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Showing posts with label Apprenticeships. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Apprenticeships. Show all posts
Sunday, 18 January 2015
Tuesday, 7 September 2010
BRITAIN "PLUMMETS" DOWN LIST OF "EDUCATED NATIONS"
The Telegraph reports that Britain has plummeted down the graduate league table to 15th in what it describes, somewhat haughtily as the list of ‘educated nations’, and that this has damaged its future.
Horror of horrors, the UK is behind Poland, Iceland, Portugal and Slovakia. How absolutely terrible! Clearly no one from the Telegraph staff has visited any of these countries recently!
I read with disbelief the rubbish that the general secretary of the University and College Union, trotted out about other countries preparing to play a leading role in the new knowledge economy while we risk consigning a generation to the scrapheap of inactivity. What garbage.
The Director of the Russell Group of universities also had a self serving message. She complained that whilst the UK was cutting back on university places, other countries were pumping billions of dollars into their tertiary establishments.
Over the last 20 or so years we have been sending more and more students to universities to do ever more simplified degrees.
Despite denials all education has been dumbed down. Schools eager to be placed as far up league tables as possible have chosen commercially run exam boards which can produce the highest grades. SVQs are module taught and frequently fail to build upon previous work, so that material is learned over a short period and forgotten once
the test is over and the module secured. Lecturers, with a career interest in the success of their students, often double as examiners.
Universities, keen to take advantage of the funding system that pays for bums on seats, and aware of the lowering rigour of Highers and A levels, adapt their courses appropriately.
And what do so many of these graduates do at the end of the course? Sainsbury’s, Tesco, BT call centres and bars employ a fair number of them.
The universities say that we should be preparing for the end of the recession, and so we should, but not the way that we have been doing in the past. (If we must have degree educated staff in Tesco, could they please do a degree in retailing, including a module on customer service?)
We have no plumbers, no electricians, no bricklayers, and no joiners (well not that aren’t called Warszawski or Krakowski!) Although to be fair, both the Scottish and English governments are increasing apprenticeship funding, a
nd that is a most welcome move.
But we don’t need many more people with degrees in media studies or sports science. There are no jobs for them.
It occurs to me that one of the problems with our analysis of success is that we rely on naked figures; targets that are set and achieved, in a soviet fashion (and it happened under the Tories too!!)
From a commercial point of view, it doesn’t matter that we produce 50% of the population as graduates if there are no jobs to use their talents on.
It is of no import where we are in the league table as long as we produce and develop the kind of talents that the country needs and can use. Keeping up the the Polands and the Slovakias on numbers alone is futile.
When will we learn that league tables are the devil’s work?
Horror of horrors, the UK is behind Poland, Iceland, Portugal and Slovakia. How absolutely terrible! Clearly no one from the Telegraph staff has visited any of these countries recently!
I read with disbelief the rubbish that the general secretary of the University and College Union, trotted out about other countries preparing to play a leading role in the new knowledge economy while we risk consigning a generation to the scrapheap of inactivity. What garbage.
The Director of the Russell Group of universities also had a self serving message. She complained that whilst the UK was cutting back on university places, other countries were pumping billions of dollars into their tertiary establishments.
Over the last 20 or so years we have been sending more and more students to universities to do ever more simplified degrees.
Despite denials all education has been dumbed down. Schools eager to be placed as far up league tables as possible have chosen commercially run exam boards which can produce the highest grades. SVQs are module taught and frequently fail to build upon previous work, so that material is learned over a short period and forgotten once
the test is over and the module secured. Lecturers, with a career interest in the success of their students, often double as examiners.Universities, keen to take advantage of the funding system that pays for bums on seats, and aware of the lowering rigour of Highers and A levels, adapt their courses appropriately.
And what do so many of these graduates do at the end of the course? Sainsbury’s, Tesco, BT call centres and bars employ a fair number of them.
The universities say that we should be preparing for the end of the recession, and so we should, but not the way that we have been doing in the past. (If we must have degree educated staff in Tesco, could they please do a degree in retailing, including a module on customer service?)
We have no plumbers, no electricians, no bricklayers, and no joiners (well not that aren’t called Warszawski or Krakowski!) Although to be fair, both the Scottish and English governments are increasing apprenticeship funding, a
nd that is a most welcome move.But we don’t need many more people with degrees in media studies or sports science. There are no jobs for them.
It occurs to me that one of the problems with our analysis of success is that we rely on naked figures; targets that are set and achieved, in a soviet fashion (and it happened under the Tories too!!)
From a commercial point of view, it doesn’t matter that we produce 50% of the population as graduates if there are no jobs to use their talents on.
It is of no import where we are in the league table as long as we produce and develop the kind of talents that the country needs and can use. Keeping up the the Polands and the Slovakias on numbers alone is futile.
When will we learn that league tables are the devil’s work?
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