Posted on 04/08/2007 10:41:43 PM PDT by bruinbirdman
The new specialist diplomas should be scrapped because they are likely to result in underqualified teenagers being exploited as cheap labour by unscrupulous employers, Britain’s largest teaching union said yesterday.
The diplomas were touted as one of the most radical changes to secondary education in 40 years, and ministers hoped that they would persuade more teenagers to stay on at school after 16, but the National Union of Teachers (NUT) said that the qualification was as weak as existing vocational qualifications.
Delegates at the NUT’s annual conference in Harrogate claimed that the reforms effectively branded some pupils impossible to educate and condemned them to low-paid jobs.
The new diplomas for 14 to 19-year-olds, which are being designed with business, aim to combine work experience with academic study. As many as 40,000 teenagers may start studying one of five subjects — IT, health and social care, construction, media and engineering — from September.
However, critics fear that the diplomas are too narrowly focused and will be seen as second best to A levels and GCSEs. Last month Alan Johnson, the Education Secretary, admitted in a speech to head teachers that the diplomas could be seen as the equivalent of secondary moderns to grammar schools, and that the plans for them “could go horribly wrong”.
Glen Mynott, a teacher from Coventry, was among several NUT delegates to raise fears that the new qualifications would lead to a poorly paid underclass of young people.
“We are concerned that the Government’s plans to keep young people in education and work-based training until 18 has not been thought through adequately and may well be abused by unscrupulous employers to exploit young people as cheap labour,” he said.
His concerns were echoed by Michael Devern, a primary school teacher from Southwark, in South London. “This is not education, this is training,” he said. “Imagine leaving school at 16 with a diploma that is recognised only by the factory up the road.”
John Reddiford, a delegate from north Somerset, said that the diplomas did not offer pupils the chance of a broad education. “But they do offer the Labour Government the chance for training on the cheap, and cynical head teachers the chance to manipulate league tables,” he said.
Awkward, unruly teenagers would be asked to decide, aged only 13, what they wanted to do with the rest of their lives, he added, asking: “What if they want to be hairdressers at 13 but not at 16?”
Steve Sinnott, the union’s general secretary, said that he had written to the Education Secretary calling for two more days of training time to prepare teachers for implementing the new qualifications, but Mr Johnson had refused to agree to this.
The Government wants teenagers to stay on in school or training until they reach 18, once all of the diplomas are running, by 2015.
A spokesman for the Department for Education and Skills dismissed the vote on behalf of the NUT’s 265,000 teachers as “a breathtakingly cynical view”, and pledged that every teacher who had asked to teach diplomas would get the “professional training they need and the time to do it”.
The NUT conference carried a motion to “campaign for a halt to the implementation of the specialist diplomas and for an independent review of vocational education”.
The union also called for schools to close for an extra two days so that teachers can be trained in readiness for radical changes that will come into effect in September next year.
From next year schools will be expected to start teaching the first five diplomas, new GCSE specifications, a new curriculum for children aged 11 to 14 and a pilot scheme introducing extended projects to A levels. Without adequate preparation, they said that this would result in an “initiative overload” that would undermine the education of young people across the country.
Pinging.
More here,
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1813624/posts
India high-tech industry out of workers; Wage inflation concerns
and also:
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/CareerManagement/story?id=2582776&page=1&CMP=OTC-RSSFeeds0312
‘Cover Letters from Hell’ Expose Poor Quality of College Grads
By KATE KLONICK
Oct. 19, 2006 — If recent college graduates apply for a job at Killian Advertising in Chicago, they’d better mind their grammar, spelling and punctuation — not to mention their sentence structure, syntax and diction — lest they end up in the company’s “Cover Letters From Hell” that it posts on its Web site.
Six years ago, Bob Killian, owner and founder of the agency, began posting anonymous excerpts from poorly written cover letters he received from those asking for employment.
The World’s Worst Cover Letters
http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=2582846
The mistakes ranged from unfortunate omissions (”I am seeking a new position as i have recently been laid” and “I also have a degree English which serves me well in editing text for poor grammer or typos”) to nonsense sentences and topics (”It is through the innovational process, as well as media, that the features of an image can be highlighted and brought to the forefront for the consumer viewing” or “The colors red, blue, and lavender are those that I identify with the most. I feel they accurately describe my personality. I choose red because I turn red when I get embarrassed …”).
Some candidates even try their hand at poetry — one girl rewrote “’T’was the Night Before Christmas,” editing herself and the advertising company into the story and substituting presents for a job.
