But if there is one annual announcement that is guaranteed to frustrate me (and I suspect many employers and like-minded parents) it is when the GCSE and A-level results are published. Every year the incumbent education secretary will seize on the 'fantastic news' that the number of pupils achieving the highest grades has (yet again) surpassed the previous year's results.
There are at least two things wrong with these results.
Firstly, examination results always used to be graded in line with the normal distribution curve, which would guarantee that only a certain proportion of students would fail, a certain number would get low grades, some would get the top grades but most would attain average grades. To ensure that the results were in line with expectations, test examination papers were set to ensure that the distribution of grades would be appropriately allocated; if too many achieved higher grades the exam was deemed too easy and modified. If the exam was too difficult the results would be skewed toward lower grades with a higher failure rate, resulting in having the exam paper amended to deliver the expected distribution of grades.
Given that students, by definition of the laws of distribution, cannot be getting clever, the conclusion is all too obvious: that the exams must be getting easier and easier.
Sadly, every year the naysayers (those who argue that education continues to 'dumb down') are shot down by bumptious politicians who confidently assert that the results due to the hard work of teachers and pupils. Calling all elephants: can you please leave the room now?
My second point is that employers are surely better placed to judge whether standards in education are falling or rising. They are the ones who take on school-leavers and graduates, and they are the ones who can see, first hand, just how academically able their new employeers are.
The conclusion drawn from the anecdotal evidence from employers, and from the many reports available on the internet, is that standards are falling. Education is failing more and more students, and there is an increasing number of children who are both illiterate and innumerate, who go into adult life without the basic skills that even the working poor attained 100 years ago!
From the perspective of a parent with two boys at primary school and it is all too obvious where things are going wrong: the (very well meaning) teachers are forced (via the inflexible national curriculum) to focus too much on peripheral subjects, which leaves less time to teach the core basics of reading, writing and 'rithmetic (yes, the good old 3Rs). We are having to teach our boys their times tables (up to 12 and not the more popular 10) and we are helping them with their reading and writing, which is in addition to their daily homework tasks.
Education is failing our children, which in turn will have an impact on our economy. There needs to be a speedy return to a focus on the 3Rs and there needs to be a return to having children sitting at desks all facing the front, not at trendy round tables in which they 'share' tasks and rarely face the teacher.
From a teacher's perspective (my father taught at a secondary modern for over 20 years) it is also so obvious where things are going wrong. Teachers are not given the flexibility to go 'off piste' with what they teach and they must stick rigidly to a system that has been created in isolation. The problem is that we have educationalists that in trying to improve standards have achieved the exact opposite; they have undermined a system of education that drilled pupils in the basics in their early years so that they were equipped to explore, experiment and challenge once they had the building blocks of knowledge.
No wonder so many children are metaphorically falling over: they are being forced to run when they don't know how to walk.
Until we change this standards will continue to fall.
Education is failing our children, which in turn will have an impact on our economy. There needs to be a speedy return to a focus on the 3Rs and there needs to be a return to having children sitting at desks all facing the front, not at trendy round tables in which they 'share' tasks and rarely face the teacher.
From a teacher's perspective (my father taught at a secondary modern for over 20 years) it is also so obvious where things are going wrong. Teachers are not given the flexibility to go 'off piste' with what they teach and they must stick rigidly to a system that has been created in isolation. The problem is that we have educationalists that in trying to improve standards have achieved the exact opposite; they have undermined a system of education that drilled pupils in the basics in their early years so that they were equipped to explore, experiment and challenge once they had the building blocks of knowledge.
No wonder so many children are metaphorically falling over: they are being forced to run when they don't know how to walk.
Until we change this standards will continue to fall.
