Literacy and numeracy standards

I too failed my 11+ and when it came to my future I was told by the Headmistress of the secondary modern school I could either work in a shop or an office; the sum total of my options! I worked in a bank.

Returning to that sort of a tiered system would be dreadful. My children are all doing well in their chosen fields thanks to the Comprehensive education.

Indeed. All children deserve a good education and not made to feel like a failure at11.

The only people who like grammars are those who were selected (or their kids) Most children do not get into grammar schools. Only some of the naturally able or heavily coached. make it. Loads of my sec mod friends went to uni or college and have had gd careers. DDs both in non selective state schols in sth London. Both got gd degrees and have gd jobs. Grammar schools will not solve the problem. Even Gove knows that otherwise he would have bought them back. Where they still exist many take kids from miles away and they no longer serve the bright working class as people of our age recall.

No I failed my 11+ and went to a secondary mod. Of the girls I knew who went to grammar school I happen to have had an equal if not more 'successful' career.

I spent a couple of interesting hours tonight talking in a pub in Soho, London. I was talking to a guy who was Deputy Head of a Primary school in Poplar, It was such an eye opener for me. He had no hope for the future, no hope for the children in his school - reason being, the parents. The parents were on drugs, alcohol whatever, had never worked and had zero aspiration for themselves or their children. He wanted so much for the children in his school but had given up trying to inspire them, there was no point and no back up.

I just think how different it was when I was young and parents did aspire for better things for their children. Education was the route out of poverty. I wonder how many on Gransnet went to a Grammar school and flourished because of it. I did.

Areas in the country that still have selective education way out perform those who don't. Why condemn children to mediocrity?

Indeed Penstemmon, I find it very hard to match this negative view with the teaching and learning that I have seen with my own eyes in so many schools.

indeed mamie

And I am no apologist for poor teaching or school leadership but there are more good & committed teachers and headteachers than not!

I think there are so many things that cannot be neatly measured too. There is lots of evidence that says that British employees are valued abroad because they can think laterally, work in teams, use their own initiative etc
Also our "gold standard" A level does not include Maths and English (or the relevant native language) so students are not automatically studying these post 16 as is the case in most other countries.
It really is comparing apples and pears.
I don't think the constant attacks on teachers help. I am amazed at how much respect teachers still have here in France, when I know from working in both systems, how much harder the teachers work in the UK.

I have tried to resist posting but here I am!

Comparing potatoes grown in Lincolnshire with those grown in Colarado will mean that Lincolnshire potatoes always do better! That is because the context for potato growing is much better in Lincolnshire.

Education is always within the context of the society it is educating and not just the school! There are many differences between England and the other countries that are 'above' us on the OECD league table. A key one might be that other languages are more phonetic making the basic skills of reading and writing much easier. They also generally have less difference between the richest /poorest and also do not have the history of public schools/class & educational snobbery. Attitudes about the value of education are apparently more positive in all the countries 'above' us on the list and teachers are a more respected and valued group. There is considerably less interference from politicians and fewer changes instigated central government. Those working with the youngest children often have equivalent levels of qualification to those educating older children.

I see the Guardian have very kindly given Paul Dacre quite a large spread in the CIF today. I am not sure he would appreciate it being accompanied by a photo of Alastair Campbell, though.
I haven't read it all yet, but what he appears to be saying is that if we do not agree with him, then we are not being fair. Hmm....

Jendurham - I read the article yesterday. I was particularly struck the removal of any reference to children or families when Gove started his campaign of terror. The Daily Mail is having a real go at the Guardian, and Polly particularly this morning. It's along the familiar lines of lefties hate Britain and spoil everything.

www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/books/barry-norman-on-dealing-with-the-loss-of-his-wife-1-3138182

Just read this very moving article in The Scotsman and was struck by the fact that neither of them had any tertiary education at all but both went on to be very successful writers. No one today would dream of employing a journalist without at least an honours degree and yet the standard of writing in newspapers and journals is often appalling.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/11/baby-p-hamzah-khan-tory-vandalism-gove
Sorry, forgot the link, again.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/11/baby-p-hamzah-khan-tory-vandalism-gove
An interesting take by Polly Toynbee re Gove and his attacks on social work and the education system. Is it true, Mishap?
I know that my grandson would not have seen a speech therapist and been diagnosed with ASD so quickly if his parents had not moved to an area with a Sure Start centre.

Jess very true. And as you imply ('delights in saying') those who seem to take pride in this attitude make me want to scream.

And nearly everyone delights in saying how bad they are at maths or how much they hate it. Not v inspiring for the little ones is it?

