Step Ahead Tutoring And Educational Services

Are things really this bad?

MORE than 80 per cent of young Scots are “unsuitable for any employment”, according to one of the country’s biggest firms.

A culture of “wholly unrealistic expectations” towards the modern workplace – including shock at the hours they are expected to put in – lies behind the decline, the training arm of motoring giant Arnold Clark has told MSPs.

A major summit is to be staged by Holyrood’s finance committee tomorrow that will see politicians and businesses join forces to try to improve the “employability” of the emerging Scottish workforce.

A report submitted in advance by Arnold Clark sets out the company’s concerns, and their findings have been backed by other business organisations.

The company said the biggest difficulty it faced was apprentices failing to adjust to a full working week, having become used to studying 18 hours a week at school or even less at further education colleges.

Many college courses were branded “state-sponsored babysitting” by Arnold Clark, which said not enough training was geared towards the world of work.

“It is desperately sad and thoroughly disheartening to hear professional recruiters with 20-plus years’ experience of employing school-leavers describe young Scots as ‘unsuitable for any employment’,” the submission said. “Yet that was the case of 81 per cent of our applicants.”

The firm had 2,280 applications for apprenticeships in 2011 – but found that 1,850 were simply not fit for the workplace.

It took on 121 youngsters, although 430 were employable, according to the submission by Arnold Clark’s subsidiary, GTG Training.

Apprenticeships, which are paid, usually last three years and have an 80 per cent completion rate.

The “recurring” problems identified among applicants included a poor attitude to others, no concept of citizenship, poor communication skills, a poor understanding of the standards expected and an “inability to make a decision based on anything other than ‘I want’.”

But the submission added: “The single biggest issue causing difficulties for the transition from school to employment is the discrepancy in working hours. Our apprentice intakes consistently describe a maximum of 18 hours in class per week, extended holidays and little or no access to extracurricular activities.” Youngsters who go on to college come into the workplace a year or more year later with a “further deterioration in concept of ―working week”, the submission added.

“We are increasingly concerned at the state-sponsored babysitting nature of some college programmes, rather than the specifically targeted vocational training for near-guaranteed employment we believe taxpayers’ money should be being spent on.”

CBI Scotland’s policy executive, Lauren Paterson, said a survey of education and skills by the organisation found “widespread dissatisfaction across business”.

She added: “Employers do not expect new recruits to be ready for specific jobs, but firms do expect them to have the right attitude and approach and be able to draw on a range of employability skills as they find their feet in the labour market.

“The value of experience gained through volunteering, work placements and apprenticeships should not be underestimated: through these means young people can gain an appreciation of the world of work and the attitudes and skills required, grow their business awareness and get their first foothold on the jobs ladder.”

About 10 per cent of Arnold Clark’s recruitment is aimed at “seriously disadvantaged youngsters” in a partnership with the Prince’s Trust, and the firm believes it could save many from a lifetime of unemployment.

But the report added: “We believe more can be achieved for the unsaved majority with intelligent and innovative interventions, provided there is the political will to effect change.”

More on Morpurgo

In a recent Diary, we featured Michael Morpurgo, a leading children's writer. I was reading about him today when I learned that he had failed his 11-plus and had disappointing O and A level results. He admitted to being a poor student, too easily distracted - with a lot of gazing out of classroom windows, bumbling along, doing enough to stay out of detention. We meet quite a few students who exhibit similar traits !

Eventually - at 66 years of age - Michael was proud (but only a little) to have received a third class degree ! In his writing life, he has been short-listed frequently and often failed to win the awards. "War Horse" was one of those 'failures'.

Michael has interesting views on teachers, talking about aptitude, the ability to enthuse, to communicate, to motivate, that he believes is more important than whether a candidate has a first- or third- class degree. And with this ability, he states that there must be a love of the subject taught. It's the one thing that reaches children, touches their hearts, awakens their intellect, when they see that a teacher really means it. (More to come)

 

Men's Rights ?

 

Education is an area where males are falling behind.  Tests in 2009 by the Programme for International Student Assessment showed that boys lagged a year behind girls at reading in every industrialised country. And women now make up the majority of undergraduates.

When women are under-represented as CEOs of companies - that is deemed discrimination. But, it is argued, when boys are falling behind at school, when 90% of people in prison are male, there's never any thought given to whether men are discriminated against.

An increasingly vocal men's movement argues that anti-male discrimination is rife. Who are the activists and what do they want?

Feminists have spent decades trying to get equal pay and rights for women.

But while, in the West at least, discrimination against women is rigorously challenged, a growing band of men's rights activists say no such protection is afforded to men.

Many of these activists also believe that the media allow women to objectify and ridicule men in a way that would be unthinkable if the gender roles were reversed.

A new book argues that on a whole range of fronts - from government, the courts and schools - men are being discriminated against.

David Benatar, head of philosophy at the University of Cape Town, argues in his polemic "The Second Sexism" that across the world men are more likely to be conscripted into the military, be victims of violence, lose custody of their children, and take their own lives.

Controversial stuff ?   Let us hear your views !

