'SHAMELESS' PARENTS NOT TEACHING SKILLS

5/14/2008 8:27:00 AM

Daily Telegraph 14 May

A generation of young Britons are growing up in "shameless" families where parents lack the basic skills to raise their children, the Conservatives will warn today. Chris Grayling, the shadow work and pensions secretary, will claim that in some parts of the country there is no culture of parents instilling discipline and respect in their offspring. He will tell a London think tank that multiple generations of teenage parents mean that some of today's children have no exposure to elder relatives with traditional experience of parenting. The result, he argues, is irresponsible parents whose children run wild and grow up without the skills and attitudes to better themselves. DT

General

LEADING HEAD TEACHER ATTACKS 'QUICK-FIX CULTURE' THAT ROBS CHILDREN OF PATIENCE TO LEARN NEW SKILLS

5/14/2008 8:01:00 AM

Daily Mail 14 May

The "quick-fix culture" is damaging children's ability to master sport and music, a leading headmaster warned yesterday. Jonathan Milton of Westminster Abbey Choir School said youngsters increasingly lacked the patience to acquire skills such as choral singing. Youngsters increasingly lack the patience to master skills such as playing cricket Even cricket matches now last no longer than a couple of hours, he said. Mr Milton, chairman of the Choir Schools Association, said our exam system was fuelling the problem. School tests forced youngsters to "get the right answer very quickly" rather than developing their ideas over time. Mr Milton spoke out as a top public school demanded greater use of "exam-free" project work in the sixth form. Rugby School has developed a blueprint for an extended project that involves in-depth analysis. It believes the plan could be introduced to other schools. Dr John Taylor, a chief examiner on the scheme, said: "We need a certain amount of knowledge and it ought to be tested. But there are skills which cannot be tested in a one-and-a-half hour paper." His concerns echo those of Mr Milton, who was speaking at a Choir Schools Association conference in Liverpool. "We are increasingly used to sensationalism and the quick fix within our culture all the time," he said. "For a musician or an artist that's really not very helpful. So many of our children these days are just used to producing instant results. "Even cricket, for goodness sake, can increasingly only be sustained for 20 overs."Daily Mail

Lead Story | Curriculum / Quality Assurance

EDUCATION IN ENGLISH SCHOOLS IS 'FATALLY DISTORTED' SAYS NIALL FERGUSON

5/14/2008 6:52:00 AM

The Times 13 May

The English education system has become “fatally distorted” by an unhealthy fixation with an anachronistic examinations system that ill prepares students for university, a leading academic has warned. Niall Ferguson, professor of history at Harvard University in the US and a senior research fellow at Oxford University, said that teenagers in England were handicapped by an over-emphasis on timed examinations and by being forced to chose between arts and science subjects too early. Professor Ferguson blamed “the tyranny of A levels” for forcing teenagers into narrowly defined paths of study and called for them to be replaced with a baccalaureate style qualification covering a broad mix of arts and science subjects and involving an element of independent research rather than assessment purely by examinations. Teaching in America, where teenagers and undergraduates study a much broader curriculum, had made him realised that “what we are doing here is wrong,” Professor Ferguson said. At Harvard, students start by taking eight courses spanning science, culture and ethics. “I can think of few worst preparations for Harvard than a typical English secondary education,” he said. Technological advances in the world meant that it was necessary for all students to have a broad based education and to continue maths after the age of 16, he said. But too often the A level system did not allow this. Times

Curriculum / Quality Assurance

LETTERS; TIMES; THE STORY OF OUR LAND IS NOT SIMPLE — OR OURS

5/14/2008 7:22:00 AM

Letters; The Times 14 May

Brighton College history lessons

Sir, I was disappointed to read that the headmaster of Brighton College has joined the clamour to give his pupils a “narrative of history they so relish” in order to imbue them with a “sense of their history” (report, May 10). While a cross-curricular course along the lines he suggests has some merit, there is a divergence between his aim of imbuing his children with a sense of pride and patriotism and teaching them about their history. Without any counterbalance, any telling of the dark side of our history, we end up with the sanitised H. E. Marshall view of our past as endorsed by Civitas, and, worse, run the danger of becoming part of the debate that treats history in its extremities as some sort of political football kicked shamelessly between traditionalists, who treat history as irrefutable fact, and those who use it to promote a social agenda. Of course our students need a proper context to view their world and they can benefit enormously from a chronological framework, but history is not taught to boost national morale but to try to give a balanced view of what happened in the past from what we know today in order to better understand our world and to make us better citizens. While students need a proper mix of knowledge, they need also to learn the skills of discrimination and analysis and the opportunity to view history as contested knowledge until proven otherwise. Learning one’s own history has nothing to do with being ashamed or embarrassed; it is about seeing one’s place in the world and looking at what happened in the past as objectively as possible. In learning about Winston Churchill (as they most certainly should), perhaps a good starting point would be a discussion of his statement: “History shall be kind to me for I intend to write it.”

Peter Tait
Headmaster, Sherborne Preparatory School, Sherborne, Dorset

Sir, The plan by the headmaster of Brighton College to teach “The Story of Our Land” is highly encouraging. It is time to end the left-wing/liberal conspiracy over the past 50 years which has inculcated, especially in our schools, a false sense of shame, guilt and need for apology for our imperial history. Sadly, we cannot expect leadership from our Prime Minister in this respect. Mr Brown has been recorded as saying, “the main challenge of modern Britishness is to put behind us all that mixture of pride and shame about our imperial past and change the subject”. We must all hope that other wise headmasters will teach our children that the history of our contribution to the peace and development of the world smacks much more of pride than shame.

Alan Forward
Sherborne, Dorset

Sir, While the headmaster of Brighton College is right to draw attention to shortcomings of the Key Stage 3 curriculum (report, May 10 ), he also shows a lack of understanding of what is currently being taught in schools and a worrying insularity in his view of education. Many schools, including mine, place great attention in their Key Stage 3 curriculum on local geography, local and British history and a study of faiths, including Christianity, which are strongly represented in the UK. However, for very sound educational reasons, most schools also draw examples and case studies from all over the world to illustrate core concepts. Many young people cease to study history, geography or religious studies after 14. If their background for the previous three years has been in “The Story of Our Land”, we will be educating a young generation to be largely ignorant at 14, and in their later lives, of the world which lies outside our small island and, hence, unfit to play a meaningful role in today’s global economy and society. The Government gives us far too many soundbites and publicity-seeking initiatives. Please, as headteachers and schools, can we focus on sound-footed, educational wisdom.

Nicholas D. B. Dorey
Headmaster, Bethany School Goudhurst, Kent

Curriculum / Quality Assurance

STUDENTS CLAIM SURVEY DISHONESTY

5/14/2008 6:54:00 AM

BBC 13 May

Students from a range of universities are claiming they are being pressed to make falsely enthusiastic responses to an official satisfaction survey. Staff at Kingston University were recorded telling students to falsify their ratings in the government-backed annual National Student Survey. In response, hundreds of students have e-mailed the BBC News website claiming this is a more widespread problem. The higher education funding council says the survey is not invalidated. The National Student Survey, set up by the funding council (Hefce), provides a league table of student satisfaction - which is intended to be useful for young people choosing a university. Endorsed by the government and funded by the taxpayer, it is part of the process of quality assurance in higher education. But an audio recording made at Kingston University revealed that staff were instructing students how to respond to the survey - and using it as a way of promoting a positive image rather than an honest assessment. BBC

FE/HE/ Skills

CAMBRIDGE TO DROP FOREIGN LANGUAGE REQUIREMENT

5/14/2008 6:53:00 AM

The Times 14 May

The University of Cambridge is to drop its requirement that prospective students should speak a foreign language, to avoid discriminating against applicants from state schools. The university has always demanded that candidates – whether arts or science – had qualifications in English, a foreign language, maths or science, and two other subjects. But the requirement for a modern foreign language has been blamed for penalising pupils from state schools. most of which no longer make it a compulsory subject after the age of 14. A university spokesman said that the change had made a significant impact on the qualifications of candidates. He said: “In 2000, 80 per cent of school students overall took a foreign language at GCSE. The proportion has now fallen to below 50 per cent. “While independent schools are generally maintaining their language provision, in only 17 per cent of state schools is there now a requirement to study a language after the age of 14.” The new entry requirement will be introduced next year. Times