Religous education or propoganda,

History before 1800,

Media studies,

Politics,

Football and cricket,

English Literature,

Drama,

Hard sums,

and then the Daily Mail could whinge about the falling standards in education etc…

Just drop RE; the whole bloody school system is based on some religious nobendery designed to keep filling churches with willing muppets.
Ban all religious education and/or instruction until people are 18 years old, then give the religious monkeys 10 minutes to convince people it's worthwhile.

any that I teach

here here Crikey, bugger RE.

Learning about religion isn't the same as being conditioned to be religious, I would say decisions about faith (whether opting in or opting out) are to be taken knowingly.

Religion would probably be the most socially, culturally and politically relevent thing anyone could study right now

im wth skidartist.

i found RE very interesting, twas like history, but with fiction parts and therefore more interesting.

Religion where an old man in a funny hat says contraception is wrong and loads of other daft things.

Citizenship
Employability
anything that starts with BTEC

I had a challenging day, apparently I am a female reproductive organ who should go forth and multiply. Nice.

Drop RE and PSRE

Include Finance and money management.

So the consensu is that we should drop anything that might help children to grow up to be caring members of society with a sense of community and history and turn out hard-nosed, money obsessed fodder for the capitalist machine?

Do they teach football or cricket? Surely they just have physical activity and team sports are easy to manage.

Since Henry the v111,relegion has caused problems, look at ireland,the problems with catholic priests,contraception,muslims and more,all down to religion.

History is the past we need to look at the future.

RE isn't taught in most Scottish schools, it's RMPS (Religious, Moral and Philosophical studies).

IMHO the actual content of all of the subjects is completely secondary to the skills gained by working at those subjects.

So how do you stop the next generation getting duped into fighting the next religious war? Teach them about religion including its ills and the conflict it generates. But teach it critically from a historical and social perspective rather than as a Sunday school presentation.

Drop foreign languages.

There should be more history esp where the F*ck ups have occured, two WW's etc etc

I'd drop RE but Edukator does have a point………..sh*t I must be getting old..I'll get me coat

RE is a crappy subject but its not what you oldies think it is…

As said, its more like the history of a number of religions rather than an a "YOU ARE A CHRISTIAN" lesson.

Psychology should be dropped…just a made up, excuse of a subject that encourages loads of peoples to do random degrees like psychology with spanish and cooking…

Mandatory second languages. I'm not going to say a second language isn't good to know, but after 4 years I knew ****-all german and even less french and yet I passed both courses at standard grade (er, o-level equivalent I think). But even the day after I did the exams I couldn't have done much useful talking to a german, and a year later almost none.

Should be in the curriculum but not mandatory IMO.

I thought history was pretty valuable, as long as it's relevant and interesting, which it can be. Maths after standard grade soon became more advanced than is useful for most people, yet a maths higher/alevel is expected by so many employers, how often do you differentiate an equation or use trigonometry in everyday life?

Religious education I thought was potentially a good thing, but in practice useless at my school, we got through about 4 teachers as they were all either pointless macrame-weavers or stealth zealots. RE seems to be a subject for failed teachers, at least it was in my school, always a joke. And I find religion pretty fascinating so if I didn't like it, probably nobody did.

Hasn't a second language now been dropped as a Uni requirement?

Skidartist and EduKator have it spot on.

Damn you Ambrose, I have to agree with you again, Skidartist and EduKator are right Project. You don't solve a problem by not talking about it.

Druidh, wasn't a requirement when I went to uni and that was over a decade ago- I don't think they cared what subjects I did, just the grades.

Languages aren't just about the language, they are also about learning about other cultures. British attitudes to languages are part of a more general xenophobia and feeling of language superioriy that in fact handicap Britons and British enterprise. "Everybody else learns English so what's the point" misses the point.

I didn't learn a single thing about other cultures when I was learning german and french, it simply wasn't part of the course- we were learning the language not the country.

I did learn about other cultures in geography and modern studies though. And history I suppose, since the recent history parts would be relevant today in some cases.

>As said, its more like the history of a number of religions

Even when I was at school doing RE (35 years ago) it was exactly that – education *about* religions, not indoctrination *into* religion.

What's more, I started secondary school having been brought up as a Christian, and RE made my mind up I was an atheist !
Result 🙂

>****-all german and even less french and yet I passed both courses at standard grade (er, o-level equivalent I think). But even the day after I did the exams I couldn't have done much useful talking to a german

You sure ? Having got a 'C' O-level in German (despite an A in French) – crap bloomin teacher *and* she was German ! – I could make a pretty decent attempt, even now my OH's suprised how much I can still piece together, and that's after 30 years..

I'd say second languages *are* useful – even if it's just at the level where you can go on holiday and make a decent attempt.
It's pretty effing embarassing how shit we are at them in the UK – there's an expection everyone else speaks English so we don't have to.

Language is kinda hardwired into our heads at some level – we all speak English – so it ought to be possible for everyone to get vaguely proficient at least one other languange, even if you have to try a few to find one. It also teaches you more about your own language in terms of construction and grammar, and how many languages are related.

