…Tristram Hunt is going to scrap GCSEs and extend school hours. The frothing will start very soon!

http://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/apr/22/labour-ditch-gcse-10-years-tristram-hunt

“It drives me mad when we see the school gates closing at 2.55pm when you have this amazing piece of the public realm in communities paid for by the taxes of the parents. The notion of a school as a fortress needs to be broken down, so as part of schooling 8am-6pm, I would love to see more cookery courses, dance clubs, competitive sports and chess clubs. Parents will have a right to have access to this kind of provision.”

A mentor apparently

All staffed on a voluntary basis allegedly, so no new money needed. Parents to pay for non-staff costs.

Right…

So we want to go like China in terms of school hours and Finland in terms of exam culture?….brilliant….the shitty bits of both systems or at least Chinas?

http://www.newstatesman.com/lifestyle/2015/01/how-chinese-success-education-comes-high-cost

Why 10 hours when Finland is doing so well with so little, where do we pick up these cockwombles?

At the same time as western governments strive to make their schools more Asian, Asian governments are trying to make their schools more European and creative. The phrase gaofen dinen has now passed into general useage, meaning students who get high scores but have low ability and never learn to take initiative.

And while we fret here about poor maths scores, the Chinese also point to another test, which did not grab the headlines, which found that in tests of creativity and imagination, their children came fifth from bottom. “The results are shocking,” China Daily warned. “Children had almost no chance to use their imagination. From the first day of school they are pushed into a culture of exams, exams and more exams.”

We need to stop competing with China and focus on what we are good at, innovating.

Well if I’m correct as a historian with no qualifications in teaching Tristam Hunt seems, just like Michael Gove a journalist with no qualifications in teaching, ideally placed to turn education upside down.

He’s certainly appears determined to hit the ground running.

Teachers are the new miners – considered as the enemy within by those who put dogma before sense.

I really hope something very unpleasant happens to Gove – he has caused an awful lot of misery for many people.

Recruitment is currently dire.
Many new teachers drop out.
The “2.55” quote is antagonising.
Surprise, surprise good parenting produces rounded and grounded young people.
99% of my day to day issues stem from parental responsibilities being negated.
Schools are there to educate, not babysit.

My place is open to students 8-5.45, Saturdays and breaks before examinations.
I have meetings or teach extra classes everyday of week.

I’m awake at 4.30 mentally planning some difficult conversations about targets and why Johnny is not performing.

Progress 8, attainment 8, 5A* – C, 4 levels progress, PP, GT, NEET, EAL, new curriculum, new assessments, new SOW, new performance management.

Too much meddling by career politicians.
I guess it’s just election willy waving, now let me squeeze in an hour of shut eye before I get up for another day in paradise.

Too much meddling by career politicians.

Summed up perfectly.

Surprise, surprise good parenting produces rounded and grounded young people.

Yep, all the good stuff is down to the parents.

…why Johnny is not performing.

Well, naturally, that’d be the teachers’ fault.

What I dont get is why do the either a. Lie for effect or are b so amazingly uninformed about key aspects of their job. If the daft **** can find a school in the country who lock the gates at 2.55 I’d be amazed.

Teachers have had it rough for the last couple of decades, the constant knee jerk direction chnages and educational fads nust be demoralising at best make the job impossible at worst. Parents I’m sure have also become more demanding and less likely to take responsibility. Free schools and acadamies are also terrible ideas, a smoke screen for not dealing with the underlying issues and a resource drain.

However its still a well paid (taking the whole package into account) vocation and there really is a victim culture amongst teachers. Quotes like

Schools are there to educate, not babysit.

really do show how teachers haven’t kept up with the way the world has changed or societies needs and expectations. Everyone else has suffered as well with the way our politicians have stood by whilst our society evolves, the days of mum at home and dad work have ling gone. Seeing kids out of school at 2.30pm on the odd occaision I’m not in work or nipped out for a sandwhich on a late lunch doesn’t paint a good picture of our education system to those outside it.

Ok we’ve had some pretty odious and dogmatic education secretaries but that doesn’t mean things don’t need to change or teachers shouldn’t be held accountable. The hatred of testing being a point in case and ofsted inspections. I find I really worrying how much educational lingo my kids come home talking, Sats being the latest one, my primary school age kids shouldn’t know about inspections and national testing, they should just be getting on with learning, the mechanics of the education sysem shouldn’t be their problem but the teachers seem to pass that burden on as well.

