By Gavin Mackintosh-
UK students hold much sway in British elections, and the government must wake up to that fact.
Students make up a large number of the electorate ; their votes must never be taken for granted.
When young people are motivated to vote, the collective impact of any unified position they take can be be enormous. The exorbitant level of tuition fees for University students has long been a point of complaint . Their moans and complaints were ignored constantly by this government.
Then came Jeremy Corbyn, smart enough to know he could attain several votes through the strategic targeting of students. His offer to scrap tuition fees.With that proposition, he automatically captured a large number of voters that nearly caused a major upset.
CUTS
Secondary school teachers and authorities are generally opposed to the Conservative party over the raging issue of funding cuts. Without an explanation or justification of those cuts, school chiefs , staff and students will be disposed against the current government.
Secondary school students are too young to vote but their teachers and parents altogether contribute to large numbers .
PRIMARY SCHOOL SAT COMPLAINTS
Add to that the similar complaints in priamary schools that the SAT exams are too hard for their students. The eye of media.com received specific complaints in the last week from primary school teachers and parents about the government annual SAT exams being too difficult. They wanted us to raise this as an election issue in our articles, but the editor felt it could unfairly influence the election.
ASSESSMENT OF SATS
Instead, the agreed plan was for us to examine the SAT exams in detail ourselves. That staff ans students complain about SAT exams may not be a legitimate issue, if priamary school students are not taught or tested well enough.
An objective assesement of SAT exams being too difficult will have to include the level and quality of teaching , and the seriousness of priamary school children to learn and work hard.
Priamary school children are kids , but must be trained to develop a required level of discipline for their age required to help their academic developent. Why that level should be is being assessed by the eye of media.com.
PAMPERED
However, findings during our research on schools suggests that most primary school children are pampered and do not work systematically or consistently enough.
That may be the real issue with the SATS, but the complaints from priamary school teachers can nevertheless not be ignored. If the SATS of a fair standard, it must be demonstrated to priamary school authorities and parents that this is the case.
A glance at the SATS Maths and English grammar test questions suggest that hard working and well taught priamary school children can pass them,.
This writer excelled in all his priamary school tests and passed his eleven plus into a good grammar school. However,.That was due to good parent training and personal hardwork at that age , and in the years leading up to it.
Frankly , the requirement is on priamary schools to train their children to work hard enough in the two years leading to their SAT’s. What the fair benchmark of hardwork is for children that age.may be debatable, but disciplined children must work hard. Establishing this much needed system of hardwork through direction is what the Conservative government may need to do .
Otherwise, if priamary school heads and teachers feel they are being ignored , their votes will always add to that of disgruntled secondary school teachers and University students and their parents. The votes of UK students as a country is poweful, the election results proved this. Theresa May’ s government have good intentions to raise the standard of education. The cuts seem to reflect the view that her government may have been disappointed in the poor standards of many schools that they didn’t consider the schools worth all the funding.
The academic standard of many UK public secondary schools is disappointing . There seems to be a handful of very good public secondary schools in the UK because of bad backgrounds and stubborn misbehaved children. The Conservative government has been trying to raise standards by introducing more grammar schools. However , this has been frowned upon . It’s not a bad idea if the children can prepare well for it, otherwise what we get is resistance. Resistance that becomes votes that can be damaging in the end.