Education. Education. Education.

The current campaign by the three main teaching unions for a 35-hour week is bogus. This is because teachers work 8 weeks a year less than other workers due to their extended holidays; So to be equal, teachers will actually have to work a 42-hour week.

What is not generally recognised is the very low productivity rate of teachers. If they worked a 42-hour week then they would only teach for half the available time. The remaining non- productive time will be made up of 20% for breaks, assemblies, registration and 30% for meetings, lesson preparation and form filling. Teacher's salaries account for 80% of the educational budget.

Any service business run with low productivity and high wage cost would have gone bust years ago. Education is grossly inefficient, too expensive, not accountable and does not provide real benefits.

 

Forget about the huge quantities of OUR money Blunkett is throwing at the problem. It's an Election give away.

Forget about the teacher shortage, there are plenty of teachers in developing countries who would jump at the chance of coming to the UK. They could work as Blunkett's classroom assistants.

Forget the fact that the simple GCSE's and 'A' levels are being changed to A and AS levels, GCSE (academic), Vocational GCSE's (replacing GNVQ's), Work-related NVQ's all at Foundation, Intermediate, Higher and Advanced level's.

Forget that a C grade GCSE at the Higher level is more difficult to get than the same C grade at Foundation. Maths SATS was separated into four papers with different grade levels for each.

Forget that GCSE coursework is wide open to abuse. My local timberyard has just made a complete bird box for a girl's Technology project. It cost her parents £60.

Forget that schools put little effort into pupils who will get above a C grade or below a D grade in their final exams. They have little effect on the school's league table position.

Forget about discipline problems. The majority of children want to learn, it's a basic instinct. Why should 95% of pupils education be blighted by the 5% 'Mad and Bad'? Why don't parents sue schools for failing to provide a competent level of education and a safe environment?

Forget that 75% of students have failed the first vocational A level exam and many now are dropping out because of exam stress. An Exam board has scheduled more than one AS level exam to be taken at the same time.

Forget that secondary teachers are highly specialised in one subject and have no direct contact with other subjects. Some topics are taught by Science, Art and Technology.

Forget that most teachers ignore the National Curriculum as it does not work. It's too easy for some and too difficult for others. It's about to be changed for the third time!

Forget that literacy, numeracy and many other strategies introduced into schools have all been at the expense of subjects such as history.

These are really trivial problems. Mr Blunkett argues that vocational subjects can be as stimulating and demanding as academic subjects. Mr Woodhead, on the other hand, is a traditionalist who believes that education is an end in itself and does not need to have any purpose. Of course, they are both correct at times. Don't forget that Woodhead's academic dreamers are paid for by Blunkett's vocational workers. The unaccountable civil servants that run education have a vested interest in not making fundamental changes. They will have to recognise that everything they have been doing for the last 20 years is now irrelevant.

 

The politicians, educational establishment, unions and many teachers don't comprehend that the world has radically changed since the 80's. Education is typical of a "zero sum" business in that something can only be added if an equal amount is taken away. Education is a non-profit service industry with all the demands of a well-run business.

Educationalists fail to see the basic facts.

