On 06/03/2012 22:57, Ghostrecon wrote:

I was not proposing that anyone should be "forced" to use any specific
bit of kit. I personally would like to see some of the basics of
software development taught alongside the office apps skills etc. I
suspect however that you would find it easier to generate enthusiasm for
a (say) a small robot being driven round an obstetrical course by a on
board Pi, than one would for something popping up on the screen of a PC.


now the mind boggles :-) lol

"def?? from wikiyuk
Obstetrics (from the Latin obstare, "to stand by") is the medical specialty
dealing with the care of all women's reproductive tracts and their children
during pregnancy (prenatal period)"

Lol! Its not often I make myself laugh that much! The joy of spell
checkers and lack of attention.

(you have to admit though, it would certainly get their attention!)

We actually have this, well, pic driven 'mars/moon lander" type robots on
the engineering diploma course avoiding obstacles - predictably the
students love it

Snipped

And then you have the other entire can of worms, whats best taught
in primary, secondardy, trade schools and university level education.

We don't really have much in the way of trade schools as such here (I
take it you refer to ones that major on vocational training rather than
academia?) which is a shame. Some of the better comprehensive schools do
now have streams that lean this way however.

We have a stream of pupils some of whom attend colleges doing different
level btec courses, run btec courses in house and the engineering diploma
these number about 100 out of a yeargroup of 400 students - its a right
b*gger to schedule i know !! Unfortunately the present education dept well
michael gove is now against this type of education despite much support fro
large manufacturing companies. Education here is a political footbal. In
the 22 years I have been in it we have changed course about 5 times - it
takes an average of 5 years to get changes through (due to the nature of
students growing up) so the system is in effect constant flux

Yup, it seems lots of the problem is that no one actually knows how to
"fix it", but they all think they do.


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

On 07/03/2012 09:38, Rod Speed wrote:
Mark wrote
wrote

We have a stream of pupils some of whom attend colleges doing
different level btec courses, run btec courses in house and the
engineering diploma these number about 100 out of a yeargroup of 400
students - its a right b*gger to schedule i know !! Unfortunately
the present education dept well michael gove is now against this
type of education despite much support fro large manufacturing
companies. Education here is a political footbal. In the 22 years
I have been in it we have changed course about 5 times - it takes an
average of 5 years to get changes through (due to the nature of
students growing up) so the system is in effect constant flux

Very true. I just wish they leave alone and let the teachers do their job.

I'm not convinced that you'd get a very viable result that way.

Historically there was a time it worked very well...

We have national curricula for a reason.

Partly because it stopped working in some cases... but to a large extent
it was a knee jerk reaction to some failing schools and poor teachers.
The teaching establishment got less good at maintaining and policing its
own standards it seems.

The good schools, that have freedom to do it their way, still get
outstanding results, however as with any freedom, what can be a positive
thing in the right hands, can become a liability in the wrong ones.

It isnt viable to have every school do its own thing, let alone every teacher.

Get the leadership and enthusiasm right, give head teachers the ability
to hire and fire as they require etc, and it can be very viable. In
effect this is what the UK had prior to the NC which is a relatively
recent thing.

Despite all the political rhetoric all parties
have micromanaged schools via their policies.

Thats what national curricula do.

Indeed, which is an argument against them IMHO.


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

On Wed, 7 Mar 2012 20:38:43 +1100, "Rod Speed"
wrote:

Mark wrote
Ghostrecon wrote
John Rumm wrote

Thats a separate issue to what needs to be taught to them tho.

I would say they are related. Being comfortable with technology, and
know the basic functions of office software is important. As is
decent mouse and keyboard skills. However repeating that over and
over only gets board kids, not better trained ones. (note there is
actually a fair amount of interesting stuff in the ICT syllabus -
alas much of it does not get taught or gets taught in a veru
formulaic way because the teachers don't have deep enough skills
either to really understand what they are doing, and develop the
concepts and explore a little.

True very true - the constantly changing OFSTED criteria discourage
(or at least penalises) the more adventurous teachers if
'experimentation' goes wrong

If you are in a state school, and ICT is on the
national curriculum, then that is what you get...

I dont believe that thats compulsory for all say hair dressers etc in

ICT is compulsory at the moment if you follow the NC. As I alluded
to, some categories of school have more freedom to interpret
manoeuvre within the constrains of the NC.

+1

the sense that they must all fully grasp what say Word style sheets
are about, let alone some of the more sophiisticated feaures of Excel.

(although schools are finding their ways around that now)

things like the Pi just make it cheaper and at least make it
possible for just about any parent to also "buy what they use
at school" should schools choose to adopt them.

Sure, but its less clear that something like the Pi
makes more sense than a netbook or a laptop.

However, I expect it being mainly taken up by the self
selecting group that are already into such things.

And it remains to be seen how many kids do, either by
demanding their parents do that or driven by the parents.

But then you can also make a case for teaching quite a bit of
DIY in schools too when so many chose to do stuff like that
after they have finished school too.

and in fact, some schools do. There is a local one here that
teaches building, plumbing, wiring skills etc, and even has
outdoor "pens" so that the trainees can get a feel f what it is
like to work in real world conditions for some of these tasks.

Sure, I didnt mean to imply that none do, I really just meant
that it may make more sense for most schools do to that
instead of using the Pi in schools, just because thats more
likely to be more use to more of the kids than the Pi would be.

Depends on the kids obviously. If it fires the enthusiasm for
learning some "real" computer science then its worthwhile

I'm not sure that it is if you are proposing all kids should be
forced to use it in school, even the ones that plan to be hair
dressers etc.

I was not proposing that anyone should be "forced" to use any
specific bit of kit. I personally would like to see some of the
basics of software development taught alongside the office apps
skills etc. I suspect however that you would find it easier to
generate enthusiasm for a (say) a small robot being driven round an
obstetrical course by a on board Pi, than one would for something
popping up on the screen of a PC.

now the mind boggles :-) lol

"def?? from wikiyuk
Obstetrics (from the Latin obstare, "to stand by") is the medical
specialty dealing with the care of all women's reproductive tracts
and their children during pregnancy (prenatal period)"

We actually have this, well, pic driven 'mars/moon lander" type
robots on the engineering diploma course avoiding obstacles -
predictably the students love it

And then you have the other entire can of worms, whats best taught
in primary, secondardy, trade schools and university level education.

We don't really have much in the way of trade schools as such here
(I take it you refer to ones that major on vocational training rather
than academia?) which is a shame. Some of the better comprehensive
schools do now have streams that lean this way however.

We have a stream of pupils some of whom attend colleges doing
different level btec courses, run btec courses in house and the
engineering diploma these number about 100 out of a yeargroup of 400
students - its a right b*gger to schedule i know !! Unfortunately
the present education dept well michael gove is now against this
type of education despite much support fro large manufacturing
companies. Education here is a political footbal. In the 22 years
I have been in it we have changed course about 5 times - it takes an
average of 5 years to get changes through (due to the nature of
students growing up) so the system is in effect constant flux

Very true. I just wish they leave alone and let the teachers do their job.

I'm not convinced that you'd get a very viable result that way.

We have national curricula for a reason.

It isnt viable to have every school do its own thing, let alone every teacher.

A National Curriculum can be useful, especially in low performing
schools. However it has been too prescriptive and was often a burden
to "good" schools. I'm not saying we should have a free-for-all but
teachers do not a lot more about education than government ministers.

And continuous changes, often not well thought out, adds a
considerable extra workload.
--
(\__/) M.
(='.'=) If a man stands in a forest and no woman is around
(")_(") is he still wrong?

John Rumm wrote
Rod Speed wrote
Mark wrote
wrote

We have a stream of pupils some of whom attend colleges doing
different level btec courses, run btec courses in house and the
engineering diploma these number about 100 out of a yeargroup of
400 students - its a right b*gger to schedule i know !!
Unfortunately the present education dept well michael gove is now
against this type of education despite much support fro large
manufacturing companies. Education here is a political footbal. In the 22 years I have been in it we have changed
course about 5
times - it takes an average of 5 years to get changes through (due
to the nature of students growing up) so the system is in effect
constant flux

Very true. I just wish they leave alone and let the teachers do their job.

I'm not convinced that you'd get a very viable result that way.

Historically there was a time it worked very well...

I dont believe there ever was.

And bugger all kids were in formal education at that time anyway.

We have national curricula for a reason.

Partly because it stopped working in some cases...

It never did work.

but to a large extent it was a knee jerk reaction to some failing schools

Nope, because its just not viable to let all schools
do their own thing, let alone every single teacher.

and poor teachers.

There will ALWAYS be poor teachers,
just like there will always be poor anything.

The teaching establishment got less good at maintaining and policing its own standards it seems.

There can be no 'standards' if every teacher decides
for themselves what is taught and how its taught.

The good schools, that have freedom to do it their way, still get outstanding results,

None of them have complete freedom to do anything they like.

however as with any freedom, what can be a positive thing in the right hands, can become a liability in the wrong
ones.

And we have national curricula for a reason.

It isnt viable to have every school do its own thing, let alone every teacher.

Get the leadership and enthusiasm right,

Not even possible with all schools.

give head teachers the ability to hire and fire as they require etc, and it can be very viable.

How odd that its never happened.

It didnt even work when a tiny subset of kids were formally educated.

In effect this is what the UK had prior to the NC

No it did not.

which is a relatively recent thing.

There was never a time when every teacher could
teach anything they liked any way they liked.

Despite all the political rhetoric all parties
have micromanaged schools via their policies.

Thats what national curricula do.

Indeed, which is an argument against them IMHO.

There is no viable alternative to curricula.

Mark wrote
Rod Speed wrote
Mark wrote
Ghostrecon wrote
John Rumm wrote

Thats a separate issue to what needs to be taught to them tho.

I would say they are related. Being comfortable with technology,
and know the basic functions of office software is important. As
is decent mouse and keyboard skills. However repeating that over
and over only gets board kids, not better trained ones. (note
there is actually a fair amount of interesting stuff in the ICT
syllabus - alas much of it does not get taught or gets taught in
a veru formulaic way because the teachers don't have deep enough
skills either to really understand what they are doing, and
develop the concepts and explore a little.

True very true - the constantly changing OFSTED criteria
discourage (or at least penalises) the more adventurous
teachers if 'experimentation' goes wrong

If you are in a state school, and ICT is on the
national curriculum, then that is what you get...

I dont believe that thats compulsory for all say hair dressers etc in

ICT is compulsory at the moment if you follow the NC. As I alluded
to, some categories of school have more freedom to interpret
manoeuvre within the constrains of the NC.

+1

the sense that they must all fully grasp what say Word style
sheets are about, let alone some of the more sophiisticated
feaures of Excel.

(although schools are finding their ways around that now)

things like the Pi just make it cheaper and at least make it
possible for just about any parent to also "buy what they use
at school" should schools choose to adopt them.

Sure, but its less clear that something like the Pi
makes more sense than a netbook or a laptop.

However, I expect it being mainly taken up by the self
selecting group that are already into such things.

And it remains to be seen how many kids do, either by
demanding their parents do that or driven by the parents.

But then you can also make a case for teaching quite a bit of
DIY in schools too when so many chose to do stuff like that
after they have finished school too.

and in fact, some schools do. There is a local one here that
teaches building, plumbing, wiring skills etc, and even has
outdoor "pens" so that the trainees can get a feel f what it
is like to work in real world conditions for some of these
tasks.

Sure, I didnt mean to imply that none do, I really just meant
that it may make more sense for most schools do to that
instead of using the Pi in schools, just because thats more
likely to be more use to more of the kids than the Pi would be.

Depends on the kids obviously. If it fires the enthusiasm for
learning some "real" computer science then its worthwhile

I'm not sure that it is if you are proposing all kids should be
forced to use it in school, even the ones that plan to be hair
dressers etc.

I was not proposing that anyone should be "forced" to use any
specific bit of kit. I personally would like to see some of the
basics of software development taught alongside the office apps
skills etc. I suspect however that you would find it easier to
generate enthusiasm for a (say) a small robot being driven round
an obstetrical course by a on board Pi, than one would for
something popping up on the screen of a PC.

now the mind boggles :-) lol

"def?? from wikiyuk
Obstetrics (from the Latin obstare, "to stand by") is the medical
specialty dealing with the care of all women's reproductive tracts
and their children during pregnancy (prenatal period)"

We actually have this, well, pic driven 'mars/moon lander" type
robots on the engineering diploma course avoiding obstacles -
predictably the students love it

And then you have the other entire can of worms, whats best taught
in primary, secondardy, trade schools and university level education.

We don't really have much in the way of trade schools as such here
(I take it you refer to ones that major on vocational training
rather than academia?) which is a shame. Some of the better
comprehensive schools do now have streams that lean this way
however.

We have a stream of pupils some of whom attend colleges doing
different level btec courses, run btec courses in house and the
engineering diploma these number about 100 out of a yeargroup of
400 students - its a right b*gger to schedule i know !!
Unfortunately the present education dept well michael gove is now
against this type of education despite much support fro large
manufacturing companies. Education here is a political footbal.
In the 22 years I have been in it we have changed course about 5
times - it takes an average of 5 years to get changes through (due
to the nature of students growing up) so the system is in effect
constant flux

Very true. I just wish they leave alone and let the teachers do their job.

I'm not convinced that you'd get a very viable result that way.

We have national curricula for a reason.

It isnt viable to have every school do its own thing, let alone every teacher.

A National Curriculum can be useful, especially in low performing schools.

It isnt viable to have every school do its own thing, let alone every teacher.

However it has been too prescriptive and was often a burden to "good" schools.

Sure, any curriculum can be stuffed up.

What was being discussed tho was whether its viable to
let teachers teach anything they like any way they like.

