Comments on: Why British Education Sucks

By: George

George — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 16:13:00 +0000

Commie.. you the man!

By: Max

Max — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 19:32:00 +0000

Your point about American education being good and effective made me laugh. American schools are smelly piles of shit next to Finnish schools who actually know how to teach their children. I’ve spoken to many American students who claim that their exams are all about memorisation and the abysmal drop-out rate among American students in high school shows that it is not an education system that should be copied around the world and it isn’t copied anyway.

American universities are better than British universities but this is really due to American universities charging way more than their British counterparts. They therefore get a lot more funding than British universities.

Plus, your last point about sacking private tutors was stupid. Private tutors are exactly that. They’re private and not easily sacked since the majority are self-employed. They also provide a valuable service. And your assumption that sacking them would solve the problem of peadophile teachers is stupid. I’ve been taught by numerous private tutors during my school years and they were the most fantastic teachers I ever had and many said to me that they would never teach in a school so I doubt sacking them would direct them to teach in schools. And none of them were paedophiles.

I know British schools are awful and fail too many students but your solutions don’t seem to make much sense. The system that is currently in place needs to be dropped and a new one built on the Finnish system needs to be built up.

By: Suraj Mistry

Suraj Mistry — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 02:17:00 +0000

Its interesting, how you said abolish Professional education. I live in the U.S., and I always wished we had something like that here, like where I could attend a college and study a course in CPA or CMA an get earn my qualification that way, as oppossed to getting a Bachelors Degree and then taking a bunch of exams. Is professional education bad altogher or is it just the way it is run in the UK ?

By: Daniel Pullen

Daniel Pullen — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 15:20:00 +0000

I really don’t see how you can sack private tutors since most are self employed. Isn’t it up to the individual/Parents to provide and pay for extra tuition anyway, so i fail to see how you could ban them from providing a service for the sake of proving a point to failing teachers .
Although I agree with much of what is being discussed, i can’t help but roll my eyes slightly at the same old stereotypes and generalisations about young people in Britain (many with decent degrees) apparently all being illiterate, incompetent and moronic. Perhaps it would occur to some that this is merely a stereotype being perpetuated by UK employers who need a legal justification for only recruiting foreign workers for about half the pay that would normally be given. i.e. BP and Rolls Royce who seam to claim that the UK doesn’t have any qualified engineers and therefore must recruit from the US and Germany. (those companies won’t recruit engineers who qualified through apprenticeship schemes)

By: Summer Rose

Summer Rose — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 21:20:00 +0000

Finally, someone who shares my exact views on education! I applaud!

By: Commie B

Commie B — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 22:33:00 +0000

Noted.

By: Charles Warren

Charles Warren — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 09:08:00 +0000

“English” always capitalized.

By: Awan

Awan — Fri, 27 May 2011 00:54:43 +0000

I completely agree with most of the points. I am currently studying at the University of Glasgow and my Master programme was the worst academic experience. I am still badly regretting my decision to come to UK. I just thing there University education is a complete trap, once a student is in, he has no choice but to complete his degree.

By: Agreed!

Agreed! — Sun, 14 Nov 2010 20:28:37 +0000

I have to say I absolutely agree with this article! I came across this site while searching about universities in UK. I’m currently taking a course through Oxford University and was expecting to learn a great deal and thinking it would be more in-depth than in North America. I was WRONG! I actually fell asleep during one of the sessions on Origins of Human Behaviour. I have never fell alseep in class in my life before and I was pretty surprised myself! This was supposed to be a 4th year course for undergrad studies and what we have learned so far made me laugh because as Morgan said, it’s equivalent to high school, well for me it was anyways!

By: James

James — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 17:54:09 +0000

Both the U.S. system and U.K system both have problems and some of them are very similar. That being said, the UK system was a lot harsher than what I have experienced in the U.S. as an overseas student. It seemed like I was typecast and deemed for failure in the schools I went to in England. Students are pigeonholed by their economic standing, which is something that probably happens everywhere, but I do think its worse in the UK. I remember being put into the lowest “set” according to my “intellegence” in middle school and high school. That was an experience let me tell you lol. I did, and still do have some learning difficulties, but I am above average intellegence regardless of this. Its something that UK schools do not seem to recognize in my opinion.

By: Ahmed

Ahmed — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 12:22:01 +0000

Let me give you an example. A student from a South Asian country is doing PhD here in the UK. The student’s proficiency in English is very low. The student’s advisor asked him/her to hire the service of a professional writer for the thesis. The student now got the PhD.

How do I know all these? I was asked to revise the thesis for the student. I gave up after looking through 3-4 pages and had to say sorry to the student. It was that bad.

Education is now a business.

By: Morgan

Morgan — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 22:13:57 +0000

I just came across this article while browsing the internet and must say that I agree completely. My host university is in San Francisco and I studied abroad this semester in London. I thought that I was going to learn so much from this school, I WAS WRONG. I felt as if the education I received here was completely equivalent to what I would have learned in high school. Not only that but the graders do not grade students by knowledge, but merely just to give a pass or fail, which might I add does nothing positive for my GPA since A’s are never given. I have found that teachers are not helpful, they have often told me to ask someone else. On one of my papers that I felt I was graded unfairly on I went to the professor to discuss my grade and she basically told me they were not allowed to discuss papers, WHAT IS THAT?! Another teacher told me to structure my essays in the exact format I would have done in maybe 5th grade. Long story short, I completely agree with this article, and I wish I had stayed in the states to received a better education. You don’t realize what you have till you try something new… *Morgan*