Wales PISA results

[Barry Dragon]

Wow, we are crap. Be interesting to see how WAG respond to this. We have gone from being bad to being rubbish. The gap between england is getting bigger.

Scores of Welsh students in science, reading and maths were below the average of 72 countries and economies taking part in a major study of educational performance.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-38208738

20 years ago when I moved back to wales the welsh education system for Maths was a whole year behind the school in England. Be interesting to see how much this had grown since.

[LordKenwyne]

In all my years of school I think I met 3/4 teachers that I would class as going out of their way to truly teach the children.

In R.E lessons we spent 4 lessons watching schindlers list. History lessons we spread the titanic over multiple lessons. Anywhere near the end of term?. Films all day every day.

Our history teacher, who was one of the good ones, used to randomly take us to do P.E???.

A part time teacher, obviously not his fault, took the place of a full time geography teacher. For an entire term. He had a GCSE at geography, that is all.

I loved my school, I imagine a few on here went to it. It was in the troedyrhiw region

I have embarrassing maths skills myself. I had to have a tutor at GCSE level. In my current work everyone I know uses a calculator for the simplest of needs. I am literally talking addition of say 17 + 32.

Drama I think should be compulsory as well. The majority of kids that came out of my school could barely hold a conversation let alone talk or present to people. Myself included again!.

I know our strong welsh accent is ok between us, but english people Ive met have next to no idea what I am saying at times.

Our english teachers were pretty unexciting so people lost interest. Why is of mice and men so loved. Every school did it. Surely there are better options to interest kids?. Why do we do shakespeare?. They can look into that as adult if they want to.

[Vimana.]

I saw Boris on Peston's program on Sunday morning.
He was still bonging on about Britain 'still being world leaders in ideas and in thinking ' clearly aiming to soothe those of us who are Brexit-sceptic, and re-assure some others.
Really Boris .. ?!

UK is so far behind so much of the developing world.
Wales, within that, seems poorer still.

I suspect this is evidence of a long decline and accompanying lack of focus that has very probably gone too far to be fixed now.
Is there the resource, finance, the comprehension or even the goodwill available to turn it around?

[LordKenwyne]

I saw Boris on Peston's program on Sunday morning.
He was still bonging on about Britain 'still being world leaders in ideas and in thinking ' clearly aiming to soothe those of us who are Brexit-sceptic, and re-assure some others.
Really Boris .. ?!

UK is so far behind so much of the developing world.
Wales, within that, seems poorer still.

I suspect this is evidence of a long decline and accompanying lack of focus that has very probably gone too far to be fixed now.
Is there the resource, finance, the comprehension or even the goodwill available to turn it around?

The UK has produced some of the cleverest people the world has ever seen.....but......there has always been the dumb under classes that provided the man power for the clever peoples exploits around the world.

[Gabalphaville]

In all my years of school I think I met 3/4 teachers that I would class as going out of their way to truly teach the children.

In R.E lessons we spent 4 lessons watching schindlers list. History lessons we spread the titanic over multiple lessons. Anywhere near the end of term?. Films all day every day.

Our history teacher, who was one of the good ones, used to randomly take us to do P.E???.

A part time teacher, obviously not his fault, took the place of a full time geography teacher. For an entire term. He had a GCSE at geography, that is all.

I loved my school, I imagine a few on here went to it. It was in the troedyrhiw region

I have embarrassing maths skills myself. I had to have a tutor at GCSE level. In my current work everyone I know uses a calculator for the simplest of needs. I am literally talking addition of say 17 + 32.

Drama I think should be compulsory as well. The majority of kids that came out of my school could barely hold a conversation let alone talk or present to people. Myself included again!.

I know our strong welsh accent is ok between us, but english people Ive met have next to no idea what I am saying at times.

Our english teachers were pretty unexciting so people lost interest. Why is of mice and men so loved. Every school did it. Surely there are better options to interest kids?. Why do we do shakespeare?. They can look into that as adult if they want to.

I went to an ordinary comp in Cardiff but my history teacher had a double first and my English teacher gained his degree at Oxford University. I'm not sure if Of Mice and Men is loved particularly I think it's just easier to grade across schools if they all do the same text. It's either Of Mice and Men or To Kill a Mockingbird, these days - in my day we did Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. We also did The Iliad (Homer) and Macbeth (Shaky) and parts of the Canterbury Tales (Chaucer). I remember finding many lessons dead boring but I can't remember any of my teachers being inept.

[LordKenwyne]

I went to an ordinary comp in Cardiff but my history teacher had a double first and my English teacher gained his degree at Oxford University. I'm not sure if Of Mice and Men is loved particularly I think it's just easier to grade across schools if they all do the same text. It's either Of Mice and Men or To Kill a Mockingbird, these days - in my day we did Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. We also did The Iliad (Homer) and Macbeth (Shaky) and parts of the Canterbury Tales (Chaucer). I remember finding many lessons dead boring but I can't remember any of my teachers being inept.

I can only laugh at that. The Iliad...... It would've been like trying to teach a herd of cows how to speak mandarin. But I suppose you couldn't have found it easy.

Noughts and crosses was everyones highlight as it was easy to read and pretty gripping stuff.

Private and peaceful we read as well.

I once remember we came to our end of year tests and there was a question on romeo and Juliet. We hadn't touched the book. We watched the film. No one had a clue what they were doing.

[Gabalphaville]

I can only laugh at that. The Iliad...... It would've been like trying to teach a herd of cows how to speak mandarin. But I suppose you couldn't have found it easy.

Noughts and crosses was everyones highlight as it was easy to read and pretty gripping stuff.

Private and peaceful we read as well.

I once remember we came to our end of year tests and there was a question on romeo and Juliet. We hadn't touched the book. We watched the film. No one had a clue what they were doing.

Education in the Valleys sounds bonkers. It's good to know that you haven't been mentally scarred by it.

[ian gibson]

In our school we read 'The big red lorry went up the hill' and the 'Janet and John' series of books.

[Heathblue]

Wow, we are crap. Be interesting to see how WAG respond to this. We have gone from being bad to being rubbish. The gap between england is getting bigger.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-38208738

20 years ago when I moved back to wales the welsh education system for Maths was a whole year behind the school in England. Be interesting to see how much this had grown since.

Once again, Welsh Labour has taken incompetence to a new low, UKIP given more ammunition to further dissolve the labour vote, I believe that the current education policies are the brainchild of City Fan (When he's looking for a bit of publicity) Leighton Andrews.

Welsh Labour couldn't organise a Pizza

[Wales-Bales]

Luckily I escaped a state education at 13

All the teachers I know seriously want to pack it in as they can't stand it anymore.

[Rjk]

The uk in general can and should be doing better. As the nation as a whole we spend quite a lot on education and these measures don't reflect that.

Some of the differences with Wales and England can be explained by socioeconomic groups as wales is poorer than England and poorer people tend to do less well. If you compared wales to say the north east of England then the performance would probably be comparable.

Aspirations also have a big impact. Too many people in wales have no exposure to high flying people to think that is something that they can also do with their lives.

I will say however that some of these measures don't tell the whole story.
I regularly interview and hire engineers from here and all across the world.
Our education system does seem to produce students with excellent problem solving skills and who can come up with creative solutions.
I've had engineers before from abroad who were really good on the theory and scarily good at mental arithmetic but next to no use at all In a real life situation.
Give me a British student with a calculator and Google any day.
We could start teaching just the kind of things that these tests are looking for but I hope we don't, as I think we would lose something not as tangible but that I think must give British businesses an edge

[Wales-Bales]

Some of the differences with Wales and England can be explained by socioeconomic groups as wales is poorer than England and poorer people tend to do less well. If you compared wales to say the north east of England then the performance would probably be comparable.

Yet there are 72 mostly poorer nations above us

I would put it down to the ideology of trying to produce a more conformist and globalist minded population. They need to get back to teaching the basics instead of trying to mind control the kids.

The current syllabus needs to be torn up and they must get rid of the one size fits all approach. We need to teach useful skills such as critical thinking, problem solving, communication, finance, commercial law, how government works, etc.

Most people leave school clueless and are wired to soak up state propaganda via the media and TV. We also need to get rid of the common purpose gatekeepers and anybody else with funny handshakes.

Unfortunately, I can't see any of this happening with Welsh Labour in charge, so education in Wales will probably remain a lost cause.

[tommy31]

I didn't have to do a Welsh bacc when I was in school, but from friends who did I've got the feeling that it's a load of rubbish.

As has been pointed out in the thread, there's only one party you can really blame for this... I just wish we had a chance to vote them out recently... Oh wait.

Where's the motivation for them! They know they're gonna win, and win handsomely at that, so why bother trying to improve anything? If Welsh people voted against this as strongly as they did against the (what I'd call) Welsh friendly EU, things might change. Unfortunately it doesn't look very likely.