...'Schools are churning out the unemployable'
according to The Sunday Times, February 21, 2010
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article7034975.ece
[Apologies to all those who send their children to school, but I AM going to have a smug Home Educator moment. I deserve it. I earned it. Just bear with me while I make rude signs to Mr Badman et al. and his cronies while quoting from the article...]
"...Sir Terry Leahy, the chief executive of Tesco, put it bluntly. Too many children have been leaving school after 11 or 13 years of compulsory education “without the basic skills to get on in life and hold down a job”. He said 5m adults were functionally illiterate and 17m could not add up properly. “On-the-job training” cannot act as a “bandage or sticking plaster” for “the failure of our education system”.
A CBI survey revealed that literacy and numeracy were not the only problems.
More than 50% of employers complained that young people were inarticulate, unable to communicate concisely, interpret written instructions or perform simple mental calculations...
...The DWP has made it clear: work is where the inflated claims for our state education finally hit the buffers. At every stage we have a system in which the expediency of politicians and the ideology of the educational establishment take precedence over the interests of pupils.
We have children who can barely read and write scoring high marks in their Sats because it makes the school, and therefore politicians, look good. We have exam boards competing to offer the lowest pass mark because it allows heads to fulfil their GCSE targets. We have pupils pushed into easy subjects at A-level — which excludes them from applying to a top university — because it benefits the school. And we have universities that offer a 2:1 degree, as the IT company director put it, to “anyone who bothers to sit down and take the exam”. "
Showing posts with label schools. Show all posts
Showing posts with label schools. Show all posts
Sunday, 21 February 2010
Tuesday, 15 September 2009
A serious case of "Excerptitis": please define and analyse, using full sentences. Marks will be deducted for incorrect spelling and grammar.
Just found this from earlier on this month:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/education/article6819979.ece
An obsession with “excerptitis” in primary schools means young children rarely read a whole book, research suggests today.
A quarter of primary school children read just one complete book a year in the classroom, and do not discover the endings of classics such as Treasure Island or Goodnight Mr Tom.
Instead they are frequently given passages or “bite-sized” extracts of books to read. The survey found that one in eight primary school teachers had never read a whole book with their class.
A lack of time caused by the pressure of squeezing many subjects into the curriculum is thought to be to blame.
Michael Rosen, the poet and former Children’s Laureate, said: “I think of it as an illness called excerptitis. The consequence of excerptitis is boredom. We have bored thousands of children and put them off reading. I mean, what a tragedy.
“This research shows that in thousands of classrooms children are not reading books or talking about books, I think it will shock the public that so few whole books are being taught in class.
“There are going to be children who will only be taught about three or four books as part of their literacy education in the whole of their primary careers. For the thousands of children who don’t read books at home, it is a travesty. That’s three books they might have come across in the whole of their infant lives.
“The idea that children can’t manage whole stories or whole books is a nonsense,” Rosen added. “No extract in the world has the power of books. Extracts deny children the meat of the story.”
The survey of more than 500 primary staff and 1,000 parents of schoolchildren was commissioned by Heinemann, an educational publisher. It claims to be the first wide-scale research into the use of whole books in literacy teaching.
Researchers said that, if the findings were extrapolated to all primaries across the country, it would mean 600,000 children would never read a book in class with their teacher. More than 1.1 million would study only one whole book a year.
Teachers said books not finished in class included The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and Roald Dahl’s popular novels.
Half of teachers could think of at least one occasion where pupils were left ignorant about the narrative of a novel, because teaching the whole book was not a priority in class.
Almost 85 per cent said children missed out on finding out “what happens next” because they did not read a whole book.
Three quarters of teachers said children’s “reading stamina” and concentration levels were being damaged by the lack of whole book reading.
Nearly two thirds of teachers feared the absence of teaching literacy using entire books could turn children off reading. One in five said they had seen evidence of this already, with many believing there was a greater negative impact on boys.
State primary classes were almost twice as likely to not finish a whole book as their independent school counterparts - 13 per cent compared with just eight per cent in private schools.
Michael Morpurgo, the children’s author, said: “When a book is written, it’s written whole.
