The English Baccalaureate has really affected the League tables...

[MrsTweedy]

Is anyone else finding this fascinating? I am really surprised at how few pupils at well-regarded schools in my area have done what I would consider core subjects eg
Richmond Upon Thames

The Ebacc is basically English, Maths, a science, a language & history or geography with A*-C passes. These were compulsory in my day (okay I am ancient and did O Levels). It just shows how the curriculum has changed and how schools have been slanting it recently to improve their league standings on the previous benchmark.

I suppose it depends on which criteria you use to rate them ie either the EBacc or just 5 A-C GCSEs at the end of the day but it is certainly a surprising result in some cases.

I did my O'Levels in 1982 ... can I claim an EBac?

On a more serious note, my DD (yr 7) really struggles with languages, although she is in top groups for everything else (academic and vocational). She is much more interested in Art, Drama, Dance, Design Technology, etc. I think the school are going to push her to struggle on with a language for the next 5 yrs at least :(

Yes, I've met plenty of teachers. A few are good, many are middling, and far more than should be the case are terrible, because it is near impossible to sack a teacher.

Suppose teachers were remunerated according to performance improvement relative to previous performance in real subjects, instead of ridiculous collective pay deals. Suppose headteachers had far more authority to sack bad teachers. How much better our school system would be!

Actually, you don't have to suppose at all. Just look at the Academies (and soon, the Free Schools too).

What a rather odd post Longfingernails. I think you'll find that most Teachers are against the dumbing down of education for places in a league table. As for Academies - the one local to me has results that are very shit bad, parents are not flocking to that Academy I can tell you.

Why are history and geography suddenly so privileged, over say Music? Or Latin?

Perhaps the best thing that Tony Blair ever did was to defy his party's instincts on academies - and the biggest shame, as he himself admitted, was that he did not go further.

I remember reading some not-very-coded sentiments from him effectively endorsing the Gove reforms.

Plenty of other Blairites, like Lord Adonis, are cheering Michael Gove on too.

The people in the way of opportunity for our nation's children are the unions and the Labour party - who want conformity at all costs, and who seem to regard the suppression of excellence as a virtue.

Did you get your EBacc longfinger?

Yes, indeed, fivecandles - though unfortunately for me, it was a rather long time ago!

language should be compulsory and i think schools are pathetic that shirk that

Latin IS privileged Boffin. It counts as a MFL from what I understand . But yes, history and geography = good but RE and ICT = bad. Science = good but drama and music = bad.

The Tories have a very clear which basically harks back to the good old days when they were at (public) school learning not very much in not very imaginative ways.

Agenda, that should say. A very clear agenda.

Latin's an MFL? Blimey. How odd. Tells you an awful lot about the Tories that they think a language last used in daily life in this country 1,600 years ago is modern...

Indeed but feel there is no place in the curriculum for ICT

The employment value of a basic grounding in English, maths, science and foreign languages are clear. I am not totally sold on history/geography, but they are reasonable choices - they are certainly moderately rigorous.

ICT is one of these subjects which might sound good for employability to a 14 year old but is in fact totally useless. Any university in the country would prefer their Computer Science intake to have taken Further Mathematics to IT at A-Level. No employer will ever require a ICT GCSE as a minimum qualification.

Whilst it is unemployable, I suppose it isn't completely fatuous subject intellectually - though I would certainly class History and Geography higher on the totem pole.

The sudden rise under Labour of certain other subjects, however, has been a national disgrace. The way some schools (especially those with a staff of a pseudo-Marxist persuasion) betrayed their pupils by knowingly encouraging them to take less employable and non-academic non-subjects at GCSE has been scandalous.

In our la the state schools have a much higher percentage getting the English Bacc than the independent schools which is interesting.

You feel that Latin is more useful to employers than ICT long????

Really??

And if we're going to reduce education down to what is useful for a very narrow range of employment why bother sending the buggers to school at all?

Up the chimneys with the little blighters.

Apart from the sons and daughters of MPs and the aristocracy of course.

They can do Latin.

It is an interesting fact that Michael Gove would have failed the ebac. As he attended a private Scottish school he sat O grades and Highers and therefore, like myself, has no GCSES or A levels!

If I were forced to hire someone on GCSE grades alone, and the only difference was an A in Latin versus an A in ICT, I would pick the Latin, simply for showing some intellectual curiosity.

Of course, I would never hire anyone on such a spurious basis - but you get my point.

Yep. Every last one of them. Privately educated followed by Oxbridge. They've never set foot in a state school and have no clue what it's all about.

No, I don't get your point.

Deciding that Latin is more worthwhile is completely arbitrary. It's as arbitrary as saying that history is more worthwhile than drama and that geography is more worthwhile than ICT.

You cannot make an objective judgement about the value of one subject over another and say that this applies to everybody.

ICT doesn't teach employable skills.

The only way it might do so is if it were made into an entirely vocational course (perhaps a multiple-GNVQ type course), and incorporate some of the myriad professional qualification in network or database management, or a serious programming assignment.

It still wouldn't be very employable though. Leaving offshoring aside, almost everyone on the lookout for even slightly non-basic IT skills would generally recruit a decent science graduate without any formal computing qualifications.

If you think that the importance of Latin is debatable, how about Biblical Hebrew? Hebrew counts as a foreign language, but RE doesn't count as a humanity. Hmmm...

I would not advise an able pupil to take a GCSE in ICT to be honest.

With a very few exceptions (notably Latin teacher) ICT teaches many more employable skills than Latin. I think you'll find that there is not much call for Latin on a daily basis in most jobs but the vast majority of jobs require ICT skills day by day and hour by hour.

But decide your criteria, long, should schools offer subjects on the basis of what makes children employable or should schools offer subjects on the basis of satsifying 'intellectual curiosity'?

Very often the subjects with the most prestige actually have the least 'use' in terms of employment. Latin and ancient Greek are good examples.

Subjects that are most directly related to the world of work -like ICT are looked down on.

Why is that?

I know what I think. What do you think is the reason for this?