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!!

"Is this not insulting ?"

Well, the opinion in the post did come over as insular and arrogant. Could I have made my point more diplomatically? Probably.

All this talk of globalisation ought to be relevant to me because DC are dual nationality. But I still think it's bollux; plenty of low skill & even low brains people are moving around the world, too.

DC in England are getting a much better primary education than I did (USA). Teaching methods & attitudes are just so much better. I haven't decided about secondary, yet. I tend to think the qualification system (GCSEs) is pants for instilling love of learning, but I am waiting with baited breath. I don't think either state or private is going to be great (I will have DC in both types of secondary).

Agree that the British love to talk themselves down. I'm pretty sure most state education is alright here, really, but still room for improvement.

How is saying that the world (because of globalization) will be our children?s oyster, insular or arrogant?

We don?t live in the days when school leavers worked in the local village or town for local employers do we, there are not enough jobs in the UK now can you imagine what it?s going to be like in 10 years time.

"The education in the UK is absolutely fantastic compared to the education they received abroad.... 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."

I have seen the education sytem up close in other countries and the UK is not "absolutely fantastic" compared to other countries. If you don't believe me then pull up the world rankings that occasionally gets published. Then pull up the reports about poor MFL skills. Then pull up the reports that shows that Brits are neglecting Physics, Maths and the like in favour of 'easier' subjects.

It is insular if your are unaware of this and arrogant if you think that there is a global economy out there waiting for your children despite all of this.

The problem is that there is no single answer because the qaulity of schools varies dramatically in the UK. I attended a state grammar that was highly regarded, which then became a state comprehensive and is now one of the lowest in the UK for added value My children attend an independent school and get a far better education than I did, and are as well equipped as they can be for global competiton. I taught in state schools in France and Japan where the standards were higher than I received in my education. I am still in contact with several former pupils from those schools who have done extremely well, those from my own school not so much

I have seen the education sytem up close in other countries and the UK is not "absolutely fantastic" compared to other countries. If you don't believe me then pull up the world rankings that occasionally gets published. Then pull up the reports about poor MFL skills. Then pull up the reports that shows that Brits are neglecting Physics, Maths and the like in favour of 'easier' subjects.

It is insular if your are unaware of this and arrogant if you think that there is a global economy out there waiting for your children despite all of this.

So you are accusing my personal experience of 3 different education systems as being insular LOL
I don?t really rate these global education polls, some of the countries at the top of the league South Korea, Denmark, Liechtenstein for example do not have the same demographical range as the UK, how can you compare a country like South Korea to the UK ? We have children in our schools from all over the world some of them can barely speak a word of English yet alone write it therefore our results (which are only taken from 15 year olds in state schools, so again unfair analysis) will be weaker than other countries.
If I take your penchant for education polls into consideration have a look at the world?s top 10 Universities ; Cambridge (number 1 in the world), Oxford (5) Imperial Collage London (6) and UCL (7) so that?s 4 of our Unis in the top 10 world rankings, not bad.
I also wonder why there are children from all over the world that come to the UK to be educated could it be that our education system is not that bad after all.

Remember that we have a very different education system in Scotland. (a few posters have talked about the UK system)

If you were to break down the background of those at these institutions you will find the figures heavily favouring students from private schools and overseas students.

If you want to make a point about how great British state schools are then I suggest you don't highlight the on going debate about how few state school kids get into these institutions.

Oxford is on course to have the highest ever proportion of state school pupils in its undergraduate intake this autumn 2011, publishing figures on Friday showing that just 41.5% of offers were made to private school candidates.

State school pupils received 58.5% of offers. Based on previous years, the proportion of state school pupils accepted is likely to be around 1% lower than this figure. The increased share of offers reflects a rise in applications from state-educated children, which reached 64.3% for entry this autumn.

I think the education here that I have experience with is fantastic you don?t agree, let?s leave it at that.

I went to an education conference where a professor pointed out that in all his travels, no country said to him 'well apart from a few tweaks, we've got it just about right'. No country is completely satisfied with its provision. It's a complex social, cultural and economic mix.

I think the comment 'the World is their oyster' was taken as arrogant as it might be taken to mean that these children will have their pick of the cream of jobs. I'm not sure if that is what was meant, but India and China currently have a miniscule proportion of their more wealthy/educated young people going out into the economy and they are doing fantastically well internationally. As these countries develop and send more of their bright young things out their influence will increase as will the competition for jobs. they are talented, hard working and willing to work for lower salaries than children from western economies.

No matter what you think of the comparative education systems, there is no doubt that simply in terms of numbers, the populations of China and India far far outweigh our own. I know less about Russia and Brazil but believe similar comparisons may be made. We are a very small country and the British brand already has less influence internationally than we might think.

Im not talking about high flying jobs just regular jobs but in a different country as the UK wont be able to provide jobs for all we will have to look further afield.

You are holding up 64.3% of places going to state schools to back up your opinion but privately educated applicants are small in pri

Scotland is not England. We have a very different system - currently in a very worrying state of change. However, my children love school, mostly learn plenty and will almost certainly get to University where they will have a ball. They can go to some ancient and very venerable institutions and follow their dreams. The downside is that the new system makes them learn things of no use to bright children and seems more about citizenship and working together rather than useful things like programming and languages.

earlier email got chopped. Not that it really matters. The thread has reached a conclusion as far as I am concerned.

