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Education In Scotland


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4 hours ago, Alan said:

Declining further. Stats are poor. Postcode and family income big determination on future success.  John Swinney has no answers in interviews today.  At least kids from private school get free uni and don't need to worry about end of grants.

What would your answers be Alan? 

 

Not being argumentative  - just wondering. 

 

It is clearly not a great situation to be in. 

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1 hour ago, Larky Masher said:

But we're below Estonia, Vietnam, Ireland, New Zealand, Slovenia to name a few.

You Are Forgetting its Based OnN three Subjects. cfe Is To Develop Independent Confident Learners. 

 

(Dunno Why each Word Is Capitilised In Here) 

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It's funny how you almost never hear of Scottish devolved matters on the BBC national news. When Scottish news is featured, it's usually a short item way down the agenda. And you almost never hear of any comparative statistics about how well different nations do relative to each other. So imagine my surprise to hear a BBC national news report featuring comparative stats, with Scotland bafflingly given the lion's share of the coverage, even more than Wales (who apparently did worse). And some say the BBC is impartial? 

And it's also funny how some people on here repeatedly complain of tribalism, and complain that it's nationalism that makes people tribal, whereas they themselves are not tribal. Yet.... you get threads like this, that are the most tribal of any on here. It's fine being tribal, as most political threads on here are, but why not just admit it?

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1 hour ago, Lamia said:

#don'tfeedthetroll

So somebody disagrees with SNP policy/performance and they become a troll?

1 hour ago, aaid said:

You could set your watch by him.

See above.

 

57 minutes ago, Stapes said:

Never heard of these figures before, which is strange given that when you compare 2000-2006 with 2009-2015, the former is infinitely worse for reading and maths. But then, the media didn't have an agenda before 2007 ...

Cy_Bt-SXgAAr2xg.jpg

 

Paranoia?

45 minutes ago, AlfieMoon said:

What would your answers be Alan? 

 

Not being argumentative  - just wondering. 

 

It is clearly not a great situation to be in. 

 

Not sure Alan was elected to improve the situation but I suspect the SG fixation with micromanagement is part of the problem. 

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9 minutes ago, andymac said:

So somebody disagrees with SNP policy/performance and they become a troll?

See above.

 

Paranoia?

Not sure Alan was elected to improve the situation but I suspect the SG fixation with micromanagement is part of the problem. 

I didn't say he was - but thanks for speaking on his behalf when I'm very reasonably asking a question. 

 

 

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1 hour ago, exile said:

It's funny how you almost never hear of Scottish devolved matters on the BBC national news. When Scottish news is featured, it's usually a short item way down the agenda. And you almost never hear of any comparative statistics about how well different nations do relative to each other. So imagine my surprise to hear a BBC national news report featuring comparative stats, with Scotland bafflingly given the lion's share of the coverage, even more than Wales (who apparently did worse). And some say the BBC is impartial? 

And it's also funny how some people on here repeatedly complain of tribalism, and complain that it's nationalism that makes people tribal, whereas they themselves are not tribal. Yet.... you get threads like this, that are the most tribal of any on here. It's fine being tribal, as most political threads on here are, but why not just admit it?

Agree completely.

As someone who only sees UK 'network' (i.e. London) BBC news coverage it was a shock to see Swinney (who he?) all over the BBC story tonight.

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4 hours ago, killiefaetheferry said:

Can anyone point out what the problem is ? Classroom sizes ? Teaching methods ? Discipline in schools ? Lack of parental involvement in their children's education ?

The issue to be noted here is that the PISA/OECD tests are a total waste of time. It compares us to countries like China and regions like Shanghai/Hong Kong whose kids go to daytime school number 1, eat, go to evening school number 2, eat, go to a private tutor, sleep for 3/4 hours and repeat - you may very well call it mental abuse and I would agree with you - is a bit like comparing Albion Rovers and Barcelona. Some schools/regions also engineer the 'best' pupils to do the test when they should have been randomly selected - it's completely open to abuse and I'm sure there are quite a few skeletons in the PISA closet. 

PISA tests also focus on a narrow part of the curriculum that has been effectively smashed to pieces by CFE - I have noticed year on year standards have deteriorated at secondary level although the massaged senior phase exam pass rates from the SQA would have you believe otherwise.

