My oldest child is in the second
year of high school. The new
Scottish qualifications that replace Standard grades and Intermediates are National 4 and National 5, and my local high school now wants its pupils
to choose the subjects that they will take to this level over the next two
academic years. As well as the four core
subjects of English, Maths, PE and Religious Education, six others are
chosen; one from each of the following groups:
When I was thirteen, I would have chosen the same subjects
as my mates did so I could hang around with them, or avoided subjects where I
hated the teachers. A couple of years
can make all the difference between making decisions out of some sort of
realism rather than just wanting to look cool.
But the way the subjects are laid out shows two big problems that the
school system dumps onto everyone else.
First, despite all the evidence that this country’s
workforce can’t sell a single thing overseas unless it’s to another English-speaker,
all foreign languages have been sidelined in such a way that they can be
avoided altogether by someone just looking for easy subjects.
The other is the redundancy of some of the more “modern”
subjects. Religious, Moral and
Philosophical Studies sounds like a big deal but any decent teaching of History
will cover the ethics behind conflicts and political events. Accounting is only really useful to people
who have already proved their worth at maths, which most fourteen-year olds
have yet to do.
I wonder if the exercise is more to make schools and their pass statistics look good
than provide the universities, colleges and the job market with qualifications
that would be of any use.
