State education in Britain is getting worse
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| Author: Patrick Crozier |
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I think state education in Britain is getting worse because:
- there seem to be a lot of reports in the media which say so
- it is my (admittedly limited) personal experience
Q&A
What sorts of reports?
- Ones like:
- O Level questions appearing on A Level papers
- universities having to run remedial courses for new undergraduates
- ever higher pass rates
- a hidden camera TV documentary in which a teacher returned to the classroom after 20 years and couldn't believe the indiscipline she found
- The disappearance of a sixth of the syllabus from A Level Maths papers.
- More money, worse schools.
- Millions not being able to read well enough to sing karaoke
But, surely, higher pass rates are evidence of success?
- Yes, but they go up every single year. You would have thought that things would bounce around a bit more. It makes me suspicious
Ah, but what about that spelling test report. Doesn't that prove that things are getting better?
- This was a report in the Times. They took a 1975 test, updated it and gave it to a group of pupils the same age. The 2006 pupils did much better than their 1975 predecessors. Assuming that things are all above board then it suggests (I'd put it no more highly than that) that I could be wrong.
What sort of personal experience do you have?
- When I was studying for O Level French in 1981 we looked at past papers from 1965. We couldn't do them. They included tenses we had never seen. It seems I am not the only one to have noticed this. See Andrew Gimson.
- My mother's O Level Maths syllabus included calculus. Mine didn't.
You seem to be going entirely on the basis of exam results, but, surely that isn't the only measure of success?
- It most certainly isn't but the state seems reluctant to come up with its own measure. And it you can't in some way reliably measure education how on earth do you know whether you are getting value for money or not?
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