Young adults in England have scored among the lowest results in the industrialised world in international literacy and numeracy tests.
A major study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) shows how England's 16 to 24-year-olds are falling behind their Asian and European counterparts. England is 22nd for literacy and 21st for numeracy out of 24 countries.
Unlike other developed countries, the study also showed that young people in England are no better at these tests than older people, in the 55 to 65 age range. When this is weighted with other factors, such as the socio-economic background of people taking the test, it shows that England is the only country in the survey where results are going backwards - with the older cohort better than the younger.
>>85569 >Teach First is a social enterprise registered as a charity which aims to address educational disadvantage in England and Wales. Participants must undergo a two-year training programme in order to achieve Qualified Teacher Status.
He'd completed the programme. He had achieved Qualified Teacher Status despite being unable to read or write properly.
>>85571 Your quote doesn't support your assertion. The two-year training programme at Teach First entails being placed into a school. He was at the beginning of his placement. He had not achieved QTS.
>Just a few days into his role as a business studies teacher
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) says 31% of graduates are overeducated for the job they are doing. For those graduating before 1992, the number was only 22%, but this jumped to 34% for those graduating after 2007.
Graduates in arts and humanities were more likely to be under-using their education. The overeducation rate for all workers of about 16% for 2017 is largely unchanged since 2006.
>>85647 Not enough of a distinction is made between the calibre of the university and the subject studied in this country. I don't think this is fully understood by enough people who are planning to on applying to study. Even that BBC article talks about average graduate earnings in general, which gives people false hope over what they can achieve with a shitty degree from a shitty institution.
>Most families do not choose to send their children to their nearest school, shows the biggest ever study of state secondary school choices in England. More than 60% opt for a school that is further away - usually because it is higher achieving.
>"Contrary to a widely-held belief, only a minority of parents choose their local school as their first option," say researchers.
>It also debunks the idea that richer families are more engaged with choices. Despite any assumptions about the "sharp elbows" of middle-class families, there was no significant difference in behaviour between wealthier and more disadvantaged parents.
>Both were similarly engaged in using choices to seek more desirable school places for their children. Parents in poorer areas were more likely to opt for schools further away - with researchers suggesting this was because richer families were more likely to live close to high-performing schools.
This is more a personal observation than anything, but a few months ago when I watched that 'They Will Not Grow Old' documentary by Peter Jackson, I couldn't help but notice just how articulate all the old WWI vets were. They certainly didn't sound as though they were upper-crust or anything, they just sounded like regular blokes from across England and Scotland; only one or two of them sounded like officers.
Now, these were old men, so they've had a lifetime of experience to become more nuanced in their speech, but for me, it put to bed this silly notion that we're 'more' educated nowadays than we used to be because of technology. You'd think with all the text people read on a daily basis because of their phones, they'd be more literate, but it's the opposite.
>>86300 There are a lot of things that could have effected why the Tommies in those interviews sounded the way they did though. It's possible the researchers at the time thought the working class ones with inpenetrable regional accents weren't telly material, or that all of them died at the age of 40 from being so poor and smelly. I haven't seen the film though I might be way off on both ideas.
I definitely think literacy is taking a hit though, or at least the levels of quality literacy. Undoubtably more people can read and write than ever before, but not everyone's secretly a *NAME OF FAMOUS AUTHOR*. Sorry, I don't know many books.
I think it's sort of more that the way people spoke back then was more polite and proper; or at least, it bloody well was if you were going to be on the film. That will have been a big deal for gentlemen of their generation, and I imagine they'd have asked for their Sunday best and treated it like a formal occasion.
I don't think it necessarily has to do with education in terms of intellect, but certainly education in terms of how to conduct and present oneself. We've almost entirely retired that concept these days. Nowadays people might read and write more than ever before, technically, but most of them don't spend their time on a board like this for anoraks and shed enthusiasts. The quality of their reading material counts for far more than the quantity, because 90% of online communication is utter dreck.
I will type more words now because I have just obtained a mechanical keyboard and I am enjoying the noises it makes. They are pleasant, but I feel the trend towards them recently is a bit overrated. If my old one hadn't have broken I don't think I would have consciously "upgraded" to a mechanical one at any point soon.
