Another Birthday - Education

Daughters yesterday and wife's today - Birthday. Great day in London as a tourist on a tourist bus with family. Dinner in evening.

No sure if anyone caught this on the news yesterday but whilst this initially sounds like a good idea you cannot help worrying about some aspects. Elderly urged to take in jobless. As it is I sometimes wonder if this would not be a better thing for students rather than the unemployed. The unemployed want a job and students are frequently occupying privately rented housing that could be used for others.

We also have 'A' level exam results. For once I am going to agree with some of what David Miliband says. It is a great shame that every year exam results come out we denigrate the achievements of the students. However, there are caveats to this. I hear a lot from teachers who tell me that children moving from school to college or university end up having to play catch up on subjects such as maths because they are not of the required standard. Maybe that always happened but many think not.

The simple fact is that the world and the skills needed to succeed in the world have changed. Frankly, if the exams we are asking children to pass now are not different or improving then they should be. Students today have an array of tools available to them that were not there even ten years ago - computers, the internet etc. Schools have changed and students are changing as well. A colleague of mine calls them 'MTV' children who can sit in a room and have the TV, radio, computer etc whirring and still read Shakespeare. Does that mean that standards are falling? No; but it probably means that the exams and the pedagogy need to change. It may mean that we need to see the sort of realignment of exams that took place with the GCE/CSE merger. However, I am very worried about an incoming Conservative Government wanting to inflict more turmoil on education. Not that it does not need it but change brings uncertainty and this Government has spent its entire period in office meddling and changing education.

So to all those students in Kingston who have received or will receive their exam results I offer congratulations and hope that the exams that have been passed will offer the greatest chances for them to excel in their adult life.

Oh, and happy birthday to my wife.