Disillusionment with public schools outside US?

[JWSJ]

Many (if not most) American parents are disillusioned with the US public school system. They see the system not meeting our country's nor our children's needs and are usually rather vocal about the situation.

 

Is this just an American phenomena?

 

I've met many families from other countries, and they sometimes complain about the US public school system too, but they stop short of complaining about the system in their home countries.

 

Are parents outside the US generally happy with their country's public school system?

 

Or, are the school systems not up for criticism like in the US?

 

 

Thanks!

[Hannah]

I'm not sure if you're interested in hearing about schools a developing country, but in South Africa the school system is most definitely up for critism and many people complain about what we call government schools.

 

Many schools in rural areas still don't have basic amenities like running water, proper sanitation and electricity. Things like science laboratories, sports fields, etc are a luxury even though the government has had an extensive budget for amenitities in the last 15 years.

 

Classes are big (30+). In rural schools there are up to 60 children in a class. In recent years, the department of Education has experimented with the implementation of outcomes based eduction (with two curriculums in 12 years) which has not been successfull across the board as few teachers know how to implement it effectively. Teacher training is very poor.

 

Less than 20% of children achieve marks good enough to go onto tersiary education. Very pass maths and science.

 

In the smaller towns there not many private schools, and where there are private schools, they are extremely expensive, so parents don't see themselves as having many alternatives.

[Jean in Newcastle]

I've heard many parents and children complain about the public schools in Japan but not for the reasons they complain here. I've never heard a complaint about the elementary schools. The biggest thing that people complain about are the exams to get into Jr. High and High school. Both Jr. High and High school are tracked so you have to get a certain score to get into the higher ranked schools at each level. If you get tracked into the lower levels then your expectations in life from then on are narrower than otherwise. My next door neighbor's son committed suicide when he failed the entrance exams for the high school of his choice. Obviously not everyone makes that choice when they fail, but it is extremely stress-ful.

[saw]

I hear complaints on nearly a daily basis about the schools here in the Netherlands, mostly about the elementary schools. Many of the complaints are from people who would like their children to be challenged more than they are.

 

Sophie

[TeacherZee]

The amount of new charter schools (publicly funded privately run) that are cropping up in Sweden indicates that many Swedish parents are unhappy with the publicly run schools.

[Laura Corin]

There's a lot of disillusionment with the UK state (public) schools, particularly with the amount of 'teaching to the test' that goes on.

 

ETA: there's also the suspicion that the university entrance exams have been made simpler, leading to the schools looking better rather than actually being better.

 

Laura

Edited April 10, 2009 by Laura Corin

[KJB]

I have heard from local friends is that their version of tracking begins too early. Kids are evaluated and tracked in fourth grade which many consider to be too young.

 

Once someone is set on a career path it's difficult (but not impossible) to change here. Friends of mine are envious of how easy it is in the US to career hop or open your own business.

 

One of our movers who moved us in when we arrived here was studying to become a truck driver when we met him 18 months ago. He had been a mover for around 20 years and had been trying to change careers for about half of that time. He recently came to our house again to move some things to storage for us and he'd just finally received approval to apply for his license to drive a truck. It took him almost ten years to be ready and able to apply for the license to change from being a mover to a truck driver. Part of what slowed him down was having to work in the interim to support his family, but a large part of his pace were the requirements of the state.

 

Think about that for a minute....

 

Also, you can't just hang a sign here and call yourself a baker, a seamstress, or a candlestick maker. You have to be licensed and to get a license you have to meet specific educational requirements. Having grandma's secret recipe and practicing at home to perfect your product won't be enough to get you licensed here to open a small business. Unlike the US where market forces might determine the success of your business, here the state decides if you can hang your shingle.

 

So, the fourth grade can be a really big year here. When I was in fourth grade I was learning to roller skate and dreaming of training dolphins for a living. I no longer roller skate and I have never trained anything (other than my children, lol) to do much of anything.

 

(I should add, you *can* study and test to enter college no matter how you are tracked, you are just at a disadvantage if you aren't tracked on the university path.)

Edited April 10, 2009 by KJB

[Sebastian (a lady)]

We lived in Berlin 2003-6. Right before we'd arrived, the results of the PISA tests had come out and German schools had scored far below expectations. There was a constant chatter about German schools not providing a trained population for the 21st century and fears that Germany would become the country that companies bypassed on their way to the new EU countries to the east like Poland and Hungary. It was bad enough that for a while, McDonalds had a low price menu advertised as the Pisa menu because the prices were so low. There was shock and frustration because Germans were very proud of the power of their school system. There was a lot hand wringing about how the school system was built on the presumption that there would be a mom at home in the early afternoon to help with homework and do tutoring to the kids. But with most women working, that was no longer the case and the schools hadn't adjusted.

 

There is also a lot of frustration among parents about how schools are organized, how much work it is to try to get their kids into good schools and how teachers (as professionals) disregard parents. I have a book that came out while we were there titled Das Lehrerhassbuch (The Teacher Hatred Book). There are few private schools and they are frequently expensive (our neighbor kids' schools ran in the neighborhood of 12-14 thousand Euro per child per year).

 

There has been also been a lot of media attention over shootings in schools (despite much harsher gun control than in the US), bullying and violence, uncontrolled immigrant populations in urban schools and on and on.

 

Almost anytime that I got into a conversation about homeschooling, by the time we were done, the other parent was telling me about all the things that were frustrating about their kids' school.

[Rosie_0801]

We're always whinging about the public school system, but complaining about the government is a national pastime. We don't have any pearls of wisdom to share.

 

My sister was in Kenya last year and says the public schools are atrocious. They have huge class sizes and few resources. The state doesn't look too kindly on homeschooling but it is a growing trend as the public schools are too bad for educated parents to send their kids to, but the private schools are too expensive.

 

Rosie

Edited April 10, 2009 by Rosie_0801

[Melissa in Australia]

I took my children out of school for academic reasons. the small country school just didn't care about educating them. the classes were small about 15 . the school only had 37 kids in it. the school was so laid back that they didn't bother starting on time. I remember being at the school for a parents club meeting. and the kids weren't called in from afternoon recess. the teachers said they were playing so nicely, why bother them!! when my son was in grade 5. 3/4 of the kids in his class couldn't read. I went (as a school council member) to a triennial review of the schools in the district. the teachers were there as well. when asked why there were so many children in grade 5 who couldn't read the teacher replied that they didn't know their alphabet when they were in prep( the grade before 1 and after kindergarten). I was flabbergasted by this answer, and the review officer marked it down as a good enough excuse. it was not long after this I started homeschooling.

[chiguirre]

Venezuelan public schools are mostly awful, but the problems go far beyond education. They're extremely overcrowded and some still operate shifts so kids either have to go from the crack of dawn till lunch or lunch till late afternoon. Chavez did spend a lot of money trying to improve school's physical plant, unfortunately he also reworked the curriculum to a more Bolivarian ideology so the gains in infrastructure were undermined by weaker curriculum. Parents who have any other option exercise it. There is a huge parallel system of state subsidized and charity supported Catholic schools that serve poor and working class kids. Better off parents send their children to parent-funded private schools. Those with special needs are severely underserved (for more traditional sn) or are not served at all (autism). That's why we moved.