It's no wonder the youth of today are struggling..

[Mr Bloom]

I take it you are joking.

 

I know a thirty year old teacher (engineering) who earns £32,000 +, but can't perform basic engineering skills (She had to telephone me to find out how to use a DTI, and she still can't use automatic feed on a milling machine).

 

She also has the communication skills of an ashtray.

 

She wouldn't last two minutes in industry, and certainly wouldn't earn

anywhere near £30K, never mind the holiday, pension, etc.

 

---------- Post added 03-09-2013 at 11:51 ----------

 

 

The teacher is question is male.

 

You think 32k is a good salary for a professional with post grad qualifcations, especially with the cost of living in the UK? I don't.

 

Pay peanuts, get monkeys.

[Happ Hazzard]

There are plenty of people with post grad qualifications working in supermarkets, and plenty more not working at all. Qualifications mean nothing if you can't actually do anything in practice. 32k is a good salary in 2013.

[Mr Bloom]

There are plenty of people with post grad qualifications working in supermarkets, and plenty more not working at all. Qualifications mean nothing if you can't actually do anything in practice. 32k is a good salary in 2013.

 

And there are plenty of people with disastrous academic results, considering what they have cost their families, sitting on boards up and down the country. Your point is?

 

32k is not a good salary for a well qualified teacher. However, it is obviously still more than our governments wish to pay, as they now let those without teaching qualifications or even degrees, teach our children on the cheap. Pay peanuts, get monkeys.

[Happ Hazzard]

Qualified teachers haven't been doing a good job in the past few decades. Meanwhile private schools employ whoever they want, whether qualified or not and get far better results. The teachers unions are corrupt beyond brief and need to be broken if we ever want to save education in this country.

 

Who private companies choose to put on their executive boards is entirely their own business. If they put people in charge who aren't capable, the company will suffer the consequences.

[Mr Bloom]

Qualified teachers haven't been doing a good job in the past few decades. Meanwhile private schools employ whoever they want, whether qualified or not and get far better results. The teachers unions are corrupt beyond brief and need to be broken if we ever want to save education in this country.

 

Who private companies choose to put on their executive boards is entirely their own business. If they put people in charge who aren't capable, the company will suffer the consequences.

 

I believe mine did an excellent job 3 and 4 decades ago. Then though teachers were respected by the government and society in general, and the profession enjoyed a certain status and there was less pressure, scrutiny, and less workload/working hours and therefore teachers had a better work/life balance. Teachers were also managed by teachers who had experience, and the respect of colleagues. This all seemed to serve to attract individuals to the profession of the required calibre.

 

Comparing private schools to state schools is ridiculous.

[Anna B]

Qualified teachers haven't been doing a good job in the past few decades. Meanwhile private schools employ whoever they want, whether qualified or not and get far better results. The teachers unions are corrupt beyond brief and need to be broken if we ever want to save education in this country.

 

Who private companies choose to put on their executive boards is entirely their own business. If they put people in charge who aren't capable, the company will suffer the consequences.

 

Private schools get better results for all sorts of reasons.

 

A class of 12 well behaved children, for example, is a totally different prospect to the 30 hooligans per class you find in the state system.

 

'Qualified teachers haven't been doing a good job in the past few decades' is surely a gross generalisation.

[frededwards]

Mr Bloom: £32,000 is an extremely good wage for someone that does not know how to use the machines and tools that they are supposed to be capable of using, of measuring concentricity and understanding how theads are sized, and teaching children so to do.

[L00b]

Comparing private schools to state schools is ridiculous.

Why?

 

Notionally, they both have the same input, processes and output.

 

Only resources and their management vary between them.

[jfish1936]

I think people were certainly better at mental arithmetic in the past. And more to the point, you didn't have pupils leaving school with a GCSE (or O-Level) pass at A-C who can't do simple sums in their head.

 

Remember ---

We had to work out our pocket money, and our shopping, at:

4 farthings (they had a wren on them) make a penny;

12 pence made a shilling;

20 shillings made a pound;

2 shillings and sixpence made a half-crown;

8 half-crowns made a pound.

 

Also:

16 ounces made a pound;

14 pounds made a stone.

 

The mental arithmetic was built into life!

My mother, having lived in French territories, commented on how much worse French shopgirls were at adding up the costs and making change than the English ones, and said it was down to their decimal system, which let them make errors by a factor of 10!

[L00b]

My mother, having lived in French territories, commented on how much worse French shopgirls were at adding up the costs and making change than the English ones, and said it was down to their decimal system, which let them make errors by a factor of 10!

As a product of French education (70s/80s), sorry but I don't buy that

 

Mental arithmetic was taught from 1st grade after kindergarten (age 5 IIRC).

 

The traditional method (when I attended) was

• a small individual chalkboard and chalk for each pupil,
  
• a math problem (addition, substraction, multiplication, division - in later years combinations of these) given orally to the entire class by the teacher,
  
• strictly forbidden to make notes/work out the answer by writing,
  
• then each pupil raising their answer (written on the chalkboard) above their head when done.

You did not want to be last (penalty point, get enough of them and it was detention), and you did not want to copy your mate's answer either (because the teacher would ask a correct 'answerer' at random to explain their answer, and woe betide the pupil caught out as unable to explain their copied answer...and let's not even go there re. a copied wrong answer!)

 

It kind of focused young minds

 

By the time we were 8 or 9, even the cretinus maximus of the class was very decent at mental arithmetic.