I’m in the NHS, and we suffer from some of the same problems as education.

Mainly that schools and the NHS are too big for the Politicians to be able to resist playing with. The organisational changes we have seen have been poorly thought out and expensive and of almost no benefit. The workforce is left feeling dispirited, under appreciated and looking for the exit door. Every Minister thinks there is a simple easy fix and they are always wrong. What needs to be done is lots of small changes, with experimentation and innovation. We had this in the NHS for a while, but the last few years have been awful. I suspect the same is true in education. Sometimes the correct leadership decision is to do nothing, or at least concentrate on fixing the system you already have. No politician or manager gets kudos from doing this though.

However – in Health we have real issues around quality, timeliness, communication, availability, customer satisfaction and perception which need to be addressed – and they won’t be by driving everyone over 55 out of the system so there is a recruitment crisis, which is what we have in Primary Care right now.Don’t believe all this “extra GPs” rubbish. There aren’t any and numbers going onto primary care from medical school are at an all time low.

In education there are some similar issues. Any of us with kids knows there are excellent teachers,but also appalling ones, disorganised ones, ones who use their pupils as therapists, ones who disappear as “sick” for dubious reasons. And the kids know who they are and which ones should be disciplined/retrained/removed. And it just doesn’t happen.
And if we are going to aim for full employment of mothers and fathers and penalise those who don’t work, educational facillities have to have a baby-sitting/containment role as well.
The outside perception of the teachers unions is that they really haven’t understood how things have changed. And that plays into the hands of Gove and other muppets.

In education there are some similar issues. Any of us with kids knows there are excellent teachers,but also appalling ones, disorganised ones, ones who use their pupils as therapists, ones who disappear as “sick” for dubious reasons. And the kids know who they are and which ones should be disciplined/retrained/removed. And it just doesn’t happen.

this is very true and it should be easier to get rid of bad teachers. The problem is also compounded by shortages of people training which leads to too many who should fail going through, shortages of teachers as something like 40% of newly qualified teachers leave within a year (many shouldn’t have been allowed to start), lots of more experienced teachers also leave or jump ship to the private sector and that leaves us with it being almost impossible to recruit good teachers.

educational facillities have to have a baby-sitting/containment role as well.

Who pays?

Schools are there to educate, not babysit.
really do show how teachers haven’t kept up with the way the world has changed or societies needs and expectations.

You are confusing the education system with teachers. I’ll ask again, who pays?

@ernie to be fair the Chancellor generally has no econommic qualifications and the defense secretary has rarely been in the military. Politicians are good at politics and getting and remaining elected, the rest is secondary sadly.

@stoats the NHS and Education are huge budget line items and political hot potatoes with the electorate, as such politicians are always going to tinker, or worse.

Baccalaureate’s favour kids who are strong all rounders, those who are say particularly good at science or arts do less well. From what I have seen with friends kids who have done them is they seem to be a lot more work than GCSEs and harder to differentiate true excellence.

All it takes is one political half-wit who thinks they’ve a mandate to drive change and chaos ensues.

If Gove steps on an upturned plug then there may well be something to cheer about.

An education secretary called Tristram in a Labour government may cause some entertaining confusion in the NUT ranks.
Should make for a smooth handover from the tories, though, so the civil service will be happy.

Irrelevant whether society has changed or not, primary aged kids can’t concentrate for 8 or 9 hours a day, at 3:30pm (2:55pm?!?!) they’re knackered mentally.

A big complaint that most teacher have at the moment is that parents expectations have changed, they expect the teacher to give the kids all their learning needs and leave the parents free of that responsibility. Kids need to learn at home as well as at school, they need to be read with/to, they need to be engaged with, they don’t need to be plonked in front of the TV and ignored. Yes, this takes time out of the parents inevitably busy day but if you can’t find 30 mins a day to sit with your kids then I would argue you need to assess whether having kids was a sensible thing for you to do.

Mainly that schools and the NHS are too big for the Politicians to be able to resist playing with.

An added problem with the NHS is that there is a massive mostly untapped potential to make eye-watering profits. When pretty much everything else has been privatised the multibillion pound NHS was always going to be simply too juicy and tempting for the privateers to resist.

The potential to make profit from children’s education was never going to quite compete with the potential to make profit out of sick people, but education is a big budget department so slashing costs, squeezing performance etc, has an obvious attraction to right-wingers of whatever hue.

