”The emotional populism of modern politicians - as manifested in Al Gore’s lachrymose convention speeches, Bill Clinton’s televised prayer breakfasts and Tony Blair’s promotion of the Diana cult - may seem to be a collective experience. In truth, however, by asserting the primacy of feeling over reason, of the personal over the political, it stands revealed as nothing more than a disguised version of self-love”. How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World. Francis Wheen.

The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardises Our Future, or Don't Trust Anyone Under 30. Mark Bauerlein. (July 2008)

In the next four minutes you will have logged exactly half the time the average 15- to 24-year-old now spends reading each day. And much of this is superficial scanning of the internet, scanning pop record sleeves, or reading the instructions on video games.

Such is the kind of recklessly distracted impatience that makes Mark Bauerlein fear for his country. "As of 2008," the 49-year-old professor of English at Emory University writes in "The Dumbest Generation," "the intellectual future of the United States looks dim."

The way Bauerlein sees it, something new and disastrous has happened to America's youth with the arrival of the instant gratification go-go-go digital age. The result is, essentially, a collective loss of context and history, a neglect of "enduring ideas and conflicts." Survey after painstakingly recounted survey reveals what most of us already suspect: that America's youth know virtually nothing about history and politics. And no wonder. They have developed a "brazen disregard of books and reading."

The problem is that instead of using the Web to learn about the wide world, young people instead mostly use it to gossip about each other and follow pop culture, relentlessly keeping up with the ever-shifting lingua franca of being cool in school. The two most popular websites by far among students are Facebook and MySpace. "Social life is a powerful temptation," Bauerlein explains, "and most teenagers feel the pain of missing out."

This ceaseless pipeline of peer-to-peer activity is worrisome, he argues, not only because it crowds out the more serious stuff but also because it strengthens what he calls the "pull of immaturity." Instead of connecting them with parents, teachers and other adult figures, "[t]he web . . . encourages more horizontal modelling, more raillery and mimicry of people the same age." When Bauerlein tells an audience of college students, "You are six times more likely to know who the latest American Idol is than you are to know who the speaker of the U.S. House is," a voice in the crowd tells him: " 'American Idol' IS more important."

Bauerlein also frets about the nature of the Internet itself, where people "seek out what they already hope to find, and they want it fast and free, with a minimum of effort." In entering a world where nobody ever has to stick with anything that bores or challenges them, "going online habituates them to juvenile mental habits."

And all this feeds on itself. Increasingly disconnected from the "adult" world of tradition, culture, history, context and the ability to sit down for more than five minutes with a book, today's digital generation is becoming insulated in its own stultifying cocoon of bad spelling, civic illiteracy and endless postings that hopelessly confuse triviality with transcendence. Two-thirds of U.S. undergraduates now score above average on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory, up 30% since 1982, he reports.

First-class degrees double in a decade amid 'dumbing down' claims (January 2008)

A record 1 in 8 university graduates left with first class honours last year amid 'dumbing down' claims. Thirteen per cent receive the highest grade possible - nearly twice as many as a decade ago.

First-class degrees have traditionally been reserved for students who showed an exceptional breadth of original work. But some institutions now hand firsts to a third of students.

Separate research suggests elite institutions are increasing their haul of firsts and 2.1s faster than less prestigious rivals.

An eight-year analysis by Professor Mantz Yorke, a visiting professor of education at Lancaster University, revealed a widening gap in degree achievement at the Russell Group of 20 elite universities compared with former polytechnics.

His report also condemned as "unhealthy and damaging" the widely-held view that it is essential for students to achieve at least a 2.1 to get a good job.

The conclusions followed a report from the Quality Assurance Agency which found degree grades were becoming virtually meaningless. It warned top graduates could be missing out on jobs because rival candidates were marked too generously.

A-level pass rate rises for 25th year (August 2007)

Teenagers collecting their results at schools around the country today can expect good news: the A-level pass rate has gone up for the 25th year in succession and the proportion of exams awarded the top A grade has soared to more than a quarter.

The 1.2 per cent increase in entries awarded A grades sets a new record of 25.3 per cent while the overall A-E pass rate has risen by 0.3 per cent to 96.9 per cent. The unstoppable progress of the once gold standard qualification will help universities - which get the results in advance - to set a new record for the number of places confirmed before the candidates themselves get their results today.

