You know, if any self-important jumped up little twerp (you know, like a Prime Minister or anything) ever manages to force me to put my children into school, i am going to be in there every sodding day asking them how they are providing an education suitable to “age, aptitude and ability†in a way that i’m not. This is absolutely and utterly ridiculous. GCSE’s are NOT hard, using the English language (if it’s your first language and you speak it daily) is not flipping hard and actually the basic maths that is enough to get you a C grade is not hard either.
It ought not to be difficult to get 16 year olds through 5 GCSEs with a basic pass and if it is, then no-one is ever going to convince me that schools do very much beyond hindering the children that need their help the most.
It comes to something when ministers want a 1/4 of children to manage 5 basic passes that include maths and english. 1 QUARTER? How about ALL. THAT would be raising the benchmark. Just how low has our expectations of what makes a person fit for purpose fallen?
i was totting up today; i’ve had 6 students (plus one adult student) since Amelie was born to help me; out of those, the 2 who NNEB students rather than BTEC ones were quite honestly NOT fit to be about to go out into the wide world. They’d done a years childcare course and they didn’t know anything meaningful or useful about childcare at all. One of them told me, quite seriously, that the book showed them how to bath a baby and that was all the practise they’d had and then proceeded to run a cold bath for 6 week old Amelie because she was frightened of ‘burning’ her if she made it warm. 
I can’t believe that as a country we need to ‘raise the benchmark’ so that a quarter of students have basic maths and english skills. It makes us sound like we’re in the 3rd world.
But how does that fit with saying they’d like 50% to go to university? 1/4 seems ridiculously low. Wow, just read the story – there’s such a huge variation within schools. How anyone can think the system works, I don’t know.
Deliberate dumbing down, IMO. They just try to keep making the right noises in the hope we won’t notice.
That sad thing is that it seems to prove the basic premise that the less you expect of people, the less they achieve.What’s worse, it must be equally applicable to students and teachers.
DH works in a teacher-training college/university – he says it’s scary. Appalling grammar/spelling/literacy levels generally and loads of social-psycho-twaddle and hi-falutin’ educational theories ….. and not much common-sense.
Not even a quarter get 5 GCSE’s here. Some schools it is 1 or 2 %.
Well as far as I can remember A-level stratification ran like this:
1. Those capable of A’s – Oxbridge standard.
2. Those capable of A’s and B’s. Not quite Oxbridge, but still worthy of a top university.
3. Those capable of C’s. Lower grade unis and polytechnics (I know they died a long time ago).
4. Those who received the unusual N grade (nearly passed? nearly failed?) either completely wasting their time or didn’t turn up to the exam sober.
Then you get the people who failed completely. And these people went to Teaching College.
I am not joking 😐
And I think the thrust of that post was simply to make the point – thick people are incapable of producing genius. I went to teaching college after uni btw 😉
Yes, it was the range (from 2% in one school to 100% in over 100) that shocked me.
Actually the target they’re talking about is that at least 25% in every school should get 5 GCSEs at a to c. Nearly 50% of school kids nationally already meet the target.
“Actually the target they’re talking about is that at least 25% in every school should get 5 GCSEs at a to c. Nearly 50% of school kids nationally already meet the target.”
I know. And i think it’s bloody outrageous. Of course 25% of children in every school should get that; 100% of mainstream children in school ought to be getting the education and support to achieve that, not bloody 25%. They’re moving the goal posts so that that has to included Maths and English… who blinking well moved the goal posts so it didn’t? Surely a decent pass in ‘numeracy’ and ‘literacy’ after doing an hour of them a day for 6 years at primary school ought to be a doddle, nevermind a target for at least 25% to achieve.
It does make you wonder really doens’t it? My SIL is a teacher and she has an awful lot to say on the subject of how literate children are when tehy come to her at 11. Not very it seems 🙁
And here’s me fretting that Aprilia isn’t really reading yet at not quite 6 🙄