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I dont think i should comment any further on this as it might be rude! ;)
It makes you wonder why the powers that be let the teaching system decline so much over the past thirty years.
(No reflection on any teachers here- you are obviously the best!)
Well you shouldn't be teaching then!
I've never heard any comments like that at Stirling (then again I'm in a seminar group where no-one else talks - so they could be think George Eliot is a he for all I know!)
I was discussing this with my History teacher (and he agrees), the exams aren't getting easier and the kids aren't getting better. The teachers have learned how to work the system and 'train' the kids. I experienced that in A level Biology 'they won't ask you about the structure of the HIV virus.' . . .
Guess what as the question with the highest marks in the exam . . .
We were given a drilling on what we would and wouldnt need for the exams and without fail all the things we were told we wouldnt need to know were the questions in the exams! needless to say its lucky i knew what 'a shaduf' was!
another reason why i am so annoyed at having to do an access course to get into uni when my South African qualifications seem to be much better than what is getting taught up here! Some of the questions we hear in our Lit class are just ridiculous... anyway... when i have kids, if this system is still in use, i will be home schooling my kids... !
Having also read some of the work submitted to the literary agency where I did work experience...well, when it came to the standards in spelling, grammar, punctuation and general usage of the English language, people whose native language was not English, had better control than the Brits.
I also find that I have had to bite my tongue almost every day in class for the last four years because I have a better knowledge of spelling, grammar and punctuation than my lecturers, and it infuriates me somewhat to have to interpret their writing.
The reason I hold a good standard though is because I had English teachers that gave a damn. Hardy made us do spelling tests every week, she gave us a list of words and told us to find out their meanings. Sometimes they were English, sometimes they weren't. She grilled us on Shakespeare and World War 2 poetry. Watkinson was sharp on making sure we knew how to spell our words, he ran games on spellings and meanings, like the 'Call My Bluff' where we had to try and convince our classmates that there was a different meaning to a word that he assigned us. They ran a charity event of a Sponsored Spelling Test, 35 words for the lower sets, 70 for the higher sets. And of course Brogden was brilliant, she read out half a story to us then challenged us to write the end, and she encouraged creativity in study.
I hold the greatest pity for the children though. When they're younger, they do want to learn. They welcome explanations and they welcome personal help in going through their work, having someone explain to them.
That isn't learning.
Our writers club has a website, and we have a contact form for people to contact us with queries, or to contact members who they might want to ask to speak.
I received one today from someone who hoped I could provide a list of magazines, blogs, competitions, an e-zines so they could send off their poetry to them. Their brief message contained two very obvious spelling mistakes.
They had no interest in the club, they just couldn't or didn't want to do the work themselves.
right o, so that's their school year:
September: Mock mock mock mock mock mock mock mock mock SATs
October: Mock mock mock mock mock mock mock mock SATs
November: Mock mock mock mock mock mock mock SATs
December: Mock mock mock mock mock mock SATs
January: Mock mock mock mock mock SATs
February: Mock mock mock mock SATs
March: Mock mock mock SATs
April: Mock mock SATs
May: Mock SATs
June: SATs
And I'm glad my own education was memorable...I may not be able to deal with measurements past using the kitchen scales and a ruler, but at least I know what to do when the bike sheds catch fire, understand how to make crop circles (secondary school), how to rescue hedgehogs in winter, how to self-diagnose a broken leg (junior school), how to deal with getting knocked by a car, etc. So I'm good. ;)
I was in primary school in the sixties- and just like the SATs now, the aim was to pass your 11+. Once you got to senior school it was to teach you, and hopefully you would be interested enough to go beyond that bit they covered and learn more, perhaps in a more practical way.
I'm afraid Stirling, that from personal experience, both taking and teaching the exams, I can verify that they ARE getting easier. They are so formulaic now and anyone can get a good grade with a lucky guess in several subject areas. There are so many multichoice questions with tick boxes in GCSEs. A levels (of which I have taken 5 since 1991, 4 of them together), are also easier than they were. For a start they are not as long. We had 3 hour exams, and often 2 or 3 papers in each subject in the 60s and they would entail several extended pieces of writing, without, in the case of English, the set books to refer to. In language exams answers had to be in the foreign language and again you were required to produce extended pieces of writing. One alteration to the exams is that they are now positively marked, rather than negatively. i.e. you are given credit for any correct part of an answer. Previously, if you had made an incorrect part of an answer you would lose marks, and this included grammar and spelling.