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February 1st, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda - Michael Gove warns against idea lessons should be ‘exciting’ with pupils dropping out if they are difficult
By
Laura Clark
Last updated at 9:23 AM on 1st February 2012
Subjects like hairdressing will no longer count towards a school’s league table results
More than 3,000 discredited vocational courses will be downgraded because pupils are shunning tough subjects, Michael Gove declared yesterday.
Schools will be barred from using ‘dead-end’ qualifications – including courses in ‘personal effectiveness’, fish husbandry and nail technology services – to count towards their league table rankings.
Youngsters will instead be encouraged to gain at least a C in English and maths and study science and a language.
The Education Secretary warned against pandering to the view that school is ‘like the movies or a club’ where pupils expect to find lessons ‘exciting’ – and drop out if they are too difficult.
‘If we say that we will tolerate or accept non-attendance on the basis that school is too hard then we are condemning children to a future where, at every stage they face a challenge, we make excuses rather than encouraging them to do better, and that way lies perdition,’ Mr Gove told the Commons education select committee.
‘It’s unacceptable that people are bristling at the requirement that we have children doing English, mathematics and science to an acceptable level.’
Michael Gove said changes to education would take time but would benefit children
Under a GCSE ‘equivalence’ system
introduced by Labour, schools were allowed to count more than 3,000
vocational courses towards their league table position.
The courses were deemed equivalent to
one or more GCSEs and given league table points in an attempt to
motivate disaffected pupils. One approved course was a Level 2
Certificate of Personal Effectiveness, which taught children how to
claim the dole.
A report commissioned by the Coalition
found that many of the qualifications were ‘effectively dead-end’ with
no use in the job market. Its author, Professor Alison Wolf, of King’s
College London, said schools had been entering pupils for the courses
just to amass league table points.
Mr Gove announced yesterday that only
125 out of 3,175 vocational qualifications for 14 to 16-year-olds meet
new criteria for inclusion in league tables.
Of these only 75 will count towards
the main yardstick of secondary school performance – the percentage of
pupils achieving five A* to C grades including English and maths. And
they will count as only one GCSE.
The number of courses that will matter is to be cut from 3,000 down to just 70
Schools will still be able to enter
pupils for the qualifications, but from 2014 they will no longer count
toward their league table rankings. Many are expected to wither on the
vine.
Former education secretary David
Blunkett said: ‘By all means slim them down but do not send the message
that this is a wholesale trashing of what was there and that vocational
education has been downgraded.’
** Exam boards are touting their courses
as ‘easier’ than rivals to win business from schools, a former director
general for education standards said yesterday.
Jon Coles spoke as publisher Pearson,
which owns the Edexcel board, called for A-levels and GCSEs to be
toughened to boost public confidence. Pupils could in future answer a
common core of questions regardless of which board had set the paper, it
said.
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About time. Dumbed down mickey mouse courses only produce dumbed down future employees. Courses in carreer education and preparation for working life or basic office skills should be standard educational practice not a qualification worth GCSE’s in it’s own right. Time to educate young people to be able to go out and get a job and stick with it through good and bad and learn.
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There was a headmaster being interviewed on TV for his opinion on the curtailing of many of the so called Mickey Mouse courses available to students today. He was joined by one of his pupils, who he must have selected for his intelligence and his ability to converse clearly. I didn’t understand a word he said, his vocabulary was limited to a few yeahs and like and that was it. It demonstrated clearly how education in this country has been watered down to accommodate the illusion that standards are rising, all thanks to the B brothers, Brown and Blair. The pair sound like grave robbers, but in fact were the thieves of our children’s futures.
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What course did Tony Blair take? how to ruin a country and make a fortune in the process? if he did he passed with flying colours.
– left planet labour, thailand, 1/2/2012 2:3 More than possible in his case, but he definitely must have majored in the lying, deception, misrepresentation and money grubbing course also.
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Stop blaming the kids for not being taught properly. All schools should perform well which also means all teachers need to know what they are doing. Issuing league tables for schools is a waste of time, because it means all the kids who’s parents can afford it just send them to the most popular school and even move house to get a place, whilst the less well of schools have all the kids left, making their life unfairly more difficult through this uneven distribution of children with their varying attributes and abilities. Also, I think we ought to use branding irons on all the kids with ‘Labour’ or ‘Conservative’ stamped permanently on their foreheads so they can more easily grow into the stereotypicaly minded individuals their parents want them to be.
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Liberals don’t want children studying science or engineering. These disciplines tend to encourage a certain understanding that causes have effects and that it’s a good idea to know which is which. They also teach logic. The sort of people who understand those kinds of thing are hard to convince that it’s a great idea to give fifty million a day to the EU in return for legislation that’s wrecking Britain. Engineers tend to reject the concept that everything is Thatcher’s fault. Scientists are likely to be able to work out that the whole greenscam thing is a crock of lies. Can’t have that. Better to have children studying something safe and simple like finger-painting. Or politics. And if there aren’t enough engineers or scientists we can always import them from some Middle East country. They might not look like engineers and scientists and they might come here to claim benefits but they’ll do and it’s their human right. Another silly lie that non-liberals might twig.
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Someone at some point in the lat 10 years or so realised if you made education easy, more people went to University and it was a bit of a money-spinner, contributing to the economy through all the student loans and money being spent. Unfortunately it’s come around to bite us on the backside.
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The best thing the Government could do is scrap league tables and butt out of education altogether. Their constant meddling over the years has not been to the benefit of school children but to justify their own importance. We have children leaving primary school barely able to read or do basic maths but by God they can come top in league tables based on SAT scores, only because they spend months cramming the children to pass them, time they lose in actual learning. So these children move onto secondary school and still struggle because they didn’t learn the basics and for some the vocational studies is the best they can hope for in terms of exams. Scrap all the tables and then see the difference in actual subject learning when children will be taught instead of coached to pass SATs.
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As an interviewer, I have spent more time asking applicants “what was this subject about?” when they attended for interview. The list of imaginatively named courses was endless, as was the number of “thank you for your interest; unfortunately you have been unsuccessful” statements from yours truely.
Did someone forget to ask the businesses what was needed by industry BEFORE they roled out an army of stupid kids?
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This is something i do agree with him
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Totally agree with Paul, London. Last night on TV I saw teacher from a college where £millions have been spent to provide ENGINEERING courses. She pointed out that students doing this course need Maths, English, Physics and yet the course has been down graded to the same level as Nail Technology. The country is crying out for engineers and these idiots in Government have down graded the course. The DM also in this article has omitted to point out that Engineering is included in the down grades
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