Long-term planning needed for education of our children

From: Stephen Peter Kurij, Well Head Lane, Sowerby Bridge, West Yorkshire.

FURTHER to your article concerning current Government reforms in education (Yorkshire Post, December 30), Michael Steer of Thornhill Community Academy is quite right to call for the permanent removal of politics from our system of state education, particularly if we are to prosper and grow against a backdrop of ever-increasing globalised competition.

In the early stages of a new century, and if we are to continue to compete successfully on a global stage, it simply does not make sense – educationally, economically or financially – for successive, politically divergent governments to come along and “rearrange the deckchairs” as part of their five-year plans – we need to make plans for the education of our greatest asset, the young, on a much longer-term basis.

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If we did, then we might just see ourselves rising up the international league tables, although it has to be said that these often do not compare like with like.

In South Korea, for example, children have to do “double shifts” at school every day, resulting in highly stressed individuals and a way above average child suicide rate, whereas in China we see schooling taking place within the context of a one party system where the needs of individuals are subordinate to the perceived needs of the collective.

Neither does it make sense for whichever political party is in power to doggedly place party political ideology above the national educational interest, for education can only become more and more central to our continuing success as a nation.

The effects of globalisation may have unpredictable consequences on the social fabric of economically-challenged, developed countries, where traditional political ideologies and institutions and economic models may be placed under unprecedented pressure.

From: Adrienne Stevens, Redmire, Leyburn, North Yorkshire.

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MAY I bring a ray of hope to Mr SB Oliver (Yorkshire Post, December 31) and assure him that there are teachers, tutors and writers (myself included) trying very hard to reverse the decline in the standards of both written and spoken English.

We are not helped by broadcasters who don’t know the difference between an adjective and an adverb, who pronounce ‘to’ as ‘ter’ and printers/proof-readers whose grasp of homophones and the use of the apostrophe is, at best, hazy.

Of course Mr Gove’s aspirations put fear into the hearts of those whose own knowledge is inadequate.

However, there is nothing I have seen in the proposed Government guidelines on spelling, grammar and punctuation which should 
not be in every young 
person’s communication “tool kit”.

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Nobody is suggesting it is easy to achieve the desired result but there are many passionate teachers of English in our schools and institutions who welcome the encouragement to teach the importance of accurate, fluent, precise and interesting language in order to facilitate all types of communication.