Education, Education, Education...

Education right now in the UK is being shaken up, quite drastically and these changes are coming from someone who has never taught in a school, Michael Gove, the Education Minister. As someone who's transitioning from education to work and experienced a bit of everything in between, I want to give my feedback and opinions on our education system.

One of the Quiet Ones

I was one of the quiet kids at school, I still am, and throughout my junior and senior school years I went to schools out of the area I lived in. They had a relatively good reputation, much better than the schools on my doorstep, but I don't believe that gave me any better chance of succeeding at school, in-fact I think it made it worse because the pressure to succeed was huge. I was put in what they called the 'express' class for science and maths, this is where I would take my exams up to a year early and then take further courses the second year whilst the other students were still working towards the exam I took last year.

The pressure was overwhelming, being a part of those groups, and it certainly took away the fun aspect of learning. In science we very rarely ever done practicals because we simply didn't have time and we had the worst teacher imaginable who wasn't in it for the sake of educating students, she was purely there for the money and would only ever be referred to as Dr. as if she was better than the other teachers.

Why Current Exams Are Bad

Having fun is what school should be about, not cramming in as much knowledge as possible so you can pass an exam, all of which you'll just forget in a couple of months time because you simply don't use or need that knowledge. I struggle to complete algebra now and trigonometry I wouldn't even have the slightest clue about, but back at school I could do it in a flash and thats because there is no use for this once you're out in the working world, its completely irrelevant unless you're in a niche field of employment. Even my Maths teacher, who was pretty awesome btw, shared this opinion to a certain degree. He told us, close to the exam...

"You need to revise, lots! You'll feel really nerdy, but in a couple of months, you'll forget most of it."

I was predicted As, Bs and Cs, but ended up leaving with three Bs, six Cs and two Ds, which was a disappointing result after being predicted these top grades, but that was mostly my own fault, I never revised outside of school for exams, not one hour, and hardly ever done any of the homework I was given and I was never disciplined for that, in fact the only time I can ever remember having detention throughout my five years at senior school was with my Religious Studies teacher, for homework I had put off for several days. My grades also were not helped by my poor attendance, I think during my last year my attendance plummeted below 70% and the welfare officer was almost involved. Much of my poor attendance was as a result of not enjoying school, I was very rarely ill.

I lived roughly five miles away from the school I went to which made it hard to make friends when you have to rely on your parents for transport. Five miles doesn't sound like a lot but when you're unable to drive yourself and there is no decent transport links, you can't just phone up your friends and arrange to go out, everything had to be planned around your parents work schedule.

College

College was much like school, except the pressure to succeed was even greater. I took 4 A Levels, Computing, Mathematics, Business Studies and Law. Throughout the course of the year I dropped both Computing and Mathematics and left college with some pretty poor grades, I never returned to the second year of college.

I soon found a job doing construction work and left after seven months to become self-employed, though that wasn't destine to be. By the end of January 2013 I was left unemployed before deciding to return to college in September.

Self-Teaching

Since leaving school I had a huge passion for technology, even throughout school this was apparent, but it started to thrive once I had the time and was left to my own devices. I began to teach myself about the inner workings of computers, began to build websites and software. Through doing this I learned much more than I probably ever could from college, I've even talked to some university students who don't share some of the skills and knowledge I have taught myself. As a quick example, Software Version Control (things like git and hg), basic tools for managing and deploying software which is universally used throughout the IT industry.

How can we educate students with the complex topics we do and expect them to go out and work within the industry when they are not being taught the vital skills that are used within the industry?

Returning To College Through Fear of Unemployment

In returning to college after some experience in the working world, it has widely opened my eyes to just how education is so structured and tailored around exams, some of the stuff we was taught was so wrong, so far from the standards and procedures of the industry.

I had an intense argument with one of my lecturers about feedback I had received on one of my assignments, it simply read "No!" in big red letters to the side of the page. I explained my work and why I had written what I did, the topic was about cloud computing, to which we was taught was things like drop box and google drive, bearing in mind this was a lesson on website production, those services have no relation at all to cloud computing in that context. She clearly had no background or previous understanding of what she was teaching, so how is someone like that going to teach me anything that I can't already teach myself through my own devices?

I chose to take a BTEC in Technical Support and Networking, an extended level 3 diploma worth ninety UCAS points after the first year, but I made a big sacrifice, it left me with zero income, financial uncertainty, and after my money run out it would mean relying on my parents as the government provided zero aid unless, I was either taking a part-time course, in which I would still need to be looking for work, or I would have needed to be a single parent, which I don't plan on doing anytime soon... but I was prepared to make that sacrifice through fear of remaining unemployed.

