Woe unto those who have to employ British educated recruits?

young people arrive at interviews without the "vital employability skills" required by employers such as having a suitable grasp of English, being punctual and having a general "can do" attitude

Mr Frost, whose organisation represents more than 100,000 British businesses, criticised Britain’s education system, saying it was a “failure” despite billions of pounds of government funding. He said firms were then saddled with funding remedial training for school leavers who lacked vital skills to do their jobs.

Lucy Neville-Rolfe, Tesco’s executive director of corporate and legal affairs, said school leavers had basic problems with literacy and numeracy and have major “attitude problems”.


Everything above it taken from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/8819425/British-graduates-not-fit-to-start-work-say-majority-of-bosses.html

First of all I want to start on the positive, the Department for Education spokesman said "too many of our young people leave school without the necessary skills – in particular in the basics of English and maths. That is why we are prioritising them."

Great start, well done. I think we can all agree that we can't leave school, or we shouldn't leave school without English and Maths.

I don't think there is anything wrong with our Maths teaching. I didn't find it particularly good, but that was because I was lazy and lacked focus. In addition Maths is a difficult subject to teach in the sense that often if the student loses focus and misses one step in a mathematical process, then they can't come back in 2 minutes later (after they have stopped day dreaming) and get back into the process. In short, Maths is something that is ideally taught one to one. But I appreciate the government can't afford that.

I personally have no problem with adding, subtracting, per centages or pretty much any maths that you are realistically likely to use in everyday life.

English is another matter. Leaving school, I had little idea of the rules regarding the use of the English language. Sure, I knew how to speak properly. My written communication was tolerable. But I didn't know where an apostrophe went in a sentence and I had little concepts of commas too. Yet, for some reason my school had seen fit to seek to teach me poetry analysis. A lesson that could have been made a whole lot shorter and a whole lot more successful if the teach had stood out the front and said "here is a poem, talk about it like you're a pontificating, arty fart".

Had this been done I believe the whole of English literature could have been dispensed with and the teacher would have been able to actually take the time to teach me punctuation.

But as I've said, focusing on those subjects, sounds great. As long as the focus is on the technicalities. So for example the teach should state; "I want you to write a story, I don't care how boring it is, just so long as the handwriting is legible, the spelling is accurate and the grammar is correct", because lets face is, that is what counts in the real world. Unless you're going into novel writing, which most of us won't and even if we were going into it, a GCSE in English doesn't get you any further whatsoever.

Writing a good book isn't something that is really should be taught in a English lesson. The five people in the whole of the UK who are good enough to make a living from it didn't learn how to write in school. It isn't something you can really teach. If it was the teacher would be a million themselves.

But the thing I want to get on to is the bit that the writer skips over. The lack of 'can do attitude', puntuality and 'attitude problems'. This is the thing that can't be addressed by a government minister, because he doesn't have the power to change it. In reality if Britain is to become more economically developed the things that need to change start not in Whitehall, but in the home.

Like so many of our social and economic problems, there isn't a magic wand in government that can be waved to solve the problem in a moment. The more I look around the more I can see that people seem to love to think that government is the answer to everything, maybe because that means we can always have someone to blame when things go wrong and we don't ever need to look at ourselves.

Look at the Jewish community. Statistics bear out that the Jewish community tend to be wealthier than any other (ethnic? Social? Religious?) group. Why is this? Is there lots of government schemes always looking to increase the participation of Jews in various high flying professions? No. What about social intergration initiatives? No. As far as I can tell there are hardly any government initatives that are founded to help Jews. Is this because no one is every prejudiced against Jews? I don't think I need to answer that question. So it must be a cultural thing... i.e. how they bring their children up and how they expect entrants into their ranks to behave. Change starts at home.

Like wise if our country is to get back on its economic feet we need to adopt a 'can do attitude' and drop the 'attitude problem'. Thinking we're entitled to a high standard of living even when we don't do any work is not healthy. Maybe what they can teach in Maths in how an economy will collapse when we buy more things than we sell as a country. Or perhaps how borrowing money from the market and then using it to create public sector 'jobs' is actually just borrowing money and using it to keep the 'good times rollling'. But such education would no doubt be considered ideological and therefore would be replaced with some socialist guff as soon as the government changes hands.

Nope, the answer lies firmly at our own doors. It has been shown that those who try to send their children to private schools, even if they fail to do so, tend to have children who do better at school. This is because the type of parent who cares enough to want to send their child to a good school cares about their child and their education, and if they fail in getting them into a private school, this concern obviously provides enough motivation for their children to do well even if the school isn't perfect.

Those who are educationally sub par, arrive at school behind those who aren't, once again showing it is what happens at home that makes the difference.

If Britain is to get going, parents should spend time with their children, supporting them, encouraging them, even just talking to them. It will all make a difference, then when it comes time for them to go to school, they will have a better chance at being able to concentrate long enough to learn their ABCs and they will be in the situation where they want to work hard because they understand that it is highly likely to make their, and everyone else's life a lot more pleasant overall.

We, as a people need to realise that what makes an economy tick is not liberally distributed bits of paper with "degree" written on it or teachers pressurised with targets or throwing money at schools. But instead it is hard working, intelligent, (by which I mean 'natural' cognitive ability developed when very young) disciplined and stable people seeking to do their best and being rewarded fairly for it.

That is what moves an economy. And that my friends is a product of families, not policies.