“The point of a book is that it should be fun, it should be exciting, it should tell you more about the world around you, it should open your eyes and open your heart, it should make you joyful, it should make you sad - and you can't get this from just taking little snippets from it.”
Classic books remembered most fondly by parents in the survey were Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Hobbit, Stig of the Dump, Swallows and Amazons, and Watership Down.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/education/article6819979.ece
An obsession with “excerptitis” in primary schools means young children rarely read a whole book, research suggests today.
A quarter of primary school children read just one complete book a year in the classroom, and do not discover the endings of classics such as Treasure Island or Goodnight Mr Tom.
Instead they are frequently given passages or “bite-sized” extracts of books to read. The survey found that one in eight primary school teachers had never read a whole book with their class.
A lack of time caused by the pressure of squeezing many subjects into the curriculum is thought to be to blame.
Michael Rosen, the poet and former Children’s Laureate, said: “I think of it as an illness called excerptitis. The consequence of excerptitis is boredom. We have bored thousands of children and put them off reading. I mean, what a tragedy.
“This research shows that in thousands of classrooms children are not reading books or talking about books, I think it will shock the public that so few whole books are being taught in class.
“There are going to be children who will only be taught about three or four books as part of their literacy education in the whole of their primary careers. For the thousands of children who don’t read books at home, it is a travesty. That’s three books they might have come across in the whole of their infant lives.
“The idea that children can’t manage whole stories or whole books is a nonsense,” Rosen added. “No extract in the world has the power of books. Extracts deny children the meat of the story.”
The survey of more than 500 primary staff and 1,000 parents of schoolchildren was commissioned by Heinemann, an educational publisher. It claims to be the first wide-scale research into the use of whole books in literacy teaching.
Researchers said that, if the findings were extrapolated to all primaries across the country, it would mean 600,000 children would never read a book in class with their teacher. More than 1.1 million would study only one whole book a year.
Teachers said books not finished in class included The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and Roald Dahl’s popular novels.
Half of teachers could think of at least one occasion where pupils were left ignorant about the narrative of a novel, because teaching the whole book was not a priority in class.
Almost 85 per cent said children missed out on finding out “what happens next” because they did not read a whole book.
Three quarters of teachers said children’s “reading stamina” and concentration levels were being damaged by the lack of whole book reading.
Nearly two thirds of teachers feared the absence of teaching literacy using entire books could turn children off reading. One in five said they had seen evidence of this already, with many believing there was a greater negative impact on boys.
State primary classes were almost twice as likely to not finish a whole book as their independent school counterparts - 13 per cent compared with just eight per cent in private schools.
Michael Morpurgo, the children’s author, said: “When a book is written, it’s written whole.
“The point of a book is that it should be fun, it should be exciting, it should tell you more about the world around you, it should open your eyes and open your heart, it should make you joyful, it should make you sad - and you can't get this from just taking little snippets from it.”
Classic books remembered most fondly by parents in the survey were Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Hobbit, Stig of the Dump, Swallows and Amazons, and Watership Down.
Wednesday, 9 September 2009
Terry Dreary says it all
Author of the Horrible Histories series speaks out about his feelings towards schools in The Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/6120942/Horrible-Histories.html
“I get 200 requests a year and the answer is no,” he says. “I detest schools with a passion. I’d rather cut off my left arm and eat it with Marmite than go into a school. And I don’t even like Marmite.
“Schools are an utter waste of young life. Learning things that will never be any use to you. The only reason they are there is to keep kids off the street. They were a Victorian invention. The Industrial Revolution took kids from their families and made the parents work in factories long hours. Then they said, ‘we can’t have these little kids working here.’ So what do we do? Lock them all up in the same room all day and we’ll call it school. I spent hours learning trigonometry, physics, none of which prepared me for life. Relationships, talking to people, managing money, planning your career, how to help someone who has cut their leg open. I have had to learn these things by default.
“There won’t be any schools in 25 years. There will be mentoring. Older people passing their skills on to younger people. Teachers know nothing about life and the real needs of pupils.”
Woah...do I want to go give that man a pat on the back!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/6120942/Horrible-Histories.html
“I get 200 requests a year and the answer is no,” he says. “I detest schools with a passion. I’d rather cut off my left arm and eat it with Marmite than go into a school. And I don’t even like Marmite.
