Step Ahead Tutoring And Educational Services

Ability to Read and Write

Concerns have again been raised about the high numbers of children still leaving primary school without the basic skills.

For instance, in Scotland's Capital, a third of pupils across the primary school age range failed their tests in reading, writing or maths in 2008, while just over a quarter of schools are still struggling to meet the minimum levels.

And in one in ten schools – a third of all pupils - are failing to meet the basic standards in ALL of the three Rs.

Councillor Ricky Henderson, Labour's education spokesman, said he was concerned about the attainment gap between the better performing schools and some of the others.

"I'm not a great fan of league tables because they don't reflect all the things that go on in a school, but obviously you want children to be able to read and write before they go to secondary schools."

Every parent we have ever met would expect no less - indeed how about being able to read and write WELL - and surely also "count and spell ?"

Girls Ahead

Boys are two months behind girls on average in their verbal skills and learning ability by their first day of school, a nationwide study of thousands of five-year-olds has found.

Although many teachers and parents have long suspected that a learning gap opens up early on between the sexes, this is the first time that it has been properly examined and quantified in very young children.

The finding comes in research from the Millennium Cohort Study, which is tracking the development of 15,000 children born in the first two years of this century.

Children in the study took three assessments involving vocabulary, picture similarities and pattern construction. They were conducted in each child’s home by trained interviewers and designed to measure three key information-processing skills. They showed that girls were roughly two months ahead, on average, on each of the three measures.

“This doesn’t mean, of course, that all five-year-old girls did better than boys,” said Kirstine Hansen, the study’s research director. “There was roughly the same number of boys as girls in the top 10 per cent of the ability range. However, there are fewer girls in the lower-scoring groups.”

Test Your Literacy Skills !

 

As employers increasingly complain that graduate jobseekers cannot spell or punctuate correctly, the above is a literacy test which is being given to A Level Students in a prestigious school. 

You may need to click on the test in order to enlarge it !

More Examples of Errors in Grammar

1.  There is an increasing and incorrect use of the word "literally" .... "I literally went blue with anger!"

2.  The proper use of "its" and "it's" seems to confound many people, with "its" being a possessive and "it's" being a contraction of "it is".   This mistake is made in many newspapers, pamphlets, media releases, TV channels, teletext etc.

3.  People use "due to" when they mean "owing to".  "Due to" means "caused by" and needs a noun, but "owing to" means "because of" and relates to a verb.  Hence, "the visit was cancelled [cancelled is the verb] owing to flooding" is correct.  So too is "the flooding [flooding is the noun] was due to weeks of heavy rain".

4.  Children need to be taught - at an early age - the difference between : "they're", "there" and "their"; not to mention "to", "two" and "too".

5.  There is also confusion over lend and borrow.  School children ask "to lend your pencil" when what they actually mean is to "borrow" the pencil.

6.  Even BBC reporters say "amount of people" when it should be "number of people"!   "Amount" is used with nouns that are not countable, such as "amount of forgiveness" and "amount of glue" - but "number" is used with countable nouns, such as "number of boys" and "number of houses".

7.  I can go there "by foot" instead of "on foot"....the right preposition to use is ON.

8.  There is debate about a single noun with a plural verb, for example: "the team are happy with their victory", or "management have congratulated the workforce on the recent increase in productivity". Team is a singular noun so "the team IS happy..." or "the team members ARE happy";  the same applies "management HAS congratulated...." but the BBC News website's style is that sports teams and pop/rock bands are always plural.

9.  A classic confusing rule is the one that states that one is supposed never to end a sentence with a preposition. While this is easy and appropriate to follow in most cases, for example by saying "Yesterday I visited the town to which she has just moved" instead of "...the town she has just moved to", when the verb structure includes a preposition that cannot be removed from it, as in "At work I am using a new computer with which my manager recently set me up", which cannot correctly be changed to "...I am using a new computer up with which my manager recently set me".

10.  When dealing with modern sports grounds, rather than ones from the classical world, the plural is "stadiums", not "stadia".

Education in Crisis ?

Readers interested in the state of education in this country will have been concerned about an article which appeared in the "Sunday Times" just over a fortnight ago.   I intend to comment on that particular case - and others of which we have first hand experience - in my "Diary" in forthcoming weeks, but suffice to say at present that we at STEP AHEAD keep hearing of more and more situations which suggest that there is a crisis building within our education system.

Just today, I listened to the concerns of a pupil who, in 4th Year, has already had SEVEN different teachers for her Standard Grade English - six supply (none qualified as English specialists) and one permanent (but frequently absent) - and we are barely out of September !!

And, believe me, I hear of such similar - and worse - scenarios every single week throughout each academic year.

Whilst in America in the summer, I kept hearing about how their schools were getting worse. The feeling that I got there - and frequently get here - is that none of the traditional solutions bandied about holds the answer.  New fads, part-solutions, bickering amongst politicians and so called education experts are nothing new - but little happens.

There is a growing trend, perhaps emanating from the U.S., building in London, and starting to be seen up here, of parents home schooling their children.  STEP AHEAD has had more experience of this during the past year than the previous decade in total.

More drastic action, real innovative ideas, and a change in the actual process of schooling appears to be needed - and urgently.  But is there an innovator - a leader - out there who appreciates and accepts that there is a crisis ?   Or does apathy rule ? 

Even comments, responses, reactions - to the above - would at least show that someone cares !!!!    And that I am not alone on this planet !