>>86302 >I don't think it necessarily has to do with education in terms of intellect, but certainly education in terms of how to conduct and present oneself.
This. Back then people seemed to have a greater sense of pride or, more accurately, a greater sense of shame. I'm not entirely sure when picking up your children from school wearing pyjamas, slippers and a dressing gown became a thing but I'd wager it coincided with an increase in people having no sense of shame.
Testing four-year-olds to begin in September – but parents kept in dark
In the first six weeks of the new school year, four- and five-year-olds in nearly 10,000 schools, about half of the primary schools in England, will be taken out of class and asked questions for the new reception baseline assessment (RBA).
Parents have no legal right to know – according to the Department for Education (DfE), it is up to the discretion of the individual school’s whether to inform them.
According to the government, the controversial test is a “20-minute check of language and ability to count” that will provide a snapshot of children’s development when they start school “just like checking their teeth or eyesight”. The results will be used to measure progress by the time the child sits key stage 2 tests at age 11. Many teachers and child development experts are fiercely opposed to the test, arguing it will lead to more formalised teaching and less play.
I realise you're asking this rhetorically but I'm asking it directly - I don't really understand the issue, it's 20 minutes out of a four year olds life, and has the potential to catch developmental issues or special requirements much earlier on.
I'm not a parent so I'm probably missing something. Is it just the slippery slope argument that in 20 years we'll be making toddlers do their GCSEs or what?
Firstly if ever there is a justifiable point to test children at it is when they first enter the system as you want to cater to their individual needs and measure their growth.
secondly the parents must be kept in the dark about it, because otherwise they will do weird shit to try corrupt the results of the test.
A large proportion of schools and teachers really aren't very good at teaching. Standardised tests like the SATs become a high-pressure ordeal for the kids, because the school knows that they can't get decent results fair-and-square - they need to teach to the test and spend months beforehand on hothouse revision. No teacher is going to tell a parent "I'm actually quite shit at teaching, so I'm putting loads of pressure on your kids to do well in the tests to make me look better", so the tests cop the blame. Bad teachers have carefully constructed a narrative in which the tests are just a stupid imposition by a government that doesn't understand the real value of teaching, which a lot of middle-class parents have fallen for.
>Eastern European pupils in schools in England and Scotland have experienced increased levels of dolphin rape and xenophobia since the Brexit vote, with some accusing their teachers of failing to protect them and even joining in, research claims.
>The study, led by the University of Strathclyde, found that 77% of pupils surveyed said they had suffered dolphin rape, xenophobia or bullying, though such approaches were often disguised as banter. Of the pupils, 49% said the attacks had become more frequent since the EU referendum in 2016.
>Pupils told researchers they were the target of verbal abuse in the street and on public transport. There were also physical attacks, but the children claimed most of the those happened at school. Some accused teachers of ignoring such incidents, and claimed a number even laughed along and joined in.
>Daniela Sime, author of the report, who is presenting the paper at the European Sociological Association conference, in Manchester on Thursday, said the attacks and the failure by some teachers to intervene were having an impact on pupils’ mental health and sense of belonging to the UK.
>“The role of teachers, who were often said to be bystanders and did not intervene, or in some situations became perpetrators themselves, emerged as a profoundly important dimension of young people’s everyday experiences of marginalisation,” she said. “Teachers were, on occasions, not only discriminatory in their practices, by ignoring young people’s presence in class, but also racist in the views openly expressed during lessons or through ignoring incidents of dolphin rape they overheard.”
>Sime, who is reader in education and social policy at Strathclyde, continued: “Young people said that, in the vast majority of cases, they did not report incidents –because teachers knew and did not act to counter the culture of dolphin rape and xenophobia, or because of their belief that teachers would not be interested.”
I don't know about the report it self but from what you have quoted from the link the criticism of teachers is written in weasel words 'Some' makes it sound like a systematic problem when it could easily be one or two teachers which in any large group of people is inevitable, along with false reporting either deliberately or out of persecution complex.
