lozgti

I don't understand either how 18 years of education reform has produced this situation either

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...6-2302710.html

Couple of quotes

"there emerges the information that a group of nursing diploma students in Kent — all with five GCSE passes including English and maths — sat a simple test arranged by the local hospital, and a third of them failed to get 60 per cent. The questions were of a pig-simple nature, involving simple arithmetic, the 24-hour clock and being aware of how many minutes there are in half an hour. Those who failed had had 11 years of compulsory education and a diploma course"

" I know plenty of elderly country people who left their village school for ever at 14 to lead an unambitious life, yet who write an immaculate, grammatical, well-spelt letter and can add up in their heads. Not to mention all these newly arrived Poles or Czechs, whose English is immaculate and who could knock off that nursing test while frying a carp"

So what the flip do they actually teach at school? (must mention a younger work colleague of my wife asked her if Glasgow was in Scotland)

TimmyboyWRX

The education system is always undergoing change, it is usually a case of as soon as us teachers get used to one type of national curriculum, we get another one!

The idea was basically this:

Grammar School kids got O-levels, the rest got CSE ( and that was only after a bit)

GCSE was designed to prevent the employers looking down on people with CSE ( which was an O level equivalent ) so both comprehensive and grammar schools awarded GCSE.

The national curriculum changes all the time to reflect what the govnt. of the time thinks is most worthy of teaching the children of the nation, currently its all about slimming down the curriculum to give a more in depth knowledge of a smaller number of topics.

( i speak from a science point of view, and am just as bemused as you as to why so many kids seem to know so little basic maths and english that they should have covered at KS2)

incidently how many of you know that GCSE average pass is still an F not a C? a C is still a 'good pass' and the only fail grade is a U (strictly speaking)

OllyK

In this day of not allowing us to have winnders and losers, teaching seems to be to the lowest common denominator. As schools can't discipline kids or exclude the trouble makers, the lowest common denominator is pretty low.

I watched "that'll teach them" a while back. Interesting that between the twenty or so kids, they scraped about 3 O Levels and yet most of them were then getting 9+ GSCE's with gardes A and B. Standards are not getting better, the measures being used to report standards are based on the number of passes and so to show improvement the pass marks a reduced year on year.

TimmyboyWRX

The grade bounderies are altered year on year you are correct ( in order to make sure any given year group will achive a similar number of Cs, hard paper = lower marks needed for a C because not many students do very well, and the reverse on an easy paper etc..)

But it is a little cynical to suggest that the pass marks are reduced each year in order to show improvement. its not that the grades are getting much easier to achieve, but the way the students are tested is different from O-levels ( multiple choice etc..) the areas they have to cover are just as in depth, there is just not the same bredth of knowledge required anymore.

ScoobyDoo555

The reason is quite simple really. I'm an FE lecturer, so I deal with the next stage of educational development further to the kids leaving school.

The schools/teachers are under TREMENDOUS pressure to work to unachievable (IMHO) targets, so whereas we (I'm 32) were taught at school, future classes were merely trained to pass the GCSEs....

There is further evidence to back this up with the introduction of "Key Skills" in Application of Number (Maths), Communications (English), and IT.
These skills start at Level 1 (plankton level) up to Level 5 (IIRC).....

And these are being taught as an additional mandatory course at college (6th form, Tech college or otherwise)

They basically "fill in the gaps" as discovered by FE's diagnostic testing.

This all falls back on the Government - demanding "champagne tastes for Cider money", and the whole system becomes devalued. For additional proof of this, think back to when a Degree was actually something that was worth something......

So, this isn't the teachers' or the lecturers' or the professors' fault. I'm not passing the buck, but it's only the same as having your resources cut in all of your respective fields, and still being expected to produce the same quality product.

Dan

OllyK

I'm confused here. In my day getting 8 O Levels was considered pretty good, when now getting 10 or 14 GSCEs seems to be the norm, how can you say they are not getting bredth of knowledge? It's strikes me they are getting plently of diversity just in no level of detail.

I don't see multiple choice as a good way forward where probability suggests you will get potentially 25% by just random selection.