Unemployment

Being unemployed was a very degrading experience, being judged by every employer who interviewed you, every person who saw you walking into the job centre, I even at one point had someone come up to me and say 'I pay your benefits' as if I had never paid any taxes and wasn't entitled to receive what little money jobseekers allowance provides. The job centre itself provided little to no support in finding a job, they was all too busy trying to force their backwards job searching policies upon you.

Towards the end of my unemployment spell they introduced what they called the 'wage incentive'. A £2,200 cash incentive to persuade employers to employ you, but this branded you like a hot thumb, promoting the one thing you tried to hide the utmost, the fact you was unemployed. This didn't help you find employment, it just labeled you more easily. I didn't bother to mention this to employers after a short while because it clearly wasn't going to work, but everytime you went to the job centre they would force it down your throat as if it was the sole thing that would get you a job.

I eventually 'signed off' to return to college and immediately I was being pestered by the job centre, 'Who employed you?', 'Is your employer interested in the wage incentive?', etc. I gladly told them I'm not employed and that I had returned to college and they stopped contacting me, as if I was going to tell them who my employer was, even if I had a job, just so they could get a nice chunk of commission in their pay cheque. They was more focused on whether my employer was interested in this incentive than the fact I had potentially got a job, so its obvious they were getting some form of commission or reward themselves.

Theory vs. Vocational

My experience of returning to college relates back to exams and why they are currently bad, they don't teach us future skills we can use. Michael Gove wants to turn the curriculum into 100% exam based, he wants to remove all vocational courses because he thinks they are irrelevant, but vocational courses are complete relevant, more so than current exams, because they teach through experience, they teach the vital skills desired by the industry that are otherwise lost through theory-based learning.

However, theory-based learning is also important, but it shouldn't shadow vocational learning, it should accompany it, promote it and enhance it. Theres also aspects of learning that are lost through vocational courses and thats the understanding of what is going on behind the scenes, what happens when you do something, why it happens, theres a certain complexity and detail vocational courses don't always meet compared to the theory side, which is why I think vocational courses are often viewed as something the less intelligent people take, which is almost certainly the reason Michael Gove wants to remove them.

There is a sweet-spot in the balance between vocational learning and theory. I believe that is where education should be headed.

Performance Based Pay

Now I want to change the subject a little bit here to focus more on the teachers and less on the students and exams. Michael Gove wants to introduce performance based pay, where teachers are paid depending upon the success-rate of their students, which is a preposterous.

Certain teachers within the school are often lumbered with the worst groups of students, the ones that don't care if they fail exams or if they get kicked out of school. Theres always that one person in the a class thats always loud, vocal and interrupts the lesson, the sort of person who finds it funny to wind the teacher up. No matter how much these type of people are disciplined, it is always a joke to them, they find it hilarious that someone can get so uptight over their own stupid behaviour, they enjoy the audience. This is the exact reason, from a students point of view, why performance based pay is ludicrous. Children are cruel.

A Lasting Impression

As a huge atheist I decided to take Religious Studies as one of my GCSE options, a bad choice you might think, and you're right, I had absolutely no interest in religion, I thought religion was a stupid idea and that any religious person was crazy, but I chose this subject purely for one reason and that sole reason alone, the teacher.

I had him as a teacher the previous year and he made learning fun. He done this amazing thing with the register, where he would take your name and relate it to a song, advert or phrase and everyone would join in and laugh. Mine was often "You can't 'Urry love", my surname being Urry, and just by spending those few minutes doing something funny brightened everyones day and made the learning environment relaxed and fun, it wasn't relentless copying from a text book and there was no huge panic to get the work done on time to prepare for the impending exam, such as it was in the 'express' classes.

The class would often distract him to talk about his stories and amazing things he had done, sometimes that ate into a huge chunk of the lesson, but the work would always get done. We even occasionally took in pot noodles or tea/coffee and just those small things transformed the classroom from a place I often dreaded to somewhere that was fun and enjoyable.

By the time exams were upcoming and the year was drawing to a close this become the only lesson I truly enjoyed. I always think back to these times when I'm down because they made me happy within a place I dreaded badly, they were the light at the end of the tunnel and I regret the fact that I've never been back to say thank you.

Religious Studies changed my view of the world, and although I didn't know it at the time, it left a lasting impression on me to respect other peoples views and beliefs, it added that extra dimension of thought.

College Was Just A Contingency Plan

Since going back to college I realised pretty quickly that I wasn't going to be learning anything new, nothing that I couldn't already do. I had told myself that if something comes up, take it, though I wasn't actively looking for work.

On a Monday morning at the start of November, I received a very unexpected email from a small local web development agency I had an interview with back in June/July, explaining how the company had grown and they need another developer. To say I jumped at the offer was an understatement, and I'm so happy to say I'll now be working as part of a three man team for an awesome local company, I cant wait!