Soldato
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For all those despising Maths, it's getting easier!
- Thread starter MajorMaccas
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Nice.
Very good points. Teachers are teaching for exams not to spread knowledge, as clearly should be the case. Remove targets and league tables and suddenly schools will not have to worry so much about exam results but on the reputation of its teachers. Then teaching improves (though I'm not passing comment on its current standard) and so the students improve.
Abolish League tables first, then exams become less important in teaching.
Soldato
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Caporegime
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the problem here is, as with anything, teachers, most new teachers and most for a long time now haven't been taught to "teach", they lack the ability to inspire students, to teach wide ranging subjects and didn't learn the "spread" of stuff required when they were at school, so even if we removed all the targets and tried to get education back on track I simply can't see how it would work, who the hell is going to teach better, as teachers going through a crappy education and AWFUl training in jobs mean theres simply very few qualified people to teach the old way anymore.
Fixing education is now in the same blackhole that the NHS is in, will take ridiculous spending and decades to see a real improvement, which unfortunately is why it won't happen. Government inititives only happen for things that can show immediate results. Its screwed now basically with no real way back.
The english government, theres another joke. The few good teachers I ever had are long since retired. Infact, trying to remember what years I did what, my best teachers in middle school who actually ignore what I was supposed to do according to the government and just gave me whatever knowledge I could absorb as quickly as I could absorb it, were near retirement back in the early 90's, long since retired now. Most of the younger teachers then, seemed incompetant when compared to them, same with high school, 1-2 decent older teachers, mostly new useless twits reading from books, and to be fair 2-3 very decent newish teachers but they were few and far between. I can only imagine that, people who went through school the same time as me are now teachers, and most of them will be crap.
I was actually thinking a while back, of any realistic way in which it could be fixed and I came up with nothing, based on the fact that even if the perfect education system was reintergrated, starting with those in their first year of school through to the end(ie work i dunno 5 year olds much harder so its easier to teach them more when they are 6, 7,......16) and get back to proper teaching, theres no one to do it. even if you came up with the perfect plan, no politician would ever do it. On the chance you got the best political mind ever to propose it, everyone would shoot it down as it would lower test scores(a good thing) so must be bad
That's very interesting reading what you have to say drunkenmaster, and I see what you mean about the difficulty of fixing it.
However one thing we haven't considered are private/public schools. I have no idea whether the teaching in these places is actually any better than in state schools, but I would hope that their standards wouldn't slip away like state schools, and hence they could provide a source of decent teachers in the future maybe.
Somehow the government need to change the image of teaching in order to attract the best & most suitable graduates from the likes of Oxbridge. I personally have been put off by the lack of respect teachers had while I was at school. If teachers were allowed to hand out harsher punishments and had more control over students' behaviour then more people would seriously consider teaching.
I guess what I'm saying is that while state education might be in a downward spiral, private education isn't slipping as fast and might, at the end of the day, save state education. It might, however, just be me being young and naively optimistic, desperately looking for hope for hte future.
However one thing we haven't considered are private/public schools. I have no idea whether the teaching in these places is actually any better than in state schools, but I would hope that their standards wouldn't slip away like state schools, and hence they could provide a source of decent teachers in the future maybe.
Somehow the government need to change the image of teaching in order to attract the best & most suitable graduates from the likes of Oxbridge. I personally have been put off by the lack of respect teachers had while I was at school. If teachers were allowed to hand out harsher punishments and had more control over students' behaviour then more people would seriously consider teaching.
I guess what I'm saying is that while state education might be in a downward spiral, private education isn't slipping as fast and might, at the end of the day, save state education. It might, however, just be me being young and naively optimistic, desperately looking for hope for hte future.
Ok that proves your lack of knowledge on the subject. ugh seriously why are you all talking out of complete blindness. I can categorically say now many people who passed their 11+ now fail at doing anything i ask them with my GCSEs.