A Thought for May

 

Average lifespan world-wide is increasing by 5 hours..... per day!

It has doubled since 1800.

 

 

Biography of Michael Morpurgo

One of the most popular writers is Michael Morpurgo, loved by many of our tutees.

He is in his late sixties, is married to Clare, father to three children and grandfather to six - and he has written over 100 titles for children over the course of his career.

After studying English and French at London University he took a job teaching primary school children and realised that the books on offer to them were sadly lacking in any real spark so he began to make up his own; something the children enjoyed so much so that this was what he decided he really wanted to do.

Morpurgo is noted for his “magical storytelling”, for recurring themes such as the triumph of an outsider, survival, and characters' relationships with nature, and for vivid settings such as the Cornish coast or World War I.

His most popular books include Why the Whales Came (1985), which was made into a film starring Helen Mirren; King of the Cloud Forests (1988), which won the Cercle D'Or Prix Sorciere (France); and My Friend Walter (1988) and Out of the Ashes (2001), which were both adapted for television. The Wreck of the Zanzibar (1995) won the 1995 Whitbread Children's Book Award.

The Butterfly Lion (1996) draws on the author's own unhappy experiences at boarding school, and is the story of a young boy who rescues an orphaned lion club from the African bush. It won the 1996 Nestlé Smarties Book Prize (Gold Award). Kensuke's Kingdom (1999) tells the tale of a boy who survives on an island after falling from his parents' yacht and learns how to survive with the help of the mysterious Kensuke. This book won the Children's Book Award in 2000. Private Peaceful (2003) is set during the first world war and telling the story of two brothers, Charlie and Tommo. It won the 2005 Red House Children's Book Award and the Blue Peter Book of the Year Award and was shortlisted for the 2004 Whitbread Children's Book Award.

In 2003 Michael Morpurgo became the third Children's Laureate, a scheme he had originally helped to set up with poet Ted Hughes. The Laureateship rewards a lifetime contribution to children's literature and highlights the importance of the role of children's books. Morpurgo firmly believes that "literature comes before literacy" and wants all children "to discover and rediscover the secret pleasure that is reading, and to begin to find their voice in their own writing".

Honoured with an MBE in 1999 then Children's Laureate from 2003-2005 and recipient of an OBE in 2006, Morpurgo is also a patron of countless charities, and in 1976 began, with his wife, the Farms For City Children charity which aims to relieve the experience of poverty in inner cities and urban areas by giving children the opportunity to live and work on a real farm for a week.

He has received critical acclaim for many of his books, nationally and internationally and counts Ted Hughes, Rudyard Kipling and Robert Louis Stevenson as his favourite authors.

2012 saw the release of the film adaptation of Morpurgo's War Horse, an exceptionally poignant story of one horse's experience in the First World War which was directed by Steven Spielberg.

CfE

 

Researchers at Stirling University’s School of Education, who have studied the Curriculum for Excellence (CfE), found some schools were struggling under the weight of expectations, with many over-stretched teachers worried about the impact on their students.

The report, one of the first published since the introduction of the curriculum in 2010, said many schools had embraced the new framework, with positive results for teachers and pupils alike. But others had only introduced the curriculum when it became “absolutely necessary”, despite having had six years to prepare. Some of these schools had simply adopted a “tick-box” approach, doing the minimum required of them.

The report warned that many teachers were continuing to feel “anxiety” about how “vague” the new curriculum is, with many in the profession believing they were “floundering in the dark”.

Many teachers expressed concern that the pupils at the forefront of the curriculum were being treated like “guinea pigs”.

Dr Mark Priestley, one of the report’s authors, said many schools had failed to grasp the potential of the CfE.

He said: “The majority of schools have not fully embraced the possibilities of Curriculum for Excellence. The general impression is that not an awful lot is changing out there. One of the big changes we’ve seen in the last ten years is a change in teaching methods, but a lot of that was going on anyway without Curriculum for Excellence.

“An opportunity has been missed to radically transform the way things are done. There’s a danger it will become a damp squib. I don’t buy the argument that it doesn’t offer considerable potential, but for various reasons we’re not getting transformational change.”

He said some schools had adopted an “audit approach”, rather than giving teachers the freedom to create their own lessons. “Teachers have not had to operate this way for a good many years – the curriculum has been prescriptive,” he said.

“I suspect there’s a lack of confidence in doing the curriculum development that’s required. There’s been a lot of support (from the Scottish Government), but perhaps it has been the wrong sort of support. There was a lot of material produced which didn’t always illuminate very well. There needed to be far more guidance.”

The report also raised further concerns about the introduction of the new National exams, which are due to replace Standard Grades and Intermediates from 2013/14.

East Renfrewshire, home to some of the country’s best-performing state schools, has already decided to delay the new qualifications for a year to allow its teachers more time to prepare.

Among teachers in other areas, there have been complaints about the lack of guidance in relation to the new exams, the researchers found.

Larry Flanagan, general secretary of the Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS), the country’s largest teaching union, said: “One of the real changes in terms of Curriculum for Excellence should be how kids learn and how teachers teach.

