Month: August 2022

Disadvantaged students starting courses in 2022 are worse off as a result of COVID – universities must support them

Published by skeptic

The A-level results received by students in 2022 should be celebrated as an example of resilience and hard work. The achievements of this cohort have been made despite a global pandemic which affected both their GCSEs and A-levels. They have faced government U-turns over assessment, and knowledge gaps in their learning. What’s more, a record number of applications to university in 2022 have come from students from disadvantaged backgrounds. However, this welcome development should not hide the fact that the pandemic has had a disproportionate impact on people from deprived areas and has widened educational inequalities. Universities must recognise that the disadvantaged students in the 2022 cohort will have had very different educational journeys to their wealthier peers, and that many will face additional challenges as the cost-of-living crisis bites. They must plan accordingly in order to help their students transition into higher education. Educational inequalities which affect students on their way to university are far from new. Institutional racism in education, including in curriculum content, affects how young people experience school. Working-class students face …

Modern language GCSEs continue to fall in popularity – but new research shows language knowledge will last you a lifetime

Published by skeptic

You might think that if you stop using a language after studying it at school, you will end up forgetting everything you knew. But this isn’t true. Language knowledge will stay in your brain for decades. In 2022, around 25,000 A-levels and around 315,000 GCSEs were taken in a modern foreign language. This means that language GCSEs taken have fallen by more than 40%, and A-levels by around 25%, over the past 20 years. Between 2014 and 2019, entries to modern language GCSEs fell by 19%. This is a worrying trend, not least because learning a language is valuable in and of itself. Among the many benefits are better performance on general standardised tests and a boost to your wage. There is another reason why studying a language at school will serve you well. As my new research shows, the knowledge you acquire in a foreign language appears to be astonishingly stable over long periods of time. A similar finding was reported almost 40 years ago. The psychologist Harry P. Bahrick carried out an investigation …

how gender norms influence what young people choose to study at school

Published by skeptic

There is a gender divide in the subjects teenagers choose to study. In 2022, 63% of UK GCSE candidates taking full-course Physical Education (PE) for GCSE were male. For Art and Design subjects, though, boys made up only 35% of the students taking the subject. The subjects students choose to study carry gender meanings. Research on boys and education has shown that Stem subjects (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) and PE are understood as masculine. Research has shown that children associate science with males and masculine traits from an early age. One study found that boys were more likely to express gender stereotypes about scientists. On the other hand, subjects like English may be considered less masculine because of their perceived irrelevance to traditional “men’s work”, lack of set answers, and emphasis on emotions. Subject choice, then, becomes what is known as an “identity resource”: something individuals can use to build up their self image. Boys can draw on these identity resources to establish their masculine credibility with their peers. These stereotypes impact on secondary …

The history of secret education for girls in Afghanistan – and its use as a political symbol

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In August 2021 the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan, and since then secondary education for girls in the country has been banned. However, there have been reports of clandestine girls’ schools operating despite the ban. Teenage girls are reportedly taking extraordinary risks to attend lessons. Their teachers bravely share knowledge, even if they do not have extensive experience or the backup of an education system. Education for girls was also banned during the previous era of Taliban rule in Afghanistan (1996-2001). In this period, too, girls attended secret schools. Not much was known about these schools during Taliban rule. A 1997 report noted that the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan supported 125 girls’ schools and 87 co-education primary schools and home schools. An article in the Guardian in July 2001 stated that aid agencies had estimated 45,000 children were attending secret schools. After the defeat of the Taliban in 2001, the educational work of the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), which they carried out during Taliban rule, was much documented. Before 9/11, there was …

The UK education system preserves inequality – new report

Published by skeptic

Your education has a huge effect on your life chances. As well as being likely to lead to better wages, higher levels of education are linked with better health, wealth and even happiness. It should be a way for children from deprived backgrounds to escape poverty. However, our new comprehensive study, published as part of the Institute for Fiscal Studies Deaton Review of Inequalities, shows that education in the UK is not tackling inequality. Instead, children from poorer backgrounds do worse throughout the education system. The report assesses existing evidence using a range of different datasets. These include national statistics published by the Department for Education on all English pupils, as well as a detailed longitudinal sample of young people from across the UK. It shows there are pervasive and entrenched inequalities in educational attainment. Unequal success Children from disadvantaged households tend to do worse at school. This may not be a surprising fact, but our study illustrates the magnitude of this disadvantage gap. The graph below shows that children who are eligible for free …

A grades are up compared to pre-pandemic results

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The 2022 A-level results are in, and the number of students receiving A or A* grades has fallen – down by 8.4% on 2021. For the first time since 2019, A-level results are being decided by formal exams. Students were warned that grades were likely to be lower than in 2020 and 2021, when cancelled exams and teacher assessments in A-levels led to record high results. Nevertheless, the proportion of students receiving A grades is up from pre-pandemic levels in 2019. A busy end to the admissions round is under way for universities and students, and the next steps for students still living with the impact of the pandemic are becoming clearer. In 2021, some universities were over subscribed and had to offer significant incentives for students to defer their places. While the number of students in 2022 accepted on a UK university course – 425,830 – is higher than in 2019 and the second highest on record, it is 2% lower than in 2021. Just a few days before the results were out, thousands …

How England plans to cut back ‘low value’ degrees so it can reap more student loan repayments

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.\÷Rishi Sunak, one of the candidates to be the UK’s next prime minister, has vowed to “crack down” on university degrees with poor career outcomes. This is not a new idea. The university regulator in England, the Office for Students, has already proposed setting minimum thresholds for the proportion of graduates from each course that should be in jobs it defines as highly skilled. A course that does not meet the regulator’s expectations could be prevented from recruiting publicly financed students. The thresholds the Office for Students has proposed are that 60% of people completing their first full-time degree should be in highly or skilled jobs or further study within 18 months of completing the course. For full-time masters students, the proposed proportion is 70%. The final levels will be confirmed in September. Students, of course, do not go to university for their career prospects alone. They are motivated by interest in their subject, and by the social, cultural and sporting opportunities at university. They look for the personal growth that comes from meeting new …