The whole of teaching should be looked into. A solid foundation in English and Maths is essential but their introduction is mainly (I know some exceptions) by mediocre trained teachers.
I have met a lot of intelligent people who for whatever reason shun Maths as they don't understand it - my wife included. The basic fundamentals of H T U (remember those?) are poorly taught and I'd guess that is because the teachers themselves didn't understand it either! I fall back on H T U notation to teach things such as binary arithmetic and stuff such logarithms and decibels and get the concept across quickly.
To be fair though it wasn't until I became a teacher (up to 'A' Level Science) that I realised that the knowledge I had been using for years I didn't really understand. Thus began my own re-evaluation to understand what I thought I did but didn't! This resulted in my pupils enjoying lessons because I could put the subject across clearly from a good understanding and bring it into perspective.
I still have fond memories of teaching. That just brought back a memory of the time when I heard some low ability pupils age 14+ (none examinable as they were labelled) being allocated a science teacher and one of the naughtiest piped up "cor! we have a good teacher!". They took just one CSE and it was the subject I and my team taught - General Science and 80% passed. Doesn't that say something about the teaching in the rest of the school?
Of course this was 40 years ago and things may well be a lot different now. But at that time the best teachers were allocated to the brightest classes whilst those with weaker/disruptive pupils had the weakest teachers. Hence why I introduced that CSE course for those that were not taking any other exam led by myself and two other top Science teachers.
DV
Excellent post, agree with much (not all!) of that, especially the opening sentence.
Yes, the whole of teaching should be looked into, one of the big problems with our education system is that we don’t have an education system. We have a multiplicity of different systems that includes Free Schools, Academies, MATs and ‘bog standard’ standard comps all of which attract different funding models and we also have Grammar schools that are openly selective and ex Grammar schools that are selective by post code. Many Academies are also selective by the back door, in that while they might have the same admissions policy as a bog standard comp, when they exclude a pupil, they can top up from a waiting list rather than having to go into an LEA ‘managed move’ system which effectively means that if a school excludes a pupil, it has to take another pupil excluded from another school. This means that as more schools become academies, there are a growing number of excluded pupils needing places in fewer and fewer LEA schools (that have less money to deal with excluded pupils) LEA schools are more and more becoming schools for pupils with Special Needs of different sorts.
Most schools with a sixth form were those who lost Grammar school status in the 70’s. As someone who failed their 11 plus and sent to a pretty awful Secondary Modern where we were consciously schooled for labouring jobs, and went to a newly converted ex Grammar School for what would now be called KS4 (and where most of the teaching staff came from the old Grammar school), I can only say the experience was deeply corrosive. I managed to get quite a few CSE grade 1’s, which we were told were that equivalent to O levels, but when I asked to see the head of sixth form to do A levels, I was met with a barely concealed smirk and fairly open contempt. I felt that I was being laughed at. So yes, I totally agree that the quality of teaching at such a school (that was still regarded as outstanding by the time Ofsted came around), was often an abject failure for pupils like me.
I would disagree quite strongly that certain subjects should be given a higher priority than other subjects. For example, when I eventually went to University I was told that I wouldn’t be able to cope with an economics course because of my lack of Maths understanding, which I freely admit is poor. Yet years later I find that I can understand economics at a conceptual level without Maths, and when I have spent a day or two analysing an equation that some people might grasp instinctively, the equation is doing no more than saying if x then y, but x is assumed, so there is no necessary connection to y which all of the maths in between obscures. MV=PT is such an equation which assumes a two hundred year old quantity theory of money and from that gives us the current day monetarist ideology of fighting inflation
only with cuts to and controls on spending.
Secondly, we are now in a situation with the English baccalaureate that certain subjects are given priority and other subjects like the arts are becoming optional to the extent that with budget cuts, less curriculum time is given to the arts and pupils are asked to pay for materials if they do choose to do those subjects. I would argue that the central role of Education is to provide a broad and balanced curriculum, not one heavily weighted in a certain direction.
Loved the bit when you said you had to re evaluate your own knowledge in order to teach. As a freelance illustrator I had an instinctive understanding of perspective that I never questioned or thought about, I just did it, it was easy. However, as a Head of Art communicating that understanding was not easy and I have to work hard at thinking about and developing that understanding in order to teach it to a mixed class. The very act of having to re evaluate my own understand brought it’s own rewards for me personally and the projects I developed as a consequence became some of my most popular.
All of which brings me to your last paragraph, yes, the best teachers still get the easiest classes, but also, teaching has changed dramatically in the last 40 years. Gove’s changes brought in far greater demands for admin and extra demands on teacher time. In that time a culture of bullying seems to have developed, and as a Local Secretary of a teaching union, I found myself dealing with more and more cases of teachers being put on disciplinary and capability proceeding for trivial reasons. As budgets were cut, such cases rose especially for classroom teachers in their 50’s who would be replaced with younger, cheaper NQTs.
. If it had been H T & U even I might have understood. At my first school you could hear the daily times table chanting from a certain elderly schoolmistress who brooked no nonsense. This is, i.m.o., as fundamental to both maths tuition and normal life's progression as it's always been.
