Transition Beyond Secondary

I just happened to be reading a blog by Don Ledingham about a forthcoming conference when my eye caught this phrase “Transition beyond Secondary school” It’s something that has exercised my mind for a very long while.

If a pupil is in the top quarter of ability and in some schools the top 1 or 2 percent the roadmap of early life is clear and well-marked. You automatically rise through the primary school from P1 to P7 and more or less automatically transfer to secondary school. From there with a lot of help from careers and guidance teachers you will be expected to go to university, perhaps with an exciting gap year. The path through all this will be made a smooth as possible.

If however you are one of the rest (over 90% of your year group in some cases), somebody somewhere will have pointed out your academic failings. It might not be a teacher; it could be a fellow pupil or it could be the subtle relentless exam records. You will however still rise automatically as everybody else does to the point of departure from secondary school. At that point some teacher or other might say something about going to college or getting a job but you will be left to your own resources to accomplish this, particularly if by the end of secondary you really just want to get out. If you are lucky you might end up with a job or even manage the minefield of getting into college. Have you ever noticed in fast food chains how all the employees are just out of school, year after year after year.

Now wouldn’t it be nice if schools particularly those with a large proportion of non-academic pupils were to leave the bright university types to look after their own transition and were to put a really enormous and imaginative amount of effort into making sure that every other pupil was equipped with life skills and had found a place in college or a job or apprenticeship with prospects before they left school.  It might even help the juvenile crime rate.

Aestivation

The title of this post is thanks to John Johnston and the power of Google. And it does mean a summer dormancy. Having never come across it before I plan to use it at every opportunity which with advancing years may well be quite frequently. I have to say that I am still wondering what search term John used as my attempts were not very successful.

This does demonstrate the power of the blogging network and the internet. I have an ancient 24 volume Encyclopedia Britannica and I really have no idea if I could find that word in there. Nevertheless I harbour a slight suspicion that there is a majority of the teaching profession who would regard the use of the encyclopedia as legitimate and the idea of using the internet as cheating. For the first time today I heard an author state that she had included a list of all the websites she visited at the end of her book! The author, Marina Lewycka was talking on Radio 4 about her book The Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian which won a prize for wit.

And yet again I ask, why do projects for assessment not include the requirement to provide search terms and websites as used in the work? It kills off plagiarism at a stroke.

Hibernation???

I wonder what the summer version of hibernation is?

I feel I have been doing this over what has been rather poor summer at least as far as the weather is concerned. However, in spite of being officially retired I will still be doing some work for Dundee City Council and will hopefully be at the Scottish Learning Festival (SETT).  That always provides a buzz of anticipation just reading about the speeches and seminars. I have not been in a total state of hibernation but I feel now much more alert and attentive to all the happenings in Scottish Education.

As I look round I see an increasing number of evangelists, early adopters and enthusiasts for all the exciting developments which are about to appear in Scottish schools. The pioneers of Web 2.0 are making so many daily advances that it is actually difficult to keep up. If I were to list the people I admire and follow, it would be invidious so for once I will forgo one of the tenets of blogging and not put in any links!

However Don Ledingham has highlighted a recent post by guineapigmum which certainly strikes a chord with me. To my way of thinking, the preoccupation with exams is going to be the main inhibitor of progress in Scottish Education. Not only do they narrow the curriculum, but they also highlight negatives for the majority of pupils who do not get A’s or 1’s.

A senior figure in the CBI commenting on the English GCSE results spoke of the number of employers who preferred Eastern European workers because of their willingness to work hard! That is an horrific indictment of our whole social fabric.