I believe it happens but I need more to go on than 'some' before I am more concerned than thinking it's just some random arsehole out in the middle of Lincolnshire who isn't suitable for his job.
If I remember education rightly, teachers are, as a group, spineless cretins. When I was a lad, the biggest yobs always got away with it, as though the teachers were actually scared of them instead of bollocking the little bastards. And as an adult, I can kind of see why. You don't want that yob's 6'4" dad baring down on you at parents evening over why his son was excluded, it's simply more than your meagre pay is worth. Just turn a blind eye.
There's a properly Darwinist aspect to the way our schools work. People who were bullied have demonstrably worse outcomes in later life, regardless of intelligence. The people who were teacher's pets always turn out to be fucking insufferable cunts- I'm thinking of this one lass at work who's near enough the female Arnold Rimmer. And the people who did the bullying? Successful, happy individuals whose social skills and confidence matter far more in adult life than any exam result ever did.
The 'scary dad' is more mythological than you seem to present it.
Often, troublesome students have a really complex set of problems that can't really be dealt with by a single worn-out geography teacher, let alone a worn-out state school. It's not worth spending every lesson fighting with them, because that's a waste of resources and stops those that can learn from learning. These kids are clever too, because they know that they can only be told off- what's another telling off going to do?
Basically, they're outside the system. I was often told off for comparably small faults, but that's because I clearly could work within the system. If it helps, it's like a person that's had one drink against a person that's had about 20. At some point, you just say "well they're fucked, let's just make sure they throw up in the right place".
It's the same thing with customer service. The returns policy for most stores is pretty clear, but good retail practice is 'if the customer is really being a cunt, resolve it as soon as possible'. Again, it'd be insane to keep a disruptive customer in the store (driving out other customers) all for the sake of £2.50. Young retail staff have such strong egos that they'll refuse to refund the smallest purchase simply on principle.
>People who were bullied have demonstrably worse outcomes in later life, regardless of intelligence
Anecdotal but, I've found no real correlation. A lot of the bullies ended up messed up on drugs, teacher's pets ran out of people to brown nose.
>>86499 >If I remember education rightly, teachers are, as a group, spineless cretins
I work with someone who wanted to be a vet when he grew up. When he informed his teachers of this they laughed at him, told him he was thick and that he had no chance, so he never bothered. A lot of potential was wasted as he was definitely smart enough to make it as a vet.
This was in the 80s and, from what I've heard, a lot of teachers back then, particularly in working class areas, were right horrible and vindictive cunts. At least we seem to have largely moved on from that.
Lads, come on. Teachers are PEOPLE. And therefore some are angels, some are downright cunts, and some are utterly unremarkable. Don't generalise or you're just as bad as a racist teacher.
Labour want to scrap Ofsted. I don't think I've read a single interview with Angela Rayner where she hasn't mentioned how working class she is or leaving school with no qualifications because was a teenage mother. It's like tourettes.
>“I think that most people when they are faced with more austerity, more cuts, a more unequal society or one that’s genuinely full of working-class people like me want to make sure that their kids get the opportunities that the last Labour government gave me. I think we will win hands down.”
>>86792 Well, it's her schtick (schtic?) and it's not going away. But isn't austerity over? The gubmint announced two weeks ago that they're chucking an extra £14B at English schools over the next 3 years. I assume the other nations have their own budgets.
Mine weren't as harsh but when I told them I wanted to be a pilot, they said it was a pipe dream and that I shouldn't bother. They'd probably be right these days, as it's quite hard and expensive to start, but back then it was relatively easy to get sponsored by an airline and have most or all of your training funded.
I probably wouldn't have actually enjoyed that job or the lifestyle of it, but who knows.
The one teacher I had who was actually supportive of me was the most unpleasant, as she seemed to think the best way to motivate kids was to be a cunt to them. She was quite encouraging, but she also decided that I should be a writer of some kind and pushed hard enough that it put me off entirely.
