While I don't really want to get into explaining the British education system but I'm going to because it doesn't make sense if you aren't familiar with it.
In England at least by the time you get to 16 you have the option to leave school or stay on for two more years, in those two years (or maybe more if you choose college) you can either do A levels or A level equivalent courses at either college or school and those qualifications can get you into university, you don't really need any qualifications at all to be quite frank but the jobs that are on offer to you are low paid so the more qualifications you have the better off you're meant to be.
People who do A level argue that BTEC is easier than A Levels because A level involves an exam at the end of the 2 years to get their results and BTEC is graded by the coursework that gets done through out the 2 years and to be honest if I had done A Levels I probably wouldn't have done as well but I wouldn't say it's because BTEC is easier, I think I did better because in BTEC you hand in your coursework unit by unit and your tutor can tell you what you're missing so you can boost your grades when in A Level all you can do is remember as much as you can and regurgitate it into your exam paper and hope for the best so in that sense BTEC is easier but quite a few people didn't do too well or failed because they were lazy and didn't put the work in over the two year period where in A Level you can afford to slack off a bit more as long as you remember most of it and revise nearer the end, really just go for the option you feel suits you.
People who do A level argue that BTEC is easier than A Levels because A level involves an exam at the end of the 2 years to get their results and BTEC is graded by the coursework that gets done through out the 2 years and to be honest if I had done A Levels I probably wouldn't have done as well but I wouldn't say it's because BTEC is easier, I think I did better because in BTEC you hand in your coursework unit by unit and your tutor can tell you what you're missing so you can boost your grades when in A Level all you can do is remember as much as you can and regurgitate it into your exam paper and hope for the best so in that sense BTEC is easier but quite a few people didn't do too well or failed because they were lazy and didn't put the work in over the two year period where in A Level you can afford to slack off a bit more as long as you remember most of it and revise nearer the end, really just go for the option you feel suits you.
At the moment the economic climate is pretty unstable so even if you do have a university degree of some sort it doesn't mean you will get the job so the best bet is getting as many qualifications,skills and experience on your CV and hope for the best.
Back to how I could end up being a potential teacher.
At school I was seen as notoriously stupid, which I think was unfair looking back.
I was always put in the bottom group in lessons at primary school (you know what I mean) in maths and English I was always put in the group where the work was easiest and we weren't that thick we knew we were sitting at the under achieving table and so did the rest of the class and nobody expected much of us and we were teased a bit.
I just really struggled writing, it wasn't really the words themselves that I struggled with it was just writing them, my hand writing was awful and writing just felt uncomfortable and it took me ages to find a comfortable way of writing, the weirdest part is that I was in the "top" group in reading and science, thank god they had reading groups or I would have felt pretty stupid and probably would've gave up on English as a subject but I think this just proves that I wasn't really stupid, I just had an issue with pens.
Any way throughout primary and secondary school I felt as though everyone thought I was stupid, I don't know maybe it's just me maybe no one really looked down on me but it felt that way, I remember when I was 10-11 we had some exams and they were giving the bright kids extra lessons to help boost their grades up and I got into the science group which was cool but all the other kids were the kinds of kids who were good at everything and I remember them awkwardly shooing me away when the moved on to maths and English and I remember it really got me down.
I was pretty good at science and I was in top set science in secondary school and even then someone accused of cheating, I think they genuinely believed that I had some how cheated my way into top set or something but what actually happened was I was looking for the date and the teacher hadn't put it on the board and I knew this girl would know the date and instead of asking her like a normal person I just looked at her book, she was quite horrible about it for a while until the seating arrangement was changed but honestly how could I have cheated off her when all she had written was the date, seriously.
This all changed when I got to college however, people didn't think I was stupid in college, I guess it's because of these reasons:
1. my hand writing had slightly improved at 15-16 (when I say improved I mean just about readable.)
2. most of our work was on the computer so my hand writing didn't matter and computers have spell check so I could fix my mistakes.
3.these people first met me when I was 16 and saw me for who I was at that time and didn't know me as the girl who used to struggled in lessons.
I really do think that the reason I struggled so much was down to my handwriting not my intelligence I just wished I had seen that when I was younger.
Any way with my college grades I can get into an English undergraduate course at Bournemouth university if I really wanted to but I have actually have met the entry requirements for the course , I'm not sure that I would take the English course because I would rather do a script writing course if I really had to but if I did the English course I could go on to do post graduate and so on and become an English teacher.
How funny would that be if I did become an English teacher, I can picture the look of shock on my old class mates if I end up teaching their children
For the sake of proving everyone wrong and rubbing it in their faces it would be so worth it but long story short I don't want to be a teacher because I still really want to work in television but it's still an interesting idea.
Any way the moral of the story is that if you feel stupid and you are under achieving at it's probably got nothing to do with your intelligence and you shouldn't just write your self off like that, you shouldn't put others down either because it's not fair, everyone has their own strengths and weaknesses you shouldn't make people feel about themselves.
On a side note I don't think it's right for teachers to label a child by putting them on a certain table, I think it makes the children on the low intelligence table feel self conscious and they stop trying, I would like to hear what other people think in the comments, did they feel labelled at school? what was your school/college experience like? It would be interesting to know.
Any way throughout primary and secondary school I felt as though everyone thought I was stupid, I don't know maybe it's just me maybe no one really looked down on me but it felt that way, I remember when I was 10-11 we had some exams and they were giving the bright kids extra lessons to help boost their grades up and I got into the science group which was cool but all the other kids were the kinds of kids who were good at everything and I remember them awkwardly shooing me away when the moved on to maths and English and I remember it really got me down.
I was pretty good at science and I was in top set science in secondary school and even then someone accused of cheating, I think they genuinely believed that I had some how cheated my way into top set or something but what actually happened was I was looking for the date and the teacher hadn't put it on the board and I knew this girl would know the date and instead of asking her like a normal person I just looked at her book, she was quite horrible about it for a while until the seating arrangement was changed but honestly how could I have cheated off her when all she had written was the date, seriously.
This all changed when I got to college however, people didn't think I was stupid in college, I guess it's because of these reasons:
1. my hand writing had slightly improved at 15-16 (when I say improved I mean just about readable.)
2. most of our work was on the computer so my hand writing didn't matter and computers have spell check so I could fix my mistakes.
3.these people first met me when I was 16 and saw me for who I was at that time and didn't know me as the girl who used to struggled in lessons.
I really do think that the reason I struggled so much was down to my handwriting not my intelligence I just wished I had seen that when I was younger.
Any way with my college grades I can get into an English undergraduate course at Bournemouth university if I really wanted to but I have actually have met the entry requirements for the course , I'm not sure that I would take the English course because I would rather do a script writing course if I really had to but if I did the English course I could go on to do post graduate and so on and become an English teacher.
How funny would that be if I did become an English teacher, I can picture the look of shock on my old class mates if I end up teaching their children
For the sake of proving everyone wrong and rubbing it in their faces it would be so worth it but long story short I don't want to be a teacher because I still really want to work in television but it's still an interesting idea.
Any way the moral of the story is that if you feel stupid and you are under achieving at it's probably got nothing to do with your intelligence and you shouldn't just write your self off like that, you shouldn't put others down either because it's not fair, everyone has their own strengths and weaknesses you shouldn't make people feel about themselves.
On a side note I don't think it's right for teachers to label a child by putting them on a certain table, I think it makes the children on the low intelligence table feel self conscious and they stop trying, I would like to hear what other people think in the comments, did they feel labelled at school? what was your school/college experience like? It would be interesting to know.
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