I'm not saying we should have a free-for-all but teachers
do not a lot more about education than government ministers.

Govt ministers dont write the national curriculum.

And continuous changes, often not well thought
out, adds a considerable extra workload.

Sure, any curriculum can be stuffed up.

On 07/03/2012 00:40, Rod Speed wrote:
John Rumm wrote
Rod Speed wrote
John Rumm wrote
Rod Speed wrote
John Rumm wrote
Rod Speed wrote

And if you want them to be able to do more than just trivial documents at work, they certainly need more than you
propose with Word too.

A bit more than a couple of weeks, perhaps - but certainly not years of it.

We dont do years even with the trade schools.

Your not in the UK I take it?

Nope, Australia.

The so called "ICT" (a name which means nothing to anyone outside of education), literally can get taught for years!

Thats not JUST Word tho if
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informa...United_Kingdom
is correct.

No its not just word, but it is largely using office applications"
(and that in reality if frequently MS Office apps). Publisher, and Powerpoint get a big look in, and some Excel...

So they dont spend years on Word.

Well if you study the same office suite for three to four years at
junior school, then all through secondary, what do you think?

After all, what sense does it make that kids leave school after doing the full time at school, without being able
to use something as common as Word for the sort of thing Word gets used for at work by so many ?

You mean writing one page letters, three page memos, and documents
that might use high tech capabilities like auto numbering! ;-)

Plenty of them do rather more than just that.

Has everyone had a sense of humour bypass tonight? ;-)

Nope, I was just pointing out that that overstates it.

As with most exaggerations there is a core of truth in there.

I dont believe there is with that one as far as the next point I made is concerned.

Yes plenty do more, however a sizeable majority don't.

Thats a separate issue to what needs to be taught to them tho.

I would say they are related.

I wouldnt. You do have to teach the more fancy stuff
even tho many wont ever have a need for some of it.

I think you are actually making the same argument as I was... That
*only* covering the basics over and over gets boring unless one also at
least touches on the more elaborate bits in such a way as students at
least appreciate the capabilities that are there and why and when they
may need them.

You can certainly make a case for using Word for 3 page memos
so that the one tool is used for most documents they are likely to
do, if only so they know that Word can do it if they need to, and
can refresh what they learnt on say style sheets if they ever do
need to do stuff that makes them worth using

Indeed

Being comfortable with technology,

I dont see a problem with that anymore with kids currently in school.

At the immediately practical level its far less of a problem than it
used to be. Although even many kids with years of computer experience
have miserable keyboard skills.

At a slightly deeper level however it is still and issue. Many people
(kids included) when confronted with a new bit of software are still
scared to explore or find out what it can do. Even though they have the
skills to drive the UI, and they seem reluctant to study each menu and
see what things do. Pop up each dialogue, see what is on it, even if you
only cancel it after etc. That confidence to actually explore and find
out is often missing.


and know the basic functions of office software is important.

Yes, and being aware that Word can do the fancy stuff like style sheets
if you end up producing stuff that benefits from that is part of that.

I would hardly say style sheets are "fancy stuff"... Even for one page
memos, there is a very good business case to use them. In this day an
age where businesses have a habit of re-branding every few years, and
often the company name is fixed above the door with Velcro, being able
to re-style all your past letters and memos etc with a quick tweak to
the styles rather than plodding through manually reformatting stuff is a
major gain in productivity.

As is decent mouse and keyboard skills. However repeating that over and over only gets board kids, not better trained
ones.

Showing them the more fancy stuff like style sheets doesnt risk that.

I was not suggesting it did.

The risk is quite different, that plenty of them like those who plan
to be plumbers and hairdressers may well decide that they will
never need to know that stuff and they may well be right too.

(what is it with plumbers and hairdressers by the way? is this some new
form of social class?)

I don't know exactly to which age group you are referring, but for the
bulk of primary and secondary education its probably a fair assessment
that the majority of kids don't yet know what they are going to do.
Hence targeting everything to what you think they will need in their
chosen occupation is not a realistic task. Also people change their
minds and do different things.

But then thats just as true of algebra and languages other
than english and history and geography etc etc etc too.

(note there is actually a fair amount of interesting stuff in the ICT syllabus - alas much of it does not get taught
or gets taught in a veru formulaic way because the teachers don't have deep enough skills either to really understand
what they are doing, and develop the concepts and explore a little.

Sure but thats inevitable with any technical area.

I am not sure that is really true... I can't see many physics teachers
saying "well I am going to skip over heat and optics because I never
really got that bit myself". The difficulty with ICT as we currently
have it, is that it seems to be perceived as a "soft science" rather
than a rigorous one.

Its never practical to just teach what a sizable majority of them
actually do with any subject.

As IT hack Guy Kewney used to say something like "people are in the habit of demanding tomorrow's technology today,
when in reality
many would be incapable of using yesterday's technology next week!"

Thats a separate issue to what should be taught in schools tho.

Indeed... although look round a school and the same principle often applies. IT suites full of "ok" computers, and top
end kit in the staff rooms that never gets touched!

Sure, but there is no solution for that sort of thing.

Plenty of times I have worked in high tech engineering companies,
where the engineers were slogging over 2000 page cross referenced
design and test specs or similar documents or crappy geriatric PCs,

Those are all quite adequate for running something
like Word or whatever else you prefer to do that with.

If they were adequate I would not have commented on it!

Corse they are adequate.

You don't do much technical documentation I take it?

It can be a bit galling when the process of loading, making a small edit
to a document, regenerating contents, and cross references, saving
again, and then rendering to a PDF takes 25 mins on the engineering
Pentium IV, with 1GB RAM, and the secretaries i7 64 bit machine with 4GB
could do the same job in five.

These things go in phases obviously - machines get refreshed from time
to time, and they new ones cope for a while. It however seems to be the
case that in many less enlightened establishments, the people making
most demand on the hardware are last in line for the refresh etc.

To be fair its less of an issues these days in that even relatively
poor machines will still perform fairly well on basic office apps as
long as you are not shifting large or complex documents about.

And even if you are.

But load up a graphics content rich 500MB doc on a machine that can't
hack it, and it will spend most of its time paging and not doing much else.

I just dont believe any engineer is stuck with a machine like that.

Not sure how to answer that, except you had better steer clear of the
likes of Marconi ;-)

Certainly it makes no sense to try and ram it down the throats of
most kids tho.

Anything you stick on a school curriculum you in effect "ram down
the throats" of the kids...

Nope, particularly when quite a bit of the curriculum is optional
and not compulsory.

If you are in a state school, and ICT is on the national curriculum,
then that is what you get...

I dont believe that thats compulsory for all say hair dressers etc in

ICT is compulsory at the moment if you follow the NC. As I alluded to, some categories of school have more freedom to
interpret manoeuvre within the constrains of the NC.

I still dont believe that all hairdressers have to be fluent in Excel for example.

Ok enough with the hairdressers. While I fully admit to not being
complete up to date with what options are offered in secondary schools -
and indeed I am aware that syllabi with vocational bias toward the
"beauty industry" are offered by some schools, I am fairly sure there
not a box one can tick at 12 years old, that says "future hairdresser",
which will then absolve you from being taught anything too difficult!

And I bet, whatever the NC says, hordes of them end up with only the vaguest
notion of what a spreadsheet is, let alone what you can do with Access.

Hairdressers run businesses as well remember. Being able to track costs
against income is a fairly fundamental ability if you need to decide how
to set prices etc.

Access skills are a slightly different case. Even in my many years as a
professional developer, I have had vary rare cause to use it even
tangentially. Knowing a bit about what databases do, how they work etc,
and what sort of problems one can solve with them however is more useful.

[snip]

I personally would like to see some of the basics of software development taught alongside the office apps skills etc.

I cant see thats going to fly with those you cant een manage to get to
show up at school at all, let alone do anything useful when they are there.

Well one could say that is a separate issue.

However if the reason some students don't want to turn up in the first
place is lack of interest and lack of challenge from what they are being
taught, it may actually help.

I suspect however that you would find it easier to generate enthusiasm
for a (say) a small robot being driven round an obstetrical course by a on board Pi, than one would for something
popping up on the screen of a PC.

Dunno, cant see too many of those that plan to be hairdressers getting interested.

A defeatist lack of vision perhaps?

It was hilarious watching that doco series
Gareth Malone's Extraordinary School for Boys
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1721246/

Even getting the buggers to read a damned book voluntarily
was a major challenge and those werent even the hair dressers.

I have not actually seen it, but it sounds like a problem with
motivation and not lack of ability.

- there are desperately few getting taught any useful development
skills prior to university these days (unless self taught)

Sure, but you can make a case that anyone who is likely to end up being much use as a computer engineer is likely to
do that seff taught stuff.

I disagree, and would also suggest that evidence would not support
that claim. We (i.e. the UK) seem to be producing far fewer people
going to university to study hard sciences in general, and
software/hardware engineering in particular than many other countries.

Sure, but thats mainly because they cant see that that got much future for them.

They may be right too, I cant think of much software wise
that stands out much thats ever come out of Britain, even
tho thats where the industrial revolution clearly got started.

Never mind the industrial revolution, the computing one as well! Much to
the American's disgust (they used to think ENIAC was something new);

I''ve just put my asbestos undies on, bet that will get a response |-)

While it might be fun to enumerate some of the counter examples, I will
leave that for another time.

Not so true of computer hardware, but its less clear
how many of those ever bothered with uni degrees.

Although it was a different world then...

A number of people have commented on this:

Yeah, that happens right around the world, particularly with the hard sciences.

And I have two degrees in the hard sciences myself.

The problem seems to be more what kids see as an area that has much future.

The employment prospects for those with degrees in the hard sciences arent that
great and they arent exactly fields where most can just coast thru effortlessly.

Bit different with engineering, but even then its more the
civils etc with the prospects rather than computing now.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14683133

Cearly when the BBC did what it did, it didnt help. **** all in the
way of any software that anyone uses today ever came out of that.

EPOC? Symbian as it became - although now on the wane, still represents
the lions share of feature phones in use out there.

Sage, Autonomy[1], Misys, Micro Focus spring to mind...

[1] Swallowed fairly recently by HP for some £7Bn IIRC

Also lots of comms, and telecoms related developers.

(three quarters of the UK software industries revenue are from exports)

Tho I spose we dont get to hear about many of those that did end up
in software development out of those who did get exposed to that.

http://royalsociety.org/Current-ICT-...ce-in-schools/

The first line of that blows quite a hole in the compulsory claim.

The study of ICT is embedded in the NC and is not optional, however
taking exams in it are not mandatory, and hence few do. THis probably
has a knock on effect on the teaching, since many teachers will treat it
as a non exam related subject.

Even when they do take exams in ICT, they really are quite weak when you
compare them to the full on Computer Studies or Computer Science courses.

The rest of its too much just sound bites for me.

Its different with something like say jet engine design.

And then you have the other entire can of worms, whats best taught
in primary, secondardy, trade schools and university level education.

We don't really have much in the way of trade schools as such here

So where do plumbers, electricians, hair dresssers etc etc etg get qualified ?

Plumbers and electricians, typically on the job. Often starting as a
junior or an apprentice with a larger firm.

I don't know about hairdressers, but probably the same, although I get
the feeling there probably are more vocational courses available for
those following that goal.

The formal part of their qualifications has to happen somewhere.

(I take it you refer to ones that major on vocational training rather than academia?)

That and where say an apprentice plumber gets to do the formal
part of their education to end up being a qualified plumber etc.

Plumbers here may well be well skilled, but few will find formal
qualifications necessary for basic plumbing. Many will then take courses
in areas like gas fitting to extend the range of jobs they can do into
the controlled activities. (unlike in Aus, plumbing in the uk is not
quite the closed shop that many trades are there - although regulation
is ever increasing).

The routes to becoming a trading electrician are a bit different and
somewhat convoluted. Typically requiring a mixture of real job
experience, and vocational qualifications, and membership of a suitable
trade organisation. Hence not something that can typically be acquired
in school before you start.

which is a shame. Some of the better comprehensive
schools do now have streams that lean this way however.

But surely thats not where you can get qualfied as a plumber or hair dresser or mechanic ?

Qualified in the having bits of paper to prove it sense, no not
generally - see above. However qualified in the sense of "filtered" i.e.
you have actually done something close enough to the real job to know if
that truly is a path you want to follow, and have an interest in and
aptitude for then yes.

I agree with I think it was Bernard who said that the basics of using
Word should be taught to something like 8 year olds just because that
would be useful for most kids even just for projects and assignments
but not neccessarily so true of Excel which might be better left till a bit later in school.

Its quite often surprising what kids are capable of if guided in the right direction.

And they dont necessarily have to be guided either.

Someone I know well started off with a Commodore 64
at home, nothing much in school at all, even tho it was
one of the better what you lot call public schools, and
ended up in software for our current submarines.

Probably not an unusual story when you think about it... most of us who
grew up in the '80s and ended up in technology related occupations also
had home computers of some sort, but little formal education in the
subject at the time. (in fact home computers took off in a big way in
the UK probably more than most places). Computers were only just
beginning to make it into schools in the early '80s, and it was still
some time before they became subjects in their own right.

He's the loony that called me from inside the loony bit later than that.

Huh?

I have never had one of ours come home and enthuse about having learnt how to set a margin in word etc, in fact it
never
gets much of a mention. However the day our eldest went for a "sampler" day at a potential senior school and they had
them
programming macros to pop up messages boxes etc in VBA, she actually came home and wanted to try it out here!

Yeah, its interesting to watch what lights some fires.

But I think you can make a case for teaching the sort of thing that
is useful for automating the production of quotes and for day to day
billing etc may be better left to trade school where you can teach
what is appropriate to a particular trade when say car mechanics
are likely to find that stuff less useful than say general builders etc.