1. All people are physically and mentally different, they are not even equal at birth. People are motivated by different things at different times and work at different rates. Some work better in the morning and others at night. Education must be flexible.
2. Males learn differently to females. The current exam structure favours girls' methodical and organised approach so that girls outperform boys in all respects. Single sex learning in mixed sex environments is needed especially for 11 to 15 year olds.
3. Today's children live in the "Post Caxton" era of coloured visual images and sound. Before they were born Colour TV, VCR's, PC's, CD-ROM's were all invented. Compare this with our education leaders who were born with black & white TV and print and mono radio. The government has kept quiet about the large numbers of children who cannot recognise shapes. We have had literacy and numeracy strategies and now we must have a Visual Strategy. This will skill train children to see what they actually look at.
4. Knowledge is now freely available and rapidly becoming easier to locate. This destroys the very purpose of academics that existed in an elitist world because they knew a lot about a little and jealously guarded this knowledge from others.
5. Subject matter can be efficiently transmitted electronically to anybody, anywhere, at any time and at a low cost or for free. Books, whether digital or on paper, still have a place but the transmission of knowledge by the printed word will lose its importance. Technical books are out of date even before they are printed. Digital information can be updated daily at a minimal cost.
6. The highest quality subject matter can be produced ONCE using the latest multimedia techniques and interactive questioning, answering, reinforcement and analysis techniques. The scientific principle of friction is the same the whole world over, so why are hundreds of teachers all producing similar teaching material? None of which can match the quality of programmes produced for TV. This is the standard by which children are judging teachers.
7. Teachers can now become tutors and stop being the collectors and transmitters of data. They could work in low cost call centres answering queries by phone or sit in the sun in Spain answering E-mails.
8. Children can learn from people other than teachers. This will allow children to learn from skilled professionals and bypass the incestuous closed cycle of pupil - teacher training - teacher.
9. Anybody can learn what they need, at their own pace and at a place of their choice. Schools as they are used today would not be needed, being replaced by highly specialised and intensive learning centres. These could be in any country.
10. Parents would be able to buy the required services with the aid of educational vouchers supplied by the Government. The removal of the vast layers of bureaucracy would release a large amount of wasted money either to real education or to reduce taxes.
11. The effects of a flexible education will have a great impact on society and many changes will have to be made. Many parents still think of teachers as social workers, policemen and baby sitters.

These conclusions have been reached during the last 8 years spent as a Design and Technology teacher on long term contracts in 10 secondary schools. I have also worked as a supply teacher in over 30 schools in West London. Previously to that, I worked in Engineering, Industrial Design, Sales and Marketing having had the responsibility of running businesses similar in size to an average school.

 

I have made no direct mention of computers and the Internet. They will play their part but the human input is the important component. Computers will always be dumb animals. One session on the Internet revealed over 1000 sites for Design & Technology. There is just too much information on the Internet, so it's not the answer.

The technology that is used to access the Internet has very powerful features. Web based browsers let the reader search a document for words or phrases and link to different sections within pages. It's now easy to produce inter-active questions and answers.

Over the last year, I have been running a web site www.tech-it-out.co.uk looking at the best ways of categorising information suitable for teaching Design and Technology. The content is limited at this moment and lacks instructional video clips.

These changes to education are already happening. It is estimated that there are already 150,000 children being educated at home in the UK. An American company is selling 600 physics experiments with all the necessary instructional videos and paperwork for £2000. There are now many educational CD's. LearnDirect is currently advertising hundreds of courses on TV. Homechoice has over 500 video films available to be view on a TV whenever you like. These films are downloaded over the Internet and are used in the same way as a video recorder.

For more information, listen on the Internet to a recent radio programme, "E-book versus paper" given by Douglas Adams. It is one of a series of four Radio 4 programmes from the "Hitchhikers Guide to the Future" available on www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/hitchhikers/

Web sites like www.techitoutuk.com will start to appear. Bill Gates and a few friends could easily put up a few million pounds and set up a free educational web site. Competition from flexible web based US distance learning could totally disintegrate school based education in the UK, it's almost at this point now.

If parents were offered a low cost alternative, many would take their children out of state education. They would get control of their children's education and how it is delivered. Many parents will vote with their feet and their wallets.

There is a basis for this to happen in recent UK History. Can you remember the UK Shipyards closing down one after another in the 60's and 70's? The Owners had no reason to change their ways as they had salted away huge profits. The Union Barons had no reason to change, as they had created an expensive and totally rigid workforce and were making a fortune for themselves.

The Owners and the Unions had created an unproductive workforce using skills and technology dating back hundreds of years. The hull was still being built from the keel upwards, launched and then fitted out with the interior fittings. These ships were very expensive but the UK Shipyards had little competition as most other yards had been destroyed in the Second World War.

Suddenly things happened more or less at the same time. The Scandinavians developed the method of welding ships inside warm sheds. New management techniques were developed to maximise the efficiency of the workforce and materials without Union hindrance. The Navy stopped ordering ships. The UK shipbuilders had no will to design new types of ships requiring new technologies and to retrain its workforce. UK shipyards went bust as new ships were built outside the UK.

History has a habit of repeating itself. Everything is in place for change.

[ Top of Page ]