Knowledge: facts, information and skills acquired through experience or education. Not ‘or’, ‘and’ - facts, information AND skills. If I’ve been in school for 10 years or so, supposedly gathering knowledge, then why haven’t I learnt any skills? Why do I look back on the past years and barely remember anything I learnt, because I never had to use it again? 

You see, I think school’s got it all wrong. And it’s not the learning part - I’m all for learning - I just don’t understand why when someone asks why we need to learn a certain topic, the teacher’s response is ‘so you pass your GCSEs’. What about after GCSEs? Honestly, in my opinion, if you shut down every high school, we’d still learn. Rather than learning Shakespeare, trigonometry and parts of a plant, we’d learn modern literature, calculating taxes and first aid, yes, but isn’t that the important information? So, why isn’t school teaching us the important stuff?

In some ways, tradition has been put over our education. I mean, we learn the stuff that’s been taught for years. School can keep up with the changing times, so why doesn’t it? Why is it so hard to change the curriculum so that we learn how to handle money, or do modern literature rather than studying Shakespeare? I understand that Shakespeare teaches analysis, a key skill, but no-one still writes like Shakespeare. We may have to do analysis in the future, but it’s going to be written in a modern way - a way we easily understand - nothing like Shakespeare. 

Another issue with the school system is GCSEs. When in life are we ever going to be asked to answer hours of  exam papers to get a job? It would be a whole lot more effective if instead of one month of test papers, we had coursework - at set intervals throughout our GCSE years we have assignments to complete in class based on guidelines set by exam boards - similar to the coursework in more practical classes, like PE or food tech. Not only would this reduce stress and paper wastage, but the assignments could be a mixture of essays, projects and presentations, increasing creativity and social and presentational skills. Take it from someone who could use some of those social and presentational skills - early practice in front of an audience would’ve been useful. 

Anyway, these are just a few of my thoughts, but my main point is that the school system NEEDS to change. I can’t say I know what it’s like in other countries, but I doubt it’s too different from ours. Schools are training pupils in ways that would prepare them for an age before technology, an age when people would read pages of writing - now to get a job you have to get straight to the point. It’s pointless, and it has to change.