Its not clear to me what the british system does with say the education of hairdressers and plumbers about computing,
whether they attempt to

Well a hairdresser running a business is as much a businessperson as
many others. The same skills are required.

Sure, but I meant whether they bother to teach computing
to all the hairdressers because some will end up running a
hair dressing operation, or leave that for those that do to
get some education in when the decide that they want to
be more than just an employee.

However, there is a danger of focussing too much on "life skills".
While it is an important part of eduction, and so is the acquisition
of qualifications (if that is your competency), there is a vital and
often forgotten aspect of education which is in effect holding up a
"mirror" to your students to allow them to form a better picture of
who they are and what they are actually capable of when challenged
and pushed a bit. To in effect push a wide variety of "buttons" and
see which one gets them going. Try a broad enough range of things to
stimulate interest, and let them decide where there interests and
vocations rest.

Sure, but most schools do manage at least some of that.

The better ones do certainly. However one of the problems with the
combination of NC and league tables, is that they tend to push schools
to teach "to the test" - i.e. teach the kids how to pass a particular
set of exams, rather than teach them about the particular subject, or
how to think independently. It can get your school good pass rates, but
ultimately does the students a disservice since they learn how to answer
particular physics questions for example, rather than have any innate
understanding of the subject.

[snip]

I know the germans particularly do make all the kids do all sorts of
things formal education wise even in trade school that isnt common in
many other countrys. They've been doing that for hundreds of years now.

They do, as do the Japanese. Although in their rigour and very constrained system they also tend to suppress some of
the inventiveness and creativity, which (historically at least) our educations system was better at preserving.

Yeah, bugger all ever came out of Japan technology wise except games consoles.

Might be understating it a bit ;-) But in general, very good at
commercialising an packaging products, less good at the initial ideas
perhaps.

Tho I Ispose you should include hybrid cars too.

Not sure what they do about that with sxy computers and hairdressers tho.




--
Cheers,

John.

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On 06/03/2012 20:25, Owain wrote:
On Mar 6, 4:43 pm, Bob Eager wrote:
BTw, can I have a prize for starting the fastest growing thread in
uk.d-i-y for quite a while?

The prize would be a RPi, but they're out of stock :-)

Sometime end of March the girl at CPC told me...


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
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|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

On 07/03/2012 02:58, Rod Speed wrote:
John Rumm wrote
Rod Speed wrote
The Natural Philosopher wrote
Rod Speed wrote
The Other Mike wrote
Rod wrote

Its arguable if its worth bothering with the pre 2007 UI of Word
and Excel when few will bother to get those older versions for their own systems and the student versions of the
latest UI are so cheap.

Word 2007 or better? That'll be WordPerfect For Windows 6.1 then

Complex text manipulations were a piece of **** in WP6.1,
they took an age in anything else. Combine that with Lotus
123r5 and it was IMHO almost a perfect combination.

And so few felt that way that they didnt survive.

No.

Yep.

It doesn't work like that.

Fraid so.

WP was infinitely better than word.

Thats just your opinion.

Welcome to usenet, that's what we are here for!

We arent just here for opinions.

Its a pretty fair assessment though IMHO...

Not in mine.

For technical documents WP is far more productive.

And learning wise it aint.

Early versions, that was fair comment. From 5.1 on, when in acquired
menus and context sensitive help etc is was really little different from
word at the time in accessibility. Note we are talking early '90s here,
when the best DOS version of Word was a toy in comparison and lacked
many features. (remember the anti-trust trials of MS? even then MS's own
legal team were still producing all their documentation in WP)

However there is one of the keys. If you are a techie user you will get more done with WP.

I dont. The user interface is a dog and it died too.

The user interface was better than Word's in many ways for power users.
Since its origin was as a keyboard driven app, it retained all those
capabilities even when it acquired its WIMP capabilities. If you could
remember all the arcane keystorkes (remember the keyboard templates to
give you a reminder of the three or four sets of overlayed functions on
every F key!?) you could drive it without needing to fiddle with the
mouse at all, which made it fast.

The reveal codes window was a godesend for resolving complex formatting
problems. (and something that could never work in Word as well due to
the less flexible way it applies effects on text). The cross referencing
was far more sophisticated and useful.

Whether an application succeeded or not in the market (especially when
competing with Microsoft) frequently had little to do with its quality
as a product.

Word is probably easier to do the basics.

Absolutely certainly easier to do the basics like
producing documents which others can read effortlessly.

Neither have much impact on readability - that's down to the author.
(although the WP grammar checker was better).







--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

On Wed, 07 Mar 2012 12:10:40 +0000, John Rumm
wrote:

On 06/03/2012 20:25, Owain wrote:
On Mar 6, 4:43 pm, Bob Eager wrote:
BTw, can I have a prize for starting the fastest growing thread in
uk.d-i-y for quite a while?

The prize would be a RPi, but they're out of stock :-)

Sometime end of March the girl at CPC told me...

I was told end of April at the earliest.
--
(\__/) M.
(='.'=) If a man stands in a forest and no woman is around
(")_(") is he still wrong?

On Wed, 07 Mar 2012 12:07:43 +0000, John Rumm
wrote:

At a slightly deeper level however it is still and issue. Many people
(kids included) when confronted with a new bit of software are still
scared to explore or find out what it can do. Even though they have the
skills to drive the UI, and they seem reluctant to study each menu and
see what things do. Pop up each dialogue, see what is on it, even if you
only cancel it after etc. That confidence to actually explore and find
out is often missing.

I wonder how much of this is time related. I don't write as many
documents as I used to, but when I do, I simply haven't got time to
find out where Microsoft have hidden all the options that used to be
evident in earlier versions of Office.

[--snip--]

I am not sure that is really true... I can't see many physics teachers
saying "well I am going to skip over heat and optics because I never
really got that bit myself". The difficulty with ICT as we currently
have it, is that it seems to be perceived as a "soft science" rather
than a rigorous one.

ICT in its current form is hardly a science at all IMHO.

[--snip--]

The study of ICT is embedded in the NC and is not optional, however
taking exams in it are not mandatory, and hence few do. THis probably
has a knock on effect on the teaching, since many teachers will treat it
as a non exam related subject.

My eldest's school offerred ICT as a after-school option in more of a
"club" format. He was bored with it and never completed the course.

[--snip--]
--
(\__/) M.
(='.'=) If a man stands in a forest and no woman is around
(")_(") is he still wrong?

On Mon, 5 Mar 2012 02:10:47 -0800 (PST), jgharston
wrote:

John Rumm wrote:
The stumbling block there however would seem to be how to get the
teachers up to speed.

Employ some computing science teachers instead of typing instructors.

More usefully, employ some teachers who have a grasp of what's being
currently used in industry and not what was used ten or twenty years
ago.

On Mon, 05 Mar 2012 11:40:09 +0000, The Natural Philosopher
wrote:

Then I could dispense with the signature below.

--
To people who know nothing, anything is possible.
To people who know too much, it is a sad fact
that they know how little is really possible -
and how hard it is to achieve it.

I'm glad I haven't bumped into too many like you, if that's really
your take on the world.
The worst one like that I met poured cold water on an idea I had. I
dropped it, only to find the Germans had made it work, no problem.

If we all had your attitude we'd never have put foosteps on the Moon.

In message , Rod Speed
writes
John Rumm wrote
Rod Speed wrote
Mark wrote
wrote

We have a stream of pupils some of whom attend colleges doing
different level btec courses, run btec courses in house and the
engineering diploma these number about 100 out of a yeargroup of
400 students - its a right b*gger to schedule i know !!
Unfortunately the present education dept well michael gove is now
against this type of education despite much support fro large
manufacturing companies. Education here is a political footbal.
In the 22 years I have been in it we have changed
course about 5
times - it takes an average of 5 years to get changes through (due
to the nature of students growing up) so the system is in effect
constant flux

Very true. I just wish they leave alone and let the teachers do their job.

I'm not convinced that you'd get a very viable result that way.

Historically there was a time it worked very well...

I dont believe there ever was.

And bugger all kids were in formal education at that time anyway.

In the UK, he National Curriculum is a relatively recent was introduced
in England, Wales and Northern Ireland with 1988 Education Reform Act.
We had had compulsory education for children for a while by that point.

Upto that point the curriculum taught in schools was down to individual
school and local authorities.

The above of course applies to state schools, public schools are free to
teach whatever they want.

The introduction of the NC was probably as much to do with political
control of education, the introduction of national testing and the idea
of 'parental choice' in the allocation ofschool place,s as much as any
thing to do with education per se.



snip

There was never a time when every teacher could
teach anything they liked any way they liked.

No probably not, well leastways not for many, many years. but certainly
say 40 years ago there was a lot more flexibility available to teachers
as to how/what they taught. And certainly at a school level there was.


Despite all the political rhetoric all parties
have micromanaged schools via their policies.

Thats what national curricula do.

Indeed, which is an argument against them IMHO.

There is no viable alternative to curricula.


I would expect every school to have a curriculum. That doesn't
necessarily mean it has to be a nationally proscribed curriculum.
--
Chris French

In message , John
Rumm writes
On 05/03/2012 11:47, Owain wrote:
On Mar 5, 11:23 am, John Rumm wrote:
You mean writing one page letters, three page memos, and documents that
might use high tech capabilities like auto numbering! ;-)

Auto numbering in Word is not high tech.

At least, certainly not well-implemented high tech.

Did you miss the smiley? ;-)

In fact, for all its popularity, word is actually a fairly poor tool
for complex documents IME.

WordPerfect is much better, but still[1] limited when dealing with
things like cross references between documents.

[1] Having said that, I have not used it seriously for a number of
years, so don't know if it has been developed any further.

Which is a major reason why the legal world stuck with WordPerfect for
so long. WordPerfect could auto-number to your heart's desire.

IIRC Microsoft's own legal department used it for years (possibly still
do) - support for "table of authorities" was one killer reason IIRC.

I seem to recall reading a few years ago that Corel were putting the
option of a DOS blue screen back into the latest version of WP to try
and wean legal firms off of WP5.1. When I looked on Ebay 5.1 licences
were still commanding quite a price.



--
Nick (=----)

On Wed, 07 Mar 2012 11:31:12 +1100, Tony Bryer wrote:

I felt/feel that about Lotus WordPro. But I've just finished the 40,000
word manual for my new EuroBeam program and have produced it using Word
2010 because although WordPro runs on Win7 (after an error message) I'm
not convinced it will run on future versions of Windows and this manual
will hopefully stay in print (with revisions) for 15+ years.

And you reckon that this Word document will be readable by MS Word in
15 years time? Plain text, you know it makes sense. B-)

--
Cheers
Dave.

John Rumm wrote
Rod Speed wrote
John Rumm wrote
Rod Speed wrote
John Rumm wrote
Rod Speed wrote
John Rumm wrote
Rod Speed wrote

And if you want them to be able to do more than just trivial documents at work, they certainly need more than
you propose with Word too.

A bit more than a couple of weeks, perhaps - but certainly not years of it.

We dont do years even with the trade schools.

Your not in the UK I take it?

Nope, Australia.

The so called "ICT" (a name which means nothing to anyone outside of education), literally can get taught for
years!

Thats not JUST Word tho if
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informa...United_Kingdom
is correct.

No its not just word, but it is largely using office applications"
(and that in reality if frequently MS Office apps). Publisher, and Powerpoint get a big look in, and some Excel...

So they dont spend years on Word.

Well if you study the same office suite for three to four years at
junior school, then all through secondary, what do you think?

That those years are spent on a lot more than JUST
Word and that nothing like years are spent on Word alone.

After all, what sense does it make that kids leave school
after doing the full time at school, without being able to use
something as common as Word for the sort of thing Word gets used for at work by so many ?

You mean writing one page letters, three page memos, and
documents that might use high tech capabilities like auto numbering! ;-)

Plenty of them do rather more than just that.

Has everyone had a sense of humour bypass tonight? ;-)

Nope, I was just pointing out that that overstates it.

As with most exaggerations there is a core of truth in there.

I dont believe there is with that one as far as the next point I made is concerned.

Yes plenty do more, however a sizeable majority don't.

Thats a separate issue to what needs to be taught to them tho.

I would say they are related.

I wouldnt. You do have to teach the more fancy stuff
even tho many wont ever have a need for some of it.

I think you are actually making the same argument as I was...

Nope, and it was mine originally anyway.

That *only* covering the basics over and over gets boring unless one also at least touches on the more elaborate bits
in such a way as students at least appreciate the capabilities that are there and why and when they may need them.

I'm not convinced that its even possible with stuff like style sheets and
boring with those who have decided that they will be hairdressers etc.

And with excel in spades with those who have decided
that they are hopeless at arithmetic and maths etc.

You can certainly make a case for using Word for 3 page memos so that the one tool is used for most documents they
are likely to do, if only so they know that Word can do it if they need to, and can refresh what they learnt on say
style sheets if they ever do need to do stuff that makes them worth using

Indeed

Being comfortable with technology,

I dont see a problem with that anymore with kids currently in school.

At the immediately practical level its far less of a problem than it used to be.

It just isnt a problem anymore. There just arent any kids who refuse to have
anything to do with facebook because they arent comfortable with technology.

Ore with mobile phones either.

Although even many kids with years of computer experience have miserable keyboard skills.

Sure but there are hordes of journos who a two finger typists and they manage fine.

At a slightly deeper level however it is still and issue.

Only in the sense that some of them dont have a clue about what to
do if their laptop or netbook stops doing what they expect it to do etc.

