I see exam results are back in the news again this week as GCSE results are out and people are complaining once again that exams are too easy.

Does it really matter how hard the exams are or how many kids sit, surely it's the level to which they are educated that matters?

When I was in school it was my opinion that 90%+ of my time was wasted, looking back I'm fairly confident the real figure is higher, and as for kids today ...

Over the last 15 years I reckon I've interviewed over 1000 graduates and people of graduate age, these are people who've come through school, A-levels and some University or collages of higher education.

I spent much of this time being embarrassed for the candidate!

The people who "make it" out of the educational system with a good grounding, and there are some, tend to be people who've given up on the establishment (consciously or otherwise) and made an effort to educate themselves to their own chosen level.

Having been beaten down time and again by people who thought the educational system was wonderful, a couple of years ago I decided to see if I could find out what was going on, so I sighed up for a teacher training course. It's a fairly serious course, 9 months full-time, partly in a University and partly in a school.

To be a teacher -"Did you know"

• That to be a GCSE teacher in a particular subject, the only qualification you need in that subject is an 'A' level.
• You do not need what I would call a "real" degree to become a teacher, Open University degrees and what used to be "higher education" certificates from collages of HE (which are now also called "Degrees") can also be used.
• One other student teacher on the course, when asked "why" quoted;
  because I'm going in late (mid 40's) I'll get pension enhancement, so when I retire I'll get nearly a full pension. not only that, once you're in it's almost impossible to get rid of you so it's a job for life, no redundancies!
• The people who teach people to be teachers in a given subject, don't necessarily have a qualification in the subject you are studying to teach, so there's no way they can assess your technical knowledge or ability. Mine found it hard enough to operate an electronic white board, pretty poor considering we were studying to teach ICT!

So overall, we're not really helping!

Too easy?

So why is it so few kids seem to know what they're doing when they leave school, and so many foreign kids go off to become doctors, and skilled professions ... to the extent we have shortages in this country and have to import them by the boatload?

Maybe kids these days have it too easy?

We used to have to fight for local part time jobs when I was a kid, paper rounds were very sought after. Today, we can't actually get a paper delivered, let alone milk.

Dog walking, car washing .. forget it.

We had no money, so had to get off our rear ends and earn it. It does seem that today money is not in short supply (generally) in which case maybe the incentive to learn something and get to be good at it, really isn't there anymore.

(I'm not counting video games here folks, I know we have many young champions in our midst)

If this is true, the signs are that as a country, within the next few generations we will be taken over by people from nations we consider to be 'poorer', who have are driven to succeed and better themselves - while we simply wallow in our own success and vanish into obscurity.

Hi Hooooooo!

Well, there are other contributing factors, other people can see all the problems we're having and are sick to the back teeth of it all.

On the news yesterday, over the last year around 200,000 skilled/educated Britians emigrated, never to return to these shores.

Apparently not a problem as we had about 600,000 unskilled / semi-skilled immigrants to replace them.

So, intelligent people looking for a future can see the system is broken and are buggering off in ever increasing numbers.

I wonder if there will actually be anyone left with an IQ to effect a revolution when the time comes?!