Summary of Education News February 2008

State education under threat

On the other hand, London's most popular state primary schools receive more than nine applications for every place; and good state schools may soon have to follow new admission rules, to prevent them from giving preferential treatment to certain applicants.

Parents may also be disturbed to read that a study conducted for the Department for Children, Schools and Families has recommended that grammar schools should be scrapped to make the education system fairer for pupils from deprived backgrounds.

These news items together do no more than to reinforce many parents’ views that an independent education is the best way to ensure that their children get the best start in life. But with school fees rising all the time, it has never been more important to get independent financial advice about how to manage the costs.

Careful planning well in advance helps, but we can help parents manage the cost of independent education more efficiently … even if children are already at school.

Testing children to the limit

The most significant and independent study of Britain's primary schools in 40 years has exposed a widespread culture of testing within the education system. This has resulted in parents increasingly seeking alternative forms of education to free their children from the state sector's regime of testing and targets. Another paper reveals that English children are attending school earlier; spend more days a year at school than in other countries … and in increasingly large institutions.

A Bristol University academic has claimed that children are being failed in large secondary schools because behavioural and educational problems go unnoticed. Meanwhile, a survey by the Association of Graduate Recruiters show that many companies failed to find suitable graduates to fill vacancies last year because they lacked basic skills. An obvious conclusion could be that the state sector is working children harder to less effect.

The problem is that educational professionals within government appear to consider that all children are the same and that their progress can be ‘measured’ according to set rules. In reality, all children are individuals and need to be treated differently, not shoehorned into categories to suit statistics.

Independent education gives parents control over how their children are treated.

Culture in schools

Plans by the Department for Children, Schools and Families to give all pupils access to 'at least five hours of high-quality culture per week' as part of the national curriculum have been condemned by various teaching groups who point out that the curriculum is already full and that the pilot grant amounts to just £15 per pupil.

Culture should not be seen as an adjunct to a second-rate education, but integral to everything learned at school.

Dumbing down

The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority is expected to accept recommendations from a review of language teaching, which said short oral exams should be replaced by assessment by teachers over a longer period. The stress of the oral exam is claimed to be a factor in putting youngsters off studying languages, according to the review.

Meanwhile, it seems that the Government has changed the pass mark in the tests planned for 11 and 14-year-olds to ensure that more pupils pass. The tests currently being piloted could eventually replace SATs in England, under which all pupils sit the same test to determine what level they have achieved.

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