Gove gone!

Won't the change in the school leaving age bring down the unemployment figures in time for the election ; or am I being cynical?

I think that's realistic Tegan.
I've just been looking back on Google to when the the last raising of the school leaving age took place - 1972, from 15 to 16. During Heath's govt. (ROSLA) though to be fair earlier Labour govts were said to be considering it.
I remember thinking at the time, helps the unemployment figures. But the effect on the many non-academic pupils wasn't helpful.

Something else happened more recently but I can't remember what it was [but I do know it reduced the figure]. I'm pretty cynical of most things that happen before elections [interest rates; unemployment figures].Lets hope that courses are in place for the non academic ones [but I'm not holding my breath about that].

Nanalogue - I agree with your post (Tue 15-Jul-14 21:14:06) completely. I have never understood why MPs are put in control of something that is openly stated that they know nothing about - no wonder things get in such a mess. Things don't operate that way in the job market for the public does it ...

Tegan Although it's not really connected to young people, perhaps you were thinking about job seekers being encouraged to move to "self employment". This quite often means that people can get a few hours work doing odd jobs and can scrape together a few quid but it's not really employment in the sense of providing a predictable income - it does, though, take people out of the unemployment figures.

I agree with you rubylady that education is much too narrow and often doesn't equip people with the sort of skills and knowledge that they need for everyday life. I think the same thing is found in the British Citizenship Test which often requires people to answer all sorts of questions that a lot of British people are unable to answer and which are of no particular practical use.

nigglynellie would you not like to see a cabinet that was representative of different genders and backgrounds? Do you not think that the cabinet we have had for the last 4 years has been rather lacking in diversity, with very few women, only one person with a non-white background, and him very recent? I think the trouble is that they are making decisions that affect the lives of many without necessarily having much experience of life.
I would agree that most successful politicians these days come from wealthy or upper-middle class backgrounds but the first 4 yrs of this government have had the least diverse cabinet for decades whether you look at gender or educational background.

Tegan You may also be referring to the fact that this year the children have had to stay on at school until they were 17 years old. Totally useless unless they were going to go onto university. What would be the use of just getting AS level without going on to get the A level and then that really is only a bridge to uni, doesn't count for much really at job level. Not when other applicants will have degrees.

It's all baffling what they do these days. I am so glad that we dropped out of the "normal" education system for four years. We had total flexibility and freedom. Free to teach when I wanted, no curriculum, holidays whenever, lessons with other people and fun along the way.

No one ever told us about home education and that it was an option.

If anyone out there has the opportunity to do this, please consider it, it is very worthwhile and rewarding.

I don't understand why, because some one has had a priveledged upbringing, they are deemed incapable of understanding the 'plight ' of people who have not and are seen to be heartless especially if they are Tories!

rubylady there are vocational qualifications they could be doing and they could be re-sitting GCSEs or at least improving their literacy and numeracy. And they could be doing work experience, sessions on preparation for work, how to present yourself at an interview, how to write a CV and actually looking for a job. In the palaeolithic period when I started teaching, pupils could leave school any time during their final year when they got a job or started an apprenticeship. There were more jobs around for 14 and 15 year olds in those days.

Kitty, I agree with you. I do not know enough about the education system to comment on whether Michael Gove's methods were right or wrong. What I will say is that many people thought he was trying to push up standards and give children a decent education and grounding in what many consider the essentials to build on, despite their background. And certainly the standards in British education were lagging behind a lot of the world and needed to improve.
Unfortunately he came up against a lot of people who had other ideas.
I do not envy Nicky Morgan, I do not think any Tory Education Minister will ever have an easy time of it.

I really do not think it was just that there were "a lot of people who had other ideas." It was far more fundamental than that. He did not listen to the professionals on the ground. He formulated ideas, based on the laudable aim of raising standards, but they were his ideas as a lay person and not based on proper knowledge and research. This is why he has been at loggerheads with so many people. Teachers have been vainly trying to tell him that he is barking up the wrong tree, but he just bulldozed his way through.

I am sure that if he had listened to the teachers they could have told him the best ways of raising standards. Broadening the curriculum is not a soft option - it is a way of producing rounded citizens and of learning the key skills in imaginative and memorable ways. He cannot see this and harks back to total desk learning, like "when he was a boy." But underfunding is a huge problem; and teacher training; and crumbling school facilities; and lack of music teachers - I could go on. If he had addressed some of these issues then I would be all for him. Instead he just plugged his pet ideas, based on no more than his gut feeling.

The other aspect is more political and that is academies and free schools. He made the naive assumption that if schools were freed from LA control they would do better. Some will, some won't, but he could not see that. They, like all schools, need to have proper management and there is no way of ensuring that free schools and academies are properly managed.

Under his watch school governors (lay people like himself) have virtually taken over the role of the LAs for all schools and have massive responsibilities for which they are unprepared and unsupported. Of course things are going to go wrong.

Reminds me of telling someone in about 1960 what my curriculum at teacher training school entailed. I reached how, as well as how to put over the three Rs and so on, we also had to choose two subjects out of teaching Art, Handwork, Music and Sport. His response? "But surely they don't need to do those things. They are all going to work in factories or something"

How about all the careers in these things that could be open to someone who enjoyed them at school? And if they did end up in a boring job, how would they spend their leisure hours? Drinking and watching rubbish on the box?

This was exactly my point Kittylester, the fact of your birth, upbringing and schooling is completely irrelevant whatever those circumstances are. As for diversity in government, I think that government/any posts should be given on merit and whether the person is a man or a woman, or where they come from shouldn't even be an issue these days. I frankly think it's being patronising to these ladies that such a big deal is being made over their gender. Everyone should be treated as a person, not slotted into pigeon holes to be issued out in order to make the numbers right.
Going back to education. Something that I feel is quite ironic and sometimes sad is that in developing countries children and their parents are so keen/desperate to get an education that they will walk miles, make enormous sacrifices mostly financial, attend lessons in run down buildings, in the open air with classes way over subscribed and under funded, and yet they all are so keen to learn and education so valued that these handicaps are coped with as best as possible in order to obtain this goal. In this country so often the exact opposite seems to be the case. Perhaps society places more value on anything that has to be fought for, than something that comes on a plate.

rubylady I considered home schooling in the early 80's but knew no-one educating their children at home. Good to read your experience. If I was beginning all over again today I don't think I would hesitate to educate my children at home.

It is not their background per se. Its that between them they have such narrow experience to draw on. I can think of management teams... e.g. one in a big well known corporate, that are so similar to each other they even look the same - all tall, thin, wear the same sort of clothes, come from south of england, all think nothing of driving hundreds of miles a week, oh and all white and all male. A less effective team is hard to imagine, because you can only have a good team if there is a mix of talents and outlooks. Could it be, I have wondered, whether there is a problem there of the boss choosing staff in his own image?
It would be the same criticism if a cabinet was swamped with representatives of the transport unions. They would not see the world from enough points of view. We might think that they are not well equipped to have valid opinions on health, education or the workings of investment banks. This is a whole country we are talking about!
So my criticism of Cameron is that he did not choose the best. He chose people like him that he felt most cosy and safe with. Like people he grew up with. Westminster appointments do not work on choosing the best, as people attempt to do when recruiting in other walks of life.

Actually I do agree with you JessM. You certainly need a diversity of ideas and attitudes in any institution. I think in politics it is quite difficult though as someone said earlier, you have to be well heeled to enter and that alone tends to attract people from a particular walk of life, and even if someone originally comes from an ordinary/normal(?) background, it's easy to leave it behind you and become like the majority in thought and deed! I also think that 'birds of a feather sticking together' is instinctive in all of us. You see it again and again when abroad, or amongst newcomers to our own shores. At gatherings we tend to seek out people with the same interests and attitudes, I think it makes us feel safe and comfortable, and I guess DC along with other political leaders feels the same, as they all seem to surround themselves with like minded people whatever their political persuasion, people they went to school with, university friends, people they worked with, shared digs with - it makes them feel safe.

My daughter always says that she would really struggle with teaching at her inner city comprehensive school had she been privately educated and didn't know the dynamics of those sort of schools. When I first started work we had to spend so much time in every department before we settled into our allocated job. What never ceases to amaze me is how much difference a good headteacher [and vice versa] makes to a school, and how quickly they can change.

Another young teacher who went to a "good " comprehensive, lived in a leafy suburb ended up tacking in an inner city 'poor' comp. She then got a job, alms twice the pay, half the class sizes in a private school. She's going back to ordinary comps as she finds the children and their pushy parents not half as interesting as her previous job

I'm not sure that is necessarily the case.

DS1 taught in one of the most ethnically diverse schools in one of the most deprived areas of London before he went to Japan. They begged him to stay, as did the students.

DD1 went to Oxford, trained as teacher and now works with the worst achieving and educationally and emotionally needy children in her area of Derby. Parents are asking for their children to go to that school from miles away because of it's reputation. She has been asked to run courses on her systems as they are seen as 'best practice'.

All our children were privately educated and I refute the idea that they cannot understand or have a view on the needs of others from their, so called, privileged positions.

Pressed 'post' before I had finished.

That being the case there is no reason why other people like them cannot be trusted to see the reality or the way forward.

Again I agree with you KittyL. bearing in mind that almost all the great reformers of the past have come from privileged backgrounds, it knocks on the head that people from this background cannot empathise with anyone else I think anyone from anywhere can have an unsentimental desire to do good and you don't have to be from any one particular section of society to feel this emotion and understand the needs of others.

Pushy parents? Are they just parents that want their children to do well at school? Surely most Comp parents want the same? If not I despair.

That is what I think PENGUIN, there are lots of parents out there who want the best for theirs.

Mind you there are also many who could not care less !

Surely if you don't find the young you are educating, whatever their background, 'interesting' you are in the wrong job? One group may be more challenging but surely all should be considered interesting?

Lilygran (my grandma was called Lily). You are so right, they could be putting their time to better use in all that you mentioned. Maybe it could still be classed as education but also to go doing work experience at different places. Not many at 16/17 years old know what they want to do for a lifetime and usually only get one work experience but this is really inadequate. I started work at 15, got the 'O' levels I needed for the career I wanted but training didn't start until I was 18, nurse training, so I went working for a while first. Because I was only filling time, I had a lot of fun in the job I was doing, working alongside a friend of mine too. She also turns 50 this year, we've been friends ever since.

penguinpaperback It is such a shame that you didn't have the opportunity to home school when you wanted to. I don't know how far it goes back in this country, it is very popular on the other side of the pond though. Hopefully we will catch up and then the education system will have to do something if they want bums on seats as the government gets an allowance for every child who attends school. If children start to "drop out" so to speak then something with the way schools are run will have to be done. My son is doing 'A' levels at the moment so I'm at the end of my children being in the system and I am thankful for that. Although he does still have university to go.