But it will fuel pressure on the Government to admit that the changes it made six years ago – splitting the exam into six bite sized chunks and giving candidates the chance to re-sit to improve their marks – means the qualification is no longer fit for its original purpose of identifying academic potential. Faced with a 1.3 per cent rise in A-grades last summer the Government announced plans for a new A* grade, harder, more open-ended questions, fewer modules and an extended essay. But many fear the reforms will not go far enough to bring back the exam's traditional rigour.

A quarter of pupils ‘make no progress from 11 to 14’ (August 2007)

A report by the Department for Children, Schools and Families shows that many children in the first three years of secondary school are easily bored, shun books and feel too embarrassed to ask teachers or parents for help.

The Key Stage 3 exams show that about a third of pupils are failing to master the basics in all three subjects. An analysis showed that, in individual subjects, pupils are failing to make progress or even getting worse results in the first three years at secondary school. They compared results gained at the age of 11 to those gained at age 14 last year and found that almost 150,000 pupils made no progress in science, while 85,000 failed to improve their grades in English and 30,000 in maths.

Schools Standards Minister: A-levels Have Become Easier (August, 2004)

More pupils are achieving high grades at GCSE and A-level because the exams have been made easier for those who do not perform well in conventional IQ tests, David Miliband, the schools standards minister, said. Mr Miliband said there were eight different types of intelligence. These include: spatial, the ability to perceive the visual world accurately; intra-personal, the ability to understand oneself and one's emotions; and bodily-kinesthetic, the ability to use one's body to express oneself and meet goals. "Because different people are good at different things, it is silly to rely on a single metric of aptitude in measuring achievement," he said. "Increasingly, our tests and exams are focusing on a broader range of intellectual competence than was traditionally measured by conventional IQ tests."

That was why the proportion of pupils achieving five good GCSEs and three A-levels had risen year by year.

 

Daily Telegraph 18th August 2004.

David Miliband, the "Minister for School Standards", has done something very clever for a man in his thirties. He has invented a new language. For example, Mr Miliband writes in the Telegraph today: "The level of challenge in tests and exams is being maintained." By this he means, as our Education Editor reports, that exams, including A-levels, have been made easier for those who do not perform well on conventional IQ tests. Instead, candidates are tested on things like "intrapersonal intelligence" - the ability to understand oneself and one's emotions. Imagine the consequences if British safety standards suddenly measured a different kind of safety - not strength or reliability, but an "intrapersonal safety" that just made people feel safe inside.

Mr Miliband (first-class Oxford degree and a master's from MIT) is too clever to tell the real story. The real story is this. It was decided on the quiet that 50 per cent of youngsters should go to university. Not all of them would be academically bright, so universities would change, and A-levels would have to change, too. Or, in Milibabble, "because different people are good at different things, it is silly to rely on a single metric of aptitude in measuring achievement". If the new policy on universities had been presented clearly and openly, and debated, then parents, children, schools, universities and employers would not be so puzzled and upset.

 

A-level pass rate hits new record of 96pc (Daily Telegraph 19th August 2004)

A-levels continue their unstoppable rise today with the 15th successive increase in both the pass rate and the proportion of subjects awarded an A grade. Since 1989, the last year that A-level candidates had previously taken O-levels before they were replaced by GCSE, the proportion of A grades has almost doubled, from 11.4 per cent to 22.4, and the pass rate has shot up from 76 per cent to 96.

Over the last 10 years, the proportion of all subjects graded A or B - vital for admission to the most oversubscribed courses at the best universities - has soared by 70 per cent, suggesting a rise in achievement unparalleled in the history of examining.

Additionally: research published in August 2004 by SHL Group, which carries out psychometric testing for companies, shows that graduates entering employment today have poorer language and number skills than their counterparts eight years ago.

August 2004: examiners marking GCSE English literature papers complained that they have been banned from penalising poor spelling and grammar. One examiner said that in more than 10% of the 1,000 papers he had marked, even the word literature had been misspelled (usually as litriture). Bad grammar was rife, as was the phraseology of Australian soap opera - as in “Then she was like, what?” to denote surprise.

Standard of A-level Maths Has Slumped

A 15 year study conducted by York University has yielded the conclusion that the standards reached by students achieving the top grades for A-level maths has declined dramatically. Six lecturers have been employed by the University to teach the basics of the subject to students who enter to study electronics after achieving A or B grades at A-level.

The same 50 maths questions were given to students between 1985 and 2000 and though the number of students accepted to the University with A or B grades increased, their average test scores dropped from 78% to 42%. The test results were said to reveal alarming gaps in basic knowledge. “A student with an A today will, on average, obtain a score on our test that would have placed them near the bottom of the cohort 15 years ago”.

This study, backed by the Higher education Academy, supports growing complaints from lecturers in maths and engineering about the decline in the standard of work demanded by the A-level.

The "don't-blame-me" mentality

The "don't-blame-me" mentality is becoming more prevalent, according to a new study. Researchers say that young people increasingly believe that their fate is out of their hands and that parents, schools, government or bad luck are to blame for their misfortunes. The growth of the victim mentality has been accompanied by a rise in cynicism, self-centred behaviour and alienation, according to psychologists who analysed thousands of personality tests dating back to 1960. They believe that the shift in attitudes has had major consequences for society and may be leading to depression, higher crime rates and lower academic standards.

Dr Jean Twenge, a psychologist at San Diego State University who led the study, said: "From 1960 to 2002, college students increasingly believed that their lives were controlled by outside forces rather than their own efforts." The same "substantial" increase can also be seen in children aged nine to 14, she said. The impact of self-centred behaviour and the victim mentality can be seen across every part of society - from the reluctance to give up seats on public transport to voter apathy. It can be seen when people in debt blame banks for lending them too much money or when fat people blame fast-food advertising or hormones for obesity.

Dr Twenge and her colleagues studied personality tests carried out between 1960 and 2002 on 18,310 American college students and 6,554 children aged nine to 14. These tests all used a standard questionnaire to assess how much people take responsibility for their own misfortunes or blame others. The results of Dr Twenge's study are about to be published in Personality and Social Psychology Review. "In the 1950s, it was fashionable to believe that anyone could make it if they tried hard enough," she said. But social movements of the 1960s and 1970s argued that this was a myth, she added.

The impact of self-centred behaviour and the victim mentality can be seen across every part of society - from the reluctance to give up seats on public transport to voter apathy. It can be seen when people in debt blame banks for lending them too much money or when fat people blame fast-food advertising or hormones for obesity.

In recent court cases, defence attorneys sometimes explained that their client was abused as a child, which was why he or she turned to crime. Such arguments were rarely, if ever, used before the 1970s, according to the new study. Trend watchers have also noted that it has become more common to attribute children's difficulties in school to external and/or uncontrollable sources -attention deficit disorder or learning difficulties.

Dr Twenge believes that the "don't-blame-me" culture could partly explain record levels of depression and anxiety. Some academics have also linked the change to drug abuse, teenage pregnancy, crime and falling standards at school. "Many members of modern society feel alienated and apathetic. Whether we can turn this tide remains to be seen," she said. "For now, young people increasingly feel that their fate is beyond their control."

Prof Frank Furedi, a sociologist at Kent University who has studied changing attitudes to blame and risk, said the shift could be seen in Britain. It was reflected in the medicalisation of human behaviour, a trend that has grown exponentially with little positive result. The changes were also reflected in day-to-day interactions, he said. "Nobody will stand up on my commuter train from London to Kent if an old person gets on. If you are under the age of 50, you just look at your shoelaces."

This research can easily be linked to studies of cultural narcissism and research showing that the incidence of narcissistic personality disorder has increased in modern Western societies.

Composer's note of anger over music education (November 2005

SCOTLAND'S foremost classical composer has condemned the standard of music education in schools, claiming it is fuelling the "terminal decline" of the arts. James MacMillan, composer and conductor for the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, fears Scottish music faces a "doomsday scenario" as interest in classical concerts dwindles and audience numbers plunge to embarrassingly low levels.

MacMillan said the new syllabus for music Higher, due to be introduced in autumn 2006, will make the situation even worse. He claimed lessons already leave children poorly prepared for performing, composing and reading music, but said he thought the new course set out by the Scottish Qualifications Authority will exacerbate these problems. He noted “a monumental dumbing-down in Scottish music education, involving a drastic plunge in standards with catastrophic potential for Scottish music’.