OllyK

I'll say it again - the wrong measure are being used and as a result are not producing the outcomes that are actually desired, they are however producing better results against the wrong measures.

TimmyboyWRX

sorry olly, slight crossed wires there i think between us.

I was talking about the bredth of knowledge within any given subject, not the range of subject that can be sat at GCSE level.

anymore than 8-9 GCSEs is unusual in a comprehensive school like mine. although there are now courses in General studies and citizenship etc.. that can be sat to a GCSE standard and and GCSE awarded in them.

This is how you get your high numbers of GCSEs, in 'mickey mouse' subjects like those rather than your traditional English, Maths, Science, Technology type subjects

SJ_Skyline

What does a fail in GCSE citizenship say about you?

TimmyboyWRX

that you are not a very nice person lol, to be fair it has nothing to do with being a 'good citizen' i was dissapointed to find out, because kids could do with being taught that!

OllyK

As a matter of interest, what mark do you need to get to actually "fail" a GCSE these days.

Nick100

Certainly mixed ability classes can not help the children - the really slow kids get left behind, so they suffer, but then the brighter ones get held back. The general progress is probably below the average - as said above the lowest common denominator (nearly).

My wife teaches juniors (never have understood what KS's are). A lot of parents expect the teachers to teach the kids everything - at home the kids seem to just sit in front of cartoon films or playstations - the parents don't practice anything with the kids - no alphabet, no reading, no mental games !

TimmyboyWRX

the only grade to fail a gcse is the same as it has always been, a U grade is a fail, anything else is a pass, with F being the original national average grade.

C and above was what employers and the old FE system wanted a person to have to set them apart from the average, it is only over time that in the eye of the public C and above has become a 'pass' with D and below a fail.

I cant tell you the exact marks in terms of %age to fail a GCSE these days becasue as has been mentioned earlier these do vary from year to year according to both subject and paper level taken.

OllyK

Shame - my suspicion, with the use of multi choice testing becoming more common, is that you'd have to work pretty hard these days to actually fail a GCSE.

Leslie

I think it is disgraceful if children are taught only to pass exams instead of being able to achieve the depth of knowledge that they would achieve from a proper education.

Les

OllyK

It's down to the government targets though, they want to see a year on year improvement in terms of the number of passes achieved and the number of A grades achieved. The easy way to do this is to dumb down the exams and the testing methods to ensure these results are achieved, this is not condusive to providing a well rounded education.

lozgti

Might be being very simplistic,but shouldn't the most basic things a child can do be the following.

1.Maths:Add up,multiply,divide and understand percentages and fractions.They don't seem too.

2.English language/Lit: Be able to read,write,spell and have a desire to read.

3.Geography:At least understand where countries are and at the very least where places are in this country

4.Biology:Again,just the basics.Bones in your body type things

5.Physics: Same again.

I just don't understand what is actually being taught to meet targets when they don't leave school with even the most elementary things.Not blaming the teachers for what they have to follow but surely every single child in the country must (at 16) have skills in points 1 and 2?

TimmyboyWRX

I think any teacher will be the first to side with you on that fact, that the curriculum these days is not condusive to a rounded education. With government targets and the like there simply isn't the time in the day to teach everything you would wish too once you have covered what the government considers to be 'compulsory' .

Obviously as staff it is our duty to make sure that, while the curriculum is delivered the way the govnt want it to be, we also make the subject relevant to todays world and the world the students will be growing up in, so at the very least they have enough information at their disposal to make well informed decisions on topics they may come across ( e.g is GM food safe, should i have a 'designer baby' etc..) rather than just teaching '10 bullet points to pass you biology GCSE' they students must be able to understand both exam technique but also the reasons why things occur.

In Science the approach that is now being taken ( and seemed as 'dumbed down' ) is one of making it once again a practical based subject where emphasis is on the investigation skills and deductive skills a person would require in the real world, rather than just learning a series of facts for an exam. If you have the basic skills you can interpret any sort of data etc... As a result the exams appear to be easier to an outsider, but in reality simply test different skills.

