State education system, is it broken?

[minimathsmouse]

I believe the wheels have fallen off the state education system. You might not agree but I have read so many posts here from parents who have had and are still having huge problems with their child's school. Many people seem to have worries about standards of teaching, clashes of ideology and problems with making up the deficit with tutors and home study. Horrendous SEN provission, huge class sizes, lack of provision for able pupils, the list goes on. It is truely depressing to think so many children are not receiving the education they deserve.

How many people believe the whole system has failed? Are falling standards only due to poor teaching or wider problems that are not being addressed within the system?

The afternoons sound good, appletree, and I like the no homework policy, but I don't like the exclusive focus in the mornings on the 3rs - very narrow and un-enriching, and positively awful for kids who are already well ahead in those areas.

My dd is another one who taught herself to read etc before starting school - no tutoring here!

It IS broken in that children are not encouraged to work things out/form opinions. It's too presciptive and not at all explorative, in my experience anyway. I'm all for national standards, how else are we to identify where problems lie? But I believe that in pursuing the average we are in danger of producing (yet another)generation of drones.

Minimaths I put that because I strongly believe that reading is the best method of education -- there are many children with no teacher input for twenty minutes right now! More than that!

I was way ahead of reading at five, six, and had huge books to read which I read when the class were doing things I already knew. Did me a world more than sitting being bored and getting fidgety and was no dobut better for the class.

And then when the other children are practising see, sea, there, their, etc, then the teacher comes to your table and looks at the hard words you've all written down because you didn't get them, and explains them.

Don't leave my school, your children would love it!

Oh no maths is so marvellous with so much time to devote to it it would be incredibly enriching! Reading too how can you say that's limited.

Ok writing is boring. But then it always is. And it's an essential vital every hyperbole skill which we shouldn't abandon because it's dull.

Both my husband and I regularly support our school both financially and with advice or practical help. We have both been governors, attend meetings. My husband goes into the school quite regularly to help out.

Children in my classroom and the classrooms across my school are taught to work things out and form opinions.

Appletrees our students read independently most mornings ( secondary) and we have regular spelling tests as you describe them.

Yea and they shall be revived, amen.

Along with copying blocks so that children get used to writing larger and larger amounts, and little daily diary books with a space at the top and four lines at the bottom for the sole purpose of the parent looking back thirty years later and saying aaaw at "We watched Catweazel and my mum bought me a curly wurly".

Abitofaflap.

A generation of drones, hey it's taken 79 posts for someone to point this out. I am so glad i didn't have to say this, you are right though.

The state Ed system was put in place because the church and pollitical elite of the 17th and 18th centuries were worried that children should not be working in factories, but equally so shouldn't be running around pick pocketing either. So along came schools.

Many great thinkers believed that education of the masses would create huge social unrest. Indeed if you educate people to ask questions in probably will. However if managed well, the system should spew forth the fuel for the capitalist machinery.

However as things are, it seems to have failed in this respect too because we have skills shortages and high unemployment. Are schools equipping young people for future life?

Waterloo that is so fab. I think parent governors are so devoted and can turn a school around. I have experience of this. Not me, a friend did it.

I agree that problem solving and encouraging opinions are important, but the issue is that you also need to be able to articulate those opinions or they are worthless. I dont want to turn this into a "spelling mistakes on CVs" thread but basic literacy is a problem even amongst undergrads. That's pretty piss poor for one of the most developed countries in the world.

There are 7 yr old Chinese kids in HK who speak and write English better than many English children their age. They come from poor backgrounds in many instances but the schools prioritise it (it's critically important if they want to get on in life)and teach them grammar so they can work out why it's "their, there or they're" by themselves.

We have to teach our children to be properly literate or they're going to be cleaning floors in Beijing.

I agree with BeerTricks' posts.

Also, tHis thread was begun in the spirit of a was a 'political' thread, wasn't it; not as a 'school' thread.

in the spirit of a

Actually I don't have a political agenda. I am just stating the social reason schools were established and the social and economic purpose they serve. They fail on that score.

Children need to be educated, where and how and does the present system work? What are its aims and how should they be achieved?

I mean, it's one thing to really want to know what people's schools are like, and another thing to just start a pro-Tory thread isn't it

well... I agree with your Mon 15-Nov-10 00:46:59 post about the aim of schools being to produce good little workers

Pro-tory thread, I couldn't be more anti tory if I tried I didn't ask people what their schools are like.

I wanted to know if other people thought state education was failing to deliver, what is should deliver and how they think that could be achieved. I am very sad that so many children seem to fail, parents are anxious and worried, rightly so in most cases.

I am very-pro state provision because I strongly believe in equality of opportunity. However I am also well read on educational sociology and I know that roughly 80% of children were being schooled to take up lower paid semi-skilled work until the 80's when unemployment shot up. The focus changed to encourage more young people into further ed. When labour took office, the focus continued to be on further education not because it's good for you, but because the economy needs certain skills. The political climate and the rule of governments very much dictates the outcome of education for all those who take part.

Well, I love my kid's school.

It's just the grown-ups I have a problem with, as this thread bears out.

not pro-tory, anti Labour then

"When labour took office, the focus continued to be on further education not because it's good for you, but because the economy needs certain skills."

Labour created a climate which made it possible for masses of young people to go into further ed, to study whatever they liked.

That is going to be destroyed by this new government

I disagree.

Labour insisted that every child should have the right to a university education. It's utter bollocks, and serves the country ill.

10% should aspire to higher education. The rest of them should get on with the mechanics of running a stable nation.

We now have a nation of youngsters who are averse to cleaning a toilet, but will happily take welfare instead.

I dont think the state schooling system has failed everywhere. There are very clearly some good and even outstanding state schools. However, in my area it has failed.

My choice of Primary age schooling is a Catholic school that is oversubscribed (we are not practicing Catholics), a CofE school which is in special measures and a just about adquate private Prep school.

Everyone who can afford (and many who cannot) send their DCs to the Prep if they are not Catholics. If we had a decent local state school near us that is where DSs would go. The Prep thay go to is not as good as many state schools our friends send their DCs to in other cities - but then we would have to buy a hugely expensive house to get into those 'good' state schools that would cost us more than sending DSs to the Prep.

In that sense the state system is 'broken' for us in our particular city.