{ daisy girls. }

[delga]

Um, wait. What? I went to a grammar school. It's not as though we're fit to bursting with economically endowed kids. We left that to the private school in S. The spread of students between our school and the neighbouring comprehensive was equal in terms of class; it differed only in academic ability.

I'm not usually one for splitting people up but in terms of education, if you're teaching to the lowest denominator, you're skipping the kids at the top of the class; if you're teaching to the highest, you're skipping the ones at the bottom. The whole point of assessed-belt teaching is to better cater the extremes of the academic spectrum. That's why in school you get split into bands.

Grammar schools are public schools - it costs no more to go to them than to a regular comprehensive. The 11+ is basically an IQ test. It tests numbers, cognitive reasoning and language. The range in a grammar school actually ends up being an average range except for the upper quarter. It's a beneficial system for everyone in the school.

Now, I don't know about comprehensive schools. I've never been to one. The Sister went to a private school for a few years before transferring to my secondary school. All this tells me is that my parents don't have faith in comprehensive schools. But all my friends from primary school went to the local comp. All of them. My cousins all go to comp schools and they all get plus-average grades. A lot of it depends on the student wanting to do well, and on the school challenging you. You need to be told, okay, good, but you need to work harder to meet the next grade.

There needs to be a little less focus on the school banding, and a little more focus on methods of teaching and methods of examination. A tasty little fact that SK used to like to tell us over and over again was that our year group was the most examined year group in twenty years of schooling. SATs, CATs, mocks, GCSEs, AS exams, A-levels, module tests, end of unit tests, end of year exams, vocab recall, date recall, formulae recall, quote recall - this was the bulk on my secondary education. There was always a test you had to be revising for and the entire fucking aim was to get people into university which is all very well but academia wasn't made for 25-30% of our student body and what they needed was a greater range of options. Also: of course we passed our GCSEs with flying colours. Our entire academic careers had held our hands up to that point. We knew how to revise. We knew how to take exams. None of this - NONE OF THIS - has anything to do with our economic backgrounds. Not a single bit. It's the system of curriculae that need changing, not the banding because even if you break the school banding, schools still band kids within the school environment.

Anyway: whatever, politicians. You really got my garter this time. Not that I'm a Tory supporter. And Gordon Brown: pull up your fucking socks. Ten years ago, all Labour talked about was dealing with the NHS and education, and you're doing it again. You're saying the same things, promising the same things. Do you know why so many parents are sending their schools to private schools? Because just look at the state of the curriculum. Look at the state of the schools, comps and grammars alike. They think they can get a better deal at privates. Can they? I don't know. But you need to look at the curriculum, you need to stop this university-based teaching and open up apprenticeships and more vocational qualifications (the way to do that is to stop acting like a GNVQ comes in second to its academic equivalent), you need to change the way we're examined, and you need to change what we're being taught and what age we're being taught it at. You need to have more collaborative schools so that one school can be science-based and the other humanities-based and swap kids between them. Most towns have at least one secondary school and access to a second nearby. That's the way to deal with the banding issue. Community colleges do it all the time; it makes much more sense.

Gah.

--

So, I woke up late again, and that was the first thing to hit me. Grrrreat.

Comments

[fallapartagain.livejournal.com]

Here, grammar schools cost an extortionate amount & everywhere else (except private schools) are paid by the government, or something. Unless the grammar schools are private schools in disguise which I guess is totally possible, because I know next to nothing about, well, all of them except vague locations, uniform, a couple of students and their names. Hmm.

Breathe. And smile. And look forward to the possible prospect of fic in your inbox sometime soon? If I can get my muse to cooperate!

[delgaserasca.livejournal.com]

Some grammar schools became independents, but the majority are state schools. The benefit of a state/grammar school over a private one is that you're getting a better educatin because of your own academic merit, not because of money. The issue that the Tories are playing with is the common misconception that state grammar schools cost more money. They don't. And the majority of grammar schools are state run, not private. It does not cost more money to go to a state grammar than it does to go to a state comp, full stop.

Fic! Huzzah! I'm going to pop out to the store so I'll look at it when I get back. Or, rather, when you send it :)

[fallapartagain.livejournal.com]

'When I send it' is more likely, because right now, my ass is being kicked by bad grammar and a total "... what do I do now?" block. I appear to have lost the ability to write, period. Colour me unimpressed. *pout*

[delgaserasca.livejournal.com]

:(

Join the club. Except I haven't written anything wrth reading for a good few months. On top of that, I have 2 ficathon entries, aie.

OK, seriously: going to the store!

[muldy.livejournal.com]

Ack I really hate the education systems of the world. No one tells you any options other than university - like I've never even been told how to do an appreticeship or even a TAFE (technical college) course. My school was all about Law and Medicine.

By saying I wanted to do science and Monash instead was almost rebelling in itself cos zomg how dare I not want to do Law at Melbourne Uni. *rolls eyes* They should teach us all our options, including going straight into the work force, and they should streamline classes because honestly some of my classes I sat in wanting to pull my hair out at the stupidity of others and other classes I just gave up cos I didn't understand at all.

Sorry I am now ranting...

*hates education systems*

[sepiaxtoned.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure if the Scottish system has it more or less crapped up than yours but we've got a clearer system for sure. Primary schools are mostly all government run and small in size. Mine was 500 this was big but we got good class attention.

