After year 9 there should definitely be a wider range of subjects that can be dropped. I didn't mind geography or history but given the choice I would have gladly dropped both for more science classes but had to stick with one. Art, drama, Re, french/German were definitely subjects that I think had way to much time designated towards them and maybe year 9 was a little late to start dropping them.
On the flip side I know it's tricky to offer every child a bespoke education and not the most practical. I'm also very out of touch with current secondary education.
Schools need a drastic re-design in education to be more practical in life.
English, Maths being the core 2, the 3 sciences are good to have basic knowledge.
But when have I ever needed to know about the battle of Hastings or Henry 8ths wives outside of 1 test? Never.
We had 6 lessons a day at my school. So 30 a week.
3x Maths, 3x English, 3x French, 3x Geography, 3x History, 2x PE, 1x RE, 3x Physics, 3x Chem, 3x Biology, 1x IT 2x DT.
Everything in bold has been a waste of time in "learning". Everything in italic was too much for practical day to day application.
Agreed. You would also have to worry about what they are being taught. Sounds like a great way to basically indoctrinate someone into a way of thinking.just seemed like a very cold way of learning though, all these kids sat in silence staring at a screen![]()
Look at where we are now - we have a growing trend of people reversing back
we no longer have technologies from 60ies to fly men to the moon
Reduce planning and admin for teachers. That gas pretty well gone out tge window with the advent of the GCSE and A-level reforms. The courses are more demanding now.
The number of people who cant even wire a plug is absolutely terrifying.
Parents need to take responsibility of their children and not expect the taxpayer to significantly subsidise the raising of children. Education is something which taxpayers are happy to cover in a civilised society, and unless an education expert can show significant benefit to extending the day by an additional 2 hours it shouldn't happen.
8.45am to 5.45pm is longer than many people work.
I suspect a parental tax to pay for these additional 2 hours of work for schools wouldn't be popular (not that I would suggest that). I find there is always a costs angle to this argument and guess who should pay for it.
Skills like this dont really need to be taught with things like youtube.
What if you need to wire the plug to turn youtube on![]()
Still remember my teachers' explanation of what happens if you touch the live wire.
Sadly seems to happen less these days for various reasons - but a big part of my learning experience as a child was from the fact we finished at 3pm - came home and then had a few hours to play with friends around the neighbourhood, do activities/clubs that weren't limited to what the school could offer, etc. I don't think that could ever be replaced inside the framework of a school day.
Regarding RE at my school it was much more spiritual with some lite Christian teaching and lightly touching on other religions but largely it was a touch more hippy than anything with a lot of focus on environmental issues, etc. my nephews (that is in NI mind) seems to be quite a lot heavier on the Christian aspects though.
Assuming you have a working RCD, not a fat lot![]()
Assuming you have a working RCD, not a fat lot
Or well, if you're wiring a plug to an appliance, nothing, because it wont be plugged in hah.
It scares me when math-phys people get to re-designing education. In my life it was the exact opposite. Maths, physics and chemistry beyond basic level turned out to be useless subjects of little to no practical value, humanist subjects however were indispensable, and I wish they haven't wasted so much of my time in school teaching us how to calculate powers and root squares, how ameba procreates and what's the imaginary notation of chemical formula for some obscure reaction. Knowledge of logics, literature, history, geography, cultures and languages - benefits society rather than individual. A set of tools to communicate, to dialog, to flesh out thoughts and understanding of human condition, knowledge of things tried, tested and failed to make a progress and so on.
Look at where we are now - we have a growing trend of people reversing back, retarding the society, believing in formulaic axioms without any scale of things - people in the second decade of twenty first century now believe in flat earth again or waste invaluable decades of technology progress because blind belief in warming/cooling/climate changes - and it's not because of their ineptitude to calculate axioms of exact sciences - almost exact opposite - it's because immediate calculations and numbers suggest so. The humanistic logic, the geographical scale, the historical facts confirming it's been done, tested and proven otherwise - all of that is impaired for at least two generations. The lack of communication skills in other languages make our scientific world isolated - it's an echo chamber of the same google results repeated over and over strengthening errors, people talking themselves into regression. And those in the avantguard actively stop progress. We don't share techs with public, if there are no number behind them. We don't do researches, we don't develop cures for the benefit of all - if there are no numbers behind them.
On the large scale of things we no longer know how to do things we've long done and forgotten - as an example - we no longer have technologies from 60ies to fly men to the moon - but it also impacts on our every day life - we develop closed systems where we penalise ourselves with "congestion charges" for coming into centralised areas, then stagnate living quarters and push everyone out of the city centres to live further and further away, so they have to travel more and more. We no longer grasp why all of it - the cities, the central areas, the work together - was done in the first place - the society, the progress, the human kind - that's now maths and physics of things - it turned into how many, in how short time, through how wide apertures of the city streets for how much money, because teaching people about people's subjects - needed for philosophy, humanism, sociology - is failing.