Primary school closing early.

economic

Owain_Moneysaver wrote: »

But at the moment we have kids leaving school at 16 who can't write their own name, or eat with a knife and fork.

then have a fourth group of children and call it the "!!!!!! group". This group doesnt do anything but really go back to basics to try catch up to those in the low IQ group. you wont have many people in the !!!!!! group maybe a handful in the worst schools, hence i omitted this group. This group are more like a special needs group in fact thats exactly what the group is.

oz0707

economic wrote: »

then have a fourth group of children and call it the "!!!!!! group". This group doesnt do anything but really go back to basics to try catch up to those in the low IQ group. you wont have many people in the !!!!!! group maybe a handful in the worst schools, hence i omitted this group. This group are more like a special needs group in fact thats exactly what the group is.

Such a way with words!

Graham_Devon

Cakeguts wrote: »

It is interesting to me that the people of my age were educated in schools that were not full of "things" and yet our standard of eduation was better than it is today. So clearly all this stuff is not needed for a good standard of education.

Clearly not if you believe A3 paper poses a greater fire risk than newspaper.

System

Cakeguts wrote: »

My theory about all of this is that the English language is a code. So if you can't get the letters of a word in the right order you are not going to learn coding on a computer because that also requires memory and the ability to get commands in the right order.

What. No. Coding is most like maths. It's logic.

economic

Cakeguts wrote: »

They can't do maths either. The standard of maths required to pass GCSE maths is roughly the same as that needed for the 11 plus. So for primary education they are 5 years behind what standard of maths do they get to at age 11. Complicated coding is not possible. Plus they will have to be told what to do because everything is spoon fed.

So I think we can assume that children don't learn to read to a high standard or do maths to a high standard so their coding must be poor or mediocre. What do they do with the time apart from cut triangles out of bits of paper?

These are low iq or !!!!!! people. They should just get basic easy jobs requiring no intellect at age 15-16. No need too ruther educate them as it’s just a waste of time for them and more importantly taxpayer money. Maybe even these kids can go into the basic jobs at age 13-14. Think how much resources can be freed up, less teachers needed and saving some money for the taxpayer.

Cakeguts

economic wrote: »

These are low iq or !!!!!! people. They should just get basic easy jobs requiring no intellect at age 15-16. No need too ruther educate them as it’s just a waste of time for them and more importantly taxpayer money. Maybe even these kids can go into the basic jobs at age 13-14. Think how much resources can be freed up, less teachers needed and saving some money for the taxpayer.

They aren't. This is what normal educational standards are these days. What you would call high iq whatever that means are not getting the education they should be. They are all behind what was possible in 1960s when there were no things in class rooms expect desks and people. You would think that with computers available children would be more advanced educationally than they were in the 1960s when people were still doing arithmatic in imperial measures but they aren't they are about 5 years of education behind people who went to primary school in the 1960s.

If you are under 40 and have done GCSEs you have studied the dumbed down version of UK education. The over 40s all took O levels not GCSEs. The difference between O level music and GCSE was this. For O level you had to be able to write harmony and play an instrument to a certain level as well as study the history of music read a music score and study the history of composers in order to get to understand the different styles of music. So if you find someone who has got an O level in music you will know what they have done. In contrast you can pass GCSE without being able to read or write a note of music, have beginner skills in playing or singing the sort of level that most people would get to in less than 6 months and by making up supermarket type music on a keyboard and recording it without knowing what kind of music you had made up and without it having any form of interest for anyone to want to listen to. So complete junk. However if you go to a really good school you will still be taught the harmony and all the other music knowledge even though you don't need it to pass GCSE music. So it is a complete lottery as to whether you know anything about music at all at the end of a GCSE music course. The reason why some music teachers can't teach the harmony and history of music is because they haven't done any of it in their training. We know that some degrees are about the standard of 3 old O levels. So at the end of a degree someone might know as much about music as a the average 16 year old in the 1960s. There is no way that someone like this can teach to the old A level standard of music. This is why if you don't go to a top school where they have well educated teachers with high standard degrees from top universities you find people at middle level music colleges doing in their 3rd year of a degree course what I did for A level. This means that the lower level degrees are the same level of education as 3 1960s A levels. Of course the top university degrees are as good as they have always been. The bottom level degrees are a lower education standard than the 1960s A levels and are around O level. So you can basically finish up after a degree with an educational level of a 1960s 16 year old. So apart from the top 10% of students who get degrees from the top universities everyone else is any from 3 years to 5 years behind what was possible in the 1960s when schools didn't have loads of stuff.