The one of the Turks who was forced to repeat year 10 because
he never did have much enthusiasm for school, is surprisingly
good at recovering from situations where the config of the laptop
has got screwed up, mostly by surprisingly effective trial and error.

Many people (kids included) when confronted with a new bit of software are still scared to explore or find out what it
can do.

I've seen no evidence of that with stuff they decide is important like
facebook with kids.

We have been stupid enough to hand out free netbooks to all kids
in year 10 and its been interesting to watch them getting around
the deliberate restrictions that are enforced on those, they arent
supposed to be able to use facebook etc but do so anyway.

Even though they have the skills to drive the UI, and they seem reluctant to study each menu and see what things do.

Not with stuff like facebook they arent.

Pop up each dialogue, see what is on it, even if you only cancel it after etc. That confidence to actually explore and
find out is often missing.

I'm not convinced that that is confidence. Watch them wiith facebook to see that.

and know the basic functions of office software is important.

Yes, and being aware that Word can do the fancy stuff like style sheets if you end up producing stuff that benefits
from that is part of that.

I would hardly say style sheets are "fancy stuff"...

They are for most Word users who only do the sort of stuf you originally listed.

Even for one page memos, there is a very good business case to use them.

Sure, but few bother. Presumably because they cant see the value in them.

I'm not convinced that any school system can do anything about that.

I've always maintained that a decent spreadsheet leaves any calculator
for dead, but very very few people have stopped using calculators and
use spreadsheets instead. There must be a reason for that.

In this day an age where businesses have a habit of re-branding every few years, and often the company name is fixed
above the door with Velcro, being able to re-style all your past letters and memos etc with a quick tweak to the
styles rather than plodding through manually reformatting stuff is a major gain in productivity.

Sure, but its very far from clear that all users of Word in an operation
should be fluent with that sort of thing instead of just some of them.

And even if you do establish that they should all be, I'm not convinced
that any school system can ever achieve that, particulary with the hair
dressers and plumbers and car mechanics etc.

Even the krauts and the japs cant manage that.

As is decent mouse and keyboard skills. However repeating that over and over only gets board kids, not better
trained ones.

Showing them the more fancy stuff like style sheets doesnt risk that.

I was not suggesting it did.

I didnt say you did.

The risk is quite different, that plenty of them like those who plan
to be plumbers and hairdressers may well decide that they will
never need to know that stuff and they may well be right too.

(what is it with plumbers and hairdressers by the way?

Its just a couple of examples of a couple of groups that are much
less likely to bother with stuff like style sheets in Word etc.

is this some new form of social class?)

Nothing new about it.

I don't know exactly to which age group you are referring,

We were discussing what should be taught in schools and at
what level. and that includes post general secondary schools,
trade schools for those like plumbers and car mechanics etc.

but for the bulk of primary and secondary education its probably a fair assessment that the majority of kids don't
yet know what they are going to do.

They do generally have some idea about the general class
of work they are likely to do tho and quite a few dont even
seriously consider university and are more deciding if stuff
like hair dressing or plumbing etc is more their line even if
they may well not have decided whether they want to be
a plumber or a cop or join the military for a while etc.

Hence targeting everything to what you think they will
need in their chosen occupation is not a realistic task.

No one ever suggested that. In fact I made the point that
the more fancy stuff in Word and Excel is probably best
left to trade school where the trade school can teach what
is appropriate to that particular trade. What makes sense
for a cop is likely to be quite different to a hair dresser.

But that you can make a case that the basics of word should
be taught even to 8 year olds in priimary school because its
so useful for stuff like projects and assigments that they will
all have to spend quite a bit of their time in school doing.

Corse whether its actually feasible to teach style sheets to
kids at that level who schools have one hell of a problem with
even getting the boys to voluntarily read appropriate printed
fiction is another matter entirely.

Also people change their minds and do different things.

Sure, and you still get lots of that in trade school, but that doesnt
mean that it doesnt make sense to be teaching whats appropriate
computer software wise to hair dressers and cops just because
some of them will change their minds.

It makes no sense to be trying to teach the full complexiity
of even just Word and Excel to every single individual in trade
school because some of them may end up needing that stuff
in some job they end up in later in life.

It makes more sense to be teaching what is appropriate for
say managers when they getting educated as managers after
they have been side tracked into trying the cops or hair dressing
etc and have decided that its not for them.

But then thats just as true of algebra and languages other
than english and history and geography etc etc etc too.

(note there is actually a fair amount of interesting stuff in the ICT syllabus - alas much of it does not get taught
or gets taught in a veru formulaic way because the teachers don't have deep enough skills either to really
understand what they are doing, and develop the concepts and explore a little.

Sure but thats inevitable with any technical area.

I am not sure that is really true... I can't see many physics teachers saying "well I am going to skip over heat and
optics because I never really got that bit myself".

Thats not a technical area in the sense I meant that term.

The difficulty with ICT as we currently have it, is that it seems to be perceived as a "soft science" rather than a
rigorous one.

And thats because thats what it is. Even the user
interface area is nothing like a rigorous science.

We dont even have general agreement on how many buttons mice should have.

Its never practical to just teach what a sizable majority of them actually do with any subject.

As IT hack Guy Kewney used to say something like "people are in
the habit of demanding tomorrow's technology today, when in reality many would be incapable of using yesterday's
technology next week!"

Thats a separate issue to what should be taught in schools tho.

Indeed... although look round a school and the same principle often applies. IT suites full of "ok" computers, and
top end kit in the staff rooms that never gets touched!

Sure, but there is no solution for that sort of thing.

Plenty of times I have worked in high tech engineering companies,
where the engineers were slogging over 2000 page cross referenced
design and test specs or similar documents or crappy geriatric PCs,

Those are all quite adequate for running something
like Word or whatever else you prefer to do that with.

If they were adequate I would not have commented on it!

Corse they are adequate.

You don't do much technical documentation I take it?

Wrong.

It can be a bit galling when the process of loading, making a small
edit to a document, regenerating contents, and cross references, saving again, and then rendering to a PDF takes 25
mins on the
engineering Pentium IV, with 1GB RAM, and the secretaries i7 64 bit machine with 4GB could do the same job in five.

That doesnt mean the first is inadequate.

And if that operation doesnt have enough of a clue to provide
the engineers with the tools that makes their work more efficient,
it deserves to die because it cant even get those basics right.

I wouldnt have any confidence that an operation that
cant even manage something as basic as that should
be designing nukes or aircraft or even central heating.

These things go in phases obviously - machines get refreshed from time to time, and they new ones cope for a while. It
however seems to be the case that in many less enlightened establishments, the people
making most demand on the hardware are last in line for the refresh etc.

Thats certainly never been the case in any operation I have had anything to do with.

And no engineer with a clue would bother to work in an operation that bad.

To be fair its less of an issues these days in that even relatively
poor machines will still perform fairly well on basic office apps as
long as you are not shifting large or complex documents about.

And even if you are.

But load up a graphics content rich 500MB doc on a machine that can't hack it, and it will spend most of its time
paging and not doing much else.

I just dont believe any engineer is stuck with a machine like that.

Not sure how to answer that, except you had better steer clear of the likes of Marconi ;-)

LIkely there is a reason they have produced **** all of any real value.

Bet its not true of those producing the RP.

It certainly aint how google or apple operate.

Certainly it makes no sense to try and ram it down the throats of most kids tho.

Anything you stick on a school curriculum you in effect "ram down the throats" of the kids...

Nope, particularly when quite a bit of the curriculum is optional and not compulsory.

If you are in a state school, and ICT is on the national curriculum, then that is what you get...

I dont believe that thats compulsory for all say hair dressers etc in

ICT is compulsory at the moment if you follow the NC. As I alluded to, some categories of school have more freedom
to interpret manoeuvre within the constrains of the NC.

I still dont believe that all hairdressers have to be fluent in Excel for example.

Ok enough with the hairdressers.

No thanks, its an example of one group that doesnt need stuff like that.

Car mechanics dont either unless they are into fiddling with the code
in car computers to do better than the manufacturer chose to do.

While I fully admit to not being complete up to date with what options are offered in secondary schools - and indeed I
am aware that syllabi with vocational bias toward the "beauty industry" are offered by some schools, I am fairly sure
there not a box one can tick at 12 years old, that says "future hairdresser", which will then absolve you from being
taught anything too difficult!

There will always be a great swag of school kids that wont ever
be doing other than menial work.

It makes absolutely no sense to try to teach the full complexity
of word and excel to everyone because it isnt possible to know
exactly what work they will be doing when they are in school,

Even the krauts and japs and koreans dont do school education like that.

And I bet, whatever the NC says, hordes of them end up with only the vaguest notion of what a spreadsheet is, let
alone what you can do with Access.

Hairdressers run businesses as well remember.

A subset of them do. Many more just work for someone who does.

Being able to track costs against income is a fairly fundamental ability if you need to decide how to set prices etc.

Sure, but it doesnt make any sense to be teaching the full complexity
of Excel and Access to all hairdressers for that reason. It makes a lot
more sense to be teaching those who choose to do that sort of thing
because they might one day be running a hair dressing operation instead.

Access skills are a slightly different case. Even in my many years as
a professional developer, I have had vary rare cause to use it even
tangentially. Knowing a bit about what databases do, how they work
etc, and what sort of problems one can solve with them however is
more useful.

I personally would like to see some of the basics of software
development taught alongside the office apps skills etc.

I cant see thats going to fly with those you cant even manage to get to show up at school at all, let alone do
anything useful when they are there.

Well one could say that is a separate issue.

Nope, it is in fact a very fundamental part of what schools are about
and a large part of the reason the schools cant get them to show up
at all is because of how badly they do teach what they currently teach,
both on content and how its actually taught.

However if the reason some students don't want to turn up in the first place is lack of interest and lack of challenge
from what they are being taught, it may actually help.

Only with those that can self help anyway.

I suspect however that you would find it easier to generate
enthusiasm for a (say) a small robot being driven round an obstetrical course by a on board Pi, than one would for
something popping up on the screen of a PC.

Dunno, cant see too many of those that plan to be hairdressers getting interested.

A defeatist lack of vision perhaps?

Or they are realistic.

It was hilarious watching that doco series
Gareth Malone's Extraordinary School for Boys
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1721246/

Even getting the buggers to read a damned book voluntarily
was a major challenge and those werent even the hair dressers.

I have not actually seen it, but it sounds like a problem with motivation and not lack of ability.

Corse it is, but motivation is the problem if you are silly
enough to try teaching the full complexity of word and excel
to those who have decided that hair dressing is for them.

Those boys just decide that books are boring and useless
and if its so difficult to do something about that in schools,
what hope have you got with the complexitys of word and
excel with those that believe it will never be of any use to them ?

Thats always been the case with algebra, languages other
than english, history etc etc etc let alone computer software.

- there are desperately few getting taught any useful development
skills prior to university these days (unless self taught)

Sure, but you can make a case that anyone who is likely to end up being much use as a computer engineer is likely
to do that seff taught stuff.

I disagree, and would also suggest that evidence would not support
that claim. We (i.e. the UK) seem to be producing far fewer people
going to university to study hard sciences in general, and software/
hardware engineering in particular than many other countries.

Sure, but thats mainly because they cant see that that got much future for them.

They may be right too, I cant think of much software wise
that stands out much thats ever come out of Britain, even
tho thats where the industrial revolution clearly got started.

Never mind the industrial revolution, the computing one as well!

I said that. You should read ahead before you comment.

Much to the American's disgust (they used to think ENIAC was something new);

I''ve just put my asbestos undies on, bet that will get a response |-)

While it might be fun to enumerate some of the counter examples, I
will leave that for another time.

Not so true of computer hardware, but its less clear
how many of those ever bothered with uni degrees.

Although it was a different world then...

It wasnt with Gates, Jobs, Wozniak, Brin etc etc etc.

And while that arsehole Murdoch did bother, its very far from
clear that it made any real difference to the result he got.

A number of people have commented on this:

Yeah, that happens right around the world, particularly with the hard sciences.

And I have two degrees in the hard sciences myself.

The problem seems to be more what kids see as an area that has much future.

The employment prospects for those with degrees in the hard sciences arent that great and they arent exactly fields
where most can just coast thru effortlessly.

And Britain doesnt really do all that much in the hard sciences now either.

Bit different with engineering, but even then its more the
civils etc with the prospects rather than computing now.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14683133

Cearly when the BBC did what it did, it didnt help. **** all in the
way of any software that anyone uses today ever came out of that.

EPOC? Symbian as it became - although now on the wane, still
represents the lions share of feature phones in use out there.

That wasnt the result of what the BBC did in schools.

Sage, Autonomy[1], Misys, Micro Focus spring to mind...

[1] Swallowed fairly recently by HP for some £7Bn IIRC

Also lots of comms, and telecoms related developers.

(three quarters of the UK software industries revenue are from exports)

None of that was the result of what the BBC did in schools.

Tho I spose we dont get to hear about many of those that did end up
in software development out of those who did get exposed to that.

http://royalsociety.org/Current-ICT-...ce-in-schools/

The first line of that blows quite a hole in the compulsory claim.

The study of ICT is embedded in the NC and is not optional, however taking exams in it are not mandatory, and hence
few do. THis probably has a knock on effect on the teaching, since many teachers will treat it as a non exam related
subject.

Even when they do take exams in ICT, they really are quite weak when you compare them to the full on Computer Studies
or Computer Science courses.

The rest of its too much just sound bites for me.

Its different with something like say jet engine design.

And then you have the other entire can of worms, whats best taught
in primary, secondardy, trade schools and university level education.

We don't really have much in the way of trade schools as such here

So where do plumbers, electricians, hair dresssers etc etc etg get qualified ?

Plumbers and electricians, typically on the job.

I dont believe that.