“Schools are an utter waste of young life. Learning things that will never be any use to you. The only reason they are there is to keep kids off the street. They were a Victorian invention. The Industrial Revolution took kids from their families and made the parents work in factories long hours. Then they said, ‘we can’t have these little kids working here.’ So what do we do? Lock them all up in the same room all day and we’ll call it school. I spent hours learning trigonometry, physics, none of which prepared me for life. Relationships, talking to people, managing money, planning your career, how to help someone who has cut their leg open. I have had to learn these things by default.
“There won’t be any schools in 25 years. There will be mentoring. Older people passing their skills on to younger people. Teachers know nothing about life and the real needs of pupils.”
Woah...do I want to go give that man a pat on the back!
Tuesday, 30 June 2009
Literacy and Numeracy Strategies to be abandoned in UK schools
It seems the government has finally realised how it has been squeezing the life out of learning with its Literacy and Numeracy strategies...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8120152.stm
"Key schools policy to be ditched
The government is set to abandon one of its most significant education policies in primary schools in England.
From 2011 schools will no longer have to implement national strategies in literacy and numeracy.
Instead they will be encouraged to work together to find local solutions to the challenges of improving the basic skills of their pupils.
The plans are part of wider reforms to be announced by Schools Secretary Ed Balls next week.
Primary schools in England have been expected to teach English and maths according to centralised guidelines set down by national literacy and numeracy strategies for more than 10 years.
BBC News education correspondent Kim Catcheside says standards improved rapidly at first but have risen much more slowly in recent years.
More from Today programme
Mr Balls will say that from 2011 he is ending the multi-million pound contract with private company Capita to deliver the strategies.
The Guardian reports that money will be redirected to schools to spend on creating networks with other schools and having their own advisers to help improve teaching standards and pupils' performance.
The paper says the changes will be part of a wide-ranging White Paper expected to be published on Tuesday.
Classroom overhaul
Earlier this month, Mr Balls told a teaching conference: "I think the right thing for us to do now is to move away from what has historically been a rather central view of school improvement through national strategies to something which is essentially being commissioned not from the centre but by schools themselves."
Earlier this year former Ofsted chief Sir Jim Rose produced a report for the government on a proposed overhaul of primary schools in England. He recommended that computer technology should be central to the curriculum alongside English, maths and personal skills.
And ministers have agreed to the findings of a group of educationists and headteachers who said formal Sats tests for 10 and 11-year-olds might eventually be replaced by teacher assessments of their pupils."
The Guardian has commented on this news here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jun/26/labour-schools-national-stra/tegy?commentpage=2
"...Today's Guardian reports that the government is to abandon its national strategies for schools when it announces its white paper on education next week. That means that the much-loathed literacy and numeracy hours in primaries, with their rigid, minute-by-minute dictation of how every teacher must structure and deliver their lesson, will stop being compulsory from 2011. Instead schools will be able to make their own choices about what their children need and how they should teach.
This, coming from a department whose controlling and centralising instincts would have been applauded in a Soviet state, is truly revolutionary. It is a (very) belated recognition that treating children and classrooms as if they were car parts and assembly lines is a strategy that simply doesn't produce skilled, or educated, or motivated pupils.
It's taken the government years to acknowledge this, because for the first few years of the national strategies, after Labour's election in 1997, test results soared. Ministers preened themselves. Everyone else knew it was because teachers were swiftly discovering how to teach children to the test.
Once they'd learned how to do that, nothing improved. The test results at 11 have more or less plateaued in the last six or seven years.
The strategies don't work at any level other than the most superficial.
Teachers feel helpless when they are in front of classes that aren't grasping the points at the speed the national timetable lays down. There is no flexibility. The national plan compels a teacher to move on, no matter how many children are being left behind. Frantic booster classes at ages seven and 11 teach children the short-term tricks they must know to get them through Sats tests.
Even those who can keep up find the lessons stultifying. Some years ago English teachers in secondaries started reporting that 11-year-old children were arriving saying they hated the subject. For years they'd been exposed to passages by brilliant writers like Michael Morpurgo or Philip Pullman, but not in order to be enraptured by their stories or taken into another world by their prose. No, it was in order to analyse their paragraphs and identify how many adjectives and nouns they had used.