“There’s been a huge focus around qualifications, but that’s not what Curriculum for Excellence is about.

“We’ve raised concerns that in some areas there’s been an approach that’s more about checklists, audits and ticking boxes, which is missing the whole purpose of the programme.

“Some of that is contributing to the workload issue for teachers by creating bureaucracy on what should be a classroom dynamic. The aims which teachers were happy to embrace have been smothered by this tick-box approach.”

The researchers said the implementation of the new curriculum had gone more smoothly in primary schools than in secondaries, where some teachers and pupils regarded the CfE as just “another subject”.

Despite lingering concerns about the impact on learning, the majority of teachers had responded “very positively to the general philosophy and ideas behind CfE”, the report said.

The report concludes: “CfE has much to commend it, although its implementation has been far from smooth. There remains a risk that eventual implementation in many schools will not represent the sorts of transformational change envisaged by the architects of the curriculum.”

A Scottish Government spokeswoman said: “The Scottish Government has listened to teachers’ views throughout implementation of the Curriculum for Excellence and has responded supportively, most recently providing an additional £3.5 million package relating specifically to the transition to the new qualifications, linked to wider CfE implementation.

“This research is based on information collected in the previous school year in a single council area and great strides have been made since then to ensure effective implementation and build the confidence of teachers.

“The relevant council, we understand, has already learnt from the findings of the research and has reviewed its implementation programme, building on the strengths identified in the report, and addressed areas where further work is required.”

 

The Olympic Flame

The Olympic Flame will come within 10 miles of 95% of people in the UK, Isle of Man, Guernsey and Jersey. It will enable local communities to shine a light on the best their area has to offer – including celebrations of local culture, breathtaking landscapes and dynamic urban areas. For the Step Ahead Area :

Wednesday 13 June

St. Andrews
Milnathort
Kinross
Crook of Devon
Alloa
Bridge of Allan
Dunblane
Stirling
Cumbernauld
Larbert
Camelon
Falkirk
Skinflats
Cairneyhill
Crossford
Dunfermline
Hopetoun House
Broxburn
Edinburgh (Evening celebration)

Thursday 14 June

Edinburgh
Duddingston
Musselburgh
Dalkeith
Lasswade
Loanhead
Bilston
Milton Bridge
Penicuik
Eddleston
Peebles
Innerleithen
Walkerburn
Selkirk
Galashiels
Earlston
Gordon
Greenlaw
Duns
Chirnside
Foulden

Inspired by a Legend

 

The photograph which appears in the post below is of one of our youngsters, Emilia Lauder, meeting the great David Wilkie MBE, a member of Scotland's sporting Hall of Fame and the last Scot to win Olympic swimming gold and two Commonwealth titles, back in the 1970s.

A very promising scholar and sportsgirl, Emilia won the right - through a writing competition - to meet and chat to David at last week's re-opening of the Royal Commonweealth Pool in Edinburgh, where they were filmed by television crews.

Swimming is not a mass- participation sport as it is, for instance, in Australia. There are pathetically few 50-metre pools in the whole of Britain compared to other countries, so we have been "punching above our weight" in recent years in the UK, where the swimming bodies believe that we have hopes of emulating David in this year's London Olympics.

Emilia meets David

Basic 3Rs - again!

 

New guidance published following a six-month consultation between the Scottish Government and education leaders said the profession should not focus solely on exam results, but rather go back to the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic.

Publication of the document, which is being made available to all Scotland’s teachers, follows input from headteachers, the Association of Directors of Education Scotland and Education Scotland.

It comes amid growing concern over Curriculum for Excellence and the introduction of the new National exams which are due to begin in 2012-13.

Earlier this week, education secretary Michael Russell announced that schools would be able to request a one-year delay in introducing the exams if teachers did not feel ready.

The guidance said teachers should focus on literacy and numeracy as “platforms on which to build future learning”.

 

Incidentally, this is exactly what we at Step Ahead have been preaching and practising for the past 15 years.

 

There are still one in six children leaving school whom the government defines as functionally illiterate, which is a very damning indictment.

Businesses are still having to spend money addressing deficiencies.

Tina Woolnough, spokeswoman for the National Parent Forum of Scotland, said the study of literacy and numeracy was already being put at the centre of the new curriculum.

She said: “Historically, basic literacy and numeracy has been overlooked and there is now a national push to address the problem.

“We really should not be having children coming out of school who are illiterate, but for too long children have left school without basic skills.

“As a parent, when I first started hearing about Curriculum for Excellence I was surprised to find out that a primary school teacher teaching history, for example, would ignore literacy or would ignore numeracy during lessons about science and would only focus on literacy and numeracy as part of set lessons.

“There is a more holistic approach now and teachers understand that.”

 

Meanwhile, a report by the politically-neutral Improvement Service was handed to MSPs in January claiming that 15-year-old children at the bottom of the class are so far behind they were performing “as if they were ten years old”. The paper concluded that Scotland has the highest gap between the top and bottom in schools of anywhere in western Europe.