The goal of putting the letters online, Killian said, is to show job seekers that, “Hello! This is not a recognizable form of communication!”
Ridicule Not the Point
Recently, Killian went through 100 letters that arrived at his agency from applicants requesting jobs and interviews. Of the 100, not one was without some kind of spelling, grammar or syntax error.
At first, Killian thought that a personal approach was best. When one of the letters came from a senior graduating from a fairly prestigious college and did not contain a single sentence without an error, Killian drafted a “gentle note,” advising the student to get some help with his writing.
What Killian got in response was an angry four-page reply.
“That really set him off,” Killian recalls. “We haven’t done it since. We don’t want to have to change the locks on the building.”
Unfortunately, in the 19 years of the company’s existence, the problem seems to be getting worse, which Killian attributes to changes in technology and everyday communication.
“There are a whole lot of people that can’t speak in an authentic voice,” Killian said. “We’re not a generation that writes a lot. Colleges don’t seem to be very demanding.
“Texting is making it worse. We’re getting printed letters with the letter ‘U’ standing for ‘you.’ And this kid wants to be hired in a communications position!”
While the site started off as just a joke within the company, its popularity has helped Killian find business clients and literary agents find him. A small book is currently being compiled with “Cover Letters from Hell” excerpts the company has collected over the years.
Though the site’s commentary pokes fun at applicants, Killian insists that ridicule is not really the point of the compilation.
“Quite a few [potential applicants] are intimidated from applying, or sending a cover letter at all, but all that they should do is exercise some care,” Killian said.
“I think if people just absorb what’s in there, they’ll at least be able to write clearly and express themselves in a meaningful way.”
Shouldn't it be "people WHO can't speak?"
It only strengthens the argument. Lol!
:^)
I guess my first reaction to this article is, who gets to decide which kids “need” to take this lesser diploma route? I can remember my high school guidance counselor trying to bully me into all sorts of classes I didn’t want to take or, in retrospect, particularly need (basically he didn’t think I had what it took to go to college. Turns out he was wrong.) A jerkwad like that could potentially mess up a lot of kid’s futures, under this new plan, IMHO.
The world needs ditch diggers too. Fortunately we all have a choice in the matter. Under communism, you get assigned a job. Here you might wanna go to college one way or the other, or, enjoy asking ‘would you like fries with that?’.
I’ve read a couple of articles lately that kids are taking part in “speed stacking” competitions where they race to see who can stack plastic cups the fastest. Is that early programing for future fast food positions?
Of course, when my son was in high school and worked at a supermarket, he competed in “bagging” competitions, but he didn’t start his training in gradeschool. What’s next - early childhood mopping competitions?
I went back to school in my late 30s. I am living proof that it is possible to go back to school and graduate late in life. If one thinks that one needs a collage degree to achieve what one wants, it is very possible to still get that degree, even later in life. It just takes some ingenuity and perseverance.
In the egalitarian U.S.A., I don't know of a state that does not guarantee a four year education.
You might have to start off in junior college/community college, but if you graduate from high school, you are guaranteed admission in JC, community college, state college, university (expenses are another thing).
If you graduate from JC/CC, you are guaranteed admission in a state college/university (expenses not guaranteed).
That is my experience with California, Louisiana, Hawaii, Alaska, Nevada.
yitbos
Coming out of school with a trade. Imagime that. It should be manditory and started in 8th grade.
Be nice. Everybody knows Art majors can't spell. ;^)
Vocational education should be tried on just about every student. When I was a teen, “vokes” was regarded as the scrap heap where the dumbest kids went. I was brainy and lazy and my parents were rich, so I never even learned pool maintenance, never mind wood or metal or home ec.
Far older and wiser now in my fifties, I’m homeschooling my youngest. She takes after me, but somewhere between Latin and Greek she goes up to the art studio and gets familiar with power tools, metals and wood, plumbing, framing, locksmithing, gun and jewelry repair. I have someone teaching her how to sew her own clothes on a machine, and how to fix that machine too.
When she’s bigger I expect her to learn how to make furniture and lay flooring and hang sheetrock.
Call it vokes or shop or what you will, to me it’s survival skills and any kid who doesn’t have some, is shortchanged.
Yeah - THIS'll help!!!
The UNION will NEVER ask to have the schools OPEN an extra 2 days!
Sure they are!
The 'demand' is: "Keep these bozo's outta the job market for ANOTHER 4 years!!!!"
Sounds right to me!
It beats leaving at that age with NOTHING!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.