They way that usually every 2 years or so the testing methods change makes it very hard to compare results achieved from years past, esp. O-levels and the like.

OllyK

Except of course, by getting a current group to sit an O Level paper in the same subject that they sat at GCSE. As I described earlier - they fail spectacularly.

KiwiGTI

Yes, sadly the basics are lacking these days, students are obviously given the freedom to choose soft subjects etc.

My mothers generation and older seem to be totally different. I haven't met one of them that can't write and spell properly and do simple arithmetic calculations, many of them were working class and did manual jobs.

I really don't know why they changed a lot of the education system, was it because average students grew up to becomen administrators and decided that school was too hard for them?

TimmyboyWRX

Well yes evidently that is true and i cant dispute it, but then if there was the time or the place in the curriculum nowdays to cover all of the areas covered in the O-level paper then the students would do just aswell. They are being made to sit a paper that they havnt learnt really, meaning an instant disadvantage.

If you look into the questions and how they are written in a higher level biology GCSE paper nowdays, and compare to an O-level paper then there is very little in the way of difference, like i say it is the bredth of knowledge in that subject that is different, for the reasons outlined in previous posts.

It has very little to do with the teaching and the teachers, but all to do with the government and what they want from the youth of today in terms of skills really.

(plus in defence of the modern system, how much of the things you learnt at O-level do you use now? id guess not alot, but the things the students learn in school now they will use time and again, its streamlined, ultimatly more useful, and accessable to those who are less academically able)

OllyK

I'd agree with that, shame government aren't asking industry what they want though - maybe that's why we have so many civil servants now?

O Level Maths - used on a daily basis
O Level English Lang - used on a dialy basis
O Level English Lit - I still enjoy reading books
O Level Chemistry - did a degree in it, but don't use it much these days other than the scientific process
O Level Physics - pretty much as chemistry
O Level Biologoy - pretty much as chemistry
O Level Geography - still use some aspects such as weather for when I go sailing etc, less so the geology side of it.
O Level French - still used on holiday

I doubt a GCSE student would read much different unless their job requires daily use of a science or additional language.

TimmyboyWRX

See now you have proved my point there (with regards my own subject Sciences ) all you use on a regular basis from your science education is the scientific process part, as this presumably allows you to work through problems you encounter with any source of data/observations etc... And therefore this is the most important part of science... and this is how it is now being taught and examined rather than a huge bredth of scientific knowledge.

As for the other subjects i cannot comment on as im not a teacher of those subjects, but i agree entirely that being able to spell and add up are vital to anyone!

OllyK

I may not use the actual facts learnt in science on a daily basis, however, I do have sufficient grounding in those subjects to have a reasonable grasp of how the world around me works. Having the basics puts you in a position to be able to consider how you may tackle other tasks. My Physics grounding in electricy meant it wasn't a big step to move on to doing domestic wiring and building PC's. We had to wire a 3 pin plug when I was at school and build parallel and serial circuits, use volt meters etc - do they still do these things?

TimmyboyWRX

yes, that is one of the main parts of the Physics GCSE course, Plug wiring, Ohms law, electrical ciruits etc.. as well as Space and formation of the universe/ exploration, and forces and radiation etc...

pslewis

You simply need to look at the posts on here to see the decline in education over the ages.

You can practically state a persons age by the quality of their words and spelling and grammar ........... how often do you see the following?

I brought a new car ................ why is it not I BOUGHT a new car?? What idiot says BROUGHT??

There cars are chavs cars ........ no, it's THEIR cars are chavs cars!!! THEIR!!!

And as 4 txt speek WHY?? You can use the proper characters here, it does NOT cost 10p a text!!!!

Rant over

Pete

TimmyboyWRX

how old would you guess that i am then Pete?

Text speak, as with so much else can become a force of habit over time and people should be forgiven when it slips into conversation for that very reason dont you think?

pslewis

I would say you are around 30 years old.

And NO, there is not and never will be an excuse for text speak ..........

Pete

TimmyboyWRX

you are close, i actually turned 25 last week and have been teaching 3 years now

dsmith

Their cars are chav's cars......surely...?