It's hard to know what has finally forced this change. Perhaps it's the shaming results of the department's latest wheeze; the piloting of new single-level tests in English and maths to replace the Sats at 11.
These are supposed to be taken – like music exams – when a child is ready.
What the pilots have revealed is that 14-year-olds are regularly scoring much lower in the tests than 11-year-olds.
There's only one explanation for this, which is that children were never really understanding their subject in the first place; they were just being crammed, and a few years on, they've forgotten how to do it.
Should we be pleased that the government has finally recognised this truth?
I don't think so. I think the appropriate reaction is fury about the wasted years."
Some of the comments under this Guardian article are sad, as well as revealing. One person comments:
"This morning, my glee at the demise of the strategies was short lived. There can be no party for the lost years. My own children have endured these trite,unimaginative lessons, their individuality and imagination stifled, their love of aforementioned Morpurgo and Pullman only present because of having parents who were insistent that they should pick up a book to read and enjoy and not ascertain and scrutinize the sentence level and structure.
As a teacher, I was disenfranchised, disempowered, constantly speeding up or rather "pacing" my lessons to get through the objectives, irrespective of the needs of the children in my charge. Countless pieces of unfinished work or unread literature that just got washed away by the need to move onto the nextset of CVCs or the learning of "where, wear, ware".
Even now, I get palpatations at the thought, and for those contributers who say why didn't teachers just do what they thought was right, well, how could we? With didactic headteachers breathing down our necks and the impending requirements of an Ofsted regime fixated on test results, we were stymied."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8120152.stm
"Key schools policy to be ditched
The government is set to abandon one of its most significant education policies in primary schools in England.
From 2011 schools will no longer have to implement national strategies in literacy and numeracy.
Instead they will be encouraged to work together to find local solutions to the challenges of improving the basic skills of their pupils.
The plans are part of wider reforms to be announced by Schools Secretary Ed Balls next week.
Primary schools in England have been expected to teach English and maths according to centralised guidelines set down by national literacy and numeracy strategies for more than 10 years.
BBC News education correspondent Kim Catcheside says standards improved rapidly at first but have risen much more slowly in recent years.
More from Today programme
Mr Balls will say that from 2011 he is ending the multi-million pound contract with private company Capita to deliver the strategies.
The Guardian reports that money will be redirected to schools to spend on creating networks with other schools and having their own advisers to help improve teaching standards and pupils' performance.
The paper says the changes will be part of a wide-ranging White Paper expected to be published on Tuesday.
Classroom overhaul
Earlier this month, Mr Balls told a teaching conference: "I think the right thing for us to do now is to move away from what has historically been a rather central view of school improvement through national strategies to something which is essentially being commissioned not from the centre but by schools themselves."
Earlier this year former Ofsted chief Sir Jim Rose produced a report for the government on a proposed overhaul of primary schools in England. He recommended that computer technology should be central to the curriculum alongside English, maths and personal skills.
And ministers have agreed to the findings of a group of educationists and headteachers who said formal Sats tests for 10 and 11-year-olds might eventually be replaced by teacher assessments of their pupils."
The Guardian has commented on this news here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jun/26/labour-schools-national-stra/tegy?commentpage=2
"...Today's Guardian reports that the government is to abandon its national strategies for schools when it announces its white paper on education next week. That means that the much-loathed literacy and numeracy hours in primaries, with their rigid, minute-by-minute dictation of how every teacher must structure and deliver their lesson, will stop being compulsory from 2011. Instead schools will be able to make their own choices about what their children need and how they should teach.
This, coming from a department whose controlling and centralising instincts would have been applauded in a Soviet state, is truly revolutionary. It is a (very) belated recognition that treating children and classrooms as if they were car parts and assembly lines is a strategy that simply doesn't produce skilled, or educated, or motivated pupils.
It's taken the government years to acknowledge this, because for the first few years of the national strategies, after Labour's election in 1997, test results soared. Ministers preened themselves. Everyone else knew it was because teachers were swiftly discovering how to teach children to the test.
Once they'd learned how to do that, nothing improved. The test results at 11 have more or less plateaued in the last six or seven years.
