Was my 5 "O levels" in 1974 worth more than 5 GCSEs now?

Don,t know ,how much do you want for them?

I knew a bloke who bought 3 A levels......

Willing to swap for Pools v Rochdale season 73/74 programme.

Its the Pools v Rochdale season 74/75 programme i am after so its a no from me.

The 2 O-Levels I failed, are the ONLY 2 I use in my current job (which I've been in 21 years!)

They mean/meant the Square Root of F-all!

Are two failed O-Levels worth less than two failed GCSE's?

No way, they are far harder today but it's all relative as teaching is far better today.

My opinion of course but the homework my children have brought home over the last 5/6 years may have well been in Chinese.....

Im at Newquay zoo, just watching a clown and obvious he failed his ho ho level humour

We need skilled tradesman, Joiners,Bricklayers ,Plumber’s,Electrician’s etc, I left school at 15, a year at college on a Pre Apprenticeship Course which was like a holiday camp.no qualifications. I served an apprenticeship as an Electrician. We are trying and have been trying to over educate kids for years now who end up with worthless degrees and a load of debt.

Glad to hear you have been recaptured.

My opinion of course but the homework my children have brought home over the last 5/6 years may have well been in Chinese....[/quote]

But what are they actually learning or are they just being taught to think in a different way to us older ones and why? Can any academics on the board answer this?

The content of them means nowt, just shows your capacity for remembering stuff. When I recruit people I don't even look at their qualifications.

I don't work in Durham though.

Durham.

But its not about remembering stuff nowadays as you can easily get facts from Google etc it must be more about the way you think and how you reason but i just dont get it.

Is the Bunker a trailblazer for Lateral Thinking as outline by Edward de Bono in 1967 given the way some threads go off course like a Poundland rocket?

"Apparently, 1 in 5 people in the world are Chinese.
And there are 5 people in my family, so it must be one of them.
It's either my mum or my dad. Or my older brother Colin.
Or my younger brother Chu Min Fu.
Personally, I think it's Colin"

Tommy Cooper

Brilliant

Not according to my friend, who is a Maths Tutor, who has O levels herself and prepares GCSE papers now for her students, same with the teachers, much better back in the day according to her , she does say though that they are slowly improving.

Of course there are huge disparities between different schools and regions and it maybe Chess that your kids go to one of the better schools.

I can only speak of my own experience but schooling today IMO is far far tougher, my girls would do hours of homework every night and most weekends. Maybe I'm was just a lazy sod when at school and would only do the bare minimum, hence why only came out with 5 o levels, all grade C's.....

I wanted to help but as I say, it was just all Chinese to me....

I am not a believer in homework as most of it is done with the help of parents if they can fathom it out nowadays.
If there aren’t enough hours in the day the school hours should be extended allowing the kids to take part in other social activities in the evening.

What I will say from my experience , is that back in the day, if you weren't bothered , the teachers just left you to it, and concentrated on those that were bothered. I would imagine now , thank god , that wouldn't be allowed to happen. We didnt give a fook about school, cos we knew there would be a job down the pit. Guess what happened the year I left school?. The village pit closed

GCSE's were brought in to replace the titled quals in the thread. Equivalent for O level was an A B or C. Below marks were a CSE equivalent. Ie nearly all students would pass most of their exams and have a qualification. That was the idea. Unfortunately employers at the time (as well as students/parents/teachers) didn't get it.

I know someone at the time lost out as a carpenter/joiner apprenticeship, because the employer thought he was over qualified (he had an A in...errrr...woodwork and got E's in the rest). Employer just saw 9 qualifications not just the one in the one needed.

It's my considered opinion that everything I learnt at school (that's everything, not just cherry picking) could have been condensed into 3 months of full-time study.
Now, a lot of that stuff was useless, most notably Religious Knowledge, so I didn't actually bother learning it, while other stuff like geography was also useless but really interesting, so I smashed it.

It doesn't matter whether you use archaic or modern methods: you can learn everything they teach in English classes and more just by reading Fowler, which would probably take a week, or you can learn shitloads of maths and science from insanely highly qualified PhDs and professors by watching Brady Haran videos on Youtube.

Seriously, all in all it must amount to about 3 months study, top whack.

So is uk schooling just a baby sitting service?

As a school teacher, some of the comments here leave me wondering whether I should laugh or cry.

You should know the answer, you're a teacher?

I was unfortunate enough to go to a school that was a disaster in terms of organisation having just been merged - 5 schools into one - allied to a complete lack of educational and pastoral guidance and finally it was a hell hole of violence and bullying. This was as often as not from the teachers as other pupils.