Teachers have also expressed concerns about the new Higher music syllabus, claiming it misses out key components that are essential for preparing pupils for serious careers in music. In the new curriculum, musical literacy is optional while listening papers have changed from deep analytical essays of musical scores to multiple-choice exercises. A Higher certificate now gives pupils the equivalent of a grade four in the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music exams. Around 10 years ago it was worth a grade seven. But universities still expect pupils to obtain the equivalent of a grade seven for entrance to music courses, and many are now doing remedial work to help Scottish students catch up in their first year.

John Wallace, principal of the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, said: "We have been worried about the qualifications in schools for a long time and it is putting children at a disadvantage. The SQA qualifications do not guarantee students entry into university."

Professor Peter Nelson, head of music at Edinburgh University, added: "This has been a concern for us. Politicians often forget that for classical music to have survived for as long as it has, it must be popular. But they have turned the arts into an enemy and stigmatised classical music as something for the elite. People need a little bit of education to enjoy classical music, in the same way they need education to read and write. At the moment they are not even getting that."

Is British Education in Decline? OhmyNews, South Korea. August 2006

There are several reasons to suspect that England's incredible examination pass rates do not necessarily reflect high academic quality. Firstly, the increases in the number of students attaining the best grades have been verging on the Stalinist.

For example, in the academic year 1997-1998, only 46.3 percent of GCSE candidates received five or more marks in the A star to C bracket, whereas by 2004-2005, the equivalent percentage was 55.7 percent. Similarly, at A-level, 46 percent of grades awarded to students fell within the A-C category in 1992; in 2005, nearly 70 percent of marks did so. Such spikes are so revolutionary that they are unlikely to be realistic.

Secondly, many within the examinations industry believe that expected standards of knowledge have slipped considerably. In Aug 2001, Jeffrey Robinson, a senior examiner in GCSE Mathematics for the OCR exam board, on noting that the mark for a C grade had been lowered from 65 percent in 1989 to a mere 48 percent in 2001, logically asserted that students currently getting A and B grades would have scraped Cs and Ds in a previous era. Many teachers have observed that it is now possible to get top marks at GCSE level without even using standard textbooks or revision guides, but comic-book style revision material from publishers such as Coordination Group Publications.

Thirdly -- and most soberingly from the perspective of the British economy -- are the findings of the OECD's International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS), which aims to measure and compare literacy skills across twenty countries. Over 50 percent of the U.K. population were deemed to not have met the minimum desirable threshold to cope with the demands of everyday life, with 20 percent possessing only very basic literacy faculties; so basic, in fact, that individuals operating at this level might have difficulty following simple written instructions, such as reading a label of instructions on a bottle of medicine.

Moreover, this trend is especially pronounced in the younger generations who are achieving sumptuous examination results. An Aug 2004 survey by the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) reported that 37 percent of firms were not satisfied with the basic literacy and numeracy levels of school leavers, and that British industry as a whole was diverting billions of pounds into providing training in elementary skills of this type.

The children have their GCSEs, but no real education (August 2006)

Last month Alan Johnson became the latest in a line of Education Secretaries to accuse such critics of seeking "to detract from the achievements of our young people". Yet the reverse is surely the case. It is those who liberally dole out higher grades for lower performances who are truly detracting from the achievements of those young people who actually deserve to gain decent exam results. As we report today, a C grade in the GCSE maths paper set by one examination board could be achieved with just 16 per cent. Put another way, a student who was 84 per cent wrong could nevertheless have been awarded a C grade.

For the 18th year in succession, the proportion of GCSEs passed at A to C grade has increased, up 1.4 per cent to 62.4 per cent. The A-level results have been improving for the past 24 years and this year almost a quarter of candidates managed the top A grade. Yet despite the forced praises from ministers, the public senses that the figures are not borne out by the facts. Academics tend to be wary of publicly querying the results but one who has been brave enough to do so is Allan White, of the Statistical Advisory Service at the University of Birmingham. "What is definitely clear is that A-level standards have fallen to a marked extent," he says. He even uses the phrase "dumbed down", relating that universities are having to restructure their courses to take account of the lack of learning of their students.

What is equally perturbing, though, is that so many children are failing to meet even these less rigorous demands. Almost half of 16-year-olds failed to achieve at least a C grade in GCSE maths and only 60 per cent managed it in English. That amounts to an awful lot of children inadequately equipped with the basics of life.

