So how does English education really compare with other systems?

[chocconut]

Thought it would be interesting to start a thread about the wise Mners' experience of English secondary education compared with others around the world. I was brought up abroad and so am very connected with children being educated abroad and since living here was always convinced I'd send my kids to private school as all I read in the news was how awful state schools were, standards dumbed down, UK kids not being prepared for employment etc etc. However, my kids are now in the state system (private not really an option financially) and they have been happy to go everyday, come home happy and -dare I say it- acutally seem to be learning well!!! Am I deluding myself? Are standards really very low but I can't see it because they are happy, and I want to justify my decisions? am I going to regret it when they are older if I realise they are able to compete in a globalised world? or.... is the system better than the news items would dare us to believe?? Over to you.. wise ladies!!

"compete in a globalised world"

This is the bit that I don't get about current employment concerns. My DS is good at sport; at one stage we thought that he might become a professional sportsman. Then as he got older and I saw the level of the competition and pfb-ness wore off, I realised that he is never going to be World Number One, he is never going to bestride the 'globalised world'. He is going to be Mr Joe Average, with an average job in an average town - just like everyone else. As long as he is happy and holding his head above water, that will do me.

I've gone slightly off topic but, seeing as he is above average intelligence (natch, he's a MN child) with supportive family and goes to an OK school then IMO he will come out of the education system well-enough equipped.

Sorry senua but I am at the other end on this one.

I was living in an average town with an average job. As soon as I got enough post grad experence to be attractive to a London City employer I was out of there. Now I am part of the globalised world. And I am very happy :)

Hopefully my DCs won't have to languish for years being average like I did.

Agree... I have no intention of moving them as they are so happy - I don't want to risk that above anything else....I also think the family environment is huge when taking into account someone's education. I think sport is a really difficult area to compete in at global (even national) level.... but on a more general academic side of things was wondering if the system prepares them to really excel and compete against kids in other coutries, that will be their reality in the future.... It does bother me though to always hear such negative reporting here in England when this is the system my child is working in.... I see lots of positives in the system here compared to where I was schooled (although that could be generational change as well) and maybe the reporting needs to be more balanced... I always tend to view things with rose tinted glasses!!

Whatever floats your boat! Living in London is my idea of hell but if you want to be 'globalised' there then you go ahead.

I suppose it all depends on what we mean by 'average', 'globalised' etc. I earn above-average wages but not stellar. My bosses wages are more in the stellar line, despite leaving school as soon as he could. We are part of the globalised world in our little backwater - we import and export - but then the Brits have been doing that ever since the Empire was invented, it's not really a new concept. BTW our Chinese and Indian suppliers are cr*p; the idea that everyone in the BRIC nations is going to do us out of jobs might be a bit overstated.

Education is only the first step of the ladder and doesn't necessarily dictate outcomes.

My children have been to 3 schools in different countries (1 international, 1 IB, and 1 BC) The education in the UK is absolutely fantastic compared to the education they received abroad.
Your question; how will they compete in a globalized world? Look around the globe, how many Brits are already working in Hong Kong, The Middle East and Europe, for our children it will be a case of the world is my oyster.

Very interesting OP I think.

Both DH and I are products of the English private boarding sector - neither school was selective, both in fact rather 'minor public school' status. We are both self-employed now; property rich but cash poor.

Both our DDs are in state, day education. Not being your typical high-flying uber-achieving MN children they are not at the grammar but at what is actually a secondary modern (given that true comprehensive education does not actually exist in grammar school areas).

At the moment I am happy with the fact that they are happy; they are learning; they are recognised as individuals at school and stretched/supported in different subjects as appropriate. They will come out with perfectly good results - probably not a string of A*s but I doubt that intensive tutoring from the womb followed by a super-selective high octane high pressure education would have got them those either.

What they will be equipped to do is to think for themselves, be able to get along with all strata of society, have a real understanding of the different ways people live and the pressures they face and be rounded people.

That's what I want for them; they get it from us at home and they see it through a different prism at school. Ultimately I want them to decide what they want to do/be, and I will help them do it.

What school you go to and how much you are pressurised to 'achieve' is not the be all and end all of education in my book.

What's IB BC ?

I don't know if things have changed alot in the last 20 years but I had rime at a French School, a rural UK comprehensive and an American High School. The French system was terrible, my UK school was great at English and humanities but aimed really low on maths and science, my US school took the most enthusiastic approach to education and enthused it's students the most, and was v ambitious with maths and sciences, but not great at English and terrible at humanities.