And of course education always makes a useful political football. People with no experience in education tend to feel they are experts on the subject. Most unqualified people, other than right-wing politicians, desist from lecturing on health care.

But everyone and his dog is an expert on fighting crime and upholding law and order and would make the perfect Home Secretary given the chance.

primary aged kids can’t concentrate for 8 or 9 hours a day, at 3:30pm (2:55pm?!?!) they’re knackered mentally.

But if after 3pm it’s all fun and games then that’s OK? Sounds like my son’s after school club really – he’s 4.

When I was at prep school we finished at 5pm though Wednesday afternoon was for clubs.

Before you all decide to lynch him – at the (Scottish state Primary) school my wife teaches at there are already classes using the school from 8 am until after 6 pm.

Athletics, archery, football, martial arts, fencing, music, swimming, dance, cricket, chess plus after school childcare clubs. Supported by a mix of paid for by parents and PTA plus parental volunteers. At the rates charged to the kids, some of the specialist coaches must be being subsidised by the council or their sport’s governing body to increase participation.

The place is busy as a community resource all the time. Classrooms are locked after hours but the rest of the place is open for all the activities.

But if after 3pm it’s all fun and games then that’s OK? Sounds like my son’s after school club really – he’s 4.

Absolutely yes, no issue with that at all. You need staff to run it, not teachers but staff like oldbloke mentions above, but yes, that would work very well. Or you can do such things at home with the parents investing the time.

Education and healthcare will always be the subject of politicians altering stuff they don’t have a firm grasp on because its common ground for all voters.

i.e. if you talk about schools or hospitals people will have an idea of what you are talking about.

Gove used his position to keep himself in the public eye. Until it was decided he was doing more harm than good.

For the record I think teaching is a sweet profession but then I put my students firmly first and don’t give a **** about other stuff. Get’s stressful at times but I know my students are enjoying their lessons and improving/making progress.

I think Hunt’s ideas are laughable at best but I have come to realise that it doesn’t matter what I believe or think, they will do what they want regardless so I might as well get on with it and live for the holidays/riding.

The potential to make profit from children’s education was never going to quite compete with the potential to make profit out of sick people, but education is a big budget department so slashing costs, squeezing performance etc, has an obvious attraction to right-wingers of whatever hue.

You’d be surprised, the EBD (Emotional and Behavioral Difficulty) schooling sector has been massively privatized.

But if after 3pm it’s all fun and games then that’s OK? Sounds like my son’s after school club really – he’s 4.

Sure, check out the Finnish system.

Finland has had access to free universal daycare for children age eight months to five years in place since 1990, and a year of “preschool/kindergarten” at age six, since 1996. “Daycare” includes both full-day childcare centers and municipal playgrounds with adult supervision where parents can accompany the child. The municipality will also pay mothers to stay home and provide “home daycare” for the first three years, if she desires, with occasional visits from a careworker to see that the environment is appropriate.[9] The ratio of adults to children in local municipal childcare centers (either private but subsidized by local municipalities or paid for by municipalities with the help of grants from the central government) is, for children three years old and under: three adults (one teacher and two nurses) for every 12 pupils (or one-to-four); and, for children age three to six: three adults (one teacher and two nurses) for every 20 children (or circa one-to-seven). Payment, where applicable, is scaled to family income and ranges from free to about 200 euros a month maximum.[10] According to Pepa Ódena in these centers, “You are not taught, you learn. The children learn through playing. This philosophy is put into practice in all the schools we visited, in what the teachers say, and in all that one sees.”[11]

Early childhood education is not mandatory in Finland, but is used by almost everyone. “We see it as the right of the child to have daycare and pre-school,” explained Eeva Penttilä, of Helsinki’s Education Department. “It’s not a place where you dump your child when you’re working. It’s a place for your child to play and learn and make friends. Good parents put their children in daycare. It’s not related to socio-economic class”.[12]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Finland

You’ve just got to pay for it with more taxes, however I get the feeling that is not what most people on here want – want they want is for teachers to work more hours for the same pay.

Why 10 hours when Finland is doing so well with so little, where do we pick up these cockwombles?

Problem is the evidence apparently is that Finland is falling down the scales

Finns aren’t what they used to be

Do schools really close before 3pm? Most go to about 3.30pm which is pretty much the same as it was over 20 years ago.

Around us the facilities are used more than ever before, with kids using the astroturf pitches for football on both Saturdays and Sundays.