Re: Teachers strike
 

Think we've travelled down that road before Margaret, you can't teach or learn compassion you either have it or not, and its easy to see too, It never takes me long to find out if any nurse lacks compassion, funnily over 30 years off being an in patient in 7 different hospitals I've come across very few thankfully, but it certainly something you can't teach. In a way its the same with people who work for care agencies, I've been quite lucky really I've had the same agency for going on 4 years now and I've had some really genuine people coming into my home, I lost my first carer when he was taken ill himself, since then I've had two more, both top rate and one girl and now I've got another male, so I've been very lucky in with this.

Re: Teachers strike
 

Great post Dave, spot on with that, there was nothing wrong with brighter kids going to Grammar Schools, they'd found their level, to hump everybody together in comprehensive schools did nothing in the education of kids it held some back whilst making others feel inadequate.

Re: Teachers strike
 

That's the good news ... bad news is that Hell is a Massey's House.;)

Re: Teachers strike
 

No such thing as bad ale, Eric. And if you end up in Hell you'll not cock your snoot even at a pint of Massey's.

Re: Teachers strike
 

Nope ... Masseys is a circle of hell whose horror not even the fertile imagination of Dante could depict.

By the way ... the education system is beyone fixing; kinda like democracy:rolleyes: "Education" stopped being "education" a while back ... it's little more than job training. In fact, it is failing so badly it doesn't even qualify as job training. Which doesn't matter, 'cause there ain't that many jobs to go around anyways.;) Civilization ... whatever that is ... has got where it is today because of man's creativitity and his willingness to take risks ... wimmin too, of course, they are equally to blame ... or one could say that we and the world we live in is as screwed up as it is because we have too much smarts and not enough sense to handle them right.;)

Re: Teachers strike
 

Aye but they did a good Bottle Eric.;) The owd Bass Blue.

Re: Teachers strike
 

You've obviously never had a pint of anything in Blackpool, closest thing to hell for an aesthetic drinker on this planet :eek:

Re: Teachers strike
 

Did they do something called Jennings gold medal at the Elite? It did not taste god.

Re: Teachers strike
 

I can go one better Guinness, Fremlins in Kent. Once called in a pub in Beniden, my mates brother was the landlord and working near by we called on the way to our digs We both ordered a pint of bitter, Trev shook his head saying the Guinness is good. A few minutes later a couple of local farmers came in and he served them bitter, as he put them on the bar he just looked at us and we understood why, there were floaters in it and looked the most appetising drink I'd ever seen:rolleyes:

Re: Teachers strike
 

I occasionally drink a natural beer brewed by Jennings, which is quite tasty

Re: Teachers strike
 

"Thick kids" aren't the problem. Teachers can be assessed on levels of progress so that they're all assessed equally, or at least as equally as possible. You don't assess the teacher on the final grades the kids get, you assess them on how much the kids have improved.

Disruptive kids are a problem, but if they can't be dealt with, maybe teaching is the wrong profession for the individual? I got an IT management job quite early in my career and got walked all over by my staff. I got out and waited another 7 years 'til I had more experience. It happens everywhere, and in all those other jobs you have to find ways of motivating people without the threat of a stick.

Not in my school! I was schooled in the 70s and 80s and the cane was used (at primary), and board-rubber missiles (at secondary, as a precursor to the cane).

Teachers should be able to handle laziness, but the disinterest is the responsibility of parents and, ultimately, government. There are plenty of kids at my son's school whose attitude is "I'm going to spend my days after my school career getting free money and watching Jeremy Kyle - what's the point of working hard now?" That's a problem that can't be fixed in school.

They don't just do it on a nationwide political level. OFSTED compare a school to "similar schools" to make decisions on whether there's a performance issue. It's bad enough comparing one year's results to another, as you can get a different incoming level of education each year, but to compare with another school based on the fact that eight years ago, you got a similar set of results to them is just ridiculous.

Apprenticeships count - so kids can still leave school at 16 for work if that's their plan...

Re: Teachers strike
 

[QUOTE=Studio25;1050552]"Thick kids" aren't the problem. Teachers can be assessed on levels of progress so that they're all assessed equally, or at least as equally as possible. You don't assess the teacher on the final grades the kids get, you assess them on how much the kids have improved.

True, but my school is still considered as being at risk because of us missing floor targets last year. We did not get a big enough percentage attaining at the right level. This despite being in the top 1% nationally for achievement - the progress they make.:(

Re: Teachers strike
 

They don't just do it on a nationwide political level. OFSTED compare a school to "similar schools" to make decisions on whether there's a performance issue. It's bad enough comparing one year's results to another, as you can get a different incoming level of education each year, but to compare with another school based on the fact that eight years ago, you got a similar set of results to them is just ridiculous.

Again agreed. It's not the OFSTED judgements I treat with disdain, but the sages at institutions like the OECD whose research is the used by octogenarian press barons to bring back learning sines and cosines by rote. ;)
World education rankings: which country does best at reading, maths and science? | News | guardian.co.uk

Re: Teachers strike
 

Just crossed my mind that teachers used to strike all the time ... in fact, I've been struck by many teachers. Ben Johnson used to make a ritual of striking; and each morning he would announce his intention to strike numerous boys in order to get his day off to a swinging good start:D

I've come to the conclusion, slowly, and over the years, that all one needs to learn is language ... and as the most obvious lingua franca on this planet is English, that would be the language to learn. Once one has a firm grasp of English and an understanding of its almost limitless potential, then one can learn anything else. In fact, one can look at other "subjects" as merely languages that one can access through English. Mathematics is a language ... it just uses short forms. Those daunting words "some assembly required" are not all that scary for someone who can read and comprehend written instructions ... unless, of course, those instructions were badly translated from the original Chinese;) Language is power.:theband: