People leave school not fit for work

Press TV, 28th November 2010

UK business leaders have complained that too many young people in Britain leave school while they are "not fit for work".

Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, said "the building blocks of English" had been "demolished by those who should have been giving our children a solid foundation in learning".

Seven years ago, Britain saw a Labour decision according to which rewards for good literacy were scrapped, and since then thousands of people leaving schools have been unable to compose a sentence, spell difficult words, or write a coherent letter or email, as claimed by business owners.

Mr Gove has strongly criticised Labour's decision in 2003 to abandon requirements for students to spell correctly, and use proper punctuation and grammar in exams.

He said, “Thousands of children, including some of our very brightest, leave school unable to compose a proper sentence, are ignorant of basic grammar and incapable of writing a clear and accurate letter.”

“And it's not surprising when the last government explicitly removed the requirement to award a set number of marks for correct spelling, punctuation and grammar in examinations.”

“Under this Government we will insist that our exams, once more, take proper account of the need to spell, punctuate and write a grammatical sentence.”

Prof Alan Smithers, the director of the Centre for Education and Employment Research at Buckingham University, said, “Clear expression is evidence of clear thought. It is reasonable to expect accurate spelling and good use of grammar in an exam.”

“The results mean less if the examiner is trying to project on to a poorly written answer what he or she thinks the candidate was attempting to say.”

This is while some that even William Shakespeare, the great British literary character, sometimes signed his own name with the wrong spelling!

The solution is to spend more time teaching business English rather than wasting children's time prattling about with poetry and classic literature. This of course requires a new breed of English teachers who have a solid background in business English because few incumbent teachers have this skill.