Often starting as a junior or an apprentice with a larger firm.

Sure, many first world countrys have apprentice schemes, but those
apprentices also have to do formal education stuff in trade schools too.

Not clear to me what Adam reads, it would be interesting
to know what he has to say about the education of electricians.

I don't know about hairdressers, but probably the same, although I get the feeling there probably are more vocational
courses available for those following that goal.

The formal part of their qualifications has to happen somewhere.

(I take it you refer to ones that major on vocational training
rather than academia?)

That and where say an apprentice plumber gets to do the formal
part of their education to end up being a qualified plumber etc.

Plumbers here may well be well skilled, but few will find formal
qualifications necessary for basic plumbing. Many will then take
courses in areas like gas fitting to extend the range of jobs they
can do into the controlled activities. (unlike in Aus, plumbing in
the uk is not quite the closed shop that many trades are there -
although regulation is ever increasing).

The routes to becoming a trading electrician are a bit different and
somewhat convoluted. Typically requiring a mixture of real job
experience, and vocational qualifications, and membership of a
suitable trade organisation. Hence not something that can typically
be acquired in school before you start.

which is a shame. Some of the better comprehensive
schools do now have streams that lean this way however.

But surely thats not where you can get qualfied as a plumber or hair dresser or mechanic ?

Qualified in the having bits of paper to prove it sense, no not
generally - see above. However qualified in the sense of "filtered"
i.e. you have actually done something close enough to the real job to
know if that truly is a path you want to follow, and have an interest
in and aptitude for then yes.

Sure but thats a different issue to where its best to teach computing in trade schools etc.

I agree with I think it was Bernard who said that the basics of using Word should be taught to something like 8
year olds just because that would be useful for most kids even just for projects and assignments but not
neccessarily so true of Excel which might be better left till a bit later in school.

Its quite often surprising what kids are capable of if guided in
the right direction.

And they dont necessarily have to be guided either.

Someone I know well started off with a Commodore 64
at home, nothing much in school at all, even tho it was
one of the better what you lot call public schools, and
ended up in software for our current submarines.

Probably not an unusual story when you think about it... most of us who grew up in the '80s and ended up in technology
related
occupations also had home computers of some sort, but little formal
education in the subject at the time. (in fact home computers took
off in a big way in the UK probably more than most places).

I'm not convinced of that last with the first world.

Computers were only just beginning to make it into schools in the early '80s,
and it was still some time before they became subjects in their own right.

He's the loony that called me from inside the loony bit later than that.

Huh?

That was another thread. He ended up quite literally barking mad.

I have never had one of ours come home and enthuse about having learnt how to set a margin in word etc, in fact it
never
gets much of a mention. However the day our eldest went for a "sampler" day at a potential senior school and they
had them
programming macros to pop up messages boxes etc in VBA, she actually came home and wanted to try it out here!

Yeah, its interesting to watch what lights some fires.

But I think you can make a case for teaching the sort of thing that
is useful for automating the production of quotes and for day to day billing etc may be better left to trade school
where you can teach
what is appropriate to a particular trade when say car mechanics
are likely to find that stuff less useful than say general builders etc.

Its not clear to me what the british system does with say the education of hairdressers and plumbers about
computing, whether they attempt to

Well a hairdresser running a business is as much a businessperson as
many others. The same skills are required.

Sure, but I meant whether they bother to teach computing
to all the hairdressers because some will end up running a
hair dressing operation, or leave that for those that do to
get some education in when the decide that they want to
be more than just an employee.

However, there is a danger of focussing too much on "life skills".
While it is an important part of eduction, and so is the acquisition
of qualifications (if that is your competency), there is a vital and
often forgotten aspect of education which is in effect holding up a
"mirror" to your students to allow them to form a better picture of
who they are and what they are actually capable of when challenged
and pushed a bit. To in effect push a wide variety of "buttons" and
see which one gets them going. Try a broad enough range of things to
stimulate interest, and let them decide where there interests and
vocations rest.

Sure, but most schools do manage at least some of that.

The better ones do certainly. However one of the problems with the
combination of NC and league tables, is that they tend to push schools
to teach "to the test" - i.e. teach the kids how to pass a particular
set of exams, rather than teach them about the particular subject, or
how to think independently. It can get your school good pass rates,
but ultimately does the students a disservice since they learn how to
answer particular physics questions for example, rather than have any
innate understanding of the subject.

Sure, but there is a reason for both national curricula
and league tables and national testing too.

I know the germans particularly do make all the kids do all sorts of things formal education wise even in trade
school that isnt common in many other countrys. They've been doing that for hundreds of years now.

They do, as do the Japanese. Although in their rigour and very
constrained system they also tend to suppress some of the
inventiveness and creativity, which (historically at least) our
educations system was better at preserving.

Yeah, bugger all ever came out of Japan technology wise except games consoles.

Might be understating it a bit ;-) But in general, very good at commercialising an packaging products, less good at
the initial ideas perhaps.

No perhaps about it. That was the society that didnt
even bother with the wheel until the west showed up.

And while they dramatically improved early gun technology,
ended up banning it completely and actually achieved that too.

Tho I Ispose you should include hybrid cars too.

Not sure what they do about that with sxy computers and hairdressers tho.

John Rumm wrote
Rod Speed wrote
John Rumm wrote
Rod Speed wrote
The Natural Philosopher wrote
Rod Speed wrote
The Other Mike wrote
Rod wrote

Its arguable if its worth bothering with the pre 2007 UI of Word and Excel when few will bother to get those
older versions for their own systems and the student versions of the latest UI are so cheap.

Word 2007 or better? That'll be WordPerfect For Windows 6.1 then

Complex text manipulations were a piece of **** in WP6.1,
they took an age in anything else. Combine that with Lotus
123r5 and it was IMHO almost a perfect combination.

And so few felt that way that they didnt survive.

No.

Yep.

It doesn't work like that.

Fraid so.

WP was infinitely better than word.

Thats just your opinion.

Welcome to usenet, that's what we are here for!

We arent just here for opinions.

Its a pretty fair assessment though IMHO...

Not in mine.

For technical documents WP is far more productive.

And learning wise it aint.

Early versions, that was fair comment. From 5.1 on, when in acquired menus and context sensitive help etc is was
really little different from word at the time in accessibility.

Sure, but choice of software is also about choosing what has
a future, because it a hell of a lot of waste of effort to have to
change to something else later when you discover that what
you chose has died in the market for whatever reason.

Like with the VHS/Beta choice, it aint just about what is technically better.

Note we are talking early '90s here, when the best DOS version of Word was a toy in comparison and lacked many
features. (remember the anti-trust trials of MS? even then MS's own legal team were still producing all their
documentation in WP)

All irrelevant to what makes sense now.

However there is one of the keys. If you are a techie user you will get more done with WP.

I dont. The user interface is a dog and it died too.

The user interface was better than Word's in many ways for power users.

In your opinion. Thats not universally agreed.

Since its origin was as a keyboard driven app, it retained all
those capabilities even when it acquired its WIMP capabilities. If you could remember all the arcane keystorkes
(remember the keyboard templates to give you a reminder of the three or four sets of overlayed functions on every F
key!?) you could drive it without needing to fiddle with the mouse at all, which made it fast.

And that is a dog/dinosaur of a user interface thats WAY past its useby date.

The reveal codes window was a godesend for resolving complex
formatting problems. (and something that could never work in Word as well due to the less flexible way it applies
effects on text). The
cross referencing was far more sophisticated and useful.

And when it died in the arse market wise, thats all completely academic.

Whether an application succeeded or not in the market (especially when competing with Microsoft) frequently had little
to do with its quality as a product.

But is what matters as far as it having a future is concerned.

Word is probably easier to do the basics.

Absolutely certainly easier to do the basics like
producing documents which others can read effortlessly.

Neither have much impact on readability - that's down to the author. (although the WP grammar checker was better).

That wasnt the readability I was talking about.

I was talking about getting it on the screen where you can even see it at all.

Mark wrote
John Rumm wrote

At a slightly deeper level however it is still and issue. Many people
(kids included) when confronted with a new bit of software are still
scared to explore or find out what it can do. Even though they have
the skills to drive the UI, and they seem reluctant to study each
menu and see what things do. Pop up each dialogue, see what is on
it, even if you only cancel it after etc. That confidence to
actually explore and find out is often missing.

I wonder how much of this is time related. I don't write as many
documents as I used to, but when I do, I simply haven't got time to
find out where Microsoft have hidden all the options that used to be
evident in earlier versions of Office.

I am not sure that is really true... I can't see many physics
teachers saying "well I am going to skip over heat and optics
because I never really got that bit myself". The difficulty with ICT
as we currently have it, is that it seems to be perceived as a "soft
science" rather than a rigorous one.

ICT in its current form is hardly a science at all IMHO.

The study of ICT is embedded in the NC and is not optional, however
taking exams in it are not mandatory, and hence few do. THis probably
has a knock on effect on the teaching, since many teachers will
treat it as a non exam related subject.

My eldest's school offerred ICT as a after-school option in more of a
"club" format. He was bored with it and never completed the course.

That also blows a hole in the compulsory claim.

On Wed, 07 Mar 2012 10:11:25 +0000, John Rumm wrote:

On 06/03/2012 22:57, Ghostrecon wrote:

I was not proposing that anyone should be "forced" to use any specific
bit of kit. I personally would like to see some of the basics of
software development taught alongside the office apps skills etc. I
suspect however that you would find it easier to generate enthusiasm for
a (say) a small robot being driven round an obstetrical course by a on
board Pi, than one would for something popping up on the screen of a PC.


now the mind boggles :-) lol

"def?? from wikiyuk
Obstetrics (from the Latin obstare, "to stand by") is the medical specialty
dealing with the care of all women's reproductive tracts and their children
during pregnancy (prenatal period)"

Lol! Its not often I make myself laugh that much! The joy of spell
checkers and lack of attention.

(you have to admit though, it would certainly get their attention!)

We actually have this, well, pic driven 'mars/moon lander" type robots on
the engineering diploma course avoiding obstacles - predictably the
students love it

Snipped

And then you have the other entire can of worms, whats best taught
in primary, secondardy, trade schools and university level education.

We don't really have much in the way of trade schools as such here (I
take it you refer to ones that major on vocational training rather than
academia?) which is a shame. Some of the better comprehensive schools do
now have streams that lean this way however.

We have a stream of pupils some of whom attend colleges doing different
level btec courses, run btec courses in house and the engineering diploma
these number about 100 out of a yeargroup of 400 students - its a right
b*gger to schedule i know !! Unfortunately the present education dept well
michael gove is now against this type of education despite much support fro
large manufacturing companies. Education here is a political footbal. In
the 22 years I have been in it we have changed course about 5 times - it
takes an average of 5 years to get changes through (due to the nature of
students growing up) so the system is in effect constant flux

Yup, it seems lots of the problem is that no one actually knows how to
"fix it", but they all think they do.

the probelem is 'everybody is an expert' cos they have all been to school -
its something everybody has an opinion, there are are very few other areas
of life that is in the same position :-)
--
(º€¢.¸(¨*€¢.¸ ¸.€¢*¨)¸.€¢Âº)
.€¢Â°€¢. Nik .€¢Â°€¢.
(¸.€¢Âº(¸.€¢Â¨* *¨€¢.¸)º€¢.¸)

chris French wrote
Rod Speed wrote
John Rumm wrote
Rod Speed wrote
Mark wrote
wrote

We have a stream of pupils some of whom attend colleges doing
different level btec courses, run btec courses in house and the
engineering diploma these number about 100 out of a yeargroup of
400 students - its a right b*gger to schedule i know !!
Unfortunately the present education dept well michael gove is now
against this type of education despite much support fro large
manufacturing companies. Education here is a political footbal.
In the 22 years I have been in it we have changed course about 5
times - it takes an average of 5 years to get changes through
(due to the nature of students growing up) so the system is in
effect constant flux

Very true. I just wish they leave alone and let the teachers do their job.

I'm not convinced that you'd get a very viable result that way.

Historically there was a time it worked very well...

I dont believe there ever was.

And bugger all kids were in formal education at that time anyway.

In the UK, he National Curriculum is a relatively recent was introduced in England, Wales and Northern Ireland with
1988 Education Reform Act.

Sure, but there were curricula before that, it wasnt left to every teacher
to decide what should be taught and how it should be taught.

We had had compulsory education for children for a while by that point.

And didnt let every teacher decide what should be taught and how it should be taught.

Upto that point the curriculum taught in schools was down to individual school and local authorities.

And not left to the teachers.

The above of course applies to state schools, public schools are free to teach whatever they want.

But the teachers in them arent.

The introduction of the NC was probably as much to do with political control of education, the introduction of
national testing and the idea of 'parental choice' in the allocation ofschool place,s as much as any thing to do with
education per se.

Its actually part of a general trend towards standardisng curricular in countrys.

There was never a time when every teacher could
teach anything they liked any way they liked.

No probably not, well leastways not for many, many years.

Yeah, thats what I meant.

but certainly say 40 years ago there was a lot more
flexibility available to teachers as to how/what they taught.

I dont believe there was with individual teachers.

And there was also the very pronounced split in the
types of schools available to kids at roughly age 11 too.

And certainly at a school level there was.

Sure, but we were discussing teachers, not schools.

Despite all the political rhetoric all parties
have micromanaged schools via their policies.

Thats what national curricula do.

Indeed, which is an argument against them IMHO.

There is no viable alternative to curricula.

I would expect every school to have a curriculum. That doesn't
necessarily mean it has to be a nationally proscribed curriculum.

Sure, it doesnt have to be, but there are certainly advantages
in national curricula, if only for kids whose parents move
around much more than they did in the past.

