1984 in Britain again......

[Swoop]

Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.


linky


Fewer than half of teenagers in England mastered the three Rs in their GCSEs this summer, official figures show.


The Government report in full


Despite record levels of investment in education under Labour, almost 350,000 failed to gain five good GCSEs including the key subjects of English and mathematics – the Government's official benchmark of an acceptable education.

More than 113,600 teenagers – one in five – failed to get a single good GCSE.

A report published yesterday also showed that almost a quarter of boys did not earn any A* to C grades – leading to fresh fears over the gender gap in education.

Last night teachers claimed young people were being let down by a "flawed, exam-based" education system.

They warned that many pupils were being left on the scrapheap as they finish school with no useful qualifications.

It is almost as though it was a system designed to turn out worker drones and state dependent proles.....

[lazs2]

If they can't read or write pass exams wouldn't that be the teachers fault?

lazs

[JBA]

Why whenever a state employee performs their job poorly the blame everyone else.

"Last night teachers claimed young people were being let down by a "flawed, exam-based" education system."

Same Crap, diffrent country.

I have a colleague  who’s wife is a teacher, we were discussing days off. She has worked part time for two years and earns 30 sick days a year, every holiday on the calendar, and two months off in the summer.  
Meanwhile our kids are cuddlinghunkes when it comes to reading and righting.

[Swoop]

Teachers.  Parents.  Lack of gov funding (despite what the article says).

Possibly even something to do with popular culture.


The list of contributary factors could get quite long.....


Depends who you talk to.  Of course, teachers unions are basically saying "it's not our fault."  Parents of these numbnuts kids will also claim the same thing.

[eagl]

You're taking it too seriously Swoopy.  It's just British humor.

[lazs2]

make the factors as long as you like but if you have a student for 8 hours a day every day for 12 years and you can't teach him to read and write and do simple math then...

your institution and your teachers are crap.   I say "your" but I mean ours also.

Blame is what socialists do to take the heat off of their failed ideas.

lazs

[storch]

heh reminds of the song flagpole sitting by greenday

[midnight Target]

Originally posted by JBA
Why whenever a state employee performs their job poorly the blame everyone else.

"Last night teachers claimed young people were being let down by a "flawed, exam-based" education system."

Same Crap, diffrent country.

I have a colleague  who’s wife is a teacher, we were discussing days off. She has worked part time for two years and earns 30 sick days a year, every holiday on the calendar, and two months off in the summer.  
Meanwhile our kids are cuddlinghunkes when it comes to reading and righting.

My mom was a teacher. She was underpaid, kept working with students well after the "end of the day" was always writing lesson plans or grading papers after coming home and cooking dinner and she often used her own money to buy supplies or books to enhance her class. Not to mention the time spent on PTA meetings, parent conferences........  Teaching is NOT a 9-5 job.

[lazs2]

mt... how was she "underpaid" except by her standards?   What part time worker made as much?

in her part time job that was maybe 6 months a year.. she worked 8 hour days at that job... of those 8... she probly actually taught... maybe 5.. the rest was breaks... if you can't do the work in those breaks (correcting papers and such) then you are incompetent or.... the load is too great for the day.

I would say that they should stay at the school and finish the work on overtime.  if the overtime gets to be too much then I would say... less classes per teacher but no time off... make em work full time like EVERY OTHER FRIGGING WORKER ON THE PLANET

lazs

[midnight Target]

6 months of school? Maybe in lazs world.

[DREDIOCK]

Im not a huge believer in the underpaid teachers claim.
Much for the same reasons Laz describes.

And it is obvious that throwing money at the problem isn't the answer.

Mainly because most of the money never reaches the areas where its needed most.
The children.

Don't know about the rest of the country but to a large extent here in jersey our education system is top heavy at the administrative level.
We actually have more school districts then we have municipalities.

If that isnt top heavy I dont know what is.

[Neubob]

Just as long as they don't start listening to country music.

[DREDIOCK]

Originally posted by midnight Target
6 months of school? Maybe in lazs world.

I think the point is for the time they work they get paid plenty.

If you broke it down by the day how much they made for the days they spent teaching at school. And added to that all the days they get off in a years time.
You would find they would make quite a nice salary.

Now if you want to look at it for an entire 52 week year. Then, yea they don't get paid a lot
the point is they do not work a full year. Thus they don't get paid for a full year.

But they do get paid pretty good for the time they are there

[Tiger]

Laz, I used to think that way until my wife started teaching.  I used to give her a hard tiem about here 'short work day' and all those days off she had.  Until I sat down and looked at all the BS she has to deal with.

She teaches 2nd grade.  Students arrive at 7:45, leave at 2:30.  There is no 'overtime' pay for teachers, they are salary positions.  
Sure she gets more holidays than me, but those days where the students are off that are listed as teacher workdays, are normally 8-10 hour days for the teachers.  They have open meetings atleast once per month with the parents that start at 3:30 in the afternoon and run until 8:00 at night.  She is constantly sent to pointless training siminars during the year.  She always has a stack of papers to grade when she gets home.  Ridiculous amounts of bureacratic paperwork to fill out for the school.  They have changed the report cards here, you no longer get ABCDF, or a #, you get a Below-Basic, Basic, Proficient and it's not just the main subjects, you get those 'results' for all the subcatagories of the each subject.  report cards are 3 pages long for 2nd graders.  Also, my wife always has a stack of government paperwork to fill out for her student's parents.  She works a low income school district and is always filling out paperwork for learning disabilities so that the parents can get an extra check from Uncle Sam.  In addition to all the government BS, they also have a program at the Elementary school to help teach the parents what the students are learning so that the parents can help the kids at home.

One big problem she runs into is discipline.  Most of her students don't get any at home, and the school cannot really do anything but suspend them and that does nothing but give them free time at home.  She has a hard time getting the 'gaurdians' to take an active role with the students.  Most are raised by Grandma or an Aunt because 'momma is always drunk, high or in jail, and they have no clue who daddy is'.  Another problem she has is kids in 2nd grade that shouldn't be.  The school district will not 'fail' a student without the parents agreement.  She has 2nd graders that can't write their own name and don't know their ABC's past P.

I still give here a hard time about how 'easy' of a job she has, but I know that she does alot more work than the $30k/year she makes.

[DREDIOCK]

Originally posted by Tiger

One big problem she runs into is discipline.  Most of her students don't get any at home, and the school cannot really do anything but suspend them

There ya go.
Thats a HUGE part of the problem.

Back in my day I remember a teacher bouncing an eraser off one kids head because he wouldnt shut up in class.

He went home and complained to his parents about it and the end result was He got butt reddened and was grounded for a week by his parents for talking in class.

Back then if you got in trouble in school, or with another adult in the neighborhood even you didnt dare tell your parents about it.

If you did your parents first quetion almost without exeption was. "Well what did YOU do to deserve it?" Then your parents kicked your butt too.