We will lose 10% of our volts by April

[newshound]

+1

Except, look at the proportion of foreign students at our universities!

[Andrew Gabriel]

We still have a number of the best universities in the world. They struggle to find enough good 6th form students to fill their places, and they earn lots of money from foreign students and there's no shortage of Indian and Chinese students educated better than ours, so that's pretty inevitable, and given the circumstances, no bad thing.

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

Even that was nearly killed off by the Thatcher administration, when they introduced swingeing fees for overseas students. Nearly a whole generation of overseas students were lost to America, Germany, France, instead of coming to Britain.

[tony sayer]

Well they bring in foreign currency and OK we are exporting our know with them;!....

[Andrew Gabriel]

Just heard on the radio that the government is concerned about us falling behind. One of the studies they commissioned has reported that at age 10, our children are level with Taiwan children in maths, but by GCSE age, our children are 2 years behind Taiwan children at maths.

[tony sayer]

In article , Andrew Gabriel scribeth thus

But isn't it an aptitude of Asian people that there very good at maths anyway?..

[Huge]

No. They have "tiger moms".

[Tim Streater]

Whatever a "mom" might be.

University chap on Today said the brightest children are not being stretched enough since schools are not streamed any more. Gosh, who would have thought it, eh?

[Jethro_uk]

Back in my day, the local comp I went to had a broad streaming into form classes which affected the first 2 years common subjects which were English, Science and Humanities. However you were streamed for Maths, and Langauges. So it was possible to be in the top maths set, but have come from the middling form set.

For the last two years kids just chose their subjects according to their ability - so again middling kids could do "O" levels (rather than CSEs) if they were up to it. Clever kids did English Lit *and* Lang, and very clever kids did English a year early, and another O level in the last year.

It all worked very well, and the school had been top of the exam charts for years - 70s and early 80s.

Then the headmistress retired, some bearded sandal model took over, dismissed any notion of streaming (along with desks facing the front - they went all group working) along with weird notions of syllabus balance [1] and within 2 years the school plummeted to the bottom of the exam league where it stayed for the rest of the 80s and 90s.

I feel sorry for younger generations - it's clear to some the fact that the world is a hard place is quite a new experience.

[1]My O levels choices were Computer Studies, Physics, Chemistry, History and Latin. I also studied Electronics A/O level after school. 6 years later my brother wasn't allowed to study Computers/Electronics/Physics as the headmasters "subject balance" didn't allow for "3 sciences". So My brother and I taught him at home, and put him in for the exam privately, where he got an "A" - which was more than anyone at the school got that year.

[Tim Watts]

On Friday 22 February 2013 10:53 Tim Streater wrote in uk.d-i-y:

It's true enough (big surprise)...

My daughter is very lucky in that she's in Year 4 (2nd year middle school to the oldies like me) but is actually in a Year 5 class as our school is so small, they don't actually have a Y4 teacher.

She has floated to the top group in the combined class for maths and literacy, because she has the aptitude and the material is available.

I am dreading next year when she's still in the Year 5 class. Will have to feed her Year 6 material at home as much as possible.

Perhaps the answer is we should get rid of classes by age and stream kids in classes by ability, at least in the smaller schools. So what if they finish the system a year or two early? My nephew in China got into a good university in Beijing a good 3 years early because he was smart.

Before anyone asks, he's the most normal lad you could hope to meet - except that he's bright. But he's got good interpersonal skills too so he does not come over as overly geeky.

[Andrew Gabriel]

It's an aptitude of Asian people that they know how incredibly important it is to be well educated in something that's going to give you a career, if you don't want to be poor. That makes you put the work in to your education, because you know the enormous impact it will have on the rest of your life. Maths is a critical foundation for all science and engineering roles.

[Jethro_uk]

Because it runs contrary to everything else in UK life ? Sadly we needs absolute lines in the sand. 16, 17, 18, 21 ....

[harry]

[The Natural Philosopher]

now where is the crucial study showing how intelligence is in inverse ratio to time spent of twitter and faecesbook?

[bert]

In message , Andrew Gabriel writes

Which is what motivated many of us in the post war era. unfortunately we were so successful that our kids have never known what it is like to be poor - yet.

[harry]

Well, they might have it coming. I think things are going to get a whole lot worse. Thanks the Bliar and Brown.

[Andrew Gabriel]

I've always had a feeling these things can easily go in cycles. Most Asian countries still have swathes of slums and other highly visable poverty, and it's all too obvious to them what happens if you don't make the grade.

That's not at all obvious to most of our children, many of whom rather more aspire to be one of the super-think C-grade celebs on Big Brother. Unfortunately, I have a feeling this may not improve until we get to the point of having much more visible poverty than we have today, but climbing back up the other side requires an excellent education system too.

The cycle rate will be many generations - probably 100 years or more - and we're currently on a downward slope, whereas many of the Asian countries are progressing on their upward slope.

[AnthonyL]

It may also be that they know they don't have the cushion of a welfare state, that they are brought up to respect and care for the elderly, and they have pride in their economically emerging nations.

[Windmill]

That brought a smile to my face and made me laugh out loud. Like something from Ayn Rand's books, it's something most people couldn't do. But it's inspirational to hear, just the same.

[Windmill]

Well, maybe we need it. But it leads to endless absurdities (Girl of 15 climbs into bed and on top of boy of 16; boy is found guilty of statutory rape).