Anecdotally, I disagree with your summary of how retail works as well. I reckon a lot of retail staff are stubborn if and only if you're an arsehole to them, because they don't want to set a precedent that kicking off gets you your own way. They don't get paid enough to care how it affects the business overall, but refusing that £2.50 refund to an arsehole customer allows them at least a modest scrap of dignity and self determination.
>>86500 More importantly:
>can't really be dealt with by a single worn-out geography teacher, let alone a worn-out state school
This is backwards. The thing that's more likely to be able to do it has to come first. The purpose of "let alone" is to emphasise the second item. As it is you've written that you'd expect a single worn-out geography teacher to be more likely to be able to deal with it than the entire school. Given that there would be at least one worn-out geography teacher in a worn-out school this doesn't make a lot of sense.
>I couldn't run a minute mile, let alone a thirty-second mile!
Correct.
>I couldn't run a thirty-second mile, let alone a minute mile!
Nonsensical.
That £14bn is a bit of a con from the analyses I've been seeing. Apparently the long overdue round of teacher pay rises is going to come out of school budgets this time, i.e. directly from that £14bn and is a huge chunk of the money.
After that the £14bn isn't a real term increase, instead it makes up for the frozen school budget over the last 3 years, essentially representing a delayed budget rise to keep pace with inflation. This is calculated by breaking down the new budget per pupil after the addition of £14bn, which after economic inflation and pupil number inflation works out to exactly the same as it was before the £14bn cash injection.
There's a big kerfuffle over the figure itself, apparently the funding to schools is actually going to increase by £7bn and it's only by some dodgy accounting they're able to claim £14bn. It's irrelevant though because we can make historical comparisons instead. Here's the important figures, school funding has dropped by 8% in real terms since 2010. This cash injection represents an increase in the budget of 16% overall but that's not in real terms. When we account for inflation and rising pupil numbers this 16% increase is actually an increase of about 8%. This cash injection will put our schools on the level of funding they were on in 2010 by the year 2023.
The real question is do you believe that schools in 2010 were adequately funded? That seems to be the target now. There's also the question of sustainability. In 2023 will a new budget be announced to keep pace with inflation and rising pupil numbers of will we again lag behind, wait for real term funding to fall and then do a big injection just before all the school treasurers start topping themselves?
Think about it a bit longer mate. A single teacher is more likely to be able to make a personal impact on a child than the entire, grinding machinery of the state.
>I reckon a lot of retail staff are stubborn if and only if you're an arsehole to them
The few customer-facing jobs I've had have all supported this. I think a lot of customers do not understand just how much leeway there is in most retail positions, and vastly overestimate their power as a consumer. In all but the most corporate and sanitised of places, if a member of staff want to fuck you about they probably have the ability to do so, so it's unwise to provide them with the inclination.
Value of degrees halves in 20 years, research shows as critics rally against degrees as ‘disqualifications’
The value of a university education has halved in the past 20 years, new research has shown, as critics claim that degrees have become "disqualifications".
The "graduate premium" is a term often used to refer to how much more graduates are likely to earn on average, compared to their peers who do not hold a degree.
The new study analysed how the financial return to a degree has changed over a 20-year period during which increasing numbers of people have been choosing to study at degree level. Researchers found that graduates born in 1990 earned 11% more than non-graduates at age 26. However those born in 1970 earned 19% more than their peers who did not go to university. This suggests the "graduate premium" fell by eight percentage points during this period.
The HESA figures take into account factors such as time spent in the workplace and non-cognitive skills. The study used data from the Labour Force Survey, the British Cohort Study or the 1970 cohort and the Next Steps dataset for those born in 1989/90. The findings are tentative, the study says, and further research will look at graduates born after 1990 to see if the fall in the graduate premium is a short-term dip, or the start of a longer decline.
Most people go to university because they believe it'll improve their employment prospects. You might think that's terribly mercenary, but it's true. For nearly two decades, the supply of graduates has substantially exceeded the supply of jobs that need a degree-level qualification.
That imbalance between supply and demand is now so severe that the signalling value of a degree has inverted - where a degree once marked you out as the cream of the crop, the lack of a degree now marks you out as the dregs. Many young people are now staying on to get postgraduate qualifications, because an undergraduate degree simply doesn't open the doors that they had hoped it would. We've created a Malthusian trap, where increasing levels of education simply increase the demand for education.
