Graduates on benefits claiming too sick to work

Grandmabatty

There isn't a British education system. Scotland has its own

Shows how much the quoted "Think" Tank knows then. Quelle surprise.

sixandahalf

Perhaps so called "manual workers" will have the last laugh. After all AI can't cut hair.

We can't rule out the fact that robots could. Probably instructed by AI.

Mamie

Grandmabatty

There isn't a British education system. Scotland has its own

Shows how much the quoted "Think" Tank knows then. Quelle surprise.

As does Wales.

Every school pupil in Wales has to take Welsh to GCSE level, often to the detriment of other languages.
Very insular and parochial.

Mamie

sixandahalf

Perhaps so called "manual workers" will have the last laugh. After all AI can't cut hair.

We can't rule out the fact that robots could. Probably instructed by AI.

I'm not letting a robot near my hair!

fancythat

What is £400, if he managed to alter what his kids did for their jobs.

🤔 How?

After being encouraged by teachers to take the university route no wonder so many are suffering mental health problems. The country desperately needs technical skills.

I'm not following this at all.

What do you mean by technical skills David49?

Technical Skills like Computing, Engineering (electrical, mechanical, electronic, aerospace, chemical, civil etc), robotics, data science etc - I cannot list them all.

Colleges of Technology and Polytechnics offered courses in technical subjects but then became universities.
The country needs well-qualified engineers, technicians.

I wonder if Covid has something to do with the rise in sickness.

fancythat

^Things do change though as recruitment in retail/service sector jobs is particularly difficult at the moment.^

Not surprised.
I saw an ad in local Aldi.
£16.5k, for a Deputy store Manager!
]I dont live in London or somewhere very salubrious. No idea if that would change the wage].

I think you’ve read that wrong. You can earn £32,000 a year as a deputy manager.
Then you can earn more if you do the managers job, ie, holidays/ sickness.
Out of interest, did you not think that was an extremely low wage?

Allira

^After being encouraged by teachers to take the university route no wonder so many are suffering mental health problems. The country desperately needs technical skills.^

I'm not following this at all.

What do you mean by technical skills David49?

Technical Skills like Computing, Engineering (electrical, mechanical, electronic, aerospace, chemical, civil etc), robotics, data science etc - I cannot list them all.

Colleges of Technology and Polytechnics offered courses in technical subjects but then became universities.
The country needs well-qualified engineers, technicians.

I wonder if Covid has something to do with the rise in sickness.

All of those courses are in UK universities.

petra

fancythat

Things do change though as recruitment in retail/service sector jobs is particularly difficult at the moment.

Not surprised.
I saw an ad in local Aldi.
£16.5k, for a Deputy store Manager!
]I dont live in London or somewhere very salubrious. No idea if that would change the wage].

I think you’ve read that wrong. You can earn £32,000 a year as a deputy manager.
Then you can earn more if you do the managers job, ie, holidays/ sickness.
Out of interest, did you not think that was an extremely low wage?

There are low wages in this area.
Very low.
I read the board at the hospital.a couple of years ago. I was shocked.

I didnt read the board wrong.
I read it 3 times to make sure what I was reading.

This place is not London or anything close!

Oadby and Wigston in Leicestershire is currently ranked as having the lowest median annual wage in the UK at £24,337, followed by Burnley (£28,173), Merthyr Tydfil in Wales (£27,852), and Torbay in Devon (£27,116). Other areas with high concentrations of low-paid jobs include Boston, Blackpool, and various coastal and urban locations across the Midlands and North

And that is median

I just dont think everyone realises what low wages[those who actually work] there are in certain areas of the Uk still. In 2025/6.

As Allira says, an IQ test measures cognitive ability - not things like leadership, ability to work in teams, creativity, originality and the sort of people skills necessary for managing others. These things can be (and are) measured in three year courses. Each module has to list learning outcomes, mapped over various criteria (not just subject knowledge) to show that the modules themselves and the course as a whole will give students a range of skills that used to be called ‘graduateness’. An IQ test is a snapshot (you can do them online) and are widely recognised as flawed, as they were culturally biased and only measure a very specific range of cognitive skills.

If the brother had an IQ of 80 it must have been quite clear that he would not score highly. It seems to me cruel to have that deliberately formalised by having a number attached. Imagine what it would do to your confidence. Also, cheating to get him an apprenticeship he was unable to complete denied that chance to a candidate who could have made a go of it. Nothing clever about any of that, IMO.

Allira

Mamie

Grandmabatty

There isn't a British education system. Scotland has its own

Shows how much the quoted "Think" Tank knows then. Quelle surprise.

As does Wales.

