This BBC report on Gordon Brown’s focus for secondary education explains…
England’s secondary curriculum is being overhauled to “focus on getting the basics right”, the government says.”
Subjects such as personal finance and cookery are likely to be included – plus languages like Mandarin and Urdu.
Anne Kiem, a commentator from the Institute of Financial Services School of Finance said: “We’re not talking about high finance – it’s things like how do you open a bank account, how do you pay a cheque.”
Please, please, pleeease let’s hope that it doesn’t turn out to be the basics envisaged by this commentator – this would likely be taught in such a way to be a waste precious school resources – drill and fill…
Thankfully another commentator Peter Hyman (a teacher surprise surprise!:^) says “I would do far more on schools preparing pupils for learning and making them more independent.”
What school leavers need is the ability to approach banks, institutions and potential employers, etc. with a good command of the basic skills as well as the confidence to present themselves as personable, well rounded, thoughtful, and confident individuals (chose your own adjectives) who are capable of finding out about what they don’t know and contributing creatively to any enterprise they engaged with.
