Snip snip snip!

More about the cuts, from another disgruntled student. Well, actually it's my first say in the matter really, seeing as I wasn't a student last year, yet am appalled that once I've returned to education, all of the funding goes down the pot hole. Well, half of it anyway.Why can't they find another way of making up for the massive financial deficit we've gotten ourselves into that doesn't involve sacrificing education? Tax, tax, tax those who find that money is no object, and plug the rest of the money into the schools. Because face it, seeing as we're already a nation being run by a bunch of idiots that went to private schools, I would not like to see the day when some burly uneducated half-wit from London's most ill-behaved comprehensive states that he will be in control of the Cabinet. And then addresses the public in grunts and can't write beyond text message speak.

No. 

However, I guess that most of the funding that the Government are choosing to do away with only really affects those in Higher Education, or mature students wishing to return to education. For starters, courses aren't cheap, and the fact that the Government is looking to cut around 40% of the budget for higher education means that universities are now looking for more "private contributions" which they have incorporated into the fee prices. I daren't look at the massive black hole of debt that I'm going to tumble into in 4 or 5 years time, at the end of it all. However, I suppose that this is a move that's made the universities revert slightly back to "more like they used to be", when universities were strictly elitist and only allowed the wealthy or very clever to attend. But it does go to show that universities are now considered a compulsory extension of the education system, instead of only allowing the top 9% or something of the population in. I guess you do get some people in there these days who can barely spell and use punctuation properly!

With the universities opening up more and more to the general public, and taking in students from more and more varied backgrounds, it's sounding like they decided to merger a lot of other skills that you would normally be able to go and learn in some designated facility, in with the rest of the university faculty. So you have lots of people doing odd things at university that they shouldn't, like nursing. There used to be nursing schools for that! I guess that's the person in charge shitting on the old institution of elitist aristocratic universities then...

But that isn't it. Certainly not the worst of it, seeing as these students can fund themselves through there with loans, loans and more loans. Those who can't however, are those who fall into the category of 19 and over (mature students now...) and are going into Further Education, without any support from a parent or guardian. In previous years, they would be able to pick up a weekly grant, just like EMA, in order to fund their studies. I think it worked out at about £30 extra a week if you were in the lowest income band, and £30 a week can go a long way, even if you have bills to pay and food to buy and rent to meet... It's the little bit that makes the difference between scraping by and getting on by. And this is the age group that the government needs to be targetting most these days, the 19-25 year olds who are very nearly all ridiculously unemployed and disenfranchised by lack of job prospects out there, so are left to sit on the sofa, drinking beer and watching Jeremy Kyle all day. Yes, I exaggerate, but still... It could quite easily be someone who'd left school at 16, gone to work full time in retail for a couple of years, realised it was shit and decided to go back and learn something, and hopefully end up doing something more productive in the long run.
If they go back to college, they will have to fund the course themselves if they somehow winded up doing A levels, struggle to work as many shifts together to piece together enough funds to be able to pay everything. And finish all their work on time, to the highest standard. All this, and no extra financial help? Though last year kids as young as 16 were getting their pocket money from the Government? No wonder not many people want to go back into education these days...

Money money money

Nevertheless, you know why else we shouldn't cut spending on schools? Because our schools are shit.
Think back to when you were last on holiday abroad, talked to a foreign person or yelled that you would like: TWO BEERS VERY VERRRY SLOOWWWLLYYY POR FAVOR into a bartender's ear. I'm pretty sure that nine times out of ten, they would be able to reply in very nearly perfect English, with a bit of mispronunciation here and there. The Europeans are especially good at it, seeing as most kids have grasped how to hold a conversation in English by the age of 9 or 10, and then go on and start learning their third or fourth language, whereas "our lot" are struggling with the "i before e" rule and can't even spell in our own language at a similar age. Isn't that a bit embarrassing? And I know that we try to kid ourselves into thinking that our language is difficult, but it isn't really. Sentence structure and grammar are relatively straight-forward compared to the numerous declensions and tenses of Latin and Spanish, and despite the fact that we have the odd one that breaks the rules, so does everyone else. Our vocabulary originates from several different tongues, but I'm sure that can easily be learnt, seeing as some of it will be familiar to them anyway. On this side of the pond though, it's a different story as teachers push for kids to pass their GCSE French or Spanish at Year 9 (hardly an adequate amount of time for them to learn the language properly as European children start at about 4 or 5...). Of course they put them through on the Foundation ("Easy") paper where the highest grade possible is a C, just so that this frees up another option on the timetable for GCSE years so everyone goes away with more GCSEs and makes the school look good. Huzzah!

