British education

I often found young people who had not been to Uni were the more astute and had an aptitude to learn that was both refreshing and long lasting. The attitude that any degree will do as it shows you have ability to retain information is not always useful. Accepting that you do not need to know everything, but know where to find an answer if you are unsure is more important. Certain standards are required, whatever your chosen career path is, achieving or even exceeding those takes a different approach to todays methods. My children are successful, but had to "unlearn" some of their education to get on. Some folk need grounding, something that seems to be more noticeable in those who think they are more highly educated than they actually are. I think life experience is more than going travelling in a gap year, going to school, then going to a bigger school, in it's self does not prepare you for a working life. Apprenticeships are an excellent way to prepare younger people for a working career alongside further education, you get a mix of hands on and academic side by side.
Ticking boxes is stifling growth of individuals and their own talents.

 

One time when we were recruiting a junior software developer, having looked through a few rather bland CVs that all came from the same mold, all with a BSc in a computing discipline, all with a few months random work experience in a local takeaway, there was one that academically wasn't as good as the rest, but his final year project was different. The others all boasted about some tediously boring website or database system, but this guy wrote about his artificially intelligent robotics project.

I thought that's impressive. That sounds like a minimum two year development for a team of 20+ senior developers and engineers. We have to speak to this guy.

We interviewed several people, all kind of ok, but weirdly sort of 'standard'. Except our robot guy. He didn't talk much about uni, he told us about his spare time hobby projects. I asked him about his AI robot project and his face sunk, like the interview was doomed, when he confessed he couldn't get it to work at all.

All three of us interviewing all rated him the highest. The other two mostly because they liked him as a person. But I as the senior developer really wanted to hire him. When we reported in to the boss, she was skeptical, having heard of his failed uni project. I argued, yes he failed, in that his robot didn't work, but he had the balls and the determination to try to do something far more ambitious than the standard stuff.

After a very short deliberation, we offered him the job, which he accepted. It was the right decision. He had a lot to learn, but he just soaked it all up.

 

One time we were looking for a new maintenance engineer and my boss let me weed out the CVs then we did the interviews together.
One CV was handwritten using one of those four colour pens, randomly changed during the CV.
I wanted to get him in just to see his logic but my boss just laughed and said no. Pity.

 

That's a shame. His quirky CV might have indicated his thought process was somewhat different to the norm. In some industries that's considered gold.

As an aside, a few years ago Google and Microsoft both separately launched schemes to specifically hire autistic people. They recognised that if you want to do anything truly innovative, you can't just fill your teams with conventional thinkers. They're too of the biggest software companies in the world and are constantly leading the way, so they clearly got something right.

 

There's a bit more in the news about this. This time on the BBC.

Sats 2023: Year 6 reading paper revealed after row over difficulty

Apparently some teachers 'had to think about it'. Yes. That's the point. The test appears to be testing how well the kids have been taught to think.

The examples on the article are easy, given even a basic understanding of English, but they do require that the reader actually reads the text and is able to pick out the relevant elements that they're looking for. This is a basic skill needed in the workplace,and in life in general.

 

Vary rarely these days, but occasionally we pay for things with cash, it is surprising how few staff have the mental basic maths skills to work out our change, unless the till does it for them.

 

'Pointless' comment to make.