Kids usually arrive into S1 from primary school full of CFE inter-disciplinary learning I can make a powerpoint happy-clappy pish that they mostly cannot draw a bar graph, have done no science (ever), cannot make an inference, sit and read, string a sentence together or do basic arithmetic like 27-14 without the help of a calculator. Fast forward these S1 bairns to PISA test in S3 and the majority have retained virtually nothing of any value in their heads as all assessments are bitty and split into bite sized chunks to tick a box. When you add in the kids living in poverty or who have ADHD, Aspergers, dyslexia, dyscalculia &  pupils who do not speak English as a first language (we have 65+ languages spoken in our lower school S1-3 yet the council have closed the bilingual support schools/bases and rattled them all straight into mainstream without adequately staffed EAL support) you start to see that a random selection of 15 year olds in Scottish schools are not going to shine as brightly as rote learned robots in eastern Asia.

It's not the bairns fault - they are only jumping through the hoops in front of them - but the main positive is that they are learning something whilst having a decent life unlike the little automatons in Shanghai .

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6 hours ago, Topcat said:

The issue to be noted here is that the PISA/OECD tests are a total waste of time. It compares us to countries like China and regions like Shanghai/Hong Kong whose kids go to daytime school number 1, eat, go to evening school number 2, eat, go to a private tutor, sleep for 3/4 hours and repeat - you may very well call it mental abuse and I would agree with you - is a bit like comparing Albion Rovers and Barcelona. Some schools/regions also engineer the 'best' pupils to do the test when they should have been randomly selected - it's completely open to abuse and I'm sure there are quite a few skeletons in the PISA closet. 

PISA tests also focus on a narrow part of the curriculum that has been effectively smashed to pieces by CFE - I have noticed year on year standards have deteriorated at secondary level although the massaged senior phase exam pass rates from the SQA would have you believe otherwise.

Kids usually arrive into S1 from primary school full of CFE inter-disciplinary learning I can make a powerpoint happy-clappy pish that they mostly cannot draw a bar graph, have done no science (ever), cannot make an inference, sit and read, string a sentence together or do basic arithmetic like 27-14 without the help of a calculator. Fast forward these S1 bairns to PISA test in S3 and the majority have retained virtually nothing of any value in their heads as all assessments are bitty and split into bite sized chunks to tick a box. When you add in the kids living in poverty or who have ADHD, Aspergers, dyslexia, dyscalculia &  pupils who do not speak English as a first language (we have 65+ languages spoken in our lower school S1-3 yet the council have closed the bilingual support schools/bases and rattled them all straight into mainstream without adequately staffed EAL support) you start to see that a random selection of 15 year olds in Scottish schools are not going to shine as brightly as rote learned robots in eastern Asia.

It's not the bairns fault - they are only jumping through the hoops in front of them - but the main positive is that they are learning something whilst having a decent life unlike the little automatons in Shanghai .

Thanks. I'll use that in my PGDE interview...............can I quote the 'little automatons in Shanghai" line please ?

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7 hours ago, Topcat said:

The issue to be noted here is that the PISA/OECD tests are a total waste of time. It compares us to countries like China and regions like Shanghai/Hong Kong whose kids go to daytime school number 1, eat, go to evening school number 2, eat, go to a private tutor, sleep for 3/4 hours and repeat - you may very well call it mental abuse and I would agree with you - is a bit like comparing Albion Rovers and Barcelona. Some schools/regions also engineer the 'best' pupils to do the test when they should have been randomly selected - it's completely open to abuse and I'm sure there are quite a few skeletons in the PISA closet. 

PISA tests also focus on a narrow part of the curriculum that has been effectively smashed to pieces by CFE - I have noticed year on year standards have deteriorated at secondary level although the massaged senior phase exam pass rates from the SQA would have you believe otherwise.

Kids usually arrive into S1 from primary school full of CFE inter-disciplinary learning I can make a powerpoint happy-clappy pish that they mostly cannot draw a bar graph, have done no science (ever), cannot make an inference, sit and read, string a sentence together or do basic arithmetic like 27-14 without the help of a calculator. Fast forward these S1 bairns to PISA test in S3 and the majority have retained virtually nothing of any value in their heads as all assessments are bitty and split into bite sized chunks to tick a box. When you add in the kids living in poverty or who have ADHD, Aspergers, dyslexia, dyscalculia &  pupils who do not speak English as a first language (we have 65+ languages spoken in our lower school S1-3 yet the council have closed the bilingual support schools/bases and rattled them all straight into mainstream without adequately staffed EAL support) you start to see that a random selection of 15 year olds in Scottish schools are not going to shine as brightly as rote learned robots in eastern Asia.

It's not the bairns fault - they are only jumping through the hoops in front of them - but the main positive is that they are learning something whilst having a decent life unlike the little automatons in Shanghai .

Toppost topcat. 

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Just now, Toepoke said:

Are we still coming to terms with the changes to an education system which for generations was predicated on the bulk of pupils going straight into the workplace at 15/16 ?