He probably knows more french than you do.

Erm, no. Not really. The foundation paper when I did it, you could quite easily pass by learning a few stock phrases and that was it. Certainly not enough to uphold a conversation past the "ca va bien merci," part, without being completely lost for words and ready to resort to Ignorant English Tourist mode. Kids need to be taught how to construct sentences so they can say what they want to say instead of being kept in the confines of the stock-phrase barrier.

Jeremy Kyle - The Working Class's
wonder boy.

Another thing is that we're not teaching them fast enough throughout secondary school, and they are having to make a massive leap during six form to attain the high levels expected from universities. And primary school as well, seeing as all the children in Year 0 or Reception or whatever it's called end up spending half their time playing with sand instead of learning to read. This wouldn't be too bad if someone was helping the child with their reading at home, but Mummy and Daddy will undoubtedly be too busy with work, the baby and the cleaning to take a look through Precious Gemima's new book from school. Either that or the parent/s aren't about at all, so instead of spending a good ten minutes designated reading time, they would become infatuated with the television and become unable to escape its grasp. If the parents pulled their fingers out and did their job earlier on, maybe the school system wouldn't be in such a disarray. At the moment it seems like the parents are expecting the teachers to raise their children for them, as Mummy and Daddy are both very important and powerful business types who don't really have enough time to cook dinner, wash school shirts, give baths and read a bedtime story after a hectic day at the office. Or if they're from a (I use the term loosely) "working class" background and  often find themselves in many situations that would also appear on Jeremy Kyle, manners most certainly need to be taught to the both of them.
There's parental influence, and then there's also discipline in the classroom as well. How can you possibly teach a lesson to a classroom full of chatty adolescents with raging hormones threatening to spark off at any second? There would always be one with the sarcastic comments, heckles cutting through your lesson plan like knives. What can you do these days? Nothing really, seeing as you'd be at risk of being called abusive, a paedophile and a host of other unmentionable names, and the worst thing would be that you'd have the whole class willing to place charges against you. It's impossible to tell off the students, as they will just come back with some sort of catty remark that will always be one up on yourself, and no one's allowed to punish them these days. All of this because secondary school kids may not pay that much attention in class, but certainly know how to get their parents to take "Sir"to court, if he has upset their precious in the slightest way whatsoever.

Any disturbance here, you'd be in pain with the cane.

Bring back punishments that will be feared in order to control the class, and possibly teach as well. I am aware that it is rather Victorian in its outlook, but Victorian children could do long division by the age of 8 and knew past their twelve times table! Teachers shouldn't be afraid that if they tell somebody off they're at a risk of getting sued, and if they accidentally call a kid fat, so be it. A slight slip of the tongue shouldn't be scrutinised when merely making an observation about the child, however calling them a "FAT UGLY COW" would be deemed unacceptable, but also most unprofessional. Not many teachers yell that choice of words at pupils, as far as I'm aware...

Observe: modern day English
classroom.  Yes, fighting is
done in lessons so you don't
have to waste your break
preying on your victim
in the lavatory.

The pupil's "take-it-for-granted" attitude towards education in this country is also disgraceful, as many other children from poorer countries, countries where there isn't a welfare state to fall back on, would be honoured to have such an opportunity. For them, it means that they would be able to get a better job later on, and hopefully make a better life for their family, and let's face it, learning certainly beats carrying buckets of water from the pump to the house in the midday heat. But here? We are rude and arrogant to our teachers, violent at times in fact, because school's just some bullshit oppressor that keeps you away from playing the latest console game. So much angst, and most of the time they end up regretting slacking it off in the first place.

So I guess that I started off with the cuts and am now undermining the whole English education system, which doesn't exactly require a massive leap in logic now, does it? The "National Curriculum" and "Literacy" and "Numeracy" hours end up teaching at a pace that is two years behind the best part of Western Europe (we won't even begin to look at China and their insane mathematics skills, as they would be sitting some equivalent of GCSE maths in primary school), and yet we are told that the education system is achieving the best results that it ever has done year in, year out. People need to stop trying to pull wool over our eyes (and their eyes as well), stop dumbing down our kids and let our 16 year olds have a similar amount of knowledge to their European neighbours.



Or maybe they're meant to be dumbing down the masses?