The laughingly named ‘skills-based curriculum’ was a joke, so it’s no surprise Labour wants it re-instated. It often allows ignorant teachers with poor subject knowledge – usually badly educated – to grandstand at the expense of pupils. These preen as “outstanding teachers” but their results tell a different story, as does a quick conversation about their supposed specialism. Non-teachers would be astounded how many are teaching with virtually no knowledge, love or ability for their subject. I know of a Head of English at my old school who’d never heard of T. S. Eliot – I was asked, were they male or female?
Roughly half of my 18 years teaching English in a comprehensive was spent under the disastrous ‘skills-based’ regime. I was constantly admonished for “too much teacher talk” and told “we don’t want the sage on the stage but a guide on the side”. I avowedly rejected this – with frequent run-ins – but they couldn’t fire me since I got good results. And I knew a lot about my subject, always dripping it into lessons. Most but not all of my colleagues were badly read and cowardly. If I sound arrogant, I don’t care: I’ve the scars from so many battles that it’s the only way if one is the sole non left-liberal in such a monoculture. Too many have acquiesced for too long.
Payback was in lesson observations, which (until Gove’s changes) involved teachers prancing around like speed-taking stand-ups, rather than teaching. Supposedly, pupils needed to self-educate through ‘Assessment for Learning’. In reality, most hated the cringe-worthy approach: endless group work; role playing; peer-assessment; self-assessment; et al. They wanted their teachers to TEACH. In particular, individual writing skills were always neglected.
After about 2014, someone noticed that hardly any pupils could think for themselves, or express themselves verbally, let alone on the page. Posters and trivia like that don’t help in exams. Nor do silly gimmicks involving handing out playing cards, sweets and traffic light hats. These got gushing praise from the useless Ofsted inspectors, but short-changed pupils in what really mattered – their education.
Small surprise if the party of indoctrination and trans-activism reverts to this. One look at David Lammy – our leading Tudor numerologist, with his Mastermind slot claiming Henry VII succeeded Henry VIII – shows that poor educational standards and Labour are synonymous.
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An astute summation of the disarray in state schooling. Socialists never learn. Their response to the failure of their interventions is invariable to do even more of the same.
The solution to the failure of state schooling is a voucher system so that the providers of schooling become accountable to consumers ie. parents. Teachers with deep knowledge which they teach to pupils would be valued in such a system.
I do recall a previous Government observation that the teaching of maths was very poor. Their solution? More maths lessons.
Maybe these expert teachers can teach us all about the “Green Jobs”. Well that is an easy one, they are all in China. Maybe the teaching specialists can tell us what a woman is since the Labour Party seems to know exactly what a woman is but prefer not to say in case they upset some potential woke voters. Maybe the expert super teachers can tell us how to get control of a chaotic classroom where proper teachers have been banned from telling the rabble to “SHUT UP and PAY ATTENTION”. Probably paying attention is too right wing.
OK extra House Points for anyone who can name a green job.
The acting job of the man who dresses up as the Jolly Green Giant?
The men that cut the grass for the councils?
The persons that make pea soup?
The Toy Story Green Army Men (see below)
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/AbrYyDYFMb4
Sorry, Skinner..I have to fail you! Point two incorrect…it is the men that STOP you cutting the grass that have the green jobs.
Oh I see. You meant ‘green’ jobs.
Governor of the Bank of England?
If you rely on the State Indoctrination system to educate your children, you are failing them.
Education begins in the home as soon as your baby is born and it is your responsibility to encourage your very young children to WANT to learn. If you succeed in doing that, they will learn …. despite the failings of the State Indoctrination system.
Well everyone knows Henry IX succeeded Henry VIII.
I became disillusioned during my university course and eventually got thrown out. I went to study electronic engineering. Now I know the older members of the congregation will know that engineering is a practical subject and that it helps to know how to apply the theory to everyday electronic problems.
My disillusionment started when I realised that most of the lecturers had never worked in industry and had no idea how some of the esoteric circuitry they talked about was used in the real world. I always thought that electronics would be a cutting edge topic; my course was mainly about thermionic valves in the sixties – well into the transistor age and at the dawn of Integrated Circuits (ICs).
Some of my pals got firsts. However they were unable to identify resistors from their colour code and had no idea how to solder a component into a circuit – neither topic was on the curriculum, and most ended mediocre careers in standards compliance or H&S departments.