There are private primary and secondary schools all over the country. It's up to parents if they send kids there or not but we dont have the 11+ SAT's or anything of that ilk, we've got a 5-14 education plan which we follow in primary and the first two years of secondary school. It's got it's merits and not, it allowed the teacher to split our primary class into groups fairly early on and give us a chance to progress at a suitably appropriate level. I was put in the top banding and as such probably have held a higher view of academia than others in my class or my year. This sort-of-but-not-official banding carried on into year 1 and 2 at secondary school with all the kids from "feeder primaries" being put into ability led classes. It had merits too we formed classes according to this system class 1a being best class 1d being the OMG NEVER GO NEAR THERE WITHOUT TEAR GAS type affair.

My parents are both teachers and I've grown up to know both sides of the coin. I whine being a pupil and my parents whine about being a teacher. TBH lack of motivation in classes today may be down to something other than teaching, it may be that kids today haven't got the manners even we have now. It's that teachers are far to stressed attempting to control kids and get them through schooling to sit back and teach the way they want to. My mum's travelled nationwide with her line of behaviour management and it's had results, I'm not acting as an advertising banner or whatever but if something were done to motivate the teachers and to make meeting targets less stressful they'd be more inclined to do more with their teaching.

I came from a YOU-WILL-ATTEND-UNI school and I can see the big ok uni. It really wasn't a plausible option for alot view point. However I can see a few people in my year who are getting a better education because they've been brought up in that system of UNI!UNI!UNI! and as a result will achieve more than they would have.

I think what I'm trying to say is that whilst any system will have flaws shoving various options down the throat of everyone will help some to do things aimed at their ability. You may well loose those capable of more to nothing.

[delgaserasca.livejournal.com]

Addressing teaching (the practice, not the content) is a whole other issue that I haven't commented on just because I don't know enough about it. I mean, I talk a lot to SK, WP and SS about this because it's a big topic for them. I'd be interested in hearing what techniques your mum is implementing, because that's an interesting topic and one that needs further exploration. Teaching targets - oh boy, dear Labour, wtf? I can see what they were trying to do but the whole system is stuck in paper. Teaching targets is also the reason why GCSEs are useless because you learn whatyou need to learn for the exam and then forget everything.

My issue is not that people are being pressed to taking education past the age of 16. I'm not saying that people shouldn't be pushd to taking further education. I'm saying that there should be as much of an emphasis on vocational qualifications as there is on the university route. And I'm not just saying this because of what I've seen and experienced personally, but because of people I know and the regular cacophany of stats that complain about the decreasing number of students with practically applicable skills.

(As for rude students - I'm with you there. I sound like a biddy -- kids today! -- but it's true. Just trying to get them to stay focused in class, to be polite, it's a nightmare and I don't envy teachers this at all.)

Actually, on that note, none of this post is against teachers, and the one thing I didn't mention was that the system we have now is not only better than nothing, but pretty good all things considered. My irritation is directly aimed at the Tory policy. Closing down grammar schools is in no way going to help anything. More than that, they're vying to an ignorant public. They're using the idea that state grammar schools are more expensive, and thus elitist in some way, than comps which is bollocks; they're encouraging the public to believe something that is fundamentally untrue. State grammars and state comps are all government funded. That's my real irritation here.

I'm pro-education! I'm pro-taxation to the aid and benefit of teaching. I think that education up to the age of 18 should be free, in fact I pretty much demand that. But I don't think you can complain that more and more graduates come into the workforce having no applicable skills and continue to push university. Labour did a grat thing for equalising opportunities to enter university. But that move went from being 'more people should have the chance to go' to 'everybody should go'. Like a good things, it escalated into a bad thing, and now in England you're dealing with fees up the wazoo and coming out wading waist-deep in debt. But that's another debate, and another discussion.

Bottom line: dissolving grammar schools doesn't help the education system AND Grammar schools are NOT more expensive than comps, and they are effective.

[delgaserasca.livejournal.com]

I...dont? No, really, I don't. The thing I didn't mention above was that all things considered, we're making the best of a bad situation. Implementing new plans will take time and there's a lot of trial and error involved. The system isn't perfect, it definitely needs tweaking, but it could be a lot worse.

As I've said below, the h towrd suniversity education was initially a good thing. Labour was trying to show that university education isn't just for the middle-to-upper classes. It just spiralled out of control, as these things do, and whilst university education is a good idea, the thing that wasn't being discussed was the need for vocational qualifications.

I have no idea how education works in other parts of the world. I have a vague idea of things in the US, even less for my darling antipodeans (*g*).

No, my contention here is the BS being used in the political campaign. State grammar schools are in no way more expensive (or elitist, for fuck's sake - that's privately funded education - in a grammar school, you're there because of your academic achievement, and whilst the 11+ isn't anywhere near perfect, it's a sly indicator) than state comprehensives. So.

I need chocolate.

[solanpolarn.livejournal.com]

One of the things I dislike most about the Swedish education system, is the way there was no support for the people who were doing well in school. I am not sure how much support there was for the kids who were doing very badly either, in truth, but it seemed to me as I was going through school that the teaching basically was aimed at the lowest common denominator. For example (but this might be an exception, and have more to do with the teacher than the school system) my brother, as all of my siblings, knew how to read when he started school. His classmate (we went to a really small school; there were only two of them in his class) didn't, so my brother was treated to the same learn-to-read teaching as the other boy. For some reason the Swedish social democrats, who have been running the country for most of the last 50 years, have decided that the fair thing to do education-wise is bring everybody down to the lowest level, instead of encouraging everybody to achieve their highest potential. I did OK in school anyway, because my mother took education seriously and made sure I did my home work, and supplemented the teaching we got in school. It seems to me that this system makes having interested and well-educated parents all the more important, instead of tearing down the class barriers which is what I thought socialist should be in favour of! (/end rant)

Summary: Education is important (duh!), and both those who are doing well and those who are doing badly should be given appropriate help and encouragement.