Corse now that you lot can move anywhere in the EU you like any
time you feel like doing that, it gets even more complicated again.

John Rumm wrote
Rod Speed wrote
John Rumm wrote
Rod Speed wrote
Mark wrote
wrote

We have a stream of pupils some of whom attend colleges doing
different level btec courses, run btec courses in house and the
engineering diploma these number about 100 out of a yeargroup of
400 students - its a right b*gger to schedule i know !!
Unfortunately the present education dept well michael gove is now
against this type of education despite much support fro large
manufacturing companies. Education here is a political footbal.
In the 22 years I have been in it we have changed course about 5
times - it takes an average of 5 years to get changes through (due to the nature of students growing up) so the
system is in effect
constant flux

Very true. I just wish they leave alone and let the teachers do their job.

I'm not convinced that you'd get a very viable result that way.

Historically there was a time it worked very well...

I dont believe there ever was.

And bugger all kids were in formal education at that time anyway.

What century are you thinking of?

The ones where the individual teachers decided what would be taught and how it would be taught.

I was talking about the period post WWII, to probably the late 60's

The individual teachers didnt decide what was taught and how it was taught then.

when the teaching profession and government between them started
"fiddling" with the formula that had been used for decades prior.

And it was a formula, it wasnt left to individual teachers
to decide what was taught and how it was taught.

You lot had a system where at roughly age 11, it was decided
what sort of school the kid would go to, with the state system.

We have national curricula for a reason.

Partly because it stopped working in some cases...

It never did work.

I don't follow your logic? That is in effect arguing that all
education failed to work prior to 1988 when the NC was introduced.

No, I meant that allowing all teachers to decide what
was taught and how it was taught never did word.

I should have said that more carefully.

but to a large extent it was a knee jerk reaction to some failing schools

Nope, because its just not viable to let all schools
do their own thing, let alone every single teacher.

The schools were not "doing their own thing", they were teaching according to type of education they were trying to
provide for their students, and being led by the syllabi of the exams they were proposing they sat.

But the teachers were not free to teach whatever they liked however they liked.

Neither were state schools either.

They were also free to select exam boards based on the style and nature of their papers - again to best suit the needs
of the school and students.

Nothing like letting each teacher decide what was taught and how it was taught.

and poor teachers.

There will ALWAYS be poor teachers,
just like there will always be poor anything.

Indeed, and its how you deal with them that matters.

And it makes no sense to leave anything to those poor teachers.

The teaching establishment got less good at maintaining and
policing its own standards it seems.

There can be no 'standards' if every teacher decides
for themselves what is taught and how its taught.

The fact that we managed to achieve massive growth in our economy right through the post war period up to 1988 without
a NC proves the fallacy of that claim.

LIke hell it does. Teachers werent left to teach
anything they liked any way they liked at that time.

The good schools, that have freedom to do it their way, still get outstanding results,

None of them have complete freedom to do anything they like.

Not anymore...

Not since the war either except with public schools.

although things are moving back a little toward how it was previously.

But not to anything even remotely resembling anything like a
situaiton where invididual teachers can teach anything they like any
way they like. You dont even get much of that in public schools.

however as with any freedom, what can be a positive thing in the right hands, can become a liability in the wrong
ones.

And we have national curricula for a reason.

Keeping the influence of the loony left out of education mostly...

Nope, its much more about modern mobility of the kids parents.

It isnt viable to have every school do its own thing, let alone every teacher.

Get the leadership and enthusiasm right,

Not even possible with all schools.

Who said it was?

You need to appreciate that "one size fits all" is rarely a good solution in many fields.

No one ever said it was. A decent national curriculum doesnt even attempt that.

Overly prescriptive control may help reduce the damage done by poor schools, but it also impedes the good that can be
done by good ones.

Yes, there obviously can be good and bad national curricula.

Thats a separate matter to whether a national curriculum has its place when done right.

You need a system that can recognise where schools are competent and
delegate the power to them to fully capitalise on their competencies.

Its much more complicated than that when you want
to allow for the modern mobility of the kids parents.

give head teachers the ability to hire and fire as they require etc, and it can be very viable.

How odd that its never happened.

I strongly disagree - there are some excellent schools about which
managed to achieve outstanding results long before there was a NC,
still do, and I am confident would continue to do so into the future
even if the NC were to vanish tomorrow.

Separate issue entirely to whether it makes any sense to let every
teacher decide what should be taught and how it should be taught,
let alone whether there is anything to be gained by a well done NC.

It didnt even work when a tiny subset of kids were formally educated.

In effect this is what the UK had prior to the NC

No it did not.

Funny, there was no NC when I was at school.

Yes, but the individual teachers did not get to decide what was taught and how it was taught.

THAT is what was being discussed in my original point.

The school was not under educational authority control, and could choose how to operate as it liked.

But it STILL didnt allow every single teacher to
decide what was taught and how it was taught.

I doubt it was the only one in the country like it at the time.

Corse it wasnt, but it was a small subset of all the schools at that time.

And its not a viable way to do the entire country when
you are compulsorily educating every single child.

which is a relatively recent thing.

There was never a time when every teacher could
teach anything they liked any way they liked.

Define "any way they liked"?

Doesnt need defining. Its obvious what it means.

It seems a fitting description of how my school operated for example.

I bet it wasnt at the level of the individual teachers, particularly in
primary school with teaching the basics of reading and writing etc.

The teachers would in fact have been taught that stuff in their formal
education and would mostly have been doing what they were taught once
they had qualifed as teachers and had started teaching in that school.

That sort of thing doesnt have to be done with a curriculum, it can
also be done by a variety of other methods like with teacher training,
school inspectors, exams set by other than the particular teacher
\whose students are being rated, standardised testing etc etc etc.

That did not however mean that they could (long term) decide to skip teaching English and concentrate on urban street
slang instead.

Precisely. And they couldnt even decide that they wouldnt
bother with maths, or languages other than english either.

Since had they have done so, parents would not have selected the school, and they would not have achieved the frequent
categorisations by OFSTED of "very good" or "outstanding".

And that last alone means that the individual teacher did
not get to teach anything they liked any way they liked.

Likewise, when teaching Physics, it was of great mutual benefit that they taught the same syllabus as that which the
AEB were going to use to set the exam and mark against.

So even tho there was no NC, there was nothing like every
teacher teaching anything they liked any way they liked.

However it did not take a NC to prescribe what subjects they chose, or what the exact content of those course was.

Sure, but an NC does have some advantages when done right,
particularly when the kids parents move around quite a bit now.

Despite all the political rhetoric all parties
have micromanaged schools via their policies.

Thats what national curricula do.

Indeed, which is an argument against them IMHO.

There is no viable alternative to curricula.

Curricula - possibly true,

So you are agreeing with my original comment.

however there is no absolute requirement
for them to be imposed at a national level.

Yes. But that does have advantages when parents move around quite a bit.

John Rumm wrote
Rod Speed wrote

Sure, any curriculum can be stuffed up.

What was being discussed tho was whether its viable to
let teachers teach anything they like any way they like.

That would seem to be a misinterpretation entirely of your creation however.

Says he carefully deleting from the quoting where Mark said just that.

There were plenty of real world pressures on schools prior to the NC to provide a rounded and useful education.

So it was never left to the teachers as Mark wanted to see.

Some were guided by education authorities,

So it was never left to the teachers as Mark wanted to see.

others by the particular needs of their (often carefully selected) students. Schools in different areas were able to
alter the balance of the education they provided to fit better with the needs of the local community.

And then the world moved on, just like it always does,
and we saw a lot more mobility by the parents and that
local community stuff became less and less relevant except
with areas that came to be dominated by immigrants etc.

And a properly done NC can handle that fine.

These can be things that are hindered rather than helped by an overly prescriptive national curriculum.

All that means is that a national curriculum
should be done right and not stuffed up.

Yes, the downsides with stuffing up an NC are
much greater than when its left to the local authority,
but so are the benefits when you get it right too.

Now, I am not even suggesting that we wind the clock back 20 years and go back to having no NC.

Mark was doing just that.

For some schools it has proved it has a benefit, much as it has also proved itself pointless or indeed worse for
others.

That will always be the case with something like that.

That does not however mean that it shouldnt happen.

When it needs is the flexibility to recognise and adapt to the needs of the school.

And any properly done national curriculum will do that.

If yours doesnt, thats an argument for doing it better instead,
not for Mark's line about letting teachers do whatever they like.

I'm not saying we should have a free-for-all but teachers
do not a lot more about education than government ministers.

Govt ministers dont write the national curriculum.

Shame no one seems to have told them...

Your national curriculum wasnt written by govt ministers.

On Tue, 06 Mar 2012 11:34:13 +0000, Tim Streater
wrote:

In article ,
The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Rod Speed wrote:
The Other Mike wrote
Rod wrote

Its arguable if its worth bothering with the pre 2007 UI of Word and
Excel when few will bother to get those older versions for their own
systems and the student versions of the latest UI are so cheap.

Word 2007 or better? That'll be WordPerfect For Windows 6.1 then

Complex text manipulations were a piece of **** in WP6.1,

What is a "complex text manipulation"?

One where you have the ability to examine and manipulate individual
formatting codes from a simple existing dialog or from a macro, maybe
just a simple change of a single character, sometimes a renumbering of
say the third letter in every row in a particular column, maybe a
deletion or addition of a column, maybe the addition of a standard
text block to page 7 of 250 different documents without overwriting
anything and leaving the existing information in exactly the same
place. The kind of thing that could be done by WordPerfect years
before those dorks at M$ even thought of that sodding **** of a
paperclip.

Raster documents were not acceptable, spreadsheets had their place to
a limited extent, but were limited for graphics, a database solution
would have cost millions and not offered any real benefits other than
to the provider of the system. So text files, some raster graphics, a
lot of ANSI line drawing characters. Something WordPerfect could
handle with ease on the desktop, or on a (large) portable.

A total of 5000 files, maybe 150,000 pages total, sized from two or
three pages up to 150 pages of essential engineering information, some
of it dating back to the 1950's, originally drawn and filled in by
hand. Converted into electronic form from the days where Microsoft
stuck to operating systems and Word was just an expensive version of
Notepad with about the same functionality.

Word, in every single iteration could not be relied upon to purely
edit and not corrupt that data across multiple edit platforms. Every
version, even with test documents specifically created from scratch
could not be imported into other versions without some quirk.

WordPerfect could be relied upon. Always, and that is why it was
chosen.


--

On Wed, 07 Mar 2012 12:10:40 +0000, John Rumm
wrote:

On 06/03/2012 20:25, Owain wrote:
On Mar 6, 4:43 pm, Bob Eager wrote:
BTw, can I have a prize for starting the fastest growing thread in
uk.d-i-y for quite a while?

The prize would be a RPi, but they're out of stock :-)

Sometime end of March the girl at CPC told me...

Well there's your problem. You can't buy them from CPC.

--

Chris J Dixon wrote:
Adrian C wrote:
I'd dumb it down further ...
Series of eight 1 hour lessons.
*lesson #1. How to hold and move a mouse.
etc.
A year or two back I attended an evening class ...
Sadly, quite a number of the participants would have
benefited from first attending the course you outline above.

Some of the participants on the Back-To-Work programme I'm on
could do with that was well.

Correction - the *course instructor* could do with going on that
course.

JGH

The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Whitby has no Freeview and isn't due to get it until around
September/October 2012.
is Whitby part of the UK?

Doesn't feel like it. No MacDonalds, Burger King, Marks & Spencers;
a couple of inches of snow and the only way out is by boat.

Obviously not enough people have money to spend on stuff they 'saw
advertised on telly' to make it worth while bringing it into the 20th
century, never mind the 21st.

Well, the perfectly decent TV transmitter on the cliff that served
the whole town and was well-placed to peer down into the valley
was deemed about to fall over the cliff, and was decommissioned.
The replacement transmitter is too far away to transmit into the
valley. We have to use FreeSat now.

When I walked past the old transmitter last week it was still a
good 50 feet away from the cliff. They could have kept it going
until a better replacement was built - or even built a
replacement on the same site, but further inland, but that
would prabably have spoiled the view of the Abbey from offshore.

JGH

On Wed, 7 Mar 2012 16:37:01 -0800 (PST), jgharston
wrote:

The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Whitby has no Freeview and isn't due to get it until around
September/October 2012.
is Whitby part of the UK?

Doesn't feel like it. No MacDonalds, Burger King, Marks & Spencers;


Surely neither MacDonalds nor Burger King are really attributes of the
UK though?

--
Frank Erskine

Frank Erskine wrote:
Doesn't feel like it. No MacDonalds, Burger King, Marks & Spencers;
Surely neither MacDonalds nor Burger King are really attributes of the
UK though?

Ok. No Woolworths, HMV, Northern Rock...

JGH

On Wed, 07 Mar 2012 16:12:00 +0000, Tim Streater
wrote:

The worst one like that I met poured cold water on an idea I had. I
dropped it, only to find the Germans had made it work, no problem.

You can't have had much belief in your idea, then.

Lack of money to make it happen. Plenty of belief - I knew it could be
done, but got no backing or support.

If we all had your attitude we'd never have put foosteps on the Moon.

Putting footsteps on the moon was relatively straightforward.

Really? Why bother with NASA at all, then?

On 07/03/2012 22:22, Rod Speed wrote:
John Rumm wrote
Rod Speed wrote
John Rumm wrote
Rod Speed wrote
Mark wrote
wrote

We have a stream of pupils some of whom attend colleges doing
different level btec courses, run btec courses in house and the
engineering diploma these number about 100 out of a yeargroup of
400 students - its a right b*gger to schedule i know !!
Unfortunately the present education dept well michael gove is now
against this type of education despite much support fro large
manufacturing companies. Education here is a political footbal.
In the 22 years I have been in it we have changed course about 5
times - it takes an average of 5 years to get changes through (due to the nature of students growing up) so the
system is in effect
constant flux

Very true. I just wish they leave alone and let the teachers do their job.

