I didn’t have time to read this one or your previous post but I’ll do…seems very interesting!

Aye, I mean standard and highs. I usually listen to Radio 4, which is England-centered. Besides (my shame) I do not really understand how standard and high grades work. Maybe you could gimme a tutorial sumday?

Very [...] area.

Maybe those schools are not failing or are failing less? I am afraid I can not give you more details, but I recall most of the people in the radio linking low-income families, local schools and “free-meals programme” to bad performance and failing schools.

The [...] ones?

Those two are the main options, but then you have to take into account other factors. (Mind that I am not taking about everybody, just generalising). I would reckon that thos pupils from middle-class families have a more encouraging environment at home. Of course world is not ideal, but how many times have you (we) heard (said) that those families in benefits, teenager moms, etc,… should even have a parenting permission? Of course any kid can go haywaire, but there is a bigger chance than a middle class mom and dad will, at least put the TV off when the kid is doing homework or even ask him/her about the day at school. If not, at the very least, those kids may learn that the life they are having is because of the effort of their parents, not the taxpayer.

However, there is the danger of those kids being influenced for the easy life of the benefits people, which some will be lazy as cows and some other will be relaly trying to improve and, whilst the first ones will certainly not benefit from either a better school or having a personal tutor 24/7 with them, the others may find encouraging to be in a mixed-whatever school/class.

My neighbourhood [...] a hope…

That should be the theory, but apparently in this country is not. When I worked for the Department of Education (under Mr. Ed Balls) I saw all the recommendations and guidelines for schools in England and Wales and I found out that they Goverment trully don’t know what to do. I believe it is a mixture of bad counseling, good manners and fear of loosing elections. I am referring to some apendixes or extra documents that will accompany the guidelines and objectives with titles such as “Ways to raise standards among black and caribbean pupils” and similar. That means that, even in this so fair and non-discriminatory country, there are discriminations and by putting everybody in the same sack (Spanish, I know) yo don’t do a favour to anybody. It is known that black people under perform in academic anvironments, in opposition to let’s say asian students, which over perform or even black athletes which excell in their fields of expertise. But, here is the catch, you can say a black guy is a good runner because he’s black but you can not say is a bad student because he is black. Sweet. Still, what I was saying is that here, in UK, the performance of the pupils doesn’t depend on their effort or their teachers’ but on the social background. And they are just trying to mix all backgrounds. And I think that is very wrong.

I think they should focus on improve the schools (all of them for God’s sake!) instead of trying to dilute them. More effort should be made in encouraging parents and students to attend classes and make an effort (maybe penalties in benefits if a certain grade is not achieved?); more effort should be made in teaching kids how to think by themselves: I belive all of us has learnt how to Google on our own, never taught in school, but still, we had our essays, our exams, our presentations, our curiosity. Now pupils just Google something and copy (or print!) it and thats an essay finished! How can we expect our kids to grow up and take decisions if we do not teach them how to infere C from A and C and measure the conseuences of their decissions?

You say [...] skills, etc.

I do not think home-schooling is appropiate. Kids need to interact with others to get ready for the adult life. If she’s concern she should tell her whats good and whats bad and maybe support her in her studies, but missing out all the other kids, parents, activities got to really mark that girl. And I am writing this thinking that I will be very stressed when Sofia goes to school…

I was [...] to me…

My sister leant very soon how to count (she’s 21 now and she got all the LOGSE good bits) and she came one day crying from school because she was not allowed to count further than five that semester (or whatever) and the teacher had told her off. It really sounds horrible…. She was so proud of what she knew and then… the cold water splash! I could have hurt that woman…

Lauren started high school this year…and she is still telling me that she is bored…that she doesnt learn anything new….she is a very clever girl and the system is going to waste her. Is that clever that she arrived in spain being 7, with so little knowledge of spanish (just a summer intensive course) and she managed to get the level she needed to pass all exams in the first term in spain…

Anyway, when you speak about O levels and A levels eduardo, do you mean Standard courses and Higher courses? Scotland doesnt have O levels and A levels…they have standard and highers…which are a bit different…