I left school with zilch! I flatter myself that I had the raw intelligence to pick up the odd O Level but the environment was horrendous.

Would of expected a bit more from a teacher. Why not dissect what you have read, try and make sense of it, and share your findings with the rest of us.

*Have

Well spotted Chris , bad grammar, and I'm not even a teacher.

Who is Chris?!

I used to be a teacher a long time ago and our lass is still one. Broadly speaking I'd say exams used to be about rote learning and schools were primarily about class control and fairly brutal forms of socialisation. If you weren't in the top few per cent only a few excellent teachers gave a toss about what you learned beyond doing what you were told and to fear authority.

Now, exams test a broader range of skills, most schools at least try to squeeze some qualifications out of all kids, and the socialisation is generally a bit more subtle even if it is still there. Trying to judge whether 'standards' are higher now than then is pointless because almost every aspect of education has changed.

Many kids work very hard, loads of teachers put a huge amount of effort in and self-interested politicians meddle and make fatuous comments that devalue genuine achievements.

Fair comment ! and very much how I remember it as a pupil in the late 70s.

Who. Is. Chris?

I think that if you analyse the comments, they are levelled more at educationalists than at teachers, so no need to get the hanky out.

Old men saying things better in their day shocker

Correction. Tim Vine. You've failed GCSE Performance Art.

The best schools in world are all in Scandinavia they have no home work only learn for a few hours a day but point is it’s stuff they want to learn. I don’t believe kids should go to school at 4-5 and should be 7. They should learn at home and have fun. Teach them the quest for learning and to question everything. Not just endless tests.

And the rich and poor go to school side by side. The reasoning , that when the rich kid finally ends up running a business and employs the poor kid, he sees him or her as a friend , rather than a piece of shit , there to exploit. Also their different upbringings mean that the rich kids feet are kept on the ground, whilst the poor kid in turn picks up some good habits from the rich kid , such as not swearing every other word and dropping litter everywhere.

Not rocket science is it?

But people like Rees-Mogg would not like this.

... breaking the bank of 2 working parents.

I've never taught but I know plenty of teachers. It's hard to compare teaching over time because the technology has changed things so much.

What I do know is that 'education experts' have been making life increasingly difficult for teachers. The vast majority of teachers are dedicated to teaching and improving the lives of kids, but more and more obstacles are being put in their way for no apparent reason. No surprise that people are leaving the profession in their droves.

Surely when you have properly prepared what needs to be taught to say 13 year olds you just keep repeating it year after year with tweeking.

or read pages 99 to 125, bugger off somewhere then come back and give homework out. a regular occurance when i was forced to attend school.

ffs They've just had 6 weeks holiday off ..And they were at it like rabbits having affairs in term time when i was a kid.

I’m not sure I agree with that as a parent of a 5 year old who I can’t wait to go back to school

No seriously he’s done reception and is just about year one but it’s as much about personal development as it is learning.

Kids of that age do all of those things you mention anyway, they are always learning but school teaches things like discipline and sharing. It’s also where most kids at that age build friendships. It’s intereting out here that people of varying nationalities have lots of choice regarding education and the British curriculum seems to be the most popular.

Correction, it was attributed to Tommy Cooper, so Mr Nelly, you've failed as a teacher!

On the plus side, welcome to the Bunker Chris, and happy Birthday Dave !

...until the Curriculum changes (every 2-3 years at present) and you discover that instead of A, or even B, you've now got to teach C, and it's got to be done by a different method to boot.....

Government keep changing the goalposts, often for their own biased reasons. My daughter will be doing SATS (Year 6, top Juniors in old money) this year, and she's expected to know all sorts of stuff that isn't relevant to most things - the grammar they are expected to learn these days is classic. Can you identify and use a Fronted Adverbial? Without looking up what it means, can you describe one? I can't, not that it's stopped me getting plenty of qualifications (up to and including a BA and a BSc) and being able to write and speak coherently for a living. Yet I would apparently fail the Year 6 SATS for not knowing the technical grammar terms....

But in the exams doesn't it go something like...

What is a fronted adverbial?

A. A horse with no tail
B. A furniture thief
C. Theresa May's Brexit policy
D. An adverbial that's at the front
E. Jordan Mellish

or F. The way Yoda talks

The worst part is that terms like "fronted adverbial" have been pulled straight out of someone's arse. I know a lot about linguistics. There are hundreds upon hundreds of specialist terms for describing every facet of a language, and I can assure you "fronted adverbial" is not one of them.
And even if it were, there are much more important things to know the name of (PhD for any pupil who spotted and is able to name the "subjunctive" and the "preposition ending" in that sentence).