I'm not convinced that you'd get a very viable result that way.

Historically there was a time it worked very well...

I dont believe there ever was.

And bugger all kids were in formal education at that time anyway.

What century are you thinking of?

The ones where the individual teachers decided what would be taught and how it would be taught.

I think you have been reading too much dennis... there is no need to
subtly shift your argument each time someone highlights the failings of
the previous one.

The education authorities and schools had freedom to decide on what to
teach. The teachers had freedom to decide how to teach. It reall is not
a difficult concept. That fact that you would rather not believe it does
not make it any less true.

I was talking about the period post WWII, to probably the late 60's

The individual teachers didnt decide what was taught and how it was taught then.

The former no, but then no one was claiming this. The latter in many
cases however, yes.

when the teaching profession and government between them started
"fiddling" with the formula that had been used for decades prior.

And it was a formula, it wasnt left to individual teachers
to decide what was taught and how it was taught.

Oops he's looping....

You lot had a system where at roughly age 11, it was decided
what sort of school the kid would go to, with the state system.

Not exactly. We have the 11+ exam, which children can take if they want
to get into one of the selective schools such as the grammar schools
(highly academic, selecting pupils of above average ability), or some of
the comprehensive and secondary modern schools that have some selective
intake.

There are however quite a range of different types of school that can be
chosen that don't require an 11+ pass.

We have national curricula for a reason.

Partly because it stopped working in some cases...

It never did work.

I don't follow your logic? That is in effect arguing that all
education failed to work prior to 1988 when the NC was introduced.

No, I meant that allowing all teachers to decide what
was taught and how it was taught never did word.

Odd how it still works fine here in the schools that don't follow the
national curriculum then don't you think?

I should have said that more carefully.

but to a large extent it was a knee jerk reaction to some failing schools

Nope, because its just not viable to let all schools
do their own thing, let alone every single teacher.

The schools were not "doing their own thing", they were teaching according to type of education they were trying to
provide for their students, and being led by the syllabi of the exams they were proposing they sat.

But the teachers were not free to teach whatever they liked however they liked.

You keep merging two separate things in the hope of scoring points it
seems. Lets separate them out again:

Schools were free to teach what they wanted. Teachers free to teach how
they wanted (and in fact elements of the latter are still true even
under the NC). Those schools which are required to follow it, are still
free to teach things of their choice in addition to the NC.

Neither were state schools either.

Prior to the advent of Grant Maintained (and now "Academy") schools,
most state schools would be guided by the local education authority
(LEA). Some were more hand on than others.

Now those that achieve academy status, and those that are grant
maintained (i.e. funded by central governement, rather that the local
authority) have more freedom to pick and chose from the NC than the ones
under direct LEA control.

and poor teachers.

There will ALWAYS be poor teachers,
just like there will always be poor anything.

Indeed, and its how you deal with them that matters.

And it makes no sense to leave anything to those poor teachers.

It makes sense to either help them overcome their failings, or encourage
them to leave the profession by sacking them.

The teaching establishment got less good at maintaining and
policing its own standards it seems.

There can be no 'standards' if every teacher decides
for themselves what is taught and how its taught.

The fact that we managed to achieve massive growth in our economy right through the post war period up to 1988 without
a NC proves the fallacy of that claim.

LIke hell it does. Teachers werent left to teach
anything they liked any way they liked at that time.

The good schools, that have freedom to do it their way, still get outstanding results,

None of them have complete freedom to do anything they like.

Sorry, but you are simply wrong. I don't say this based on some belief
that I have, but based on actual personal experience.

The school I went to was free to teach exactly what it wanted (it was
not state controlled, and did not have to adhere to the wishes of any
education authority, and there was no NC at the time). The teachers
working along with the school head were able to not only select the exam
boards that would be used, and the courses they would teach, but also
how to teach. If the teachers did not perform well enough to the
satisfaction of the school, then they were replaced.

Not anymore...

Not since the war either except with public schools.

although things are moving back a little toward how it was previously.

But not to anything even remotely resembling anything like a
situaiton where invididual teachers can teach anything they like any
way they like. You dont even get much of that in public schools.

Which was the last British public school you attended?

however as with any freedom, what can be a positive thing in the right hands, can become a liability in the wrong
ones.

And we have national curricula for a reason.

Keeping the influence of the loony left out of education mostly...

Nope, its much more about modern mobility of the kids parents.

I don't recall that ever being raised and reason for its introduction.
However there may be some arguable benefit there.

It isnt viable to have every school do its own thing, let alone every teacher.

Get the leadership and enthusiasm right,

Not even possible with all schools.

Who said it was?

You need to appreciate that "one size fits all" is rarely a good solution in many fields.

No one ever said it was. A decent national curriculum doesnt even attempt that.

A decent one might not...

Overly prescriptive control may help reduce the damage done by poor schools, but it also impedes the good that can be
done by good ones.

Yes, there obviously can be good and bad national curricula.

Thats a separate matter to whether a national curriculum has its place when done right.

You need a system that can recognise where schools are competent and
delegate the power to them to fully capitalise on their competencies.

Its much more complicated than that when you want
to allow for the modern mobility of the kids parents.

Yup, so if the parents decide to move because the local schools are
crap, they can be assured any they move near will be equally crap? ;-)

give head teachers the ability to hire and fire as they require etc, and it can be very viable.

How odd that its never happened.

I strongly disagree - there are some excellent schools about which
managed to achieve outstanding results long before there was a NC,
still do, and I am confident would continue to do so into the future
even if the NC were to vanish tomorrow.

Separate issue entirely to whether it makes any sense to let every
teacher decide what should be taught and how it should be taught,

Looping again...

let alone whether there is anything to be gained by a well done NC.

It didnt even work when a tiny subset of kids were formally educated.

In effect this is what the UK had prior to the NC

No it did not.

Funny, there was no NC when I was at school.

Yes, but the individual teachers did not get to decide what was taught and how it was taught.

The school decided what, and the teachers how.

You were not there, I was, so you will have to take my word for it.

THAT is what was being discussed in my original point.

The school was not under educational authority control, and could choose how to operate as it liked.

But it STILL didnt allow every single teacher to
decide what was taught and how it was taught.

looping

I doubt it was the only one in the country like it at the time.

Corse it wasnt, but it was a small subset of all the schools at that time.

And its not a viable way to do the entire country when
you are compulsorily educating every single child.

which is a relatively recent thing.

There was never a time when every teacher could
teach anything they liked any way they liked.

Define "any way they liked"?

Doesnt need defining. Its obvious what it means.

It seems a fitting description of how my school operated for example.

I bet it wasnt at the level of the individual teachers, particularly in
primary school with teaching the basics of reading and writing etc.

I was referring to my secondary school. (the bit about exams etc might
have given that away)

The teachers would in fact have been taught that stuff in their formal
education and would mostly have been doing what they were taught once
they had qualifed as teachers and had started teaching in that school.

That sort of thing doesnt have to be done with a curriculum, it can
also be done by a variety of other methods like with teacher training,
school inspectors, exams set by other than the particular teacher
\whose students are being rated, standardised testing etc etc etc.

What no NC, how the the world as we know it not end?

That did not however mean that they could (long term) decide to skip teaching English and concentrate on urban street
slang instead.

Precisely. And they couldnt even decide that they wouldnt
bother with maths, or languages other than english either.

Well in fact they *did* decide to skip all languages other than English.

They could have done so with maths, although obviously there would be no
logic in doing so.

Since had they have done so, parents would not have selected the school, and they would not have achieved the frequent
categorisations by OFSTED of "very good" or "outstanding".

And that last alone means that the individual teacher did
not get to teach anything they liked any way they liked.

Are you are simply being obtuse? Or do you feel that if you can rephrase
everyone's point of view to make it sound absurd, you will emerge the
victor in some argument that only you seem to be having?

Its a fair assessment that a physics teacher was not going to suddenly
say, oh today I think I will do sanskrit. They were also unlikely to
teach vast amounts of things that students were not going to be doing in
the exams.

However when I was there, the school decided to teach Physics and Human
Biology (rather than the more common "normal" Biology), but not
Chemistry. After my time (but before NC) they elected to change those to
a combined science course. Their decision, based on an assessment of
what suited the needs of the pupils and staff best.

The teachers were required to teach the subjects they were recruited to
teach (and possibly a few they weren't), however they were given freedom
to teach how they wanted, in the order they wanted etc. If that meant
decamping the whole class to the swimming pool during double physics so
as to carry out acoustic standing wave experiments using long pipes and
lots of water, then that is what they did.

Likewise, when teaching Physics, it was of great mutual benefit that they taught the same syllabus as that which the
AEB were going to use to set the exam and mark against.

So even tho there was no NC, there was nothing like every
teacher teaching anything they liked

No, but that bit is your concoction remember.

any way they liked.

And yes, that is exactly how it worked. And very very good it was too.
The teachers could be inventive, let their enthusiasm and passion for
their subjects really come to the fore. They could adapt and change the
way they taught to match what worked best with their kids. If that meant
they worked one way with one class, and yet taught a different class the
same subject in a totally different way, then that is what they did.
They had the full backing of the school head to do just that.

Now, this was not a typical school by any stretch of the imagination,
but it demonstrates what good schools can do when not prevented from
doing so.

However it did not take a NC to prescribe what subjects they chose, or what the exact content of those course was.

Sure, but an NC does have some advantages when done right,
particularly when the kids parents move around quite a bit now.

Yup I would accept that.


Despite all the political rhetoric all parties
have micromanaged schools via their policies.

Thats what national curricula do.

Indeed, which is an argument against them IMHO.

There is no viable alternative to curricula.

Curricula - possibly true,

So you are agreeing with my original comment.

No you stated there was no viable alternative to a national curriculum.
That I don't accept. However that is always a place for a curriculum at
a far more local level - and that level may be tailored right down to
the individual pupil, not even a class or a school.

however there is no absolute requirement
for them to be imposed at a national level.

Yes. But that does have advantages when parents move around quite a bit.

Which is a whole different discussion.

Anyway, I get the impression everyone has had enough of this discussion
now, so I will let it rest. You may have the last word... (or
WordPerfect if you would rather have a good one ;-)


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
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|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

On 07/03/2012 21:22, Ghostrecon wrote:
On Wed, 07 Mar 2012 10:11:25 +0000, John Rumm wrote:

On 06/03/2012 22:57, Ghostrecon wrote:

We have a stream of pupils some of whom attend colleges doing different
level btec courses, run btec courses in house and the engineering diploma
these number about 100 out of a yeargroup of 400 students - its a right
b*gger to schedule i know !! Unfortunately the present education dept well
michael gove is now against this type of education despite much support fro
large manufacturing companies. Education here is a political footbal. In
the 22 years I have been in it we have changed course about 5 times - it
takes an average of 5 years to get changes through (due to the nature of
students growing up) so the system is in effect constant flux

Yup, it seems lots of the problem is that no one actually knows how to
"fix it", but they all think they do.

the probelem is 'everybody is an expert' cos they have all been to school -
its something everybody has an opinion, there are are very few other areas
of life that is in the same position :-)

Oh indeed, as this thread demonstrates.


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

On 07/03/2012 23:16, The Other Mike wrote:
On Wed, 07 Mar 2012 12:10:40 +0000, John Rumm
wrote:

On 06/03/2012 20:25, Owain wrote:
On Mar 6, 4:43 pm, Bob Eager wrote:
BTw, can I have a prize for starting the fastest growing thread in
uk.d-i-y for quite a while?

The prize would be a RPi, but they're out of stock :-)

Sometime end of March the girl at CPC told me...

Well there's your problem. You can't buy them from CPC.

I think that is what we just said... ;-)

http://planet.farnell.com/email/cpc/...sRedirect=true


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

Frank Erskine wrote:
On Wed, 7 Mar 2012 16:37:01 -0800 (PST), jgharston
wrote:

The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Whitby has no Freeview and isn't due to get it until around
September/October 2012.
is Whitby part of the UK?
Doesn't feel like it. No MacDonalds, Burger King, Marks & Spencers;


Surely neither MacDonalds nor Burger King are really attributes of the
UK though?

Burger King is.


--
To people who know nothing, anything is possible.
To people who know too much, it is a sad fact
that they know how little is really possible -
and how hard it is to achieve it.

John Rumm wrote
Rod Speed wrote
John Rumm wrote
Rod Speed wrote
John Rumm wrote
Rod Speed wrote
Mark wrote
wrote

We have a stream of pupils some of whom attend colleges doing
different level btec courses, run btec courses in house and the
engineering diploma these number about 100 out of a yeargroup
of 400 students - its a right b*gger to schedule i know !!

Unfortunately the present education dept well michael gove is
now against this type of education despite much support fro large
manufacturing companies. Education here is a political footbal. In the 22 years I have been in it we have
changed course about
5 times - it takes an average of 5 years to get changes through
(due to the nature of students growing up) so the system is in
effect constant flux

Very true. I just wish they leave alone and let the teachers do their job.

I'm not convinced that you'd get a very viable result that way.

Historically there was a time it worked very well...

I dont believe there ever was.

And bugger all kids were in formal education at that time anyway.

What century are you thinking of?

The ones where the individual teachers decided what would be taught and how it would be taught.

I think you have been reading too much dennis... there is no need to subtly shift your argument each time someone
highlights the failings of the previous one.

Everyone can see for themselves that I have not shifted my argument one iota.

The education authorities and schools had freedom to decide on what to teach.