"We have children in our schools from all over the world some of them can barely speak a word of English yet alone write it therefore our results (which are only taken from 15 year olds in state schools, so again unfair analysis) will be weaker than other countries."

I think you will find the same applies in most European countries: a country like Denmark or Sweden is hardly a monoculture these days. Lots of immigrants, and many of them asylum seekers from war-torn countries where they have had little or no chance of an education.

The reason university students come to Britain is that British universities are well funded (Cambridge is a huge property owner, living off many centuries of endowments), so can afford the best teachers and fantastic libraries. A small country like Denmark can't manage to fund their higher teaching institutions like that, however well educated the general population may be.

I used to teach at a Swedish university and the students were quite as bright, and quite as well prepared by their schools as the students I teach here, but we simply couldn't offer the kind of salary that would tempt somebody with the potential to get an Oxbridge or Harvard job: that kind of person went where the money was. Nothing to do with the quality of Swedish schools.

The salaries at Cambridge are pretty standard for the sector - more or less the same pay scale is used for all university lecturers in England. So unless you are one of the top 5% or so you're not getting anything you wouldn't get elsewhere in the country ... And the top 5% are never there and don't teach very much at all.

League tables are just a set of statistc. The very fact that league tables (domestic and international) can vary so much shows their inherent subjectivity.

All I can say is we moved from Spain where DS was at nursery to the UK (DH's country) solely for the education. In Reception he did more playing, thinking and creative learning that he had done in two years state nursery in Spain. In Year 2 he was writing stories while his old friends back in Spain were finishing incomplete sentences. His old babysitter from Madrid came to stay with us - she's a reception teacher back there - and she was shocked at the high level he was working at. It is true he is at a really good primary.
Six years later, the differences are a bit less obvious. Their traditional way of teaching maths I think is slightly more succesful. The maths here are tackled from too many angles! But all in all, still very happy with our decision. UK has more critical thinking, more public speaking, more commitment in time and effort from teachers.

I thought the standard in the UK is pretty poor. I can't remember the name of the world league table published each year that put the UK a long way down the list for educational achievement standards.

I was state educated and do work in a global business environment and I think my education stands up well but I do meet and deal with a lot of people who have accumulated lots of post grad qualifications, not something that seems to happen in my profession in the UK.

Roseformeplease, ever feel you're invisible? I'll say it again. There is no "UK" education system. Scotland has its own , and it is very different to England's.

Scotland has its own , and it is very different to England's.

It really isn't very different - not in terms of the global comparisons in teaching style and curriculum content that the op intends.

And as Roseforme suggests above, have you heard the Scottish teaching profession lamenting the horror that is the new Curriculum for Excellence?

It?s easier to type UK rather than the national curriculum for England and Wales. We all know you Scots don?t like to be associated with anything English?..except our money LOL

I was struck by the SKY interview recently where by Ofsted rep (I think) and Head of the Chinese school in London were there to give their opinion on the apparent decline in literacy standards.

The Head of the Chinese school didn't say much but it seemed clear to me that she believed there should be a lot of support given at home by parents and academic learning going on outside of school hours. Of course literacy standards would decline if parents were not bought in and helping out at home seemed to be the subtext.

I don't think you can easily compare at all. Education is more important to some countries/cultures than it is to others, different emphasis is placed on different areas of the curriculum etc. Children are apparently a year behind the UK in the USA (at least in the earlier years) and American history seems to be heavily emphasised at the expense of world history - does this mean their system is worse or better? Who can say it's all very subjective.

The China Daily reported: ?China has the largest number of overseas students in the world, with a record 1.27 million studying abroad at the end of 2010, according to the latest statistics from the Ministry of Education. About 285,000 of them were new students who began their overseas studies last year, up 24 percent over 2009, said the ministry. Self-financed students now make up the largest group of those going overseas, and among more than 100 countries they selected, more than 90 percent of the students chose to study in the top 10 destinations - the United States, Australia, Japan, the United Kingdom, South Korea, Canada, Singapore, France, Germany and Russia. [Source: Chen Jia, China Daily, April 18, 2011]

"Due to more higher-education opportunities available abroad, an increasing number of young Chinese students go overseas to evade the highly competitive national college entrance exam," Li Jing, an application writer who works for an overseas study agency in Beijing, told China Daily. For the universities, assessing these applicants' command of English is a challenge since their parents have usually hired agents to write their application essays, experts said.

After completed four years at a Chinese university many students study abroad. In the early days most of the students who studied abroad were on government scholarships. These days most are from families wealthy enough to send their children overseas to study. "Since China's economy is booming, more middle-class families can afford to send their children abroad for education," Wang Qiang, a Beijing resident who plans to send his son to study in Australia, told China Daily. "Even short-term overseas study experience could win my son better job opportunities here in the future," he said.

The best and brightest Chinese students tend to go to American and European universities. In 2003, there were 18,000 Chinese studying at British universities, making them the largest group of foreign students there. About 35 percent of them took mostly business and accounting courses, 14 percent focused on computers and 11 percent on engineering.