The Luddite
02 October 2011 at 08:35

"Dave C. We need better teachers and be able to sack bad ones!! Dave C. If 30% leave full-time education unable to read and write and not have a basic understanding of maths, what's going wrong? It certainly wasn't because of underfunding."

Taking a more oblique angle - (or is it obtuse?) it's obvious so many school leavers have little understanding of the three r's because in reality the main gist or bulk of quality learning our kids experience happens at home anyway - in spite of all the money that gets poured into the formal schools establishment.

Kids actually learn very well at home in my experience..in ways that aren't prescribed and surely don't need to be prescribed so severely by over powered teachers, in my view. Given a chance of freedom children routinely sieze the opportunity to learn how to count and deal with real people and money when we were sent to do errands-

but where are the local shops now? And what do children learn from parents who buy everything on-line , or by wielding some bit of plastic? The simple connections between earning, buying and selling have become so ridiculously complex it doesn't seem reasonable to expect ordinary members of the public in our ordinary lives to have to thoroughly explain to our kids all of the going concerns of this economy. Who can be bothered?

Over the years I've noticed how the bits of paper and information being brought home from schools for us to sign and return, even by the youngest of kids, seems part of some completely ill-regulated requirement by which parents are effectively conned into thinking we must basically teach our own kids how to read and write at home. But we're not getting paid to do the work of teachers.. and they shouldn't take our liberty and private lives for granted.

However, I certainly don't think the answer is more meritocracy, formal schooling or prescriptive regulations. Variety is the spice of life and in my view the state should back off and let this great UK culture and economy develop itself in peace and tranquillity.

even though we've tried throwing as much money into education over the last 13 years we still should have done better. when it comes to maths we are way behind Singapore and many Asian countries, i read we were even behind many East European countries.

I do like the new emphasis on the English Baccalaureate, we need to drive standards higher at the same time we need to try different systems too, essentially the tories have taken one of our best ideas. if we oppose it then we are really opposing our own ideas and there is a lack of any other new ideas in this area.

Flashbuck,

There are countries where children aren't educated, but no-one much wants to live in them.

Typical definition of fascism: A system of government marked by centralisation of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism.

Few would agree with your assertion that the local primary school is some hallmark of fascism.

Luddite,

The supposed fall in the international educational league table reported by the press is largely an artefact resulting from the number of extra countries that entered the PISA scheme.

2000 (32 countries)
2006 (57 countries)
2009 (65 countries)

Dave C.. NO!! it isn't.. Britain ranking fell against all are leading competitors. Why was that Dave C?

Luddite,

Please quote the PISA reports that support your viewpoint.

No reply!! Dave C.. now come-down from your arsehole and smell some fresh air. Dave.. If you never accept you have a problem you will never solve that problem, many on the political-left are in total denial about the magnitude of Labour's failures, Dave don't bother replying the sun's cracking the flags and i'm off down the pub.

Luddite, your last decent into abuse defeats any argument you may have had. However, quoting a single teacher on maternity leave also adds nothing to the argument.

I suspect that one reason that some countries outperform the UK may well be that those with symbolic languages (eg Japanese) are likely to outperform those with phonetic languages in Maths. Those with simple phonetic languages are likely to outperform the UK in spelling, simply because English has so many exceptions.

Getting back to school governance.... If politicians and newspapers spent as much time praising good examples in local authority schools as they do their latest vanity project, then we would really be able to improve state funded education. Whilst we continue to denigrate teachers and comprehensive schools we are missing the point and, worst still, throwing considerable amounts of money at schemes which are destined to be subsumed. For example, city technology colleges have all but disappeared but swallowed extra funding and have now become academies, again with extra funding.

It is time that Labour apologised for continuing Thatcher demonisation of teachers and teachers unions and started to support all the excellent work which is being done in conjunction with local authorities, parents and the wider community in community schools.

OFQUAL has looked at this topic and quotes this study:

"It also needs to be noted that the differences between countries’ performance are not that large and are usually statistically insignificant. The ‘horse race’ approach to the rankings produced by international studies – looking to see which position England is placed in and whether or not it has moved up or down the league tables is not that meaningful partly because the absolute differences in scores between countries are not that great and partly because the constituent group of comparators changes from study to study and from year to year. Overall, and over time, England’s performance is not that worrisome."

International Comparisons in Senior Secondary Assessment:
http://www.ofqual.gov.uk/downloads/category/42-comparability?download=11...

There's an interesting take on PISA here.

Leaning tower of PISA – 7 serious skews: http://donaldclarkplanb.blogspot.com/2011/03/leaning-tower-of-pisa-7-ser...

Well said Dave C.
I find that many who are opposed to league tables often like to quote them when it suits.

Dave C When in a hole you stop digging. Luddite has proved his point.

Dave C. We need better teachers and be able to sack bad ones!! Dave C. If 30% leave full-time education unable to read and write and not have a basic understanding of maths, what's going wrong? It certainly wasn't because of underfunding.

The Luddite

Few would disagree with you, if what you say is the case.
My prescription: abolish long school holidays. We don't need children to help with the harvest any more.

Ed was 100% right to accept charity status for private sector schools. It encoruages diversity in the education system.

I went to a awful comprehensive and would not force the next generation into them. Hardly any got a levels or went to uni when it was free and most kids left early to as they hated it so much. They got crap jobs and still have because they could not read or add.

I'm sick of being the guinea pig of Labour's socio economic experimentation. I am not Labours property and Labour does not own me. Its not good enough for my kids and I'm proud of that.

There needs to be a lot of choice in the system so that parent and pupil selection determines the fait of schools. That happends with private sector, bad schools dont survive and no one keeps them artificially on life support, which is one of the reasons why private do so much better than the state schools.

Blair understood it when he introduced accademies. We should have other types of school too and allow only the best to survive above people's self interests.