David Orr. Verbicide

The word 'verbicide' means 'murder of a word,' coined on the analogy of 'suicide' ('murder of one's self'), 'homicide' ('murder of one's fellow man'), etc. It can also mean 'murderer of a word,' in the same way that a 'suicide' can mean a 'murderer of one's self' and a 'homicide' can mean a 'murderer of one's fellow man'.

According to David Orr’s 2000 article, “Verbicide”, “In the past 50 years…the working vocabulary of the average 14 year-old has declined from some 25,000 words to 10,000 words. This is not merely a decline in numbers of words but in the capacity to think.”

“In the past 50 years, by one reckoning, the working vocabulary of the average 14 year-old has declined from some 25,000 words to 10,000 words. This is not merely a decline in numbers of words but in the capacity to think. It also signifies that there has been a steep decline in the number of things that an adolescent needs to know and to name in order to get by in an increasingly homogenized and urbanized consumer society. This is a national tragedy virtually unnoticed in the media. It is no mere coincidence that in roughly the same half century the average person has come to recognize over 1000 corporate logos, but can now recognize fewer than 10 plants and animals native to his or her locality”.

He makes the case that as a society we are losing vocabulary. Estimates say that 50 years ago the average 14-year-old had a working vocabulary of 25,000 words. It is now 10,000. The vocabulary we do have is increasingly specialized, because of the highly technological age we live in. Technical language is very useful, Orr says, for “describing fragments of the world but not for describing how these fit into a coherent whole.” And, he continues, “it is coherence our culture lacks.”

Orr doesn’t blame the death of vocabulary merely on TV and video games. One of the most insightful parts of his article shows how a decline in language stems from a postmodern worldview:

“However manifested, our linguistic decline is aided and abetted by academics, including whole departments specializing in various forms of postmodernism and the deconstruction of one thing or another. They have propounded the idea that everything is relative, hence largely inconsequential, and that the use of language is primarily an exercise in power, hence to be devalued. They have taught, in other words, a pseudo-intellectual contempt for clarity, careful argument, and felicitous expression. Being scholars of their word they also write without clarity, argument, and felicity”.

He makes an important point: “If we do not have the language to discuss what is important — “ultimate meanings, ethics, public purposes, or the means by which we live” — we will soon lose the ability to think about those things. “We cannot expect to cope with problems that we cannot name.” In the end, we will be left with one way to express our dissatisfaction with ourselves, the universe, or God: “That sucks.”

David Orr. Verbicide.

The reading habits of British teenagers (March, 2008)

A report published this month shows the favourite reading material of teenagers is Heat magazine. The results are contained in a report called Read Up, Fed Up: Exploring Teenage Reading Habits in the UK Today, which was commissioned by organisers of the National Year of Reading, which Gordon Brown launched in January.

The celebrity gossip and news magazine comes top when 11- to 14-year-olds are asked to name their favourite read, followed by teenage girls' magazine Bliss, which comes joint second with reading song lyrics online. They are followed by reading computer game cheats advice online, and then reading your own blog or fan fiction.

The first books in the list are the Harry Potter series at number five. Harry Potter is also number eight in the most loathed reading material top 10.

The most loathed read is homework. It is followed by Shakespeare, books of over 100 pages, books assigned by school/teachers, encyclopedias and dictionaries, the Financial Times, anything in another language, and stories about skinny celebrities in magazines - although the cover and pages six to 12 of this week's favourite read Heat are devoted to the subject.

This research presents a dire and unfortunate portrait of the reading habits and attitudes of British teenagers.

British People Think Churchill Didn't Exist (November 2007)

Britons are losing a grip on fact and fiction, with nearly one in four believing Winston Churchill and Florence Nightingale are myths and more than half thinking Sherlock Holmes actually existed. In a new survey, 47% of people thought that Richard the Lionheart, the 12th-century English king, was a myth.

They were also under the impression that Charles Dickens, one of the most famous writers in English literature, was a fictional character himself.

Indian political leader Gandhi; Cleopatra, ruler of ancient Egypt; adventurer Sir Walter Raleigh; British military leader Bernard Montgomery; and Boudica, famous for leading a major uprising against occupying Roman forces, were all thought to be characters dreamt up for films and books.

