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Why Is Britain So Far Behind In Education?

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anotheoldgit | 12:13 Wed 30th Oct 2013 | News
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Britain may lag behind Lithuania, Latvia and Hungary in a worldwide education league table, but heh, all is not bad, because 80.4% believe it's a good place to live for immigrants.

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It does not matter whose figures you accept. Education in the UK is and will now always be largely second rate. Here’s why: 1. 93% of children are educated in the State system. This has a number of fundamental flaws. Firstly it is administered by local authorities. These organisations are particularly inept in just about everything they do. There is no...
14:06 Wed 30th Oct 2013
It can't be anything to do with immigrants AOG. Your grammar's p1ss poor and you were at school a long time ago.
good question, it doesn't really say. It may be to do with actual spending on education - number of schools, number of teachers (per pupil) etc.

It may be simple determination that a country needs a well-educated population. I'm surprised there aren't any Asian countries near the top of the list, since Japanese and Chinese, for example, rank education very highly. But NZ, for instance, has pioneered the teaching of children to read, and comes top of the list, so it may be that starting young is imporant.
Added the league table.
ouch, based on that league table alone, it's a bit damning innit?

Where's that table from? does it give any reasons why we're so bad?
could you invert it, Mr Ed, give Britain a better showing?
Question Author
jno

Thanks for that jno,I thought that the Daily Mail had finally been banned by AnswerBank.
Question Author
AB Editor

/// Added the league table. ///

Why was that Ed? Although it looks very impressive it has obviously been confusing for some posters.
Makes you proud eh?
What exactly is the league table measuring ?
Well it is a great place for immigrants and even better for the majority who are nationals - now that really is something to be proud of
ok right - i did not see the link
Question Author
ludwig

/// It can't be anything to do with immigrants AOG. Your grammar's p1ss poor and you were at school a long time ago. ///

Then please explain the modern approach to grammar, I may have left school all those years ago, but I am still eager to learn.
It may depend a bit on what the ranking is based on. Coming 30th is less bad, for example, if there isn't much to separate the top 30. So we'd really need to see the raw data on which this is based before drawing any conclusions. Remember too that the UK has some of the finest Universities in the world, and some exceptionally good schools underneath that.
AOG

How did the Daily Mail come up with these stats? What I mean is - what was their source.

I ask, because last November, according to the BBC, we were sixth:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-20498356

I kinda feel more inclined to trust the BBC's sources, but would like to know where the Daily Mail got it's figures - for comparison purposes.
Incidentally - I have to say that's quite clever posting a picture link to a story.

Didn't know we could do that in AB.
Legatum Institute - Nice source


http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Legatum_Institute

Legatum Institue (LI) is a right-wing think tank promoting "free markets, free minds, and free peoples"

Jeffrey Gedmin is President and CEO of the Legatum Institute in London. He is a "Founding signatory" of the Project for the New American Century.




The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) was a neo-conservative think tank



PNAC's policy document, "Rebuilding America's Defences," openly advocated for total global military domination. Many PNAC members held highest-level positions in the George W. Bush administration.



But sure! apart from that of course I'll take their data at face value!
Question Author
jim360

/// It may depend a bit on what the ranking is based on. ///

Sorry about that jim the AB Editor removed the link, but it was re-entered by jno, if you had cared to read it this was some explanation.

*** The standard of education was based on factors including pupils-to-teacher ratio, the level of secondary education reached by workers and enrolment in universities and other higher education. ***

A number of factors are involved here.

First and foremost, successive governments enjoy an ongoing obsession with further education. They insist that everyone wants to go / is suitable for university, which is arrant nonsense, but they plough milliions of pounds into funding propoganda that continues to fail in its mission.

At the other end of the scale, successive governments ignore nursery education, and treat it with contempt.

Why else would nurseries be staffed with disinterested teenage girls with no motivation or empathy with children, being paid less than they could earn in a supermarket, or the same as they could get for cleaning toilets.

If one government took the brave step of inverting those two education concepts, and put money and training into nurseries, we could have a generation of children who understand the basic concepts of the three R's as they enter school, instead of playing 'catch-up' through their entire time in education, being taught a curriculum that changes like the wind as successive Education Ministers mess with it.

My wife is currently working as an Inspector in schools in Abu Dhabi. There, children are taught science from the age of four, in English, and they thrive.

If the goverment could appreciate teachers for the job they do - and not constantly tell them, and the public, how useless they are, which has gone on for so long that it has become a self-fulling prophesy.

Education is a conversational football for all governments because they see it as a vote-catcher, so they pretend that school is as it was in the 1950's - when their immigration policies have swamped primary and secondary schools with pupils who cannot speak English.

If just one government could treat education with the finance and gravitas it deserves - as the training ground for the next generations, things would improve.

Investing in education is not 'sexy', running down teachers is.

No need to look any further for our ongoing poor showings against the rest of the world.

They care about the future for their populations- we prefer to moan about fast trains and expensive energy.
BTW Pearson placed us 6th

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-20498356

They're a bit more neutral than a bunch of right wing american Neo-cons I'd say

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Pearson

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