All the teachers who say that this is not true but who didn't do O levels and A levels are not helping the situation by not finding out about the dumbing down and trying to reverse it. Not admitting to it isn't helping the students who now have to pay for their education instead of getting it free at school. The people who lose out in all of this are the students. The UK state education system is failing large numbers of children especially those from poorer areas who can't catch up.

The scandal that most parents should be complaining about is that their children now have to pay for 3 years to study at university the level of education that used to be taught at school in 2 years in the 6th form. It means that a Labour government introduced private 6th form education by stealth. Now most of the 6th form level of work is done at university and you have to pay for it. Remember the university year is shorter than the school year so that 2 years of free education at school 6th form has now become 3 shorter paid for years at university. What totally disgusts me about this situation is it is really bad for students from poorer families because they are now expected to take out loans to pay for the 3 years of education that they used to get for free in their schools 6th form. So the expansion of university education has made it much much harder for poorer students to get a high standard of education because of the cost.

LydiaJ

Cakeguts wrote: »

They can't do maths either. The standard of maths required to pass GCSE maths is roughly the same as that needed for the 11 plus. So for primary education they are 5 years behind what standard of maths do they get to at age 11. Complicated coding is not possible. Plus they will have to be told what to do because everything is spoon fed.

So I think we can assume that children don't learn to read to a high standard or do maths to a high standard so their coding must be poor or mediocre. What do they do with the time apart from cut triangles out of bits of paper?

You are forgetting that the majority of children failed the 11+. The idea that the foundation level required of almost all young people at age 16 might not be very much different from what the elite brightest children could do at age 11 in a subject like maths would not be as controversial as you are making out, even if it were true, which I don't think it is.

While I admit that current GCSE maths requires less depth and rigour than O-level maths used to when I did it, it has more breadth, and it certainly includes things that are a lot harder than anything I learnt in primary school.

Cakeguts

LydiaJ wrote: »

You are forgetting that the majority of children failed the 11+. The idea that the foundation level required of almost all young people at age 16 might not be very much different from what the elite brightest children could do at age 11 in a subject like maths would not be as controversial as you are making out, even if it were true, which I don't think it is.

While I admit that current GCSE maths requires less depth and rigour than O-level maths used to when I did it, it has more breadth, and it certainly includes things that are a lot harder than anything I learnt in primary school.

The problem is that now it is only the brightest children who get to this standard at age 11.Years ago people who did CSE were ahead of what children can do now. The top CSE grade counted as the bottom grade of an O level. So someone doing CSE in 1960 would have the standard of education of an A level now. People who did CSE mostly went on to study at colleges or technical colleges at age 16 and came out with a certificate or diploma at 18 that would now be called a degree but the degree would be 3 years later and have to be paid for. So even today's education except for the brightest children who go to a good school with highly educated teachers is behind even what the CSE age 16 school leavers did. The problem I have with it all is the fact that poorer students are being expected to take out loans to pay for 3 short years at university instead of getting that education in between 16 and 18 for free as they used either in the 6th form as A levels or as vocational course at technical college. The point is that the technical college education was the same level as the degrees from about 70 of the universities that we have now but started at age 16. So they started work at 18 with an educational level of what many 21 years olds have now and that is very very unfair on the less well off students.

I am old and I went to several primary schools for one reason and another but I had to learn to do arithmatic in imperial measures. There was no decimalisation when I was at school. The fact that everything is now decimal should mean that children in primary school today would be years ahead of the 1960s group because you don't have to deal with pounds and ounces in weights etc and they have calculators so there is really no excuse for it to be so far behind.