Every school pupil in Wales has to take Welsh to GCSE level, often to the detriment of other languages.
Very insular and parochial.

I'd be very interested in time to come to see what effect this has had.

If I'd been a parent = I wouldnt have dared move to Wales if I'd looked into the education system here. My reaction would have been "They've got to be educated privately then - unless I can see they're going to be able to manage to get through to end of their schooldays being taught only in English" and not feeling very hopeful that that would be possible - as I've watched schools being changed over from English to Welsh - first with a Welsh stream being introduced and then subsequently that Welsh "stream" becomes the new replacement school and cue for having to move one's child to another school that is still English or pay for private education (Steiner schools or private tutors anyone?). Of course lots of people can't afford that - and then you've got a problem on your hands (unless you've got a child that is naturally gifted in languages and willing to learn Welsh - but if you haven't....whoops..and no they don't all "pick it up like little sponges".).

I know I'd have paid about as much attention to a Welsh weekly lesson or two as I did to Latin lessons in the event (ie goodness knows how the teacher didnt seem to notice I'd got a book on something more interesting/relevant to me hidden inside my Latin textbook - despite being one of the "obedient" pupils that did what teacher said basically). He must have been wilfully blind - especially given I was one of the pupils that was on friendly terms with him....

But yep....I do think it's a waste of a lesson where something more useful could be taught (unless you know your child plans on staying in Wales and plans on working in the public sector at that - ie where there might be someone there in the personnel office deliberately scanning down application forms to "that language question" and throwing the application in the bin if they didn't like the answer to that one - yep....I've been told by a horrified watcher of that sort of thing going on) - the watcher didnt dare tell the personnel person off or leak it officially - but they definitely leaked it unofficially that that was happening. Otherwise that lesson time could be used for something more generally useful in Britain as a whole - like French for instance.

With the knowledge of his IQ, his father did his best for his son[i wouldnt argree with him taking the interview for the son either].
But you can see where her dad was coming from. Can you not.

Knowledge can be power.

Has to admit too that, if I'd been in a Welsh school and forced to spend a lesson or two doing Welsh each week = it wouldnt have been worth their while sending me in to do an exam on it at the end - as they'd probably realise I'd fail it anyway. If they sent me in anyway - I'd have probably skyved off school apparently ill (though again I wasn't someone who skyved basically - only did it once).

fancythat

With the knowledge of his IQ, his father did his best for his son[i wouldnt argree with him taking the interview for the son either].
But you can see where her dad was coming from. Can you not.

Knowledge can be power.

Yep fancythat - I could certainly see where my father was coming from re his son. He would have had a good idea anyway - but would have wanted confirmation as to whether he was correct.

Yep...indeed to he was wrong to pass himself off as his son over the phone - but part of how I know how to "recognise his footprints" is he sometimes will do things by an indirect route if it seems like a good idea to him.

I came to recognise those "footprints" when I landed up in the small claims court (with my father with me) because of a lodger that was refusing to stick to the agreement he'd made with me and, very clearly, never meant to from the outset. Cue for my father saying to me at the end "Did you hear Mr Bad Lodger say he'd failed his teacher training course?" I hadnt heard that - but must have smiled at the thought. My father went on to say "Well you can't have someone like that (ie immoral) teaching children. Teachers are supposed to teach Values as well". At which point - I remembered that he'd gone to exactly the same teacher training college as the lodger had - and it still had the same principal my father had trained under (and been one of his star pupils by the sound of it). LOL - and I wondered just how much that phonecall must have cost when he rang that principal........as he had so obviously rung up and said "Hello - Mr Former Star Pupil here. Now about one of your current trainees........"

He'd also found a way to handle it when a vendor had played games with me about the starter house I was supposed to be buying and let me down - he never did get back his architects plans for the work he was doing on the house - as my father wouldnt even give them back to me....

If a child refuses to engage with learning there is little a teacher can do, other than try to ensure they don't disturb others who value education. It's not for me to comment on the politics of Welsh being taught in Wales, but as it is the first language of many children and was sidelined by the English it doesn't strike me as a bad idea.

I can see where the father was coming from yes - but that doesn't mean I think it was morally ok. If one of mine clearly had a low IQ I would have been trying to find a niche for them that played to other strengths, and would definitely not have humiliated them by deliberately having it pointed out.

When I was young, a friend of mine had an apprenticeship, and loved the work. He was with a carpentry firm who specialised in bespoke furniture and fittings. Unfortunately there was a death in the family who owned the firm, and it closed, leaving my friend unqualified and also unable to get another apprenticeship. He was written off at 17/18, as the cut-off age for starting an apprenticeship was 16. I have never forgotten that, as he was so disappointed, and ended up working on production lines instead of being the master craftsman he'd wanted to be.

