Education

‘Try your best’ is not enough

Going to school may not be the most enjoyable experience for most. And it is getting more stressful with the pressure to excel in GCSE examinations, whilst being disappointed to find that even the most exceptional results will not guarantee you a place in university let alone college.

Anna Fujer, Hackney/Islington Socialist Party

It is worrying to think that a majority of pupils in my school, The Skinners Company’s School For Girls, fear for their future. They dread unemployment and being dependent on government benefits. It is not only their future that they are anxious about. The present situation regarding GCSE examinations depresses them most.

Many, including myself are very displeased with the lack of choices in topics for GCSEs, due to lack of funding for crucial subjects such as history and foreign languages.

The government once said education was a priority. But with reports on lack of primary school and university places, is education still a priority?

There are also issues like the privatisation of school canteens. Skinners’ canteen is privatised. My peers and I have carried out a survey and the majority of students have not seen an improvement in the quality of food. Yet it costs more – not for the food itself but for the rather glamorous packaging. So is there really a point in privatising school canteens?

So what is there to be done? Youth of today cannot speak out without our cries for a better education falling on deaf ears. Youth of today cannot speak out without being labelled as immature adolescents who do not have a wider experience of life. Undeniably our education is in trouble. Tony Blair once spoke of “education, education, education” but we all know that this is just another of 1,001 empty phrases used by our politicians.