The very good state non selective secondary school near me that is oversubscribed has to generally get students to catch up 5 years of reading standard in the first year where the local primary schools have not taught the children to read properly. So if the children are not lucky enough to go to this outstanding school (nearest catchment is a big council estate) they are going to be 5 years behind the students from this school for the whole of their education. The same catchment of children from the same area. It is not the fault of the children. It is not the fault of the government because if some schools can do it then they all can given the will of the people who work in them.

LydiaJ

Cakeguts wrote: »

...So someone doing CSE in 1960 would have the standard of education of an A level now.

That's nonsense, Cakeguts.

A-level maths involves, among other things, calculus (including differentiation and both definite and indefinite integrals, including of trig functions), Poisson and binomial distributions, complex numbers represented on Argand diagrams, resolution of forces, division of polynomials, etc etc. Those are just the ones that spring to mind off the top of my head. None of those things were included in the O-level in 1984. I'm absolutely certain they weren't on the CSE syllabus, even in 1960. I admit that I wasn't around in 1960, so I'm open to being convinced otherwise if anybody can find any actual evidence of such content in a CSE, but if I were a betting person I'd put good money on such evidence not being in existence. The standards of O-levels and CSEs just didn't change that much over several decades until they were combined into GCSE in 1988.

TBH, I don't think the content of A-level maths or further maths is all that much different from when I did it in 1986. The problems set in exams have for many years been more straightforward than they used to be - broken up into parts (a), (b) and (c) to help the candidates through rather than just "find this for 10 marks and it'll probably take you more than one page" as we used to have to do. However, that's changing now, with the introduction of more multistage problems in the most recent specifications.

Meanwhile, A-level physics had its mathematical requirements significantly reduced round about 1990, although I'm not sure of the exact year. However, the mathematical content has been replaced with things that weren't on there when I did it - astrophysics and particle physics and the like - which are by no means trivial. Also, we used to have to do "learn this proof and regurgitate it when required in the exam" questions, whereas now they always have to apply what they've learnt in some specific and perhaps previously unseen context, so there's arguably less scope for the weaker students to get through by merely memorising stuff without properly understanding it. This makes it arguably a better qualification for people who aren't going to go on to be professional physicists, who will have a broader scientific knowledge, and will never need to do calculations with half a dozen or more simultaneous equations anyway. It's less of a preparation for a physics degree, I admit, since physics degrees remain extremely mathematical, which is why they mostly take 4 years to achieve the standard we did in 3. Still, only a tiny minority of A-level physics students go on to do physics degrees anyway, so making the qualification more suitable for aspiring doctors, dentists, vets, lawyers, politicians etc is no bad thing.

That's still a very long way from your assertion that today's A-levels are equivalent to the CSEs of 50 or 60 years ago, though.

westernpromise

I did O-Level Maths in 1978 (Oxford & Cambridge Board) and it did not include calculus. That was part of what was called the "AO"-Level, sometimes known as "Further Maths", which we sat the year after O-Level. Two years after that you did Maths A-Level if you were going to.

"Poisson and binomial distributions, complex numbers represented on Argand diagrams, resolution of forces, division of polynomials" were part of neither O- nor AO-Level, so as long as 40 years ago, nobody with just an AO-Level would have been able to do any of those.

There is certainly some content in a Maths GCSE that wasn't there in an O-Level 40 years ago. It came as a surprise to me, flicking through my daughter's maths homework a week or two ago, to learn that there is a way through trigonometry to work out the area of any triangle including scalene triangles. I didn't know that was even possible (although now I know it is I might be able to work out how for myself). I definitely didn't cover that at school though.

What has changed I guess is the boundaries between grades. Actually failing a GCSE seems to be quite hard, as witnesses the fact that very few people do. When you consider that fewer than 50% of the populace sat O-Levels yet 50% are now presumed fit to go to university, that means there are kids who in the past would not have been thought fit to sit an O-Level who are now being told they are good enough to go to university - which does not compute.