How could the British school system improve?

[BakedAlaskan]

I'm pretty sure that some Eus tudents get free university, even if it's not many.
They may of got a special grant though...

However i am still annoyed about the whole scotland free university thing...

Absolutely none of the EU students I know get anything like that, they pay exactly the same as me, and I know people from France to Sweden to Latvia.

EDIT: I have a Scottish flatmate so I hear alot about them, the universities in Scotland are free for a very good reason.[/quote]

Yeah.. thats why St Andrews and Edinburgh are in the top 25 universities in the world and have been for some decades... maybe since they are some of the oldest and most experienced universities in the world. Take note universities (ex-polytechnics) that were established simply to take in waifs and strays rather than the most academically able.

My good God, lets face it, Scotland has a great education system and its dissolved from the PC antics of the English system. I grew up in the Northern Irish system (best UK GCSE and Alevel results for 10 years plus), attended (an excellent) university in Edinburgh, Scotland and have since taught in schools in England for six years. Issue is, like many have said before, schools offer too many wanky subjects, a lack of focus on what will help students in that area get WORK!!, and not enough suitably qualified teachers in certain subjects- especially science. Good teachers are hardest to fine. Shit subjects are easiest to get rid of.

Some lesser universities in the UK will accept 3rds in science and allow you to become a teacher. The PGCE is standardised apparently- one from one uni is the same as another- which I dont buy at all!!!!!!

No other academic subject in the UK allows this- you'd NEVER get a graduate geography teacher delivering a higher qualification in history or philosophy, so why should your chemistry teacher (or school) think he or she is qualified to deliver a course in physics like some have stated before.

Long story short, my suggestions:

1. Schools need to hunt down the most suitably qualified young(ish) teachers who love their subject and encourage them more to remain in the profession.
2. Schools need to drop wanky subjects from the curriculum. Fuck RE. Teach more Latin.
3. Accept cities will NEVER do as well as town and countryside students
4. Pay the best teachers more, thus keeping them in the system and not running off to private schools in Singapore and elsewhere, which happens phenomenally often.
5. Drop IT from the lower school curriculum giving more time for literacy- it is 3 years of showing 11 year-olds how to open and close powerpoint ad infinitum. Waste of time.
6. Encourage computer languages to the same degree as foreign languages.

 

[Zoomy]

1. Schools need to hunt down the most suitably qualified young(ish) teachers who love their subject and encourage them more to remain in the profession.
2. Schools need to drop wanky subjects from the curriculum. Fuck RE. Teach more Latin.
3. Accept cities will NEVER do as well as town and countryside students
4. Pay the best teachers more, thus keeping them in the system and not running off to private schools in Singapore and elsewhere, which happens phenomenally often.
5. Drop IT from the lower school curriculum giving more time for literacy- it is 3 years of showing 11 year-olds how to open and close powerpoint ad infinitum. Waste of time.
6. Encourage computer languages to the same degree as foreign languages.

2. Many would call latin pretty wanky, since it's fairly useless to the common man. Hell, I'd argue that in Britain, R.E is more important now more than ever to combat Daily Mail/BNP lies about Muslims.

4. One problem, how do you quantify "best"? Exam results? That can, and has, led to corruption with teachers helping students cheat to get more money. One of my old maths teachers told me that.

5&6. Surely these could be merged? Instead of wasting time doing nothing but Office, I'd say teach the basics in 1st year (Scotchman here, no idea what the English call it) and then start teaching Java or something.

As for my own opinion (which may be outdated since I left school about 4-5 years ago), I'd say the best thing Scotland could do right now is drop the Standard Grades altogether in favour of Intermediates. For the English, think GCSE level. Any Scotchmans here could probably agree, they're shit. Basically, instead of A B C D F, it goes 1-6, where 1-2 is "credit", 3-4 is "general" and 5-6 is "foundation". Kids do either a Credit exam and a General exam, or a General and Foundation mix. Gives them a safety net.

The "course completed" grade is a 7, which in the words of my old Physics teacher, "means they walked into the exam room, wrote their name and left". But since it's still a numerical grade, people think it has a value beyond the FAIL it really is. Hell, bring back the word FAIL while we're at it, in big capital letters. Let kids know there is a consequence for mucking around all day. Everyone's a winner is bullshit. And 6 passing grades? What the fuck?

The Intermediates, on the other hand, I feel are much better. They already exist for fuck's sake. Why do we even have SG's when a better system is there. The leap from SG to Higher (sorta like an A-Level, only less intensive so we do 5 instead of 3) is ridiculous, whereas IM to Higher is a much easier jump. Like Highers, you do five a year, which means you don't have to take stupid subjects to fill the timetable (I took Drama for frig's sake. I don't have any aspirations for that field at all). You also do IM's in a year, as opposed to two years for SG. Allows for changing your mind after a year with not too much problems. Make the kids do 5 Intermediate 1s (General level work) in 3rd year and 5 IM2s (Credit level) or redo any FAILed IM1s in 4th year. Then Highers/IM2s in 5th/6th year. SG's aren't worth the paper they're written on.

At the college level, I'd say the SQA (Scottish Qualifications Authority) needs to rethink how they decide what modules are considered mandatory and optional. Currently, they say "This module is mandatory in every course it's taught, whereas that one is optional". In college I did HNC Computer Games Development. Object Oriented Design was optional, despite being one of the most important units, whereas shit like ITAS and COS were mandatory. ITAS is the sort of shit the poster I quoted called "how to open and close powerpoint ad infinitum", or in other words THE SORT OF SKILLS NEEDED TO GET INTO THE COURSE. Utterly pointless bullshit. COS, or Computer Operating Systems, went like this: rename a folder. Now write step-by-step instructions on how you did that. Now do 20 fucking tasks of this level. And now you're done with that pre-assessment, here's the real assessment which is the SAME. FUCKING. THING. And that's mandatory.

For Uni's, I sorta agree with the "remove certain subjects" idea mentioned by others. I'm not the sort to advocate removing Philosophy degrees, since I'm all for education to better oneself. I mean remove the sort of degree that doesn't need to be a degree in the first place. Like "Event Management". There is no way that takes 3 years of uni-level study. That's the sort of thing that you can do at HNC level.

 

[AnarchistFish]

See my first posts

My problem is, that it's too easy for kids to get away with things, a kid at my school managed to get a teacher fired from his job for claiming that he hit him.
(he didn't by the way)
That's just out of order.
We can support these kids all we want, but there parents need to do something.

Can a teacher be fired for assault without proof? I'm pretty sure there has to be evidence.

And I still think the way to tackle it is like what I said.

It makes me angry when students, typically undergrads, whine about student debts. The way it's set up the graduate doesn't even have to pay anything back until they're earning a substantial wage, & then a tiny amount a month. It's a laughable example of the self-entitlement children are currently being brought up with,

I think it's more that people in the past didn't have to pay. And £20k-30k is still a lot of money.

It annoys me when people who paid less/didn't pay at all for university complain about students complaining about student loans.

2. Schools need to drop wanky subjects from the curriculum. Fuck RE. Teach more Latin.

lololololololol. Latin is one of the most wanky subjects of them all, and RE is quite useful cos it teachers people more about society and people.

4. Pay the best teachers more, thus keeping them in the system and not running off to private schools in Singapore and elsewhere, which happens phenomenally often.

I've never heard that happen. And teachers are paid a lot already.

5. Drop IT from the lower school curriculum giving more time for literacy- it is 3 years of showing 11 year-olds how to open and close powerpoint ad infinitum. Waste of time.
6. Encourage computer languages to the same degree as foreign languages.

Irony much? IT is more than that.