And that is NOTHING like Mark's line about TEACHERS.

The teachers had freedom to decide how to teach.

No they did not. They basically did that the way they
were taught to do that in their professional education.

And HOW its taught is a quite separate argument to
WHAT is taught, as specified by a curriculum anyway.

It reall is not a difficult concept.

Neither is what Mark was saying.

That fact that you would rather not believe it does not make it any less true.

The fact that you cant even grasp what was being discussed changes nothing.

I was talking about the period post WWII, to probably the late 60's

The individual teachers didnt decide what was taught and how it was taught then.

The former no, but then no one was claiming this.

We were discussing whether we ever saw what Mark was proposing.

We never did except back in the times when only a tiny
subset of kids got any formal education by teachers at all.

The latter in many cases however, yes.

Sure, but thats a separate matter to what was being dicussed CURRICULA.

when the teaching profession and government between them started
"fiddling" with the formula that had been used for decades prior.

And it was a formula, it wasnt left to individual teachers
to decide what was taught and how it was taught.

Oops he's looping....

Even you can do better than that.

You lot had a system where at roughly age 11, it was decided
what sort of school the kid would go to, with the state system.

Not exactly.

Yes, exactly.

We have the 11+ exam, which children can take if they
want to get into one of the selective schools such as the grammar schools (highly academic, selecting pupils of above
average ability), or some of the comprehensive and secondary modern schools that have some selective intake.

Thats what I said in a lot more words.

And I was talking about what you HAD after the war, not now.

There are however quite a range of different types of school that can be chosen that don't require an 11+ pass.

It is however used to categorise the kids,
even tho not all kids have to bother with it.

We have national curricula for a reason.

Partly because it stopped working in some cases...

It never did work.

I don't follow your logic? That is in effect arguing that all
education failed to work prior to 1988 when the NC was introduced.

No, I meant that allowing all teachers to decide what
was taught and how it was taught never did work.

Odd how it still works fine here in the schools that don't follow the national curriculum then don't you think?

Doesnt work for the entire education system.

I should have said that more carefully.

but to a large extent it was a knee jerk reaction to some failing schools

Nope, because its just not viable to let all schools
do their own thing, let alone every single teacher.

The schools were not "doing their own thing", they were teaching according to type of education they were trying to
provide for their students, and being led by the syllabi of the exams they were proposing they sat.

But the teachers were not free to teach whatever they liked however they liked.

You keep merging two separate things

I havent merged anything.

in the hope of scoring points it seems.

Corse you never ever try to score points, eh ?

My original comment was to Mark, not you.

Lets separate them out again:

They were never merged.

Schools were free to teach what they wanted.

Only back in the days when only a small subset
of kids were ever formally educated by teachers.

Teachers free to teach how they wanted

Only back in the days when only a small subset of
kids were ever formally educated by teachers and
no one bothered with professional training for teachers.

Even in the days when there was no specific training
for teachers, individual teachers were not free to teach
any way they liked, most them had to teach the way the
school wanted them to teach the kids.

(and in fact elements of the latter are still true even under the NC).

Sure, but they are not free to teach anything they like.

Those schools which are required to follow it, are still free to teach things of their choice in addition to the NC.

Sure, but that nothing like what Mark was proposing.

Neither were state schools either.

Prior to the advent of Grant Maintained (and now "Academy") schools, most state schools would be guided by the local
education authority (LEA).

And that nothing like what Mark was proposing.

Some were more hand on than others.

Now those that achieve academy status, and those that are grant maintained (i.e. funded by central governement, rather
that the local authority) have more freedom to pick and chose from the NC than the ones under direct LEA control.

And thats STILL nothing like what Mark was proposing.

and poor teachers.

There will ALWAYS be poor teachers,
just like there will always be poor anything.

Indeed, and its how you deal with them that matters.

And it makes no sense to leave anything to those poor teachers.

It makes sense to either help them overcome their failings, or encourage them to leave the profession by sacking them.

Sure. But thats easier said than done when the state
system has been hijacked by the teachers unions.

I cant think of any country's system that manages that very well.

That was certainly much more easily achieved in the
days before there even were any teachers unions,
and bugger all in the way of any unions at all.

The teaching establishment got less good at maintaining and policing its own standards it seems.

There can be no 'standards' if every teacher decides
for themselves what is taught and how its taught.

The fact that we managed to achieve massive growth in our economy right through the post war period up to 1988
without a NC proves the fallacy of that claim.

LIke hell it does. Teachers werent left to teach
anything they liked any way they liked at that time.

The good schools, that have freedom to do it their way, still get outstanding results,

None of them have complete freedom to do anything they like.

Sorry, but you are simply wrong.

Nope.

I don't say this based on some belief that I have, but based on actual personal experience.

Irrelevant to how the state system particularly worked at that time.

The school I went to was free to teach exactly what it wanted

No it was not. It could not for example decide that reading
and writing was just some fad and that they wouldnt bother
with either and that they would return to an entirely oral
tradition as some societys had done in the past.

They couldnt even decide to do things the way so many of
the islamic system does, concentrate entirely on memorising
the Koran and dont bother with anything else at all and still
have been where parent could send their kids to satisfy the
legal requirement for the compulsory education of their kids.

(it was not state controlled, and did not have to adhere to the wishes of any education authority, and there was no NC
at the time).

But there were other ways of detemining what had to be taught
in the school for it to qualify as a school which parents could send
their kids to and still satify the legal requirement for compulsory
education of their kids.

The teachers working along with the school head were able to not only select the exam boards that would be used,

So they were not in fact free to teach anything they liked.

and the courses they would teach, but also how to teach.

Sure, they had a lot more freedom on how it was taught,
but again, that was not the invididual teachers, that was
detemined by the school, not the individual teachers,
particularly with the more unusal approaches to teaching.

If the teachers did not perform well enough to the satisfaction of the school, then they were replaced.

So they were not in fact free to teach any way they liked.

They had to teach effectively.

Not anymore...

Not since the war either except with public schools.

although things are moving back a little toward how it was previously.

But not to anything even remotely resembling anything like a
situaiton where invididual teachers can teach anything they like any
way they like. You dont even get much of that in public schools.

Which was the last British public school you attended?

Irrelevant to whether they can teach anything they like and
still satisfy the legal requirement on compulsory education.

however as with any freedom, what can be a positive thing in the right hands, can become a liability in the wrong
ones.

And we have national curricula for a reason.

Keeping the influence of the loony left out of education mostly...

Nope, its much more about modern mobility of the kids parents.

I don't recall that ever being raised and reason for its introduction.

Whether it was or not, its clearly an important consideration.

However there may be some arguable benefit there.

No may be about it, obviously there are.

It isnt viable to have every school do its own thing, let alone every teacher.

Get the leadership and enthusiasm right,

Not even possible with all schools.

Who said it was?

You need to appreciate that "one size fits all" is rarely a good solution in many fields.

No one ever said it was. A decent national curriculum doesnt even attempt that.

A decent one might not...

Again, no might not about it.

Overly prescriptive control may help reduce the damage done by poor
schools, but it also impedes the good that can be done by good ones.

Yes, there obviously can be good and bad national curricula.

Thats a separate matter to whether a national curriculum has its place when done right.

You need a system that can recognise where schools are competent and delegate the power to them to fully capitalise
on their competencies.

Its much more complicated than that when you want
to allow for the modern mobility of the kids parents.

Yup, so if the parents decide to move because the local schools are
crap, they can be assured any they move near will be equally crap? ;-)

If they choose to move because of employment prospect or just on a whim they
can certainly have a reasonable level of confidence that the kids can handle that.

give head teachers the ability to hire and fire as they require etc, and it can be very viable.

How odd that its never happened.

I strongly disagree - there are some excellent schools about which
managed to achieve outstanding results long before there was a NC,
still do, and I am confident would continue to do so into the future
even if the NC were to vanish tomorrow.

Separate issue entirely to whether it makes any sense to let every
teacher decide what should be taught and how it should be taught,

Looping again...

Nope, just rubbing your nose in the basics when you keep heading
down side tracks that have nothing to do with that Mark was proposing.

let alone whether there is anything to be gained by a well done NC.

It didnt even work when a tiny subset of kids were formally educated.

In effect this is what the UK had prior to the NC

No it did not.

Funny, there was no NC when I was at school.

Yes, but the individual teachers did not get to decide what was taught and how it was taught.

The school decided what,

No it did not in the sense that they could teach anything they liked.

and the teachers how.

No they did not They were pointed in the direction of how things
should be taught by their professional education with most of them.

You were not there, I was, so you will have to take my word for it.

LIke hell I do. And only a tiny subset of schools operated like that anyway.

THAT is what was being discussed in my original point.

The school was not under educational authority control, and could choose how to operate as it liked.

But it STILL didnt allow every single teacher to
decide what was taught and how it was taught.

looping

Rubbing your nose in the basics when you keep heading down
side tracks that have nothing to do with that Mark was proposing.

I doubt it was the only one in the country like it at the time.

Corse it wasnt, but it was a small subset of all the schools at that time.

And its not a viable way to do the entire country when
you are compulsorily educating every single child.

which is a relatively recent thing.

There was never a time when every teacher could
teach anything they liked any way they liked.

Define "any way they liked"?

Doesnt need defining. Its obvious what it means.

It seems a fitting description of how my school operated for example.

I bet it wasnt at the level of the individual teachers, particularly in primary school with teaching the basics of
reading and writing etc.

I was referring to my secondary school. (the bit about exams etc might have given that away)

The teachers would in fact have been taught that stuff in their formal education and would mostly have been doing
what they were taught once
they had qualifed as teachers and had started teaching in that school.

That sort of thing doesnt have to be done with a curriculum, it can
also be done by a variety of other methods like with teacher training, school inspectors, exams set by other than the
particular teacher
\whose students are being rated, standardised testing etc etc etc.

What no NC, how the the world as we know it not end?

That did not however mean that they could (long term) decide to
skip teaching English and concentrate on urban street slang instead.

Precisely. And they couldnt even decide that they wouldnt
bother with maths, or languages other than english either.

Well in fact they *did* decide to skip all languages other than English.

They could have done so with maths, although obviously there would be no logic in doing so.

Since had they have done so, parents would not have selected the school, and they would not have achieved the
frequent
categorisations by OFSTED of "very good" or "outstanding".

And that last alone means that the individual teacher did
not get to teach anything they liked any way they liked.

Are you are simply being obtuse?

Just rubbing your nose in the basics when you keep heading down
side tracks that have nothing to do with that Mark was proposing.

Or do you feel that if you can rephrase everyone's point of view to make it sound absurd, you will emerge the
victor in some argument that only you seem to be having?

Even you can do better than that.

Its a fair assessment that a physics teacher was not going to suddenly say, oh today I think I will do sanskrit. They
were also unlikely to teach vast amounts of things that students were not going to be doing in the exams.

So the exams were in fact a significant constraint on what was taught.

However when I was there, the school decided to teach Physics and Human Biology (rather than the more common "normal"
Biology), but not Chemistry. After my time (but before NC) they elected to change those to a combined science course.
Their decision, based on an assessment of what suited the needs of the pupils and staff best.

And its never going to be feasible to do an
entire country's state school system like that.

The teachers were required to teach the subjects they were recruited
to teach (and possibly a few they weren't), however they were given
freedom to teach how they wanted, in the order they wanted etc. If
that meant decamping the whole class to the swimming pool during
double physics so as to carry out acoustic standing wave experiments
using long pipes and lots of water, then that is what they did.

Likewise, when teaching Physics, it was of great mutual benefit
that they taught the same syllabus as that which the AEB were going to use to set the exam and mark against.

So even tho there was no NC, there was nothing like every
teacher teaching anything they liked

No, but that bit is your concoction remember.

Thats a lie.

any way they liked.

And yes, that is exactly how it worked.

No it was not. If some stupid teacher decided to 'teach' history
entirely by communcating directly with those who were around
at that time using telepathy etc, they would have got sacked.

And very very good it was too. The teachers could be inventive,

Only within limits.

let their enthusiasm and passion for their subjects really come to the fore. They could adapt and change the way they
taught to match what worked best with their kids. If that meant they worked one way with one class, and yet taught a
different class the same subject in a totally different way, then that is what they did. They had the full backing of
the school head
to do just that.

Now, this was not a typical school by any stretch of the imagination,

And it is not feasible to run an entire country's state school system like that.

but it demonstrates what good schools can do when not prevented from doing so.

But it is not feasible to run an entire country's state school
system like that, so isnt relevant to what Mark was proposing.

Its certainly feasible and arguably a good
approach for a small subset of schhols.

However it did not take a NC to prescribe what subjects they chose, or what the exact content of those course was.

Sure, but an NC does have some advantages when done right,
particularly when the kids parents move around quite a bit now.

Yup I would accept that.

Despite all the political rhetoric all parties
have micromanaged schools via their policies.

Thats what national curricula do.

Indeed, which is an argument against them IMHO.

There is no viable alternative to curricula.

Curricula - possibly true,

So you are agreeing with my original comment.

No you stated there was no viable alternative to a national curriculum.

No, I actually said that we have national curricula for a reason, a different matter entiely.

That I don't accept.

Having fun thrashing that straw man ?

However that is always a place for a curriculum at a far more local level

That useless if you want to allow for the modern mobility of parents.

- and that level may be tailored right down to the individual pupil, not even a class or a school.

Thats not a curriculum.

however there is no absolute requirement
for them to be imposed at a national level.

Yes. But that does have advantages when parents move around quite a bit.

Which is a whole different discussion.

Nope.

Anyway, I get the impression everyone has had enough of this
discussion now, so I will let it rest. You may have the last word...
(or WordPerfect if you would rather have a good one ;-)