What do you think of the Education system in the UK?

Do you think that schools are doing better or worse than when you were at school? How do you think schools are performing? Could they do more, or a better job? Are exams getting easier? Are children getting better or worse education than previously? Should there be more private schools? Or should all education be free to all? Should they raise or lower the school leaving age? What would you do if you were in charge?

I think that the quality of education in this country has fallen considerably. Children are more commonly leaving school unable to read and write as well as they should. Discipline in the schools is practically nil, as the kids know that they can get away with whatever they want.

The education system itself seems to be more aimed towards producing workers for business that just about have enough skills to do the job, but are not intelligent enough to question anything or cause any problems. There seems to be less and less encouragement for people to move into purely academic areas of study, insisting that they all must study something that will be useful in the business marketplace. This is causing a real brain-drain in this country, where each generation seems to be coming out less and less educated and less and less able to do anything other than fit into the tight slot that was moulded for them in school.

Further education is badly effected by student shaving to pay towards their education. This was a terrible idea. I can see why it was brought in, because many people felt unhappy about students apparently "lazing around" for 3 - 5 years at the tax-payers expense and not earning money. But what people forget is that this "lazing around" was a vital part of university education too, as it was during these times that the students discussed things amongst themselves, "discovered themselves" and tested out various theories and belief systems that allowed them to grow as a person and to learn to think in different ways. Now the students have to spend every moment that they aren't in lectures in work trying to support themselves and pay for their courses. This is causing a great loss to society, as it means that most of these students are forced into thinking in terms of getting as much money as possible instead of taking their time to think abstract thoughts, developing new theories, following new ideas and experimenting with who they are. This means that we have fewer examples of the great minds of the past, because the students are too busy being practical and trying to make money than they should be spending thinking.

Further I believe that all education should be free, because the more educated people become, the better jobs they tend to get when they finish studying, and so the more tax they pay, and so in the long run it makes more financial sense to not try and get the money out of them while they are studying but to let them get on with it and benefit from the resulting higher educated population.

I think that it is disgusting that anyone should attempt to make a profit from education, as by definition in doing so, they will try and cut costs (so reducing the quality of the education), while maximising income (so excluding those that can't afford it).

The point of free education is to open it up to all people, as there is actually more likelihood of someone from a poor background to become an expert in their chosen field of study than someone from a rich background, as the poorer person tends to be more driven to succeed.

One thing that I would like to see brought back into normal schooling is the teaching of Latin. This may seem strange to many people, as it is a dead language and considered an elitist subject to study, but my view is that Latin is the basis of our language and by learning it in school it allows people to understand the meaning of many words that they had never encountered before, it leaves them with a wider vocabulary, better able to express themselves and better able to study other languages (as well as being better able to speak English itself).

Another way that the education system has declined recently is that it's another victim of Labour's obsession with league tables and assessments. Exams have always been partly about giving a good impression rather than really being a test of someone's skills, but this has become more obvious lately. Teachers end up teaching things just because they're likely to be in the exam, under pressure that the school will look bad if the exam results aren't better than the year before. This means that children aren't being taught for the right reason - i.e. to learn for its own sake.
As someone once said: "nothing grows by being measured".