Britons thought fictional characters like Sherlock Holmes and pilot Biggles were real, according to the survey of 3,000 people commissioned to celebrate UKTV Gold's forthcoming Robin Hood season.

Over half of those questioned (58%) believe that the detective created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle for his novels of the late 1880s actually lived in Baker Street, with sidekick Watson.

A-levels have got two grades less difficult (August 2007

This is the conclusion of a study done for the Office of National Statistics by Durham University’s curriculum, evaluation and management centre. Its approach is to compare the A Level performance of pupils with the same pupils' performance in a standardised test of academic ability known as ITDA (International Test of Developed Academic Ability). The data has been collected every year since 1988, and currently covers 1400 schools.

Thus, for English Literature, pupils with the same ITDA score are now getting an A Level over one grade higher, and for Biology, nearly two grades higher. For Maths, the increase is an astonishing three and a half grades. Overall, the change is about two grades, as reported.

The authors of the study conclude:

"A level grades achieved in 2006 certainly do correspond to a lower level of general academic ability than the same grades would have done in previous years. Whether or not they are better taught makes no difference to this interpretation; the same grade corresponds to a lower level of general ability."

Frank Close, professor of physics at Oxford University says "Every physics department has been aware that A-level students do not have the same knowledge base they did even 10 years ago. This is no reflection on intelligence, but an indication that the syllabus has been dumbed down."

British Teenagers (September 2004)

British teenage girls rank among the world leaders in terms of obesity, drinking and smoking cannabis, according to statistics compiled by The Economist. Fifteen-year-olds have the fourth highest obesity rate, are the third biggest users of cannabis and come first for the amount of alcohol they drink. They also watch more television than their age group in most other countries. Last year, a report published by the British Medical Association said that the drinking, eating, sexual, drug-taking and smoking habits of adolescents in Britain were responsible for creating a public health timebomb.

'Shocking ignorance' about History (October 2004)

As survey, which involved nearly 2,000 people, "appears to raise the question of how and where we acquire our general knowledge of history", said Channel 4, which commissioned the research. A spokesman for the programme said that the relatively poor performance of 15- to 24-year-olds might have implications for the way history was now taught in schools. The research revealed that many people do not know the most basic facts about the monarchy and its history.

Almost half of all adults could not say how many wives Henry VIII had and only 40 per cent of them was able to name William the Conqueror as the victor of the Battle of Hastings.

Young people, despite having been in education most recently, proved particularly ignorant about royal history. On each of the 10 questions asked in a poll to accompany a major Channel 4 series on the monarchy, 15- to 24-year-olds were far less likely than older people to know the correct answer.

Just over one in 10 knew that John was the king who signed Magna Carta and less than a quarter could name either the most recent monarch to abdicate (Edward VIII) or the opposing sides in the Wars of the Roses (Yorkists and Lancastrians). Only 16 per cent knew that James was the name of the first monarch to sit on the thrones of England and Scotland simultaneously. Fifty five per cent of adults and 34 per cent of those aged 15 to 24 correctly named Queen Victoria as the longest serving monarch while the identity of the king who was executed after the Civil War was known to only 38 per cent and 26 per cent respectively.

UK Slips in World Education League (December, 2004)

The United Kingdom has slipped significantly down the world education league, particularly in maths. In the second round of tests conducted by the Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) involving more than 250,000 15-year-olds in 41 countries, it dropped in three years from fourth in science to 11th, from seventh in reading to 11th and from eighth in maths to 18th. The report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation (OECD) is a blow to the Government, which hailed the 2001 results as a triumphant vindication of its policies.

The test was taken by 9,200 pupils in 361 schools. They were judged to be representative of 23 million 15-year-olds and all took the same two-hour paper-and-pencil test, translated into the national language. The questions, at six levels of difficulty, were designed to test not knowledge of the curriculum but "how well students can apply what they have learned in school in real-life situations".

Finland, where there are no wholly independent schools, was the star of this year's table: top in reading, as it was three years ago; top in science; and second in maths, only marginally behind Hong Kong. Other star performers were South Korea, the Netherlands and Liechtenstein in maths; Korea, Canada and Australia in reading; and Japan, Hong Kong and Korea in science.

