Skip to content

The surprise here is what?

Only one out of every 25 pupils in schools for those with behavioural difficulties or exclusions managed to gain passes in English and maths GCSEs this year, according to national data which also shows little headway being made in improving overall exam results.

People who don’t study don’t pass exams.

And?

13 thoughts on “The surprise here is what?”

  1. ““Every year this ‘forgotten third’ is a feature of our exam system, not by accident but because it is baked in by the mechanism used to distribute grades. We cannot continue to accept that one-third of pupils must ‘fail’ in order that two-thirds succeed,” Barton, a former secondary school headteacher, said.”

    What ‘mechanism’..?

  2. People who don’t study don’t pass exams.

    How terribly old fashioned. These days merely being there is supposed to guarantee you a prize, because competition, or even expecting someone to do some work, is eeeevul.

  3. What success? Poor nuggets come out stupider every year while teachers achieve less and less and grade get higher and higher.
    Once kids with IQs below 90 could read and write, do arithmetic sufficient for everyday use, do some carpentry and or metal work. Now they stay in school for longer and achieve less.
    If anyone points at teachers or the education establishment, they pull a Greta Thunberg and accuse critics of calling kids stupid.
    Socialised schooling is as shit as socialised medicine.

  4. “People who don’t study don’t pass exams.” Or, at least, don’t pass them at the level they’d hoped for – vide Boris. And, on one occasion, me.

  5. I attended a run-of-the-mill Secondary Modern that had four streams: 1 Alpha was for kids that passed the 11-plus and who studied a curriculum leading to GCE O&A level examinations; 1A failed their 11+ but were still considered ‘bright’ and who studied for CSE examinations; 1B were afforded a good enough education to secure apprenticeships and attend technical training colleges; and 1C were kept chained in the basement and fed raw meat. When I left school I guess about 7pct of British kids went to university and 93pct didn’t. Am not sure how one size fits all would have suited back then, unless of course the examinations (and ergo entrance to uni) were dumbed down to accommodate all four streams.

  6. Bloke in Costa Rica

    Not every poor person is thick, but almost every thick person is poor. The “behavioural difficulties” that make these fucking potatoes such a curse on humanity are probably hereditary and therefore impossible to counteract without the sort of measures that no-one here would support.

  7. @Chris Miller…

    There’s a reason we’re called Baby Boomers: there were a lot of us…and a limited number of grammar schools. Parental preferences too.

  8. @BinCR…

    Many of the kids I grew up with weren’t particularly academic (thick seems a bit harsh) and went to neighbourhood schools that have long since been consigned to history. The lads were a brutal lot and a frightening proposition on the sports field during inter-school meets. While they left with zero qualifications, in those days you could find yourself a job that afforded some self-respect, marry and raise a family. I suspect their grandchildren are a chip off the old block, but unfortunately the world has moved on. I have no clever answer.

  9. Sometimes the behavioural difficulties aren’t because of a lack of intelligence, sometimes it’s the opposite

  10. @ BniC
    Yes, that’s the 4% who pass despite being in a pupil referral unit.
    I *am* being serious: being cleverer than the teacher is liable to be a problem unless one has a remarkably good teacher

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *