NEWS
EVENTS
Education Regression.
Other | Tuesday 8th October 2013 | Alex
It’s not too far to claim that high levels of education are, usually, fairly prominent indicators of how prosperous and cognitive any given country’s populous is. With that being said, it’s quite worrying to see the UK slip to 21st and 22nd places, respectively, on the scale of developed countries in Numeracy and Literacy.
The BBC broke this story today and, at the time of writing, it was not in the top 10 read articles of the day, nor was it in the top 5 most shared. Instead, we have people more willing to raise awareness about a robot that’s got balance. Sorry, but that seems fairly skewed. Every year we hear about how many more young students attained grades A*-C than last year, or straight A*s for that matter, with colleges and academies nationwide brandishing these results as a signpost for their academic proficiency. If we’re doing so well with results, how have we fallen so far?
Conservative MP Matthew Hancock, who has the dubious title of “Skills Minister”, was eager to blame, what he termed, a “dumbing down” from the Labour party that were in power last. As a rule, MPs from the current regime seem ever eager to point the finger at their predecessors in an attempt to shift any blame from themselves. Usually, this falls on deaf ears and has all the gravitas of a child saying “I didn’t start it”. Hancock’s comments, in this case, would appear to hold at least some water.
To combat these failings in the world of numbers, the government are willing to put £20m over two years in something they have dubbed “Real Life” maths. Presumably, to counteract the age of question of when one will use algebra outside of the classroom. Hopefully, this will bring the playing field back to an even 90 degrees. The truly concerning aspect of this is the problem of upwards mobility.
In Robert Peston’s column, BBC Business Editor, he outlines the degree to which young British people will be incapable of upward mobility due to a lack of proper education. The results don’t make for particularly pleasant reading. His most damning statistic comes when the hammer blow that British youths are eight times more likely to have poor educational proficiency if your parents were less well educated. This impacts on future skills and ability to demonstrate value in the job market, not ideal by anyone’s standards.
We aren’t going to experience the repercussions of these findings in the short term future by any means. These findings are going to hurt the country 10 to 15 years down the line. By then we could see the United States cement their place at the bottom of the Numeracy table and, maybe, the Dutch won’t be so good at everything. Who knows. For the time being, the results are very worrying for the UK. The rot needs to stop or we’ll be rapidly falling behind and can we be sure the motivation will be there to catch up?
Alex Taylor