The UK's declining performance in reading, which contrasts sharply with rising scores in national tests, is particularly embarrassing for the Government because the standard of Pisa's tests is held constant. Questions are repeated from year to year, whereas the comparability of national tests is questionable. Since the first Pisa round, the UK's reading score has dropped from 523 to 507.

U.K. shows pitiful state of arts funding

The London Guardian reported this week that the culturally literate in England were "devastated" over budget news regarding the British government's commitment to arts funding. According to the newest budget figures, Arts Council England will have its budget frozen from 2005 until 2008. When you account for inflation, the fact that the agency's appropriation will be stuck at 413 million pounds, says the head of Arts Council England, essentially means that arts funding in Britain is facing a 30 million-pound cut over the next three years.

B grade for pupils who get 83% wrong (January, 2005).

Pupils have been awarded a B grade in a maths GCSE exam despite scoring only 17 per cent. The pass marks for the new exam, which was taken last summer by 7,500 children from 65 schools and is due to be introduced nationwide next year, were an all-time low. Pupils sitting GCSE maths last year had to achieve about 40 per cent to get a B grade. But with the new exam, designed by the Cambridge-based exam board OCR, those who got as little as 17 per cent were given a B, while those scoring 45 per cent were awarded an A. Kevin Evans, a maths teacher, said: "I have picked up concerns from teachers that people moving on to A-level who have got a grade B have very weak knowledge."

The new exam has been designed to replace the "three-tier" GCSE, where teenagers sit a higher, intermediate or foundation paper depending on their ability. Pupils taking the lowest paper cannot achieve the all-important grade C. Candidates will instead take a "two-tier" GCSE. The more difficult paper allows pupils to get A* to B grades, while a less difficult one covers grades C and D.

Family and Civilisation

In 1947, Dr. Carle Zimmerman wrote a book called Family and Civilisation. He reviewed the decline of multiple civilisations and empires, and found eight patterns of domestic behaviour that signalled the decline of a civilisation:

1) Marriage loses its sacredness; is frequently broken by divorce.

2) Traditional meaning of the marriage ceremony is lost.

3) Feminist movements abound.

4) Increased public disrespect for parents and authority in general.

5) Acceleration of juvenile delinquency, promiscuity, and rebellion.

6) Refusal of people with traditional marriages to accept family responsibilities.

7) Growing desire for and acceptance of adultery.

8) Increasing interest in and spread of sexual perversions and sex-related crimes.

Literacy (The Guardian, April, 2005)

One in five British schoolchildren cannot read or write properly at the age of 11. A committee of MPs has expressed alarm and called on the government to experiment with phonetic teaching. A study of 300 pupils in Scotland suggests that this method has a dramatic effect on literacy, especially on children from deprived backgrounds and for boys.

Dumbing Down of Literature Exam (April, 2005)

Anne Fine, a leading author, has criticised a new exam syllabus that ignores classic literature in favour of modern works. She says that is is “a real sign of dumbing down”, adding that “many of the books put in front of children nowadays simply do not merit the amount of time which is spent on them”. The GCSE examination is drawn up by AQA, one of the three exam boards in England.

Incorrect spelling not penalised in English tests (May 2005)

Examiners marking an English test taken by 600,000 14-year-olds have been told not to deduct marks for incorrect spelling on the main writing paper, worth nearly a third of the overall marks. The paper, called the "longer writing task", is part of the national curriculum English test taken in more than 3,000 secondary schools on May 6. The tests are regarded as a good indicator of GCSE achievement. This ruling was issued by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, a government organisation.

Ministers are particularly concerned about exam results this year, having failed to achieve their 2004 target of 75 per cent of 14-year-olds reaching the level expected in English. Just 71 per cent reached the standard, despite a multi-million pound Government strategy aimed at improving lessons in secondary schools. This ruling can therefore be seen as a further move to reduce standards in order to meet centrally-determined targets.

School Science Changes (September 2005)

PUPILS at GCSE are to be allowed to abandon learning traditional “hard” science, including the meaning of the periodic table, in favour of “soft” science such as the benefits of genetic engineering and healthy eating.
The statutory requirement for pupils to learn a science subject will be watered down under a new curriculum introduced next year. There will be no compulsion to master the periodic table — the basis of chemistry — nor basic scientific laws that have informed the work of all the great scientists such as Newton and Einstein.

The changes, which the government believes will make science more “relevant” to the 21st century, have been attacked by scientists as a “dumbing down” of the subject.