I don't look at other EU countries and see great schools, and the US is often criticised (although it's universities are praised), maybe the Far East is impressive academically but I'm not sure about emotionally. Is there any country whose state education is seen as a beacon of academic and social education?

You also have to remember that Brits love to criticise themselves. It wouldn't be British to recognise our schools are OK.

I went to a state school on the UK, DH went to a private boarding school in Ireland, the DC are now in state-run international schools (ie lessons partly in English) here in Germany. I hate hate hate the German school system, but I suppose in some ways the standards are very 'high', in a very restrictive academic sense.

The state school system is incredibly elitist, with very few comprehensive schools. Everyone else is divided after year 4 (age of 10) into one of three schools - grammar schools, 'Realschulen' and 'Hauptschulen' according to their grades in years 3 and 4. The grammar school is effectively for the children of professionals, the Realschule prepares people for skilled manual work, and the Hauptschule focuses on ensuring people can read and write enough to become labourers or shop assistants. Of course after only 4 years of school the place they end up at is largely reflected by their own parents' level of education.

The school system is largely based on continual tests and assessment rather than actual learning. Grades are everything and kids soon become disillusioned with actually learning content and are simply out to get the best grades - whether they learn anything along the way is irrelevant.

However, DD1 (13) is now in year 8 at a grammar school and I think the actual level of what she is learning is incredible - far more analysis than was expected of us at the same age. She's given a topic - diabetes, Copernicus, Beirut - and expected to produce a fully researched analysis plus competent Powerpoint presentation to the class. I think what she's doing is at a higher level than I had at O-level, perhaps because the school is so academically selective.

The downside is that it's incredibly stressful for the kids, and there's no alternative home schooling (illegal). DD1 has been suffering psychosomatic stomach and headaches, other friends have other stress-based illnesses. The grammar schools have the attitude, 'if you can't deal with it just get out', but obviously the other schools don't prepare kids for university in the same way (and DD1 is pretty academically competent and would get bored elsewhere). So I feel German schools have a very weird, traditional and inappropriate way of defining intelligence and academic success - it's designed to exclude people rather than include them.

The good thing is that the schools only start at 5.6 to 6 years, which gives more time to relax at nursery. In Berlin the last year of nursery before school is now free of charge (sponsored by the state), so everyone can send their child, and get prepared for school. However, very few nurseries teach letters or numbers, so if you don't do that at home your child will be disadvantaged from the start.

And - this is worst of all - the schools start at 7.55 every morning. Surely that's against the Human Rights Convention!

US high school start earlier, and charter schools have very long days.

Okay OP I think UK schools are okay on the whole, and even crap ones can turn out a few pupils who do okay. EG. DH and I went to schools which when league tables came out were competing to be bottom (for the whole of England) we both have doctorates, they were crap schools but we survived, and they are doing much better now. Private schools in the UK have also improved, people didn't used to send kids there for better grades but "better discipline", and schools which used to give a half day holiday for someone going to Oxbridge now send pupils every year.

Brits do like to moan. Also the perception that state schools are awful, comes from the media, where people predominantly live in London, and also want to justify why they send their kids to private schools.

darrowby that's really interesting because the German system has been lauded here recently for providing real differentiation between academic/not academic, with the emphasis on the not academic schooling being 'just as good' as the academic side. From what you say, it sounds absolutely horrendous.

Agree, interesting OP.

On ds's school report there is an explanation of the levels "This is average/above/below the level expected at school X".

So what? Very good that he is top of the tree (or not as the case may be) when compared with other children living within a two mile radius of the school. But I would like to know how ds measures up when the day of judgement comes and he has to compete against those of similar brainpower from all over the country - Europe and the world, even.

I knew a sportsman when he was a teenager who does now hold a world record and an Olympic Gold. He never thought he would be able to compete at that level either, but a University chosen for its sporting prowess that also did the course he wanted to do, refired him and gave him opportunities and he went on achieve great things.

I believe a lot of what we end up doing comes down to luck, our social lives and being in the right place at the right time. So character, determination and 'other halves' carry as much weight in the end as education.

"Brits are already working in Hong Kong, The Middle East and Europe, for our children it will be a case of the world is my oyster"

In the thread about learning Mandarin a (Chinese?) poster accused some Westerners of being insular and arrogant. Hush but I think that he/she was talking about you :o :o

Sure there is a world wide reverance for Eton/Harrow/Oxbridge & Co. Sure that will open doors for your child. But it is a tad a naive and perhaps arrogant and insular of you to imagine that the world will automatically be an oyster for a monolingual grad with a 2ii in Media Studies simply because he is British.