The strategies don't work at any level other than the most superficial.
Teachers feel helpless when they are in front of classes that aren't grasping the points at the speed the national timetable lays down. There is no flexibility. The national plan compels a teacher to move on, no matter how many children are being left behind. Frantic booster classes at ages seven and 11 teach children the short-term tricks they must know to get them through Sats tests.
Even those who can keep up find the lessons stultifying. Some years ago English teachers in secondaries started reporting that 11-year-old children were arriving saying they hated the subject. For years they'd been exposed to passages by brilliant writers like Michael Morpurgo or Philip Pullman, but not in order to be enraptured by their stories or taken into another world by their prose. No, it was in order to analyse their paragraphs and identify how many adjectives and nouns they had used.
It's hard to know what has finally forced this change. Perhaps it's the shaming results of the department's latest wheeze; the piloting of new single-level tests in English and maths to replace the Sats at 11.
These are supposed to be taken – like music exams – when a child is ready.
What the pilots have revealed is that 14-year-olds are regularly scoring much lower in the tests than 11-year-olds.
There's only one explanation for this, which is that children were never really understanding their subject in the first place; they were just being crammed, and a few years on, they've forgotten how to do it.
Should we be pleased that the government has finally recognised this truth?
I don't think so. I think the appropriate reaction is fury about the wasted years."
Some of the comments under this Guardian article are sad, as well as revealing. One person comments:
"This morning, my glee at the demise of the strategies was short lived. There can be no party for the lost years. My own children have endured these trite,unimaginative lessons, their individuality and imagination stifled, their love of aforementioned Morpurgo and Pullman only present because of having parents who were insistent that they should pick up a book to read and enjoy and not ascertain and scrutinize the sentence level and structure.
As a teacher, I was disenfranchised, disempowered, constantly speeding up or rather "pacing" my lessons to get through the objectives, irrespective of the needs of the children in my charge. Countless pieces of unfinished work or unread literature that just got washed away by the need to move onto the nextset of CVCs or the learning of "where, wear, ware".
Even now, I get palpatations at the thought, and for those contributers who say why didn't teachers just do what they thought was right, well, how could we? With didactic headteachers breathing down our necks and the impending requirements of an Ofsted regime fixated on test results, we were stymied."
Monitoring HE mentioned in Bill :(
More legislation on the horizon for home education?
Monitoring arrangements for home education are mentioned in the Improving schools and safeguarding children Bill
http://www.commonsleader.gov.uk/output/Page2831.asp
"Creating world class standards in schools, listening to parents, giving them more information and acting to protect vulnerable children by:
delivering the commitments in the forthcoming Schools White Paper including:
http://www.commonsleader.gov.uk/output/Page2827.asp
as well as making your views known to your MP.
___________________________________________
Monitoring arrangements for home education are mentioned in the Improving schools and safeguarding children Bill
http://www.commonsleader.gov.uk/output/Page2831.asp
"Creating world class standards in schools, listening to parents, giving them more information and acting to protect vulnerable children by:
delivering the commitments in the forthcoming Schools White Paper including:
- a new set of guarantees to an individually tailored education for each child and their parents;
- backing head teachers to enforce good behaviour with measures to clarify parents responsibilities to sit alongside their entitlements;
- an accountability framework and school improvement strategies for all schools, underpinned by a new School Report Card;
- giving parents a greater say over the range of schools in their local area;
clarifying the role of Ofsted and other inspectorates in inspecting Local Safeguarding Children Boards (LSCBs) and enable information sharing for LSCB purposes; - improving monitoring arrangements for children educated at home;
- helping to tackle anti-social behaviour through powers of intervention with Youth Offending Teams that are considered to be failing - otherwise putting young people and/or local communities at risk;
- putting in place a new framework, based on the position in youth courts, to enable the media to report the substance of family proceedings whilst protecting the identities of families and providing the courts with discretion to disapply this safeguard where it is in the public interest and safe to do so."
It's really worrying that because the home ed stuff is all mixed in with other good-sounding stuff it could just end up slipping through parliament with little resistance.
You can comment on the draft proposals herehttp://www.commonsleader.gov.uk/output/Page2827.asp
as well as making your views known to your MP.
___________________________________________
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