The state of UK's education and why employers are weary

[Merry]

A few points, as someone recently out of the system as a whole (i.e school - 6th form - uni)

- Stop dicking with exams, be they A level GCSE or whatever, it devalues both the effort students put into them and the actual qualification you end up with. Nobody wins.

- Let teachers teach, especially in Primary.

- Parents, its your responsibility for education too. I'm glad mine took this view.

- Stop pushing people into Uni as a matter of course. 6th forms and some parents are responsible for this hence the devaluation of degrees. Uni is not for everyone, the Government should stop pushing it as being so.

- Unis could do with actually teaching, rather than providing minimal contact time and setting little in the way of assignments, that was my experience anyway.

- Alternatives for higher education, such as work placements /apprenticeships should be offered and given the same weighting as degrees.

- A change in mentality. Most graduates (such as myself) will have to start from the bottom. Get over it, get on with it. You probably wont get a job on your terms on the salary you think you deserve, especially if you act like those in the article.

- Employers, give people a chance before looking elsewhere. The example in the article paints a sad picture of the quality of candidates, but I refuse to believe the majority are the same.


I think there is an unfortunate trend towards talking down generations such as mine. This does little to help. Of course there are a few for who appear to have gained little from education, but there are those who have. Painting everyone with such a wide brush is a bit insulting to be honest.


Can I have a job yet?

[wiffmaster]

SGirl said:

I decided not to proceed to interview with any candidates whose CVs contained basic errors in spelling or grammar.

My old man had exactly the same policy. He said that if he was reading a CV and spotted a spelling error, he'd stop reading, throw it straight in the bin and go onto the next one. Logic being that if they were careless/lazy enough to make such a basic error when applying for the job, how bad were they going to be if they got the job? He said he threw quite a few out, and we're talking about applications for a £150k+ job here! Beggars belief really.

[J B L]

It reminds me that our French company still insist on computer made CVs but hand written covering letters.
I appreciate that applicants could write the letter in Word first to correct the mistakes but those too lazy to bother learning properly first they certainly aren't going to write a letter twice are they?... Anyway, this application process generates some proper gems.

[Orb the Impaler]

I find this whole situation with the UK O level and A level (or whatever the hell they are called this week) utterly laughable - but sad.

Every year you see the government, students and their parents on the news etc harping on about how their exams are just as hard as they have always been etc etc.

Yes. Of course they are. That's why even mediocre students out of comprehensive schools are coming out with full sets of "A"s - something only the upper couple of percent of students would manage 20-30 years ago. I believe many private schools now sit 'Euro' exams.

And the final proof: I was working for part of the medical school at Manchester Uni a few years ago. They were having to have their own entrance examination because kids were coming to them all with wedges of straight As and yet lacked fundemental knowledge of the subject and elementary spelling and math skills. Mrs Orb(s) is a scientist for a major international company: UK graduates are now almost useless and this is reflected in her recruitment policies.

Edited by Orb the Impaler on Monday 22 February 17:44

[RDMcG]

In business, it is just unacceptable at a senior level to be unable to communicate crisply and clearly. I have often received letters and emails that were bullet points,misspelled, or with appalling grammar or syntax. Paragraphs and punctation are things of the past. Those who say that none of this matters are simply misguided. Spellchecks can reduce the most egregious errors, but they typically cannot understand context. Thus, " I would of" as against "I would have" will often escape as the individual words are correctly spelled. There is more to progressing than a nice suit and working hard.

Evidently, if you have no need to ever write or communicate in a structured fashion, this is irrelevant, but it is certainly a bar to progress in a career.

[ewenm]

RDMcG said:

In business, it is just unacceptable at a senior level to be unable to communicate crisply and clearly. I have often received letters and emails that were bullet points,misspelled, or with appalling grammar or syntax. Paragraphs and punctation are things of the past. Those who say that none of this matters are simply misguided. Spellchecks can reduce the most egregious errors, but they typically cannot understand context. Thus, " I would of" as against "I would have" will often escape as the individual words are correctly spelled. There is more to progressing than a nice suit and working hard.

Evidently, if you have no need to ever write or communicate in a structured fashion, this is irrelevant, but it is certainly a bar to progress in a career.

So good until that split infinitive

Even outside the business world clear, concise communication is vital. If you're a scientist or someone working in another technical discipline it is imperative that you can communicate complicated scenarios in a language that the layman can understand. Whenever I hear the line that something is "too complicated to explain" I see it as a failure of the communication skills of the person.

