So it seems we’ve got more A-level leavers leaving with A grades these days…strange then that we still struggle as an economy to find decent, well educated skilled professionals, even at pre-entry level.

It seems tragic that the education system has been taken over by politics and parties looking to boost their numbers at the expense of the wider workforce and economy, and students futures. a generation ago, having a degree was something of an achievement and having a degree from a reputable university was like entering an elite club with opportunity at your door step, and whilst this seems like a swing from one extreme to the other, surely there needs to be some level of exclusivity between those that have a degree from those that dont, if everyone has a degree, then how do you measure who is better, how does an employers determine a good canditate from a poor one?

Imagine the doomss day scenario- soon you’ll have a levels at pass/fail, so you either pass or you fail, how to uni’s determine who to accept, already unis are having to forkout for entrance exams, ok, so at uni, you now have advanced students along side those who barely passed…you’ll need an extra year or so of uni jsut to get everyone up to level, and that level will need to be low so that everyone gets into the following year..for league tables, so when they graduate suddenly its a case of majority of students getting a 1st, so then employers can determine the value of a 1st as everyone has one, so the value of a degree goes down.

Government AND schools and the education establixhment really need to have a good long look, it seems unfair for those of us who grew up under the old system that now I have students who can barely multiply with degrees look for unreasonably high pay for relatively junior jobs that they aren’t even any good at.

I respect that no child should be left behind, and that every student should have the OPPORTUNITY to go to uni, but fact of that matter is its an OPPORTUNITY to go do GCSE, and if you pass its a OPPORTUNITY to go do A levels and thus go on to uni, I can’t emphasis its an opportunity, NOT a right, an opportunity, so some people will get left behind, and if they do, there should be something (vocational qualifications), to provide them with alternative options, the students themselves need to grow some balls and take responsibility for their education and this should be supported by their parents, after all. Its wrong that just so that on spreadsheets and graphs everything look hunkydory  the government is allowing for this kind of mediocrity about 20years ago the UK was The place to go to get a great education that would set you apart from the masses and the ‘everyone elses’ and help to make you stand out as the best possible candidate for a job..now however, everyone is the same- at least on paper…and companies know this…so you’re devaluing education by dumbing down grades and by so doing, reducing the employable workforce for the kind of jobs that would be good for the country, as a result, year-on-year the number of people with degrees and no job to go to increases (partly due to companies being reluctant to employ poorly skilled and equiped graduates with inflated egos), and year on year new immigrants who will work twice as hard for less money and have a ‘better’ education will take up jobs that these graduate ‘could’ have taken up if they were better prepared by the education system. But of course by the time we see the repercussions of these changes the governing party will be long gone, after all, they only have an agenda to get more votes, not to better the society and economy.

so whats the solution?  start Testing students instead of handing out grades, its NOT ok to get an ‘E’ grade, A-C is all that is worth anything and an A grade should reflect the top 2-3% of the student population, NOT 20%, start getting students into work earlier so they get experience and realize how though the job market is, start training students instead of stroking their egos into believing that now they have a degree they are special, because you know what? A degree doesn’t make you special because everyone on now has one, and even then, its only the first step on a long ladder.

rant over.