I agree with drunken master, some topics today are pointless. My history teacher said the school leaving age should be lowered not raised. I half agree. 14 is ofc too young to go do your own thing, but the fact that after year 9 sats all kids have good/decent maths skills is fine. GCSE maths is very specific to seemingly pointless topics (if you consider its forced maths, then perhaps longer on useful things would be better than simultaneous equations, that although may help at sometime, no adult will recognise it later as being helpful and the way to work out their problem).
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Soldato
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That doesn't mean that much though - asking someone to do something they sat years ago and have likely forgotten the vast majority of proves nothing. They've made GCSEs significantly easier.
They don't all have good/decent maths skills though.
How do you know? And also if you've fogotten stuff from your education how do you compare it? My parents say our stuff is much much harder than theirs, you must be seeing some bad work off people because all the people i know say the opposite to what all you say, maybe some of you just wont let go that were bettering you? TBH all your arguments have come from tabloids.
Well you dont want all of them to do you.
im doing a level physics at the minute and you definitely need to do maths with it if you wanting to do well.
this is probably true you are guided through questions but i havnt seen any old papers so cant comment on how this has changed. the unifying concepts paper at the end tests your understanding of the subject more then the parrot fashion solutions you mention.
my teacher couldnt score 600/600, so i doubt anyone has done that when sitting their a levels, and they are introducing a A* next year i think, so seperate the good from the excellent.
Lozzick, my mum has been teaching maths at primary, middle school, and secondary level. She's got a degree in maths and statistics, and also covered maths when she was at school and college.
I just asked her if she felt exams were easier than say 20 or 30 years ago and her reply was 'Yes, definetely - exams are being dumbed down a lot'....'Mainly to keep up the grades'.
Interesting. What examing board are you on? I would like to see your syllabus. Do you get shown proofs that involve intregration? What level of maths do you mean exactly?
I know at least one person who has got 600/600 at further maths. I think a lot of people could, but most people who find themselves in the situation where they could get 600 realise that they don't need to do the work for the remaining exams and relax ( and hence don't learn later topics too well and so shouldn't deserve an A after all).
I'm glad to hear they're introducing A* grades at last, but it's a real shame that they have to (and 5 years too late too). I only hope that the A* grade doesn't end up being devalued like it has at GCSE. To be honest though, the A grade was originally intended to separate the good from the excellent so the fact that they're introducing A* grades kind of indicates that they've admitted something's not quite right about A levels.
Soldato
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Why must I be 'seeing some bad work off people'. What does that even mean?! I'm not basing it on tabloid articles as you assume; I'm basing it on seeing past papers from the 70's/80's that had a larger syllabus and more detailed questions and calculations than the GCSEs I was sitting at the time.
You don't want everyone to be numerate and literate? Whyever not?
Soldato
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A lot of people are repeating the same things - yes maths a-levels has gotten easier, ask any teacher. This is no random coincidence of rubbishly written papers, this is a DELIBERATE attempt to make Maths A-level more accessible to less able students.
I can't believe your teacher wouldn't think they could get 600/600. I think they were just being nice
I can't believe your teacher wouldn't think they could get 600/600. I think they were just being nice
im doing OCR, and you need to know how to rearrange logs for the practical exam, but thinking on it theres not actually a lot of pure maths in the exams, more re arranging formulas. that said the people who dont do maths find it a lot harder than those who do, and any decent uni wants a maths a level for a physics course, so it is needed really.
i honestly dont see anyone getting full marks on all of the papers, even the most gifted make mistakes, but congrats to whoever did.
yea i agree i think an A* is necessary. i'd say if they introduced the A* at the 90% and kept the A at 80% id probably be on the border so id say i benefit from there not being one at the minute. in my further maths class there is 8 people left at the end of the second year (started with around 15) and most of the people in it are going to get AA or AB, im pretty confident i'll get AA, but theres oen person in the class that can afford to miss an exam and she'll still probably get 2 A's, this is who the A* would benefit, and i think is needed for.
Who is talking "out of blindness" exactly and why do you say that? What makes you think you are the enlightened one? (Are you a teacher or student? I can't work it out?)
You can easily compare past papers and present just by reading them!