You say that you would like to set up your own school… What are your opinions about home-schooling? My husband’s sister in law is a bit “special”. Let’s say that she’s a bit overprotective and she won’t allow her now-two-and-a-half-year-old girl to go to school and she intends to home-school her. Now, I am pretty sure that this is somehow illegal in Spain, isn’t it? Don’t you have to have a very important reason not to take your children to school? My in-laws (the grandparents of the girl) are horrified and can’t understand why she would want to do something like that. Not only won’t the little girl learn the same things, but at the same time she will be missing on the other basic skills that you learn when you are surrounded by other kids: Communication, standing up for yourself, social skills, etc.

I was listening to the radio the other day when they were talking about the A-level results. The general opinion of the public was that the exams are getting easier (your question about the solar energy summarises it all) but other people were arguing that kids don’t get the same amount of support any more in schools and will be let into the following course without having learnt the basic skills like maths, grammar, etc. Some lady called and said that her daughter had learnt to write and read at home before going to school and rather than getting praise from the teachers, she got “penalised” by being left in a corner unattended. Sounds horrible to me…

I trained to become a teacher. I did my “CAP” course, then did another course in teaching Spanish as a foreign language and I even worked as a teacher for a short while. I hated it. I was no good at it and after thinking about it for a while I decided to give it up and try to find something new from scratch. I decided that it wouldn’t be fair on my pupils because I was not able to motivate them (it all lies on motivation, you’re quite right) and I didn’t want to become that horrible teacher that nobody liked and everybody ended up hating.

Dios mio como me enrollo…. Well, in summary, I agree with you in most points. Other points I think I still have to experience by myself at some point in order to have a better opinion. I need a child going to school. Then we will resume the conversation

Well, my point of view…Lauren is the girl I have been teaching spanish to, she is 12 and I met her when she was 9. She is very clever, and a good girl, but if she gets bored you have lost her…so basically you can get from her whatever you want if you keep her motivated. She went to school in Spain when she was 7 till she was 8 (a school year and a half) and now she is back to the Scottish system…what she told me is that in spain she learnt more, she was asked to do homework and she had exams. In UK she is bored. Her level now, after the spanish experience, is higher than her classmates (she took advanced maths in a separated room because what the rest of the class was doing was so easy for her, in Scotland)She is not asked to do any homework at all, and she doesnt have exams…she said to me she liked the spanish school more than the british one “because the scottish one is so easy and boring” And she is under the Scottish system, which is better than the English one as far as I know…

About education… I am not completely sure that the government chooses a curriculum based in “indoctrination”. I want to believe that we are a tiny bit away from the Big Brother society still! And those new schools that the coalition government are trying to push forward (what are they called? I can’t remember, but you know which ones.. those that would be run by parents and teachers, away from government power) I am not sure how successful they’ll be, because although most parents want the best for their kids, at the same time, they don’t know how to run a school, or how to teach… And how would they be funded? How would these schools be maintained?

It is true that the education standards are “well bad” (lol) and listening to your average 14-year-old speaking makes me cringe. They can’t express themselves without saying “like”, “alrite”, “man”, “mate” and they simply lack the vocabulary to put a simple sentence together. And I still don’t believe that for the 30th year running (or so) pupils in secondary education are getting better and better grades at their GCSE and A Levels exams. It is not their fault, of course, because they will learn what they’ve been asked to. However, are those exams getting easier? I believe they are.

A lot of people argue that most graduates (and we are talking graduates: young men and women who have finished an university degree) are having so many problems trying to get work because their basic skills are almost non-existent. A lot of them struggle to spell correctly, they fail to grasp the meaning of a text after reading it, they can’t communicate properly… A disgrace. But I wonder, how did they finish a degree without those skills? How did they even manage to get into a graduate course? How were they allowed to finish school? Are schools “inflating” their results just for pure self-promotion?

This is a very interesting subject, and I believe I will get even more passionate about it when I have children in school-age!