Deliberately cheating to get someone you have already taken pains to categorise as having a low IQ into an apprenticeship for which they are not capable is not only cruel to the young man in question, whose confidence was probably already low, but very unfair to someone who could have benefited from the opportunities the apprenticeship allowed.

I don't fully follow the architect story, but moral is as moral does, and if the lodger had resat his course and was trying to turn things round, it was not (IMO) very moral to try to get him sacked. The HT may well have known about the failure - s/he would almost certainly have seen the certificates and registration documents - so why be cruel? One bad act (whatever the lodger had done) does not excuse another, does it? Maybe morality means different things to different people.

It's not for me to comment on the politics of Welsh being taught in Wales, but as it is the first language of many children and was sidelined by the English it doesn't strike me as a bad idea.

Of course Welsh should be taught in Wales but not as a compulsory subject and, as a pupil only needs to include one language when choosing GCSE options, Welsh is often the only one they need to take, which may prove to be a handicap in their future. The number of pupils taking a language other than Welsh at GCSE level has declined rapidly in recent years.

I remember very many years ago being in a meeting with the DofE and he was then very keen to introduce Welsh language teaching back into schools but it was an option for a long time which is fine.

You are right, CariadAgain Welsh is needed in many organisations even if the job is not public facing or even temporary.

But Has to admit too that, if I'd been in a Welsh school and forced to spend a lesson or two doing Welsh each week = it wouldnt have been worth their while sending me in to do an exam on it at the end - as they'd probably realise I'd fail it anyway.
You'd probably have passed, it's apparently fairly basic according to a DGC!

I really don't understand what the problem is with compulsory Welsh GCSE.

I had to take compulsory French (which I loathed and was rubbish at) and would have happily taken Welsh!
I could have at least practiced it easily.

But now I know that even my French wasn't wasted. Education is never wasted it seems to me... and so young people learning Welsh are still growing, developing and acquiring new skills.

I really don't understand what the problem is with compulsory Welsh GCSE.

Because it is limiting.

It is spoken in Wales and Patagonia. Spoken by less than 20% of the population of Wales on a daily basis.
It is not the language of technology, not a majority workd language and is a niche language.

I am enthusiastic about niche languages being saved but not as a compulsory language at the expensive of languages which are more extensively spoken around the world.

My five year old , from an English speaking home in Wales, is halfway through Reception in Welsh language school. His spoken Welsh is developing well.
There is some evidence that learning a second language whilst very young can help you to add other languages later.
One of my daughters took German at GCSE, and I'm not sure how useful she has found that, either.
My twin GC are in Norway, and, aged seven, move seamlessly from Norwegian to English in speaking, reading, and writing.
The population of Norway ( 5 million)
would definitely define this as a niche language, but they do live there, so...

There is some evidence that learning a second language whilst very young can help you to add other languages later.
Yes, it creates pathways in the brain which makes learning other languages easier apparently.

However, it is the compulsory element which is wrong imo.

The population of Norway ( 5 million)
would definitely define this as a niche language, but they do live there, so.

Totally different. It's related to other N European languages too, including English.

You speak as someone from the borders Allira, but the further you get into Wales, the more important the Welsh language becomes to people, adults want their children to learn and speak it better than they do themselves, and children see it as part of everyday life. My little granddaughter, who is under two, and attends a Welsh speaking nursery, moves seamlessly between the two languages, it is quite amazing.

Allira

^The population of Norway ( 5 million)^
would definitely define this as a niche language, but they do live there, so.

Totally different. It's related to other N European languages too, including English.

It's my understanding that Welsh has got very different roots to many other languages and would be harder to learn to most people.

One can't regard all languages as equivalent. Obviously I'd have a fit at the thought of trying to learn something like Japanese or Chinese and regard myself as just having been set a difficult task (and kudos to those that can manage it).

But there are basically language "groups" so to say - which is how I see it and if you speak one of the languages in a "group" then it should be easier to learn another one in the same group. Welsh is a thing on its own from what I can see and there's still all these different types (think it was 16 or 17??). Cue for one of the awful neighbours I used to have not having a clue what I was on about when I called a microwave a "popty-ping"....and yep that is a Welsh way of describing one.

With a language in the same group there will be recognisable words and things and I was surprised when I got invited off to stay with an Italian friend in her country subsequently that I never had to ask her what any of the things on a menu/signs/etc said - because I could figure it out and I don't speak Italian. But there's enough words with common bases etc that I could get a pretty good idea. So - what I regard as the same "language group".