Only one succeeded. He entered as a mature student and knew how to get what he wanted. He actually developed some clever circuitry, built it, tested it and eventually sold the rights to one of the big manufacturers. He was the one who drove his Porsche until he was too stiff to get in and out of it.
A close friend on the course was also a mature student who came from the electronics industry. He challenged the lecturers over many of their inadequacies and not surprisingly was invited to leave during his second year.
I know of two individuals that did a mechanical engineering course but with no practical. I have encountered electronics engineers (with degrees) that do not know which screw driver to use and have never wired a plug.
Then there was my dad. No qualifications, except an electrical apprenticeship and self taught in maths. Worked on houses first, then the new Olympia, then boats (before they were sunk) then planes. Ended up an aircraft electrical inspector and assisted in sorting out the wiring on the UK prototype Concorde.
I completely agree with you. University courses are basically useless now, The teachers know very little that is useful, despite having fake PhDs. Strangely I am a graduate electronics engineer, who worked for an extremely successful electronics company. I learned very little from my University course, partly because I had studied electricity from the age of about 5. I am afraid I too corrected the lecturers, pointed out the vast gaps in knowledge, and got endless flack as a result. When it came to the final year project the truth came out. Mine worked and was accompanied by a masters dissertation quality report, the rest failed to do anything useful and the reports were basically rubbish. This was confirmed many times as I interviewed potential job candidates, the number who could answer much more than their name was tiny. The few good ones were fantastic. Most of these had studied electronics all their childhood, and had the skills to prove it. Electronics courses have now become almost entirely based on computing skills, but this is only a tiny part of a useful knowledge base. Any knowledge of analogue electronics is sadly lacking, because it is expensive to teach practically. So sad. It is why Britain now lags behind many other Countries, our technological edge has been destroyed.
Interesting article. I wish I know more about the “skills based curriculum”. I am not a fan of grand initiatives, but surely skills are important, alongside knowledge. I appreciate that the situations are not analogous, but in my work I get asked tons of questions and asked for help and I am keen and careful to balance getting the job done quickly and giving people answers with leading them to work out the answers for themselves so they can one day replace me when I retire. Personally I find learning by doing more productive, though I do see that accumulating knowledge is also important if only for background and context and to then understand what further knowledge you lack. Would be interested to hear the author’s thoughts on this.
Okay, well, how did you qualify to get the job in the first place? How did you then acquire the skills to do the job efficiently enough to teach others and answer questions?
In both cases you learnt the basics at school, you learnt how to add, subtract, reason, converse. Skills Based Curriculum does none of those basics and assesses none of them.
Re-read the article. You and I would think of skills as being things we learnt at work, maybe planing a piece of wood, wiring a plug, planning a project. We are able to do those things because we demonstrably understand those things. We were actually taught how to understand them.
What the author is essentially saying is that Labour taught kids absolutely nothing. They came out of school with easily gained qualifications that a pet hamster could pass. Many employers have stated that most kids were not employable. The Chairman of Tesco is on record as stating that most of his staff are sent back to school to learn to read and write: these were the management candidates.
I can’t read the full article. I have read the extracts above and other than the author thinking that the curriculum he was asked to teach was not effective I didn’t get much sense of how it was.
I would imagine you can teach many subjects with a more interactive approach. I would think there is a spectrum and the question is not binary.
I am neither defending nor attacking the approach, simply trying to understand it better.
As far as my work goes, I had a fairly standard education up to A level and did an entry level short course in what I do now and learnt mostly on the job. I had to take an aptitude test to get on the course- something like the 11+ which I took to go to grammar school.
TOF, I think that the way you learn is by doing things. It is practice and knowledge together. Do we teach Doctors or Dentists by sitting them in a lecture room and talking at them for a few years? Of course not. They meet patients quite quickly in the process, at first dead ones where they learn by doing, cutting them up to find how they work. With live patients they begin to discover all the complexities of the body, giving an injection or taking blood is much harder than it looks when seeing an expert. They also learn how real people describe problems, the first step to diagnosis.
The classroom method described is ridiculous, nothing can be learnt without a basic knowledge base from which to start. You can read a book on how to bang in a nail, the first few times you try will probably hurt you. Of course the book is safer but useless!
I agree, though I am afraid that I didn’t understand very much about the “classroom method described” from the excerpts printed above, other than that the author didn’t think they were effective. I would guess he is correct, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the idea of a “skills-based curriculum”, if done sensibly, isn’t a good one worth exploring.