 

Perhaps, more importantly  most of the teachers were trained under that system with only 5-6 cohorts of cfe trained staff out there, most at junior level working with colleagues (as humans all are) reluctant to change. 

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9 hours ago, andymac said:

So somebody disagrees with SNP policy/performance and they become a troll?

 

Eh no. Plenty others have done so including me on many an occasion so I have absolutely no issue with that. Alan however is a troll.

Edited by Lamia
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3 minutes ago, Lamia said:

Eh no. Plenty others have done so including me on many an occasion. Alan however is a troll.

Being a troll doesn't mean the issue he's raising here isn't valid. 

So many folk on this board have a complete blindness to any problems with the SNP's governance of the country. 

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1 minute ago, Parklife said:

Being a troll doesn't mean the issue he's raising here isn't valid. 

So many folk on this board have a complete blindness to any problems with the SNP's governance of the country. 

I know it doesn't but it doesn't help the debate. Blindness on either side is unhelpful 

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The key to successful education is to have better teachers, and to have them actually teaching.  I doubt the government actually makes any difference, but the CfE seems to be a bit controversial - maybe that Labour-initiated idea should be looked at to see if it is a waste of time.  My wife is a teacher in a promoted post and the time she has to put in on course development in the evenings is significant.

If you want to complain abut lack of funding, that is caused by the Westminster government 100%.  The SG can only disburse the fixed pocket money that they receive.  PFI has not helped either as that syphons off money and thus reduces resources.

The problem with Scotland is that we are constantly fighting with one hand tied behind our back.

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3 minutes ago, Ally Bongo said:
Quote

Do I see some cause for concern in the latest PISA findings? Yes! Do I see a 'crisis' in Scottish education? Of course not! Because I'm neither an idiot nor, to the extent that there is a meaningful distinction, a British nationalist.

I stopped here. 

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11 hours ago, Topcat said:

The issue to be noted here is that the PISA/OECD tests are a total waste of time. It compares us to countries like China and regions like Shanghai/Hong Kong whose kids go to daytime school number 1, eat, go to evening school number 2, eat, go to a private tutor, sleep for 3/4 hours and repeat - you may very well call it mental abuse and I would agree with you - is a bit like comparing Albion Rovers and Barcelona. Some schools/regions also engineer the 'best' pupils to do the test when they should have been randomly selected - it's completely open to abuse and I'm sure there are quite a few skeletons in the PISA closet. 

PISA tests also focus on a narrow part of the curriculum that has been effectively smashed to pieces by CFE - I have noticed year on year standards have deteriorated at secondary level although the massaged senior phase exam pass rates from the SQA would have you believe otherwise.

Kids usually arrive into S1 from primary school full of CFE inter-disciplinary learning I can make a powerpoint happy-clappy pish that they mostly cannot draw a bar graph, have done no science (ever), cannot make an inference, sit and read, string a sentence together or do basic arithmetic like 27-14 without the help of a calculator. Fast forward these S1 bairns to PISA test in S3 and the majority have retained virtually nothing of any value in their heads as all assessments are bitty and split into bite sized chunks to tick a box. When you add in the kids living in poverty or who have ADHD, Aspergers, dyslexia, dyscalculia &  pupils who do not speak English as a first language (we have 65+ languages spoken in our lower school S1-3 yet the council have closed the bilingual support schools/bases and rattled them all straight into mainstream without adequately staffed EAL support) you start to see that a random selection of 15 year olds in Scottish schools are not going to shine as brightly as rote learned robots in eastern Asia.

It's not the bairns fault - they are only jumping through the hoops in front of them - but the main positive is that they are learning something whilst having a decent life unlike the little automatons in Shanghai .

What about having a decent future?

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Guest BlueGaz
3 hours ago, Alibi said:

The problem with Scotland is that we are constantly fighting with one hand tied behind our back.

Let the system slip - blame it on London - guaranteed votes in future - achieve only real aim.

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Heard anecdotally from different people kids' handwriting has definitely gone downhill in recent years due to massive use of computers.  

Foreign Language teaching in Scotland is appalling.  Get pupils to memorise sentences to pass exams rather than teach grammar like continental schools do.  Would love the government made this a priority.

It's been a long time now, can't blame Westminster for everything. Certainly on my last point nothings changed.  Sadly.  I just don't understand why not?  

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Folk were totally dismissive of Antidote I seem to recall when he was posting as he could 'see no (or little) fault with the SNP' etc etc... But now when it comes to Alan who makes Antidote look like Mr Unbiased and who can see only faults with the SNP, and has been like that for a decade 100% consistent now at least that I have witnessed (and it really is 100%, he has never taken a day off, not once ;)) but now we are being told we should listen to him.

Listen to fhucking Alan. Aye right. Total hypocrisy.

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