The OECD has sparked off a furious political row in the UK with its latest 'Pisa' educational test results. As if we didn't already know it, the UK is falling behind almost every other developed or developing country in its ability to educate our children; apparently, we are no longer ranked in the top 20 of international performers in mathematics, reading or science; within the UK, England performed worse than Scotland in mathematics and reading, while Wales was the poorest performer in all 3 subjects.
Labour and the Conservatives are now busy accusing each other of failing our children, failing to implement necessary educational reforms and so on an so forth. Neither has admitted to any failings of their own and both have simply proved how abysmal have been their activities on the education front over a period of many decades.
Anyone who has any experience of children and their education knows, without doubt, that the current system is a mess. Teachers are more concerned about making out health and safety reports for every bump and scrape than they are about educating their charges; they spend time and effort on fund raising in every possible way and in promoting a vast range of 'cultural' activities, rather than in teaching reading, writing and arithmetic. Is it any wonder that great swathes of children leave primary school still unable to read, write or add up ?
Once they become teenagers, things become even worse. Science classes no loner have much in the way of 'hands-on' science, due to costs, the availability of suitably qualified teachers and that hoary old chestnut, health and safety; the wonder of science is, consequently, destroyed. The pupils are subject to no effective discipline and can happily ignore lessons whenever they like; many, it seems, spend lesson time on their mobile 'phones, texting others in the class or friends outside. The teachers seem powerless to act.
Examinations have been rendered almost useless by the huge amount of 'continuous assessment' that has been included in final grades; with the emphasis on league tables, schools have been sorely tempted to be overly-generous in the marking of their children, so as to appear to be doing better than the lot down the road. Again, the result has been children with 'AS' and 'A' level grades which simply do not reflect their true level of attainment; the better universities have been complaining for many years about the effect this has on them, but to no avail.
The nonsensical ideology of university as being a right rather than a privilege has been a further problem. Large numbers of former technical colleges, polytechnics art colleges and so on have been granted university status and award degrees, far too often in pointless subjects and to students who simply shouldn't be at university. This approach is, of course, beloved by the educational fraternity as it provides them with jobs and status - imagine being a Professor, even if it is of Park Management at the University of West Wittering !
Sadly, the 'university for all' approach has also been favoured by successive governments who've seen it as a way to reduce the unemployment figures. By keeping children at school until they're 18 and then sending most of them to university until they're 21 or 22, millions have been removed from the 'dole' and from claiming other benefits; if this was to be reversed, the revelation of the true parlous state of our nation might just terrify us all.
What is needed is a return to a few 'old fashioned' values. Reintroduce Grammar Schools and discipline in the classroom; stop the namby-pamby nonsense of health and safety at every turn and get back to some proper teaching. Do away with 'children's rights' and the nonsense of university being a 'right'; it is a privilege for those for whom it may be beneficial, for the rest it is a distraction and even an impediment to getting a job.
Until some government really takes a grip on all of this, our children will continue to stagnate and our country will continue to slide down the international league tables, while China, Korea, Singapore and the rest will become more and more dominant.
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