Murdoch criticises UK education in speech to honour 'Iron Lady'

When I read this I think I broke the record for the greatest number of F-words in a single sentence without losing grammatical cohesion.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/murdoch-criticises-uk-education-in-speech-to-honour-iron-lady-2113428.html

What I'm waiting for is for some of our "leaders" to grow the cojones to stand up to him.

The Skin

In fact I wouldn't be at all surprised if media ownership rules are changed before the current Parliament is out.

Firstly, where does he get the right to call Britain 'OUR society'? He is not a citizen, nor, so far as I know, a long-term resident. He just makes money off us - that doesn't make the country his.

Secondly, his comments on reading are ridiculous. He claims that children in the poorest countries of the world can learn to read despite appalling conditions, so why can't ours do better? Thia is infuriating, especially to anyone who knows (as I do) people who are involved with education in developing countries. Of course, children do learn despite the obstacles - but many don't. In some countries, most don't. In the UK, almost all children who do not have severe learning difficulties become 'literate' in the basic sense of the word. Some may read slowly; some may not be able to read difficult texts or to fill in forms accurately; some may have poor reading comprehension skills; many may not read for pleasure - but they can *read*. 'Functional illiteracy', which has a variety of definitions according to the context, is commoner than it should be; but it is not the same as absolute illiteracy. Contrast many developing countries: in Pakistan, for example, the basic literacy rate is 54%. This of course covers a huge gender gap; but even among males, about one-third are illiterate.

Data on international comparisons of secondary school pupils' literacy, e.g. PIRLS, also do not bear out such statements. Such studies only include countries where the majority of pupils go to secondary school (thus omitting the poorest nations), and measure a lot more than basic literacy; nevertheless England and Scotland - assessed separately in these comparisons- did better than the international average. They did less well than some key Europaean countries: notably Germany and Italy (though it needs to be taken into account that German and Italian are much easier languages to learn to read than English).

Do I think that British education is perfect? No. There is a long way to go. A significant part of my 'day job' involves research aimed at the improvement of education for struggling pupils; and education has been one of my key causes as long as I can remember. But I am still sickened by the idea that British education is a disaster in a Broken Society; or that, as Murdoch is implying, it's all due to bad teaching and resources play no role.

And in any case - Murdoch should hardly be wanting literacy and culture to improve dramatically in this country, because if they did, who would read 'The Sun'?!