2.9 million ex-pat Brits live in the USA, Canada and Australia

11,000 British citizens in Brazil

29,000 in Kenya

55,000 ex-pats in the United Arab Emirates

26,000 live in Saudi Arabia

761,000 live in Spain

59,000 - Cyprus

200,000 - France

Pushed to the Edge, Would it be reasonable to assume that as so many Brits are living/working abroad now that in the future there will be more Brits (including our children) that will look for/ and find work abroad. When I said the world will be there oyster I meant that our children will look further for their opportunities in life, the world is now a much smaller place then when I left school.
Have you ever lived in another country?

"Have you ever lived in another country?"

It greatly irritates me when people feel to wheel out their CVs in great detail just to make a minor point so lets say I have lived in various countries including Germany, HK, Singapore and the US and leave it at that.

You?re just argumentative. If you knew anything about life outside the UK you would know that you are talking a pile of poop.

If I don't agree with you then that makes me 'argumentative'. Interesting perspective.

And I'm sorry that you don't think that, having lived in a number of major cities, qualifies me to speak authoritatively on the subject, unlike your goodself [where is that damned emoticon for SARCASM?]

I have seen your comments on various other threads you are usually insulting or arguing with someone

Wheres the ignore button!

Interesting thread. I grew up in NZ, did my schooling and two degrees there and did a postgraduate qualification and another degree in the UK. I've also taught in the UK and Scottish systems. I went to bog standard schools in NZ and, when there are only 7 universities in the country, it's hard to call any one better than the other.

With the disclaimer that anecdote does not equal data, and bearing in mind my recollections are highly subjective, I think the UK education system is nowhere near as good as it likes to think it is. I find it highly elitist, from primary onwards. It strikes me that the whole public/private debate here obscures the fact that poor education happens in both sectors. The worst examples I saw of poor teaching all came from the private sector.

That aside, I work in Higher Education. Maybe I'm an old gimmer who thought it was all better in her day, but I'm appalled at the low levels of literacy I routinely encounter in undergraduates (and a significant proportion of postgraduates). The simple things I was taught in primary school, grammar, spelling, logic, how to structure a written piece of work etc seem not to be taught with any rigour. We also left school scientifically and mathematically literate. I remember being taken aback when teaching computing that 18 year old students hadn't encountered binary before. By the time I left primary school I remember being able to calculate in binary, octal and hexidecimal. We were also expected to know how to conduct a formal debate and were taught basic logic by the time we were 12. However, like the UK languages were a massive weak point.

When I studied for my MSc in the UK I remember getting a bit worked up beforehand about how hard it was going to be. It was in a subject I hadn't studied at undergraduate level, in fact it was a completely different discipline. I was stunned at how easy it was. The level of scholarship and the amount of research that was required was minimal compared to the MA I had done in NZ. The support, guidance and spoonfeeding that went on was on a scale I had not encountered before.

So how does this translate into the global market place? I guess to answer that you need to look at who works where. I can't speak for the UK, but wherever I go, and I'm quite widely travelled, I always encounter a Kiwi working at some interesting job.

I agree with Boschy. Generally I think the state school system in this country is good. I think there is far too much angst over it all really.

The media loves to harp on about how rubbish it is but they have always done that. The state education that my children will receive at secondary school is 100 times better than the sub standard education I received. Schools are more accountable these days.

Haziedoll, I agree the education my children recieve is far superior and much more advanced than in my day.

"I have seen your comments on various other threads you are usually insulting or arguing with someone"

This is a forum for discussion. God forbid there should be arguing going on.

As for being insulting, if you are going to be patronising with your "Have you ever lived in another country?" then what do you expect in return?

In the thread about learning Mandarin a (Chinese?) poster accused some Westerners of being insular and arrogant. Hush but I think that he/she was talking about you

Is this not insulting ?

Some schools in England are fantastic, probably the top 10%.
Most schools in England are pretty good. Your local school will most probably be fine for nearly all children, probably 80% of the total would be in this category.
Some are a bit ropey and/or work for some children but not others, probably the bottom 10%
If any are absolutely awful they get sorted out sharpish.

Independent schools look better on paper because they recruit from the top 20% of families in income and/or intelligence terms. If you strip that out then the teaching looks less brilliant, usually comparable with a good state school. That's not to say they don't have their uses, and they seem to do particularly good work with some 14-19 year olds.