I don't know if or how you can access yesterdays Back Bench Debate in Parliament but if you are genuinely interested in this topic it is worth catching up with it. I caught it on BBC Parliament, Freeview 81, 11.30a.m.

Conservative M.P Caroline Dineage put forward a debate titled 'Adult Literacy and Numeracy'. I taped it and watched it today. I must say it was a nice change to see decent M.P's acknowledge the OECD report was a disgrace, by 'BOTH' sides of the house. There was a little partisan politics shown but the debate was very sensible and raised good points. The yobbo section were missing, thank goodness and it was a pleasure to see parliament doing it's job in an intelligent fashion. I was appalled at the numbers I saw in the house though, at one time there were 4 Labour MP's, 12 Tory MP's and no Lib Dems.

It would be refreshing if the atmosphere and thoughts displayed yesterday could be carried forward and for once all parties concentrated on getting our children educated to a good standard. Too much to ask, probably.

I take your point Mishap but not all of us have a knowledge of social-worker-speak.

I think it is unfair to imply that teachers are primarily to blame for falling educational standards. You can't view education in isolation from the rest of society. In the UK in particular, there is an over-emphasis on trivia and superficiality, and an increasing number of young people have a very narrow view of what "success" might be.

Hardly a week goes by without some glamorous awards ceremony being televised, where film actors, pop stars, soap stars, sportsmen/women, etc., etc., are heaped with praise and treated like demi-gods for doing something that they enjoy and for which they are highly paid. Is it any wonder that young people aspire to this sort of lifestyle and therefore view education as superfluous to what they want out of life.

I have just been chatting to my DD who is well educated - she has an MA. But she knows very little about grammar - and fully admits this. The business that she and her OH run carries the necessity to produce publicity materials and she always comes to us to check the grammar.

She has no confidence in her ability to get it right and says that she did not learn grammar at school. Her comment was that the teachers just fed her the stuff to get through exams and grammar did not count.

No lack of intelligence here; but a huge and frustrating gap in her education, which has probably been shared my most of her generation.

I worked as a social worker - so I had contact with many families for whom education was simply a meaningless concept. They simply couldn't see the point of getting up early to take the children to school when you could leave them in front of the TV with a packet of crisps.

That is the sort of family I was talking about, not ordinary decent people facing problems in their lives of one sort or another. I was trying to avoid usuing the phrase "problem familes" as it has gone out of favour. Anyone who has practised SW will know exactly what I mean, and it is very sad for the children.

Parents in families with problems do not value education and we cannot make them however hard we try.

That's a bit sweeping Mishap. There may be many reasons why families have problems but it doesn't automatically follow that the parents don't value education. I don't particularly want to plaster private information about my daughter all over Gransnet, but suffice it to say that, regardless of my degrees and the fact I value education, we had huge problems when my daughter was a teenager which included her refusal to attend school from the age of 12 – any school and we tried three different ones.

Btw She is now studying for a degree in psychology while holding down a highly responsible job and raising a family. So far all her grades are A+.

Has anyone else read School Wars by Melissa Benn.
Needless to say, I agree with most of what she says about the education system.
One of the problems with taking education out of the hands of the politicians is the starting base. Would it mean we would have to accept the system as it is at the moment, which I would definitely disagree with. It's such a mix of different types of school and management.

The only person I know who is a neet is my sister's son, who is 36 and outside the age group concerned. However, he is also the only one I know whose parents did not support the staff at his school. If my kids or my other sister's kids had been in trouble at school we'd have wanted to know why and probably supported the staff. They have always been in education or work. If my sister's son was in trouble at school, she would always believe what he said and ring up the school and say he was not going to do the punishment, usually detention. He has still never had a proper job, and usually ended up walking out of any work placement he was given.
But we all had the same parents who valued education, so what happened to change my middle sister?

Parents in families with problems do not value education and we cannot make them however hard we try. They themselves feel let down by the education system as they are the product of successive governments' interference. They cannot see that their education did them any good, so why would they want more of the same for their children?

I really do think that we need to leave the teachers to teach - this is what they are trained to do and what they do best if they are just left to get on with it. Of course there has to be monitoring by the head and the governing body, but as long as they feel straight-jacketed and undermined they will have poor morale with the inevitable consequences.

Aka you are so right about the need for children and their parents to value education! And someone else said that much of a child's learning takes place outside school, which is also true. If children don't see books and reading as something normal, for example, then the importance which schools place upon them must seem very strange.

Teachers would also value more time to teach, as well I know, but this has been repeatedly discussed on GN, so I will not start again.

BTW, I had appalling Mths teachers back in the 50s and 60s - no classroom disruption, just a collective grey pall over every lesson.