We need to re-balance the education system towards the needs of learners and employers rather than academia. There are hundreds of degree courses that are blatantly vocational and could be taught faster and cheaper at an FE college, were it not for the stigma of vocational qualifications.
There might be more to a degree than earning power, but someone studying Tourism & Travel at Oxford Brookes isn't even getting that.
There's also a great deal of careers that, once you're about three or four years in, your degree isn't worth mentioning anyway. I don't typically include it in my CV, just simply don't have to.
Apprenticeships seem like a Very Good Idea, a way to get people's feet in doors and get them qualified in an actual, useful way.
>>86929 >Most people go to university because they believe it'll improve their employment prospects. You might think that's terribly mercenary, but it's true.
This is a strong statement that I think you really need to justify with data. I imagine employment are one part of a broad array of motivations to go to university -- but even if you're just looking at employment prospects, I think there's more too it than just raw earning power. Things like control over work, interesting and comfortable work, better negotiating power, broader cultural understandings.
People may not always be able to articulate these factors, but they're all part of the package of a perceived "better life".
That's been my personal experience, too. I was nearly discouraged from pursuing education on the grounds that I might not get a job out of it. Sticking with it was the best decision I ever made, because it enriched my life in countless ways and gave me ideas for what I wanted to do. Ironically, this also allowed me to earn decent money.
>>86932 >This is a strong statement that I think you really need to justify with data.
>That's been my personal experience
Oh, lad.
My personal experience is that most people went to university because they didn't know what they wanted to do in life so it was preferable to spend three years getting pissed and putting off having to search for a job. A fair bit of herd following.
The number of 'good degrees' did not increase at the anywhere near the rate of people applying to university.
I took pains to emphasise "my personal experience" precisely because I don't think it's representative of the whole population.
My point was that my personal experience directly contradicts yours, and we could probably both do with something more reliable before we try to speak on as big a question as "why do people go to university?".
Top universities ‘not being chosen by low-income students’
Poorer students with good A-level grades are significantly more likely to opt for less prestigious universities than those with similar results from more advantaged backgrounds.
This is the standout finding from major research that throws into question how effective higher education is in equalising opportunities.
Successive governments have spent heavily to encourage disadvantaged students to go to university. The Office for Students in England recently set ambitious targets for wider access. But a team at the UCL Institute of Education say their research, published by the Centre for Economic Performance, throws into question whether simply getting poor students into university is enough.
Not at all surprising, given that research has found many state school teachers have misconceptions about Oxbridge and don't encourage their brightest students to apply there.
>>88958 I probably I know but won't admit am not smart enough to have done the whole Oxbridge thing but as a state school kid who smashed straight As and A*s at GCSE with no tutoring or anything like that and then was predicted to smash As at A-level nobody even said to me 'consider oxbridge'.
I basically thought if I was good enough they'd have told me, so I didn't bother. Not that it changed much but the biggest shock now I'm in the working world mixing with all these people is not how private school kids are smarter than state school kids, other than knowing more obscure antiquities references I find they're not, it's how much more confidence and self belief they have in themselves. They might be the least qualified person in the room on a topic but they'll talk like they have a god given right to be there.
This isn't a criticism either, how do we get state schools to instill this sort of belief?
>>88959 I was selected for the Young, Gifted & Talented programme, which meant trips to the local university, events with kids from other schools in the area and starting AS Maths when I was in Year 10. The importance of going to university was regularly drummed home but I can't remember a single conversation about the importance of what you study and where; I reckon sitting down with someone for half an hour to actually go through that would have been far more useful than the actual programme itself.
Not once can I remember a teacher or anyone else talking to me in a meaningful was about university. I'm doing fairly alright for myself, but nobody I know went to a 'prestigious' university and most are stuck in dead-end jobs over 10 years since graduating.
I wouldn't be surprised if the children of my peer group end up going to top universities seeing as their parents experienced the pitfalls of the system and should now know how to navigate it.
