better from themselves. That getting a C isn't good enough and that they can do better.

[Isitmebut]

Stopmithering….Of course it is not possible to isolate teaching from society, including jobless figures, but AGAIN, how many of those other countries, that did not have such an increase in spending on education, have similar social problems to the UK?

Parent and children attitudes are so important as I and other posters have mentioned, so here is a question, like other areas, was the government’s education policy designed around what it thought it might achieve (re the league tables) to look good, rather than pushing up education standards to try force changes in attitude - risking falls in ‘passes’ in the early years?

Is this what the current Labour Shadow Education bod mentioned here, and what is behind their recent policy for better educated teachers about, as they set the standards of children leaving now?
www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/labour-admits-great-crime-on-education-tristram-hunt-says-his-party-encouraged-schools-to-aim-too-low--and-pupils-paid-the-price-9053693.html

On Primary Schools, I also agree with you, my three went to a really nice village type school, with an excellent Head Mistress, enjoyed all the school clichés on being happy at school, but all said they felt they were at a disadvantage to their peers once they got to Secondary education. And regarding the shameful levels in the basics of children leaving school today, those basics should have been drummed in AT Primary School, not left to higher education.

Having three children I never thought of a private education, as although we had a good income it was not guaranteed for years ahead, so I couldn’t contemplate bringing them out and placing them with the state at an undetermined time.

But I DO now wish we would have invested in a private Primary School, to both raise their pre Secondary Standards and (hopefully) instil a better sense of education effort needed, that I failed to get over, trying everything, carrot to stick.

As for correcting people grammar on a public board, no problem here, but if every teacher did that in class, it might go some way in solving the literacy problems – NEWSFLASH, it’s too late for me.

[Isitmebut]

Sorry, didn't 'convert' the link.

www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/labour-admits-great-crime-on-education-tristram-hunt-says-his-party-encouraged-schools-to-aim-too-low--and-pupils-paid-the-price-9053693.html

[Isitmebut]

“British schoolchildren are lagging so far behind their peers in the Far East that even pupils from wealthy backgrounds are now performing worse in exams than the poorest students in China, an international study shows.

The children of factory workers and cleaners in parts of the Far East are more than a year ahead of the offspring of British doctors and lawyers, according to a report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Researchers said the study, which looked at the performance of 15-year-olds in mathematics, showed countries could overcome traditional social class divides to raise education standards among relatively deprived pupils."

www.telegraph.co.uk/education/10645090/Chinas-poorest-beat-our-best-pupils.html

[llljkk]

Maybe because the children of factory workers & cleaners all send their kids to crammers & Saturday school every spare waking minute? Because that's how much faith they have in their education systems in the Far East.

[Dustypeas]

These studies are very one dimensional and do not give a valid picture of education across different systems. Ability to pass maths tests is surely not the only measure we should use to judge an education system. In the current world climate people need many different skills to succeed, with sophisticated technology rote learning facts is simply not necessary. Children need to be confident, creative and flexible as well as possessing knowledge.
I would highly recommend taking a look at any of the TED talks by Ken Robinson on these topics.

[Bonkerssometimes]

There is a raving debate about the same question in Secondary education, although the OP heading is different. The discussion from page 15 is about what is wrong and how to fix it.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/secondary/1996012-Fed-up-with-the-education-divide?pg=20

[Bonkerssometimes]

I think the problem is that the education fails to address the needs of the less bright pupils, so they leave school without even a basic benchmark of education.

Bring back rote learning. It works.

[Isitmebut]

LLLjkk…..you are correct about weekend and school holiday crammers in the Far East, but that is more of a reflection on their higher standards/competition out there, ‘Chinese mothers’ are well known throughout the Far East countries they now live, and even in the UK if you get to know one.lol

But we seem more content to make excuses, yet link after link shows that our numeracy and literacy stands are falling here, never mind on a global basis – as when nearly half of children cannot give change of £100 in a decimal system, after buying just one item, when we had Pounds, shillings AND pence (AND pesky half-pennies) to get our little grey cells around, come on, enough is enough.

Forget ‘the global race’ for education, jobs and economic growth and prosperity, we will soon be making excuses for why our children can’t write their names properly on their GSCE papers - and making singing and dancing compulsory to try and match our children’s ‘aspirations’, to appear on, never mind win, The Voice or The X Factor.

THE MONEY WAS THERE for the children in most of these tests, so the answer is in the combination of our education system, teachers (maybe that may have come through that system themselves and find it tough to teach/improve upon what they never learned), parental guidance, and our little darlings who would rather be doing something else. Bless.

[Toadinthehole]

A comment on a characteristic of British education, which I haven't found replicated in other places I've lived in.

Academic versus vocational

This is the idea that a child is one or the other. It underpinned the grammar / secondary modern system, and before that provided the reason why children at the public schools spent years learning pointless Latin and Greek. Go back still further, and you find it in Plato's Republic.

Now it seems that vocationally orientated children should go into trades, while academically orientated children should study whatever at university.

But in other countries, I suspect people would point out unless a child's literacy standards are deficient, there should be no reason why he or she shouldn't go to university. They might add that not many university courses are "academic" anyway, except for things like philosophy, Classics, or history, and anyway there is no point in studying courses such as those because they don't lead to any decent employment. They might also add that a trade might be better for a bright child anyway, because the pay is higher.

They might even add that labelling a child as "vocational" is just another way of writing them off for useful employment and as such is a positively unhelpful concept. They might - if they were historically minded - comment that it is perhaps a hangover from the class system.

[PlainBrownEnvelope]

Actually, the whole Tiger Mom thing is a bit of a myth, or at least the fact that it's ubiquitous is a myth. In Hong Kong (where I live) there are still a lot of parents who are not engaged in the education system, don't hugely value it, and don't send their kids to crammers and weekend classes (Hk had to make schooling mandatory to make enrolment close to 100%), yet HK still has the highest literacy and numeracy rates in the world because that's what the schools focus on. Even the schools in low opportunity areas with the least well qualified teachers do okay in respect of that. Now, the fact that HK schools totally fail in critical thinking/ team work/ experiential learning is a whole other issue, and one which is fairly widely recognised. However, in terms of basic skills, they do very well, and it's those basic skills that make people employable.

Whilst I think that learning to be a learner is important, possibly UK schools have gone too far that way, and neglected the basics. You cant google everything. You need a foundation of basic knowledge to be able to comprehend the next conceptual step, especially in maths/ science subjects where the UK is very weak. Knowledge has a value.