As a country we are failing an awful lot of kids. Our literacy and numeracy rates are plummeting. Whilst test scores are going up. The state of the educational system as a whole is a mess. GCSE's were set up to be an illustration to employers of a persons ability to apply themselves, yet more and more companies are losing faith in secondary education to a point where degrees have become the entry level academic requirement for previously no academic job roles. This video (although discusses the USA educational system) is applicable also the UK.
If this video interests you I really recommend you check out this book on how our school system is failing one in five kids.
The book briefly discusses in the fifth chapter something I have long known, that actually parents have the greatest impact in their child's future. Something that I personally believe could be remedied by increasing the amount of mothers who stay at home with their children in the early preschool years. This a point which I'm looking forward to discussing further in a future blog.
It also identifies the demographic of Children most likely to fail. Those labelled with learning difficulties, or SEN. This is a big problem because currently in the UK we have an over inflated number of kids labelled with SEN, one in five of our kids is labelled as SEN. We presume that by identifying our kids as having a block to their potential to succeed, they will get resources allocated which will help remove it. In fact the opposite is true. Of kids diagnosed with SEN only 22.4% gained 5 good GCSEs in 2012, and only 17.4% kids with behavioral special needs achieved five good GCSE's. See here
These kids are seemingly labelled as faulty products and forgotten. Whilst schools take hand outs for them.
There's a great global discussion by many impressive academics (like the video above) about how we implement change into our school system, to better equip them for the modern changing world. However until we stop thinking of kids as a manufactured product, we're really not going to get anywhere. Personally I feel there's a strong argument on the basis of GCSE results to homeschool your Children