[nonegreen]

We need to scrap and sack the QCA and the LSCs. Thats the oppening gambit, then move on from there.

[RDMcG]

ewenm said:

RDMcG said:

In business, it is just unacceptable at a senior level to be unable to communicate crisply and clearly. I have often received letters and emails that were bullet points,misspelled, or with appalling grammar or syntax. Paragraphs and punctation are things of the past. Those who say that none of this matters are simply misguided. Spellchecks can reduce the most egregious errors, but they typically cannot understand context. Thus, " I would of" as against "I would have" will often escape as the individual words are correctly spelled. There is more to progressing than a nice suit and working hard.

Evidently, if you have no need to ever write or communicate in a structured fashion, this is irrelevant, but it is certainly a bar to progress in a career.

So good until that split infinitive

Even outside the business world clear, concise communication is vital. If you're a scientist or someone working in another technical discipline it is imperative that you can communicate complicated scenarios in a language that the layman can understand. Whenever I hear the line that something is "too complicated to explain" I see it as a failure of the communication skills of the person.

I stand corrected

[bogwoppit]

The inexorable decline towards universally poor grammar is something that genuinely depresses me. These days, I find myself actually accepting error-laden communications without comment or significant prejudice. This is only because if I did not lower my standards, I would end up attending anger management classes. Nevertheless, every time I see an important email go out with basic grammatical errors, a little part of me dies. If I notice the errors, I am sure the recipients do too.

Don't get me wrong, I recognise that mistakes happen (and I make plenty) so I'm not expecting perfection in every email, but it is generally fairly easy to differentiate a genuine mistake from an error that has come about because the person does not understand correct usage. It is getting more and more common. I can only imagine that, soon, "they're" and "their" will officially have the same definition.

What is actually more worrying is that I am now starting to see new high calibre graduates exhibit a curious new breed of poor communication: a combination of bad grammar and overly formal language. "Further to you're most valuable last week's correspondance [sic]..."

[Jasandjules]

IainT said:

Why would the state of education in the UK make employers tired?

Because they are expected to employ those who have little idea of correct punctuation and/or basic sense at all, yet these are students with a mere 3 A grades at A level.... It is therefore necessary to address this during employment, when it should not need to be the case i.e. firms waste money.

My old Law lecturer had a little hobby, he would put "I do hope English is not your first language" in red across the cover sheet of essays where he had given up reading them......... I know 3 people (2 of whom had 4 A Levels at Grade A) who got this.. And one Canadian. So basically three native English Speakers.. 2 of the 3 I believe were in tears in the toilets that day..... I know I shouldn't have laughed, but I did...

Also if you have dyslexia you get extra marks or somesuch, I know a lady with a very bad case of dyslexia (she asked me to proof read one of her essays one time, my word I got a headache) but she got a 1st for it (wrongly in my view, I only got a high 2:1 !!) who, on the back of several rather good essay results got a job in a fairly good firm... I would LOVE to know what happens when she writes a document for a client which only a select few can read/make head nor tail of. And bear in mind the importance of written English as a lawyer........


I have no doubt I have made a huge number of mistakes in the above

[anonymous-user]

grumbledoak said:

Emigration just looks better and better.

no dont do it, its horrible. just stay there we don't need any more british immigrants..

[s3fella]

I have a 2 year old daughter as well. She has 90% of her clothes from charity shops, 95% of her toys, DVDs videos etc too. She's as happy as a sandboy, as she has no clue about the cost of things, and does not care where things come from, she is after all, 2 years old.
However, she also has £12k in bank accounts already, from us, and gradparents, as we spend fapp all on her in the shops! This is for us to use when she is 11 to send her to a decent school, one that educates children for their lives, not just to pass some multiple choice tests.
By the time she is 11 we aim to have enough to get her through A levels, and by A levels, enough to get her through Uni etc and a nit left to start on in adulthood. Will we suceed, well, who knows, it wont be though lack of trying. Will she get all manner of insignificant Chinese tat for Xmas each year, that will end up on the tip within a few months, well, no! Will she get a better start to adult life than her playstation generation friends....I hope so.

Ejukation in this country has become a total farce, as has pretty much everything else that these meddling socialist fxckwitts have touched.

[s3fella]

On a seperate note, you can still find properly educated people in less than glamourous roles. Only last week, whilst reading the menu at a local massage parlour, I noticed several of the operatives had both A and O levels.