In June the government had to announce financial incentives to tackle a shortage of science teachers. Academics have estimated that a fifth of science lessons are taught by teachers who are not adequately qualified.

Most children now study for the double-award science GCSE, which embraces elements of biology, chemistry and physics. This GCSE will be scrapped and ministers have agreed that from next year all 14-year-olds will be required to learn about the general benefits and risks of contemporary scientific developments, in a new science GCSE. A harder science GCSE will also be introduced as an optional course.

One expert involved in devising the new system believes it will halve the number of state school pupils studying “hard” science. Independent schools and more talented pupils in the state sector are likely to shun the new papers in favour of the GCSEs in the individual science disciplines of physics, chemistry and biology. These will continue to require pupils to achieve an understanding of scientific principles.

The new exams were devised after proposals by academics at King’s College London, who told ministers that science lessons were often “dull and boring” and required pupils to recall too many facts.

Professor Colin Blakemore, chief executive of the Medical Research Council, warned that reducing the “hard” science taught in schools would create problems. “I can understand the government’s motives,” he said. “There is a crisis of public confidence in science which is reducing the progress of policy on such issues as nuclear energy and stem cell research. But sixth-formers are already arriving at university without the depth of knowledge required.” Mo Afzal, head of science at the independent Warwick school, said: “These changes will widen the gap between independent and state schools. Even the GCSE that is designed for those going on to A-level science is not as comprehensive as the test it replaces.”

Four in 10 primary pupils fail the three Rs (August 2006)

A damning set of education figures crept out on the day that record-breaking GCSE results were revealed. Four in ten children have failed to master the three Rs by the time they leave primary school, the Government has admitted. Ministers were accused of classic New Labour "burying bad news" tactics as it emerged that:

• More than 230,000 youngsters finished primary school this year without the proficiency in reading, writing and maths to cope with the secondary curriculum.
• Almost one boy in ten will move up to comprehensive school almost completely incapable of reading.
• And seven-year-olds are performing worse in the three Rs than last year. The figures exposing the devastating scale of underperformance in subjects which employers and parents regard as crucial were posted on the Department for Education website.

Its key stage national curriculum tests showed that children's performance in reading actually went backwards, keeping ministers wide of targets they should have achieved in 2002. And more stretching 2006 goals for raising the attainment of 11-year- olds were missed by a huge margin even though billions has been committed over nine years to literacy and numeracy initiatives.

Ministers' chances of ever meeting the targets faded further with the disclosure that seven-year-olds' performance dipped in all three key subjects of English, maths and science for what is believed to be the first time in the history of the tests.

Improvements in test results for 11-year-olds have ground to a halt in English while maths crept up one percentage point. It means only 60 per cent of pupils - and 54 per cent of boys - reached the standard expected of a youngster leaving primary school in reading, writing and maths. A decline in boys' reading standards was largely responsible for flagging English results, the figures showed. More than one in five boys failed to reach expected levels in reading - and almost one in ten will start secondary school with rudimentary reading skills. Only 59 per cent achieved the required 'level four' standard in writing despite improvements on last year.

A third of 5-year-old British children lack basic literacy skills (October 2006)

Nearly a fifth of five-year-olds cannot write their own name and fewer than half have reached their expected level of learning, official figures show. An assessment of 535,000 five-year-olds in England found that, after a year of schooling, 91,000 could not write simple words such as “mum” or “cat” or hold a pencil correctly. The number of children who had mastered basic literacy and numeracy was much lower than last year, as was the number of children who reached expected levels of physical development. Boys proved worst at completing writing tasks, with 21 per cent unable to write key words compared with 11 per cent of girls.

About 21,420 children could not count to ten and 39 per cent could not hear or pronounce the short vowel sounds in words such as “pen”, “hat” and “dog”, while 17 per cent could not recognise or name all the letters of the alphabet. Overall, 44.6 per cent of five-year-olds reached the expected level of improvement after their first year of primary school, a drop of 3.2 percentage points on 2005.

The Department for Education and Skills has defined a “good level of development” as children achieving six or more points across 13 scales in areas such as personal, social and emotional development, reading, writing and maths. However, the figures suggest that the Government will fall short of its target of 53 per cent of five-year-olds in England reaching this level by 2008.