Tories turn back the clock, it's back to O Levels

olly300

Pennywise wrote: »

Forget all the faffing about with the GCSEs etc. We need to bring back grammar schools in every town, together with technical colleges.

The academic can go to the grammar, the non academic can learn a trade or technical skills.

Comps don't help anyone. The less able are still relentless pushed towards exams they are probably incapable of. The gifted aren't stretched. One size doesn't fit all.

Are you aware of how the 11+ was fixed and how it is fixed now?

In the old days girls use to do better than boys so they fixed it so that boys could go to Grammar school meaning many girls lost out.

Now in places where there are Grammar schools you are a lucky child if you haven't spent at least 2 years being tutored outside school to pass the 11+ and you get into Grammar school.

Also most good Comps stream.

If you are in the lower streams -and unfortunately children tend to be in the top or lower streams for most subjects even if the school streams per subject - then in the comps (my family members were taught in) you tend to get the teachers the school regards as less good.

CLAPTON

olly300 wrote: »

Are you aware of how the 11+ was fixed and how it is fixed now?

In the old days girls use to do better than boys so they fixed it so that boys could go to Grammar school meaning many girls lost out.

Now in places where there are Grammar schools you are a lucky child if you haven't spent at least 2 years being tutored outside school to pass the 11+ and you get into Grammar school.

Also most good Comps stream.

If you are in the lower streams -and unfortunately children tend to be in the top or lower streams for most subjects even if the school streams per subject - then in the comps (my family members were taught in) you tend to get the teachers the school regards as less good.

whilst all may be true you seem give the flavour that you think it wrong to have equal number of boys and girls in the same school, that it is wrong to be tutored, that it is wrong to stream kids by ability, that it is wrong to have the better teachers teaching the brightest?

Pennywise

olly300 wrote: »

Are you aware of how the 11+ was fixed and how it is fixed now?

In the old days girls use to do better than boys so they fixed it so that boys could go to Grammar school meaning many girls lost out.

Now in places where there are Grammar schools you are a lucky child if you haven't spent at least 2 years being tutored outside school to pass the 11+ and you get into Grammar school.

Also most good Comps stream.

If you are in the lower streams -and unfortunately children tend to be in the top or lower streams for most subjects even if the school streams per subject - then in the comps (my family members were taught in) you tend to get the teachers the school regards as less good.

Yes, I'm well aware of the 11+ and it's history. My DS is taking the 11+ next week and I went to a grammar. My mother was a teacher.

Today, tutoring is almost essential because there are so few grammar places. In our city, it's less than 10% of places, so competition is fierce. However, before comps, there were a lot more grammars. My home town had a grammar and a secondary - the grammar slightly smaller took 40%, leaving the secondary the other 60%. Competition nowhere near so fierce so there was little or no need for tutoring. Now, it's the elite/tutored who get the places - 50 years ago, it was much fairer being the top 40% - far more children got the chance of a grammar education.

I'm not saying that the 11+ in itself is right - I'm sure there are far better ways of determining which children are suitable for grammars and which are suitable for technical. A one-off, no re-take, test for a 10 year old is cruel today when 16-18 year olds get the chance of coursework, re-takes etc. It's also noteworthy that despite the "dumbing down" claims and changes etc for 0 levels/GCSEs, the nature and standard of the 11+ exam is virtually unchanged from decades ago, so standards are still as high, but it's harder now because the primary schools don't teach to the same standards anymore. That, again, brings you back to tutoring because some of the 11+ won't have been covered by the primary at the time of sitting the 11+.

What not scrap the 11+ but bring back the grammars with a different/fairer entry criteria?

Jennifer_Jane

I failed the 11+ (as did my brother who became the youngest qualified Solicitor in the Country some many decades ago and who won a scholarship to a major public school). I have two 3-year college diplomas which I did whilst working in very pressured, time-consuming jobs. I am just setting the scene in the hope that I won't be put into the 50% of 'non-academics' that the people who went to grammars seem to think I should belong to.

Luckily I had quite a good education though. The school I went to was a 'bi-lateral' which had two grammar streams and two secondary modern streams. It happened then that at 14 I was moved with others into the grammar stream and took 'O'-levels and RSA's. Too little, too late, however. The problem with my school was that we were only encouraged to become secretaries or hairdressers, and most of my group left school at 16, to go to secretarial college or perhaps to nurse.

All in all, I was lucky that I managed to get into that school, but unlucky that the 11+ was skewed towards boys which was unfair and did not give me the education I would have liked.

You need to have a grounding in the basic subjects before you go on to more work-related things.

By the way, 'O'-levels were also a 'dumbing down' of a sort. In my father's day, you had to pass all 5 subjects to matriculate, at least with 'O'-levels you could get individual subjects.

GeorgeHowell

There is no point in having exams that everybody passes. That's like these idiotic, non-competitive every-child-gets-a-prize so-called sports days. The real world is competitive -- that's human nature -- and children need to be properly prepared for it.

I also agree with those saying bring back grammar and technical schools. Their abolition was the start of education being treated as a political football, and this country has suffered grievously as a result.

PaulW1965

Nothing wrong with Michael Gove saying he wants us to emulate countries such as Finland in his attempts to raise educational attainment. It is after all at the top of international league tables such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA).



For the record, Finland not only tests students far less often than the UK, but along with teacher assessment it places a strong emphasis on modular assessment after each semester rather than end-of-course examination. The very opposite of what Mr Gove intends to establish.
Finland has also made paying for education illegal, sends all of its children to comprehensives, has abolished its inspection service and uses collaboration rather than competition between schools as its main driver of school improvement.

CLAPTON

GeorgeHowell wrote: »

There is no point in having exams that everybody passes. That's like these idiotic, non-competitive every-child-gets-a-prize so-called sports days. The real world is competitive -- that's human nature -- and children need to be properly prepared for it.

I also agree with those saying bring back grammar and technical schools. Their abolition was the start of education being treated as a political football, and this country has suffered grievously as a result.

you forget to include secondary modern schools in your wish list

Kennyboy66

Generali wrote: »

The UK used to have something similar but it upset the socialists.

The GCE (O'Level)/CSE was meant to provide qualifications suited to the child's needs and abilities.

O' levels were abolished in the UK in 1988.

Aparently this was slap bang in the middle of 18 years of Conservative government.

Are we saying that the Blessed Margaret who took on the EU, the miners, the print unions, the Eastern Bloc and Argentina was cowed by a load of lefty geography teachers with leather patches on their elbows ?

Kennyboy66

CLAPTON wrote: »

whilst all may be true you seem give the flavour that you think it wrong to have equal number of boys and girls in the same school, that it is wrong to be tutored, that it is wrong to stream kids by ability, that it is wrong to have the better teachers teaching the brightest?

1) It would seem wrong to have a system that favours one sex over the other. Are you saying girls are less intelligent than boys ?

2) Nothing wrong with being tutored - but all the evidences suggests that a highly tutored public school university student will do slightly less well than the equivalent state pupil.

3) The UK's problem is not the top 10% in education (and never has been), but the bottom 20%. Surely it would make sense for the best teachers to teach the least able.

4) Nothing wrong with streaming or setting by ability

System

sabretoothtigger wrote: »

The main problem with O levels was people forgot the answers by the end of the two year course

"The evil men do lives on - the good is oft interr'd with their bones"

There you are, I remember that line from Macbeth even after half a century