Edited by s3fella on Monday 22 February 20:14

[Puggit]

Standards are definitely slipping on PH, no one has commented on this:

article said:

...of the 1.7m jobs created since 1997, 81% have gone to foreign workers

[Pesty]

Now you will not hear me comment often on a persons spelling because I am rubish and my punctuation is pathetic.

I belive I know why mostly because I am thick but there are other reasons IMO. One of them is I was taught in the 80's teh start of the new way of teaching where your work was not corrected by the teacher. No red marks in my books. However only good work by clever students ever got put in pride of place on display. It didn;t bother me one bit that mine never was because it was ste and I knew it.

My daugther is thirteen she took a physics GCSE 2 years early and got a B one mark apparently from an A. this weekend we went for a walk and she asked " if I threw a stone at the power line would it get electricuted ( they have covered electricity ohms law and all that jazz)

anyway I digress
we had to go up to an open evening to talk about her future what options she should pick and if she should do some more fast track GCSE's or somthing . There were stands for each subject dissplaying pupils work. Bare in mind this is a seconday school and the work was by students ready to pick their options

up on a wall in pride of place for hundreds of parents and students to see was this for the DT food tech section.
Now I'm sure they don't want to discriminate against people not as tallented but what does that teach them. It teaches them that inferior work is acceptable IMO so they don't even try.

Edited by Pesty on Monday 22 February 21:30

[JagLover]

It is nothing new really.

I am the product of a state comprehensive (sometime before Labour so they can't be blamed) and I can't remember receiving a single lesson on grammer and punctuation.

[Iain328]

fido said:

GSP said:

Private education is the only way forwards in my opinion if you truely want you children to be succesful.

Then you have the problem that universities are pressured into favouring state-schools over private-school, so you'll have to make sure they get 4As to get into a top university (or apply some bribes/nepotism) - a Future Fair For All my arse

That is indeed happening - and so some kids are bailing out of private schools after GCSE's & heading to 6th form colleges to get around the problem which shouldn't exist in the first place - which is ridiculous.

[Iain328]

Greg_D said:

The thing that scares me the most:

The teachers are no better.

Of the (literally) hundreds of teachers I interview every year, very few fill me with confidence and exude the obvious competence you would expect of the profession.

It starts and ends with the staff.

I don't have children, and never plan to. But if fate dictates that I have children in the future, they will 100% go to private school. To send them to comprehensive school round here (even those with glowing OFSTED reports) is to condemn them to failure.

Those bloody targets have to go, they need to get back to 'proper' education

Greg

No, it does not start and end with the Staff. It starts at home with the parents.

How can you expect teachers to teach when some of the kids they have to deal with have zero respect for them, the school environment or even any of their peers - and then they (the teachers) have next to no serious means to sort them out?

One unruly kid in a class can waste a massive percentage of the teacher's time (to the detriment of everyone else in the class) and yet when it comes to parent's evening, apparently, "little Johney is never a problem at home". This is where the private schools have an advantage: if it gets bad enough, "little Johney" (and his parents) can be told to take a hike & go elsewhere.

Your last point about getting rid of targets etc is spot on though - and again one reason why the private schools do better. Our kid's schools got rid of some of the SATs tests years ago because they were a waste of time.

My Mrs is a (state sector) secondary school teacher, both our kids are in private schools. 'nuff said.

Edited by Iain328 on Monday 22 February 21:39

[bga]

Iain328 said:

That is indeed happening - and so some kids are bailing out of private schools after GCSE's & heading to 6th form colleges to get around the problem which shouldn't exist in the first place - which is ridiculous.

That was happening throughout my time in secondary school - 15 years ago. We always had loads of kids from public school join us for 6th form.

[bga]

JagLover said:

It is nothing new really.

I am the product of a state comprehensive (sometime before Labour so they can't be blamed) and I can't remember receiving a single lesson on grammer and punctuation.

I spent 3 years in public school and wasn't taught them either. When my brother & I went back into state education we were ahead in maths and history but quite a way behind in English.

My dads g/f was teaching in state and public schools for donkeys years before becoming an Ofstead inspector. She reckons that a mediocre public school is just as bad as a mediocre state school. Unfortunately there are lots of parents who are paying over and above the usual tax burden for their children to get an education that is sub-standard compared to that of nearby state schools. She does go on to say that good public schools are a good deal better than anything that the state provides. Mentioning Steiner schools is always a good way to liven up a quiet evening.