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Mike they failed to recognise the International GCSE they sit there so it is a bit unfair IMHO to use this as stick with which to beat the [s]posh elitist fee paying[/s] highly aspirational schools
I know; wouldn't it be nice if state schools could also choose to ignore government-inflicted targets and instead do what they feel is best for their students?
Being able to recite the 12 times table from memory has little practical application in our post decimalization world. We no longer use £s, shillings and pence and no longer deal in dozens and gross. I belive ther reason that kids don't know their 12 times table now, is because they only have to teach up to the 10 times table in middle scholol nowadays.
As a target for academic rigour, you might tas well say they should be able to decline 15 different types of Latin verb, it has about as much use.
Perhaps a more relevant target might be to make kids comfortable in doing basic arithmetic in hexadecimal. Do code monkleys still need to do that sort of thing?
miketually - Member
I know; wouldn't it be nice if state schools could also choose to ignore government-inflicted targets and instead do what they feel is best for their students?
Indeed.
I belive ther reason that kids don't know their 12 times table now, is because they only have to teach up to the 10 times table in middle scholol nowadays.
I doubt there's a primary school in the country that doesn't teach up to 12x12. This issue isn't with the idea of teaching multiplication tables, it's the idea of using a test on them as an accountability measure* and then setting the target as a blanket 100% when anyone with any real world experience of schools knows that this is just nonsense.
*this pretty much means the head teacher is fired if the target's not met
Basically, Acadamy chains would take over by force schools that are deemed to require improvement. Lots of the academy chains are run by... You guessed it... Tories. Academies are not good places to work, and put huge pressure on their staff. There have also been some very important reports of financial irregularities in some Academies, and most importantly, there is no concrete evidence that they actually do a better job than anyone else. He knows teachers hate him anyway, so he has lost our vote. Therefore, he has nothing to lose from playing politics with education. Ultimately, the most important thing in a school is motivated staff. And he just doesn't get it.
A teacher/friend's input.
As for the freedom to choose its one of those its both good and its bad and its an overused right wing meme as , in education, it is largely unachievable.
Most people have a fairly limited choice of the school they attend as both geography and funds limit the choice.
What we need to do is also eliminate the "postcode lottery" aspect of education and try to ensure each child gets the same access/opportunity irrespective of location [ and of course wealth]. To achieve this you need to have a fairly standard "offer". Choice is largely illusionary and would just lead to a patch work quilt of provision. With boarders and fees you can abandon your child to any institution you please so choice is real.
I assume we were briefly going to have a grown up debate without the trolling....but I may be being naive there
Yes who was it he said that teaching around the syllabus was a waste of time?!?
What I actually said was its a waste of time in relation to exam results as it is not tested. Still isnt.
they should be able to decline 15 different types of Latin verb
This would be incredibly difficult as you conjugate verbs! Declensions are for nouns etc.
😀 Standards 😀
Maybe Latin grammar at 11 too!!!
It's tested in some exams but they seem to be out of favour - oh and the odd interview.
they should be able to decline 15 different types of Latin verb
This would be incredibly difficult as you conjugate verbs! Declensions are for nouns etc.
Ah, that's why I flunked my Latin O-level then.
I'm a victim of a failed education system!
Maybe Latin grammar at 11 too
You [i] are[/i] joking, right? Most people in this country can't order a pizza in another [living] language and you're proposing teaching them a dead one?
Surely not??
It's all a bit outdated really...
I'm looking forward to metric time
Latin? Pfft!
"dos cervezas por favor"
Any more johnny-foreigner language than that and you can't even count yourself as British. Actually ... that should be...
[b]"DOS... CERVASAS...POR...FAVOR!!"[/b]
"Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten."
I didn't really like the way maths was taught when I was at school. A lot of it was just thrown at me without any context or meaning as how it could be useful or relevant.
Why should I care than the differential of x(cubed) is 3x(squared)
It took a sympathetic physics teacher to fill in the gaps, he showed me that the differential of velocity was acceleration, the integral of velocity was distance travelled etc. Now it made sense, it had meaning to me.
Too much of what is thrown at children these days is just information without context, designed to pass exams and then be discarded.
I don't think its a massive stretch to have 11 years know there 12 times table but should we not be asking what the point of that knowledge is?
Ah, that's why I flunked my Latin O-level then.
I won't hold it against you - the great merit of a classical education is that it allows you to make lots of smart arse remarks on the internet!
Interesting article by Zoe Williams:
[url= http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/01/teachers-education-secretary-nicky-morgan-schools-kids ]It's time ministers realised that teachers do really want to teach[/url]
[i]Now we’re back to square one: a picture in which governments want the best for children, and schools don’t; governments drive learning by setting targets for schools, who would otherwise just make endless necklaces out of macaroni.
Testing young children doesn’t improve their reading, any more than taking the temperature will make it snow.[/i]
I was meaning to your something like that earlier, but trying to write this sodding paper on EVs instead.
What exactly do these governments think teachers want to do? They work extremely long hours, often taking work home that will keep them up until 11pm just to finish.... Why would they be teachers if they were not keen to improve the prospects and skills of the kids they deal with? And yet all we every hear is meddling, demonizing, threats and more testing (which that columnist summed up well as just a distraction from actually teaching and enthusing).
Which counties have the highest results in internationally recognised testing? Of us it's the ones where the kids start school later (7 or thereabout), and don't spend all their time being tested and scared of being tested (and, as was mentioned above therefore concentrate on passing tests, rather than actually understanding what the subject entails).
This last point is so well known (outside of Westminster, it seems) that it's even known and named as "Strategic Learning" and work going back to 1976 identified this (Marton and Säljö)
"Strategic Learning - this has been identified as a third catagory of learning. The approach focuses on the end product - the marks, with the main aim being to pass. It means the student chases grades and only learns what looks necessary, thus there is no linking and little retention"
-Whisker, The Postgraduate Research Handbook, 2008 [2nd ed]
(other references of note, Entwistle and Ramsden, 1983 and Ramsden 1979).
However I am not in the last bit surprised to see this "modern, progressive" research ignored, especially by the current lot....
The current lot want to take the education system back to some sepia-tinted 1950's utopia that never actually existed
The current lot want to take the education system back to some sepia-tinted 1950's utopia that never actually existed
And for [i]all[/i] schools to be above average.
The current lot want to take the education system back to some sepia-tinted 1950's utopia that never actually existed
but at least they expected numeracy and literacy to be good, even if it was actually much worse
exactly:
The education secretary’s bellicose mood takes practical shape with this suggestion: any English primary school that can’t drill times tables into every pupil by the age of 11 will be taken over by new management. Since there will always, in every school, be one kid who can’t manage it, the next government will, some time in 2017, be looking for 17,000 new headteachers. But that is by no means the most glaring flaw in Morgan’s plan.
*"I was meaning to [s]your[/s] [i]write[/i] - bloomin phone/swype - sorry folks.