• Scrap Interest on Student Loans
• Teachers Should Teach How To Think, Not What To Think
• Introduce a Valued Apprenticeship Scheme

Education

** UPDATED JUNE 2022 **

We have reached the point in time when our educators have given up providing a rounded education. An announcement that because children can’t tell the time, they will be removing clocks from schools sums up the problem! Alternatively, they could have taken it as an opportunity to teach children how to tell the time. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5652743/Schools-removing-analogue-clocks-exams-teenagers-tell-time.html. I remember being taught how sundials work, how pin hole cameras work etc. despite neither being modern technology.

What happens when a child is given a watch for an 18th or 21st birthday present? The sort of special ‘welcome to adulthood’ gift that many people have treasured for life. We are instead facing a time when children will not know how to do something as basic, as simple as necessary as being able to tell the time.

I know this probably isn’t the big issue I see it as, but it is indicative of the standard of education. We are falling behind the rest of the world. Our schools, like many of our services are not delivering the levels of excellence that we require.

Education Standards are Falling

“Those who do not learn from history are destined to repeat it.” – George Santayana

Many developing countries have education systems that puts ours to shame. While we are busy deleting our colonial past and attempting to rewrite the deeds of our forefathers, many developing countries are teaching their children how to compete against us. How to read and write high quality English (thankfully for us the dominant international language).

The next generation is, because of the decisions of our education administrators, heading towards a day of reckoning when they will sadly be found wanting.

It is not the fault of our children. It is the fault of woke teachers, trade unions (seeking to decolonise history – https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1419388/teachers-union-call-school-curriculum-decolonised) and civil servants, more focused on race, gender and non binary correct think than they are in arming our children with the tools that they will need to compete on the global stage.

Coursework and continual assessment started the decline in educational standards. The unfortunate truth about education is that if you want to find out (and measure) how much information a child has learned about a particular subject, you need to test them… to have them sit an exam. That way you get a true reflection of how well (or badly) the children have been taught.

Continual assessment teaches children how to research. Exams teach them facts and figures.

We need to raise the standards of our schools to the same level as the private sector. We owe it to our children to push them to learn as much as they can, on a wide range of subjects. To teach them facts, dates, numeracy, handwriting, grammar, as well as teaching them HOW to think….. not WHAT to think.

University isn’t suitable for everyone. Sending ducks to eagle school just gives you unhappy, disillusioned ducks. What possible use is a degree in Golf Course Management from a polytechnic? How many golf courses are short of managers?

Not everyone needs a university degree to succeed. Many people would be better off learning a useful trade. Skills that will pay them throughout their working life. We need to connect our education system with industry to address the workforce shortages we face.

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We need to encourage schools to encourage students towards qualifications for the skillsets that we need.