Quote:
Originally Posted by classicman
Kids are no longer being taught to learn, they are taught to regurgitate information in order to pass the state exams. IME - This has had little, if anything to do with their college classes.
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*nods* It's a problem over here too.
Unfortunately it's one of those really tricky little nuts to crack, and whne you attempt to solve the problem you just make new problems.
So, we had a real problem here with a lack of consistency across the education system. With schools selecting their own individual curriculums, it was entirely possible for kids in one school to come through their education with a good grounding in all the basics, whilst kids from another school might come out with serious gaps in their education. At the same time we had a serious, and rapidly growing, problem with functional illiteracy amongst school leavers.
In order to try and get to grips with this, various measures were introduced. New ways of teaching were explored, standardized curriculums and exams were introduced. In order to try and find out why children were falling behind, and to attempt to stem that fall, new methods of testing and monitoring were introduced, at various stages in the child's schooling.
So, now we have a much clearer idea of what the schools are doing, what children are at risk, and various strategies to tackle those problems. We know that every chiild has access to certain standard elements of the curriculum, and that an exam result in that subject means the same regardless of which school they went to.
Unfortunately, results from testing and the level of attainment/achievement that can be tracked in a child all get fed into the school's grade and affects its ability to attract certain types of specialist funding, amongst other things. With schools competing in league tables, and desperately trying to avoid the perils of Offsted and Special Measures (a mechanismm for rescuing failing schools) the most important thing is that kids get their grades.