There's been several graduates working in the same company section as myself over the last several years – they haven't been specifically language students – they're electronics/software engineers – but in every case their language ability has been to at *least* a good standard. Can't see how we've got any excuse..

"21st Century Science"
A terrible GCSE science course. Didn't prepare me for AS level science in the slightest, but it did teach me 'the person with brown skin doesn't eat certain meats'.
Terrible Terrible Terrible.

you must have had rather different educations from myself, as i could be bothered to listen RE taught me all about the virgin child, the flying monkey man, the folk that dont like bacon and working on saturday and even the great prophet jesus etc. for me RE was a very good lesson that they are all full of crap and i was right and happy to believe in none of them.

dropping or only teaching after 18 would be even worse than no drink/drug/sex ed etc before 18. give (young)people the chance to make up their own mind. even worse than the section 28 arguement FFS.

subjects like home economics, craft and design should be compulsory for most of your education, very few of my younger relatives have a clue about making a dinner of any sort or basic mechanics like using a screwdriver.

complicated maths like how do **** bank charges or mortgages work and the hyper complex rules of forums etc should also be taught to stop the individual being poor and laughed at.

My Partner is head of 'BPE' – beliefs, philosophy and ethics – at a large comprehensive. She's an atheist, BTW. Why shouldn't kids learn about something that is designed to expand their minds and make them think about some of the important things in life rather than just becoming mindless exam-passing machines? Surely we owe it to them to try and give them a rounded education?

Ban all lessons, kids should be used as chimey sweeps, miners and general labourers. There role in life is to makes thier elders and betters happy. Nothing good has come out of mass education, mind you I see that the goverment is reducing the level of education each year, perhaps at some point we will get to a Dickensian level.

I notice that some one above thinks that relegion has been a problem since Henry VIII. Sounds like history was already out at his school.

Its RS, Religious Studies, where my son is – and they learn about all religions and/or cultures. Better than what we had.

But if you want a proper education IMO I'm afraid that you have to pay; lots of Maths, English, Languages and Games – where they are taught to play to win!

"21st Century Science"
sounds ace. All about flying cars, foil suits and entire meals in pill form, right?

There role in life is to makes thier elders and betters happy. Nothing good has come out of mass education

Not normally a grammar pedant but I like the irony 🙂

Religion is entwined in everything whether you choose to engage with it or not. Even with a secular government, mostly secular population, mostly secular culture and mostly secular media – our laws, customs, value and morals are all within a Christian model. We have the values regardless of whether we have the faith

I'm a secular educated, unchristened, unbaptised atheist, an atheist begat by atheists. But I'm an atheist within a country and culture that has evolved within a christian tradition over the last one and half thousand years.

nothing need be dropped; but the pressure to have every kid pass at least 8 GCSEs and then 3 A Levels and then go to University or else they are a failure, that attitude should be dropped.

And having 14yo have to make decisions about 'their future' and 'career'? That needs to stop too.

I got 13 A-C GCSEs and passed 4 A-Levels; still haven't been to Uni, cos I can't find a course that wil keep me interested for 3 years whilst amassing a ridiculous debt.

There is way more to life than academic achievement, although it does have it's place.

And RE/RS should have the name changed to Cultural and Social History or something…

A Second language should be on the curriculum, kids need to learn grammar somehow, and they do not seem to do it in english lessons.

Surely the idea of secondary school is to give kids a rounded education, therefore a varied selection of subjects is a good thing.

However, any course that gives pretend qualifications, can ce used by the school as a scam to pretend that the kids got 5 A-C @ Gcse or has applied in the title should be given a wide berth IMO.

I'm probably out-of-date, but anyway…

Subjects to be dropped:

Art
-it was a pointless, waste of time at my school and 'taught' by cr'ap, bohemian teachers.

Combined Science
-and any other wishy-washy, vague 'science' that includes no maths or scientific methodology. Real Science only.

Media Studies
-and any other pseudo-subjects that can easily be incorporated into others.

Subjects to be improved:

Maths
Expand the syllabus and make it more difficult.
What is wrong with having a population with a good grasp of maths and arithmetic? Understanding and knowing how to manipulate numbers is a very useful skill that many people seem to struggle with. Admittedly, undergraduate engineering maths was a bit of a chore at times…

English Language
My knowledge of language was gained from Latin, which is ridiculous. Teach pupils English grammar -The younger teachers may struggle these days though…

Physics/Chemistry/Biology
Include the maths and make them difficult.

Languages
This is difficult. As English people (not the Welsh) we are not exposed to foreign languages in the way that many other countries are exposed to English (TV, Film, WWW, books) and so we do not grow up with a second language in the background. Having now actually been to French-speaking and German-speaking countries (and picked up a passable, tourist level) I now wish I'd learned more at school at at time when visiting these places seemed very unlikely.
Foreign exchange trips for all would be a good start.

Overall:
Raise the standards, not just the number of pupils passing a lowering standard. Lower standards benefit nobody.

Who cares how many pass 5 GCSEs if those qualifications aren't actually indicating a good level of education?