Soon there's going to be no time left in schools for actual education, as ministers are to announce this week that every child is to have "five hours of cultural learning and activity every week" during the school day. Add this to be extra PE time schools are also supposed to give, and the amount of time for actual teaching and learning will suffer massively from the lack of time they actually get.
Even though school tables keep showing better results, and the annual increase in GCSE and A-level results, Britain is dropping in comparison with other countries:
Britain has fallen to 17th place in reading from England’s seventh in 2001. In science, the slide is from fourth to 14th. In maths, the performance was particularly poor - down from eighth to 24th - making Britain equal to Poland. (The Times)
This decline can at least partly be put down to just the "tyranny of the testing regime" which has sprouted massively during the last decade. Tests and targets don't foster good teaching or a good education system. So even with billions of pounds being thrown at the problem, bugger all has really been achieved by it - and in fact the opposite in comparison with other countries.What this latest education gimmick that Labour will introduce shows that they don't really care about actual education and learning - which is the real point of school - but about making change for changes sake. Children don't need five hours of "cultural learning and activity" every week, but they do need more actual education and teaching. And it is just this lack of teaching that gives them their arguments for educational conscription.
Source: The Guardian, The Times, BBC, The Telegraph
