Monday, June 28, 2010

Good idea, but, more thought needed.

The government plans to arrange school Olympics to reintroduce competitiveness into our schools. Can't say I blame them, though I do wonder why it is that politicians have to meddle so much with education, I suspect it's because it's all they have left to meddle with, the EU pretty much runs everything else.

Telegraph.
As the fall-out from England’s World Cup defeat continues, the Government insisted the reintroduction of highly-competitive sports days and inter-school tournaments would help push children “to be the best” when they grew up.
Under new plans, schools will be expected to compete against each other in an Olympics-style event, covering sports such as football, athletics, rugby, swimming, tennis and cycling. 
Some £10m will be spent creating a local league structure for primary and secondary schools. Winning teams will compete in 60 county finals before going on to a national final.
Jeremy Hunt, the Culture Secretary, insisted the move would “get rid of this myth that competitive sport is bad for children”.
“We have to realise that sport is a good thing,” he said. “It does not damage your self-esteem, it helps to strengthen your self-esteem because sport is often about picking yourself up, which is what I guess we are doing today [after England's World Cup exit].”
He added: "Sport - whether you win or lose - teaches young people great lessons for life. It encourages teamwork, dedication and striving to be the best that you can be."
But the move has been criticised by head teachers who said it risked being derailed because of a lack of money and the amount of time spent preparing for exams.
First off, something has to give in the education "industry" the Labour obsession with exams and weird citizen/sexual/environmental education policies has to go. They were never necessary and took up time that could have been spent actually teaching kids something useful (No, learning about global warming climate change and carbon isn't, nor is exploring "alternative" lifestyles) these were something that only a left winger could come up with and were viewed as cultural imbecility by most normal people, but as schools and the ministry of education were mostly filled with left wing doctrinaires in key positions, there you go.
Also needing to go would be SAT's, they aren't necessary and take too much time, let teachers teach, not prepare kids for exams, at least not until they actually need them.
Better yet, get the state out of education, simply have business and industry leaders tell school exam boards what they are looking for and have the exams when they leave set up accordingly. Hint literacy and numeracy good, citizenship useless. The Swedes showed us the way to go on this, it works well, so lets copy it.
Yes competitiveness is a good thing for kids to learn, that there are winners and losers and how to cope with victory and defeat, it teaches you about life. That was wrecked by socialist education theories where there were no winners or losers and left kids very unprepared for real life once they got out into the world.
Get rid of all the political rubbish, get rid of the idiot exam culture and get back to simply filling kids heads with knowledge, the system will sort itself out quite quickly.

Then and only then, will teachers have the time to do other stuff like school Olympics

6 annotations:

Chuckles said...

'The government plans to arrange school Olympics to reintroduce competitiveness into our schools. Can't say I blame them, though I do wonder why it is that politicians have to meddle so much with education'

See 'Mental Age' and 'Peer Group'.

English Pensioner said...

Following on comments by Sir Terry Leahy of Tesco and Sir Stuart Rose of Marks & Spencer, today the Telegraph reports that Sir Michael Rake, the head of BT has called our education system "a disgrace", claiming that 6,000 out of 26,000 applicants for places on their apprenticeship programme were not even worth of consideration because they couldn't spell, read the questions or or write a coherent sentence.
Whatever the merits of bringing back competitiveness in sport, it would be far better to bring back the "Three R's". But then I wonder how many of teachers would meet the standards set by my old Grammar School and actually be able to teach these rather than today's "woolly" non-subjects.

English Pensioner said...

PS to my previous comments.
Please don't blame my grammar for he two errors, but the fact that my brain still works faster than my typing fingers (and the keyboard on my lap-top is terrible).
I should have put "worthy of consideration" and "how many of today's teachers" !
And a further thought:- with computerisation, the teaching of touch typing wouldn't be a bad idea.

Mrs Rigby said...

We went to an Infants School Sports Day where it wasn't only the parents who were bemused and confused, because little ones like to win - something, anything. The children had to 'pass the beanbag' and then sit down. They had to 'throw a ball around a circle' and 'do an obstacle course'. There were no prizes, because there was no competition.

And the country is hosting the Olympics, which is a sporting event - with winners and losers.

Odd sort of thing really, don't you think?

@ English Pensioner - yes, too many of today's teachers have themselves been through a system that does not prize either academic excellence or attention to detail and the nitpicking of spellnig and gremmer. (deliberate by the way)

Why should a reader have to try to work out what the writer is trying to say? It should be the responsibility of the writer to make the meaning clear, and make sure it isn't open to misinterpretation.

James Higham said...

First off, something has to give in the education "industry" the Labour obsession with exams and weird citizen/sexual/environmental education policies has to go.

Right on and that's just for starters.

Woman on a Raft said...

"the Labour obsession with exams and weird citizen/sexual/environmental education policies has to go."

Well said.

But I don't agree with removing the SATS entirely, although I would drastically reduce them. The aim is not to test every child to distraction but to sample the attainment so we can see if the school is doing its job.

If we don't have raw figures to compare, then parents end up trying to compare schools by their own PR and the school which goes to the best PR agency wins.

We need to do the comparisons before the children have taken their exams, when we might be able to correct the situation. Otherwise we end up leaving it to the FE colleges to sort out the mess.