The government want 50% of all school leavers to go on to some form of higher education. At the same time, they have set a target that all schools should aim to have 30% of pupils achieve a 'good' grade in at least 5 GCSEs, including English and Maths. A 'good' grade is defined as anything better than a C. And, according to current estimates, only 46% of all pupils are achieving this target.
Something just isn't right here.
Actually, scratch that. Everything isn't right here. Firstly, the 50% figure is just plain wrong. I believe I've blogged about this before, but it bears repeating. Sending 50% on to higher education is meaningless if most of them drop out after the first year, or less. Far better to have fewer entrants to universities, but a much higher percentage of those who enter actually graduating at the end of the day.
Of course, there are other forms of further education, which I will discuss if and when I unveil my master plan for reforming education across the country. At present, they are badly undervalued, badly under-represented, and represent an area that the government really should take action on.
Then there's the target that 30% of pupils in all schools will achieve this minimum grade. Meaning that it's acceptable if 70% of the pupils in any given school reach the age of 16 without a basic grasp of Maths and English. (And, in fact, there are worse consequences of this. If I were running a failing school under these targets, I would indentify the 40% of pupils who represent my 'top' achievers, and isolate them from the rest. The target would be to get three-quarters of those 'good' pupils to achieve the required grade at any cost. As for the rest, well, no reason to bother with teaching them anything. We'll just keep them away from the rest, so they don't cause problems.) The target has to be for 100% of pupils to leave school with a working knowledge of the fundamentals of English and Maths, whether that is defined as a PASS in some exam or other, and whether or not there are other targets in place. Anything less is a disgrace.
Then there's the definition of a C as a 'good' grade. I'm sorry, but no. A C is a pass. It's an acceptable grade. Indeed, given that we're talking about GCSE level, a C does not bode well for the student's ability to achieve a pass at Higher/A-level, and so a C should be considered a barely acceptable result.
And then there's that statistic that 46% of all pupils are reaching the target. 54% do not. In other words, our education system is utterly failing more than half of all pupils nationwide.
I blame the politicians. Of both major parties. (Oh, and don't give me any of that shit about "but look how much it has improved!" I refuse to accept that being stabbed is a good thing, just because you've made sure I won't get shot.)
6 comments:
[Sarcasm]
But, Stephen, you're missing the point. The target is 30%, and 46% of school pupils are achieving it. We have succeeded - and, in fact have succeeded beyond what we had aimed for. Let us all pat ourselves on the back (pat) (pat).
And if the quality establishments being produced, like the University of the West of Scotland, out of the 50% higher education target are not proof of the validity of the target, I don't know what will be.
[/Sarcasm]
Ah, but the target is for 30% of pupils in all schools to achieve the goal. So, if one school has a 100% attainment, and another has 29%, that's still a failure to meet the target.
On the one hand, that's a nonsense - more students overall will meet the goal in the scenario I just described than would be the case if each school had a 30% achievement rate (unless one school was much bigger than the other, of course). On the other hand, the school that achieves less is almost certainly in a poorer area (economically), where the need for good education is perhaps greatest. So, I actually do applaud the notion that we should target an achievement level per school, and not for the nation as a whole. I just don't think the current targets are the right ones, nor am I pleased that the targets are being missed.
I think it is splendid that under the new scheme, over 50% of people can be above average.
Surely we should all applaud this?!
Um...
1,1,1,1,6,6,6,6,6,6
What is the average of those numbers? What percentage of those numbers are above average?
:)
(Just feeling a bit pedantic. If it makes you feel better, heres a missing apostrophe for you to pull me up about.)
Don't crib... my home's probably much worse education wise than anything you've seen.
I thank the internet knowledge. look: thank you internet.
:)
http://afishcalledveda.blogspot.com/
Ha ha,
I didn't say it was impossible!
I would expect with so many kids some kind of normalisation in the results, however. I bet I'm wrong though, you are right to point that out. When you fiddle with the figures so much you are bound to muck up the way the graph looks.
I hope that set of results isn't what they are aiming at though.
1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2.
Look, there are some more results... this time 90% of people are above average!
Shame it was out of 100.
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