Teachers on strike?

[wordfromthewise]

I’d be surprised if anybody is suggesting that hitting kids is a good thing per se and stories about mentally unstable violent teachers don’t help the debate IMO but a return to discipline and fear of consequence is speedily required IMO.

As for the lost generation-who based on their parents qualifications and suitability to be parents mean for me that they probably should never have been born-for whom this will come all too late, I fear something drastic needs to be done. Uncool as it sounds,I’m afraid that we’re probably looking at something as unoriginal as that much discredited 80s phrase a short sharp shock …….round them up and put them in a boot camp for an appropriate period with the promise of more if they don’t ‘fix up’ and can clearly demonstrate that they know how to behave……not pretty,not PC and not particulary original or clever but I’d like to see it given a try.

[insomniac]

From an article by Daniel Knowles in the Daily Telegraph

…Apparently, in some areas of the country, like Knowsley, Merseyside, just 3 per cent of teenagers manage a “good pass” (one at grade C or above) in the subjects the Government is calling the Ebacc: English, maths, two sciences, a language and history or geography. Even in the most affluent areas, such as Berkshire, only a little more than a quarter of pupils get the grades. Unsurprisingly, that’s mostly because they’re not even being entered: overall, only 22 per cent of pupils are entered for that combination of subjects. In 1997, 50 per cent of pupils sat them.

It is hard to overstate how damning these statistics are. It should be obvious to anyone that a decent grounding in English, maths, history, science and languages is the core of a good education, but if it isn’t, then we can listen to our universities. As the Russell Group of top universities says: “the sharp decline in modern foreign languages, particularly French and German, is also of grave concern”, as is the low proportion of poorer pupils taking separate sciences. But Labour dropped the requirement to take a modern language in 2002, while it created incentives for schools not to teach hard subjects like chemistry or physics separately.

The problem is that while Labour rightly poured money into the school system, they judged success by the percentage of children getting 5 “good” GCSEs in any subjects, as long as they included maths and English. So while schools were forced to teach maths and English, they could get the other three results through soft subjects, such as religious studies, design and technology, or business studies. Most depressingly, as today’s statistics reveal, this affected the worst schools most: only 13.6 per cent of pupils in the least affluent areas are entered for the Ebacc.

The reason why is obvious: wealthier parents are more likely to appreciate the value of these subjects and so insist on their pupils taking them. They can afford private schools, or to move to the catchment area of a good school. Inevitably then, the best schools end up filled with the most affluent pupils. At the grammar school I attended in Birmingham, it was impossible not to study the Ebacc subjects. At my sister’s comprehensive, it was exceptionally difficult to study them at all, as teachers instead pushed soft subjects on all but the most academic pupils.

Stephen Twigg, Labour’s shadow education secretary, tells the Guardian that this is exactly right: “there is a danger that the English Bacc will crowd out important subjects like Music, Religious Education, Art, and Design and Technology” he says. But the problem is precisely the opposite: in all but the best schools, those subjects have crowded out important subjects which employers and universities actually value. On education at least, Labour still doesn’t have a clue: perversely, they insist on supporting a system of education which benefits mostly the wealthiest.

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