- Volume No.:
- 209
- Editor:
- Lisa Firth
- Binding:
- Paperback
- Publisher:
- Independence Educational Publishers
- Replaces Issue:
- Vol. 139 The Education Problem
Go to: Key Facts - Table of Contents
Key Facts
- In a recent Edge Foundation survey, half of secondary teachers and 39 per cent of parents said their school favoured academic qualifications, with very few saying it favoured vocational ones. (page 1)
- A study from Cambridge University found that teachers had been forced into a ‘tick-list’ approach to teaching, which had resulted in pupils being coached to pass exams and tests. (page 5)
- In 2010, 69% of 16-year-olds got five good GCSEs, up from 45% in 1997. (page 7)
- There are at least 771 million illiterate adults worldwide, of whom 64 per cent are women. (page 8)
- In a recent survey of teachers, 81 per cent of respondents had experienced stress, anxiety or depression as a result of bad behaviour, while 79 per cent said that they felt unable to teach as effectively due to poor behaviour. (page 15)
- In a recent survey this year, 38 per cent of members of teaching union ATL said they had had to ‘deal’ with physical aggression, and 7.6 per cent said they had suffered ‘physical harm’. (page 16)
- Free schools are all-ability, state-funded schools, set up in response to parental demand. (page 19)
- The Academies Bill – the Coalition’s first major piece of legislation – allows parents to set up their own schools and paves the way for hundreds more academies. Thousands of primary, secondary and special schools could become academies – independent state schools that have opted out of local authority control. (page 26)
- Almost three-quarters of this generation of students (73%) are at university in order to enhance their employment prospects and 58% are studying because they think it will increase their earning power. (page 31)
- Teenagers from the poorest homes in England are 50% more likely to go to university than they were 15 years ago. (page 34)
- Today, roughly a third of young people in the UK progress from school to higher education. (page 36)
- The Government plans to increase the funding for apprenticeships to more than £1.4 billion in 2011-12. (page 38)
- The proportion of adults who are currently learning, or have done so in the last three years, has risen by four per cent, from 39 per cent in 2009 to 43 per cent in 2010. (page 39)
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Table of Contents
Chapter 1 School Issues
Attitudes to learning, Pushy parents turn schools into ‘exam factories’, Study suggests curriculum ‘overloaded’ and ‘narrow’, Adapt GCSE to be national exam at 14, Are our schools really failing?, Education: key facts and figures worldwide, Myth: standards rise is just exams getting easier, One in four boys is turned off school by the age of seven, Comprehensive pupils outperform independent and grammar pupils in university degrees, Class has much bigger effect on white pupils’ results, Over 70 per cent of teachers consider leaving profession over poor behaviour, Major assaults on staff reach five-year high, Maintenance allowance axed in £500 million budget raid, Will White Paper help poorest pupils do better?, Free schools, The truth about free schools, Maintained faith schools, Faith school admission policies criticised, The Academies Programme, Academies will leave pupils ‘unprepared for modern life’, say critics.
Chapter 2 Higher Education
Young people’s views on Higher Education, Did you know? Facts about higher education, Higher education: what will life be like?, The 2010 university lifestyle survey, 50% rise in likelihood of England’s poorest teenagers going to university since mid-90s, Fears for ‘privatisation’ of higher education, Millennium mothers want university education for their children, UCAS reports record student applications for university, Ministers push for more apprenticeships, Economic fears get more adults learning.
