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.

[Barry Dragon]

The problems have been there long before WAG existed. When I moved back to Wales I went from being in second set in maths to a year ahead of everyone else in wales. Apparently i was the 7th cleverest child in Wales for Maths for that age, how can a school be a whole year behind?

WAG and labour have not improved for several decades it seems. A complete lack of ambition has let down generations of welsh people

[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

[Rjk]

The report said "The report also notes that only 6% of the variation in how Welsh students are performing can be put down to their socio-economic background"

We dont want to produce robots - I agree with that , we want independently thinking, well rounded and grounded children who are ambitious to do something. However we seem to be failing in that area as well.

In short - in comparison to the UK we are a bit cr@p to say the least and the UK compared to others is way down the list. A bit like being the substitute for the worst team in the football league. Maybe Carwyn will dress it up as such as tell the Luddites that vote for him year in year out that we are the "Jamie Vardy" of education.

The report also notes that only 6% of the variation in how Welsh students are performing can be put down to their socio-economic background - in the rest of the UK, 11% of the variation can be explained by it.

Thats the full quote, I think that must be talking about the variation from the last set of results rather than the variation between England and Wales. It just reflects that a slightly different mix of schools were used.
My point on the difference between England and Wales still stands.

[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.

[Rjk]

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, and replace them with real teaching professionals.

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

Nonetheless there will be different socioeconomic groups in the poorer countries. The mix of socioeconomic groups might be better in terms of educational attainment in some of these countries even if the country itself is poorer as a whole.


As for your second point. Wtf?

[Wales-Bales]

Nonetheless there will be different socioeconomic groups in the poorer countries. The mix of socioeconomic groups might be better in terms of educational attainment in some of these countries even if the country itself is poorer as a whole.


As for your second point. Wtf?

2nd point came from a teacher who is about to quit the teaching profession in disgust

[Rjk]

2nd point came from a teacher who is about to quit the teaching profession in disgust

Quitting teaching because they're sick of brainwashing kids to accept the globalist agenda? Yeah ok then.

[Wales-Bales]

Quitting teaching because they're sick of brainwashing kids to accept the globalist agenda? Yeah ok then.

How do you know that is the specific reason they want to leave? Just because I mentioned some of the ways that education is being dumbed down? Do you have any knowledge of how political ideologies are turned into policies, and how they are implemented?

Also you might be surprised by the number of teachers who are looking to get out of it.

[City123]

RJK - I thought the Welsh BAC was supposed to be the 'thing' that enabled well rounded individuals etc - yet I have a mate who works in the Cardiff Business school, when I asked him about the Welsh BAC last year - he burst out laughing saying it is not worth the paper it's written on and then some of the students they take on need extra tuition in the basics as they arent up to standard the business school wants.

The business school now makes more money from it's over seas students that it does from the UK based ones. or so he reckons anyway.

The Welsh Bac is utter bullshit, I'm in Sixth Form at the moment and the Welsh Bac is completely pointless, they get you doing stuff we learned in Year 9 and (try to) dress it up as something new and exciting

It has a ridiculously heavy workload for something that wasn't optional and, despite it not being particularly hard, is time-consuming and takes focus away from other (more important) lessons, for example we've missed 2/3 full days of lessons in order to have specific Bac days

The teachers would rather be teacing their subject and the students would rather be doing the subjects they chose. So, all in all, its pointless

[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.