According to the BBC:

Britain’s involvement in the slave trade is to be studied by all secondary pupils in England from September.

Children will study the development of the trade, colonisation and how slavery was linked to the British empire and the industrial revolution.
Um, haven’t all schools always taught that anyway?! Isn’t that just part of history? I guess not.

I have a concern. I remember listening to a programme on R4 about the anniversary of the abolition last year, and I heard a couple of bits of astounding ignorance, both from teachers who basically chose not to (or were unaware of) African chiefs and Saudi Arabian involvement in slavery.

And then there are sites like this…I see NO mention of of the fact that Britain was one of the FIRST to abolish slavery, that Britain only accounted for 5% of the slave trade.
Most of the trading happened in Arabian countries, which didn’t abolish slavery until 1962.

But then, this site’s title informs us that
“Britain abolished the slave trade on 25 March 2007“. Doesn’t sound like Marika Sherwood is very clued up!

You know, listening to people talking about British involvement in slavery, you’d think we were going to Africa with nets and rounding them up!

I’m all for history being taught, but in full. But I wonder if they’ll include the inconvenient truths?

By the way, I think slavery was a horrendous and despicable part of history that we should learn from. But let’s get some perspective - I’ve no reason to feel guilt. My forefathers weren’t sugar traders or land owners.

Let’s have history as it was, and less “guilty white man” crap like this

Hmmm, I’ve just had a thought - imagine a world where between 65% and 80% of everthing you worked for was taken from you. And if you didn’t give it, you were threatened with violence and imprisonment.
Oh, wait. That’ll be tax in the UK.

Tags: education
Categories: Politics, education
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ANOTHER huge stuff-up from American-based marking company, ETS Europe.

Just read the above - what a sorry story. And apparently, they use GCSE students to mark the papers!

Un-be-lievable. And I heard a bit about it Radio 4 this morning - NO-ONE from ETS or the government had the most basic decency to be interviewed - ETS pulled out at the last minute.

Isn’t ANYONE sick of the way the government treat our children with lowest common denominator, expensive poor quality marking companies?

Couple of bits of audio - here are a couple of young readers on Radio 4’s 6pm news, thurs 17th July:

I’d be more worried about not being able to understand “yoof speak” than anything else! As someone on the message boards said:

We have a Jamaican friend over here. He was telling us that the West Indian patois so common on the streets and schools of London and elsewhere, would not be tolerated in the West Indian schools. He says it beggars belief that in England it is allowed… and remember he IS Jamaican.

This interested me, because I was Headteacher for most of my career hundreds of miles north of London/Essex/the East End. On occasions, one of my RURAL pupils would begin talking with a kind of Estuary/Essex/West Indian patois accent!!!!

Well, that was easily solved in school, as I simply refused to acknowledge anything said in such a fabricated accent for that area.

However, have you noticed that anyone employed as a “Youth Worker” apparently needs as their number one top priority, just such an accent, and in all probability to dress down to the same standards as the “yoofs”.

Can we not be allowed to teach children to speak properly any more, to have role models who can speak English, and to have a media that doesn’t think it is “wiv i’ ” [that's a 't' missing by the way] if the actor/personality doesn’t put on the most awful, forced, incoherent accent?

Maybe we need a grown-up debate about standards in everyday language?

And here is the view from The Now Show

No-one sick of this government yet? Where are the protests? Where are the riots?

Tags: education,mp3,the-now-show
Categories: Politics, education
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In the last few days…

From The Times (added 30th June 2008)

Pupils are being rewarded for writing obscenities in their GCSE English examinations even when it has nothing to do with the question.

Write ‘fuck off’ on a GCSE paper and you’ll get 7.5%. Add an exclamation mark and it’ll go up to 11%
One pupil who wrote “f*** off” was given marks for accurate spelling and conveying a meaning successfully.

His paper was marked by Peter Buckroyd, a chief examiner who has instructed fellow examiners to mark in the same way. He told trainee examiners recently to adhere strictly to the mark scheme, to the extent that pupils who wrote only expletives on their papers should be awarded points.

From BBC News

A report this week by think-tank Reform laments the drop in numbers of people taking maths A-level, at an estimated cost to the economy of £9bn.
“The UK remains one of the few advanced nations where it is socially acceptable, fashionable even, to profess an inability to cope with maths,” it says, despite a maths A-level putting on average an extra £10,000 a year on a salary

Also University cheats ‘not expelled’

University students who are caught submitting plagiarised work are very rarely expelled, shows a survey.
A study found only 143 students caught cheating were expelled out of 9,200 cases - despite almost all universities threatening expulsion as a sanction.

Exam papers had answers on back

Thousands of teenagers are facing uncertainty over their exams after a GCSE music paper was found to have some of the answers on the back.

Students ‘had hints’ before exam

An exam board is investigating suggestions that some teachers gave students hints about what questions would be in an A-level biology exam.

I know this myself - I went to Reading College 11 years ago, and it was tough graft.
I went back 2 years ago, and it was a joke - they virtually stood there and read the answers out as the exam was happening! I blogged about it.

All this came to mind when I heard Harriet Harmon whiffling on about how educational standards are far higher than they were 10 years ago.

Does ANYONE believe that?!

Tags: education,labour,Politics
Categories: education
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