Education issues

Everybody of us has any education. What is education? Education is the process of receiving or giving systematic instruction, especially at a school or university.

Nowadays there are a few stages of education. The first step is a nursery school or preschool. It is a school for children who are younger than five years old. The second stage of education consists of primary or elementary school and secondary school. Elementary and secondary schools are institutions of compulsory education. Schooling has an amount of debatable problems. For example, one of these is the discussion about advantages and disadvantages of single-sex schools and mixed schools.

The first argument against single-sex schools is that they are unnatural because in higher education and working life people are mixed and school should reflect the real world. In the opposite side of view, according to statistics in single-sex schools pupils get better exam results then in mixed schools. In addition, boys and girls learn in different ways and in these schools teachers can focus on their different needs. But the main disadvantage of separately education is that there are more bulling and ‘dog eat dog’ situations because of the increased competition.

Instead of bullying, the widespread problem in every school is truancy. I think, improving curriculum and keeping pupils interested may solve this problem.

Very controversial question is also the worth of examination results. Exams are the most widespread ways of monitoring students’ progress. But it has a lot of disadvantages. Kids stay up all night cramming for a test and, as a rule, forget almost everything in several weeks after that. An exam is only one chance to show your knowledge, so it is very stressful for pupils. You can also feel bad on the exam’s day and get low results.

But the most important educational problem is the purpose of secondary education. At school children learn a lot of things they will never need, at the same time they can find everything on the Internet nowadays. So a plenty of people say schools should spend more time teaching the skills people need to get a job.

Well, next step is higher education. After finishing school pupils are able to continue their education at a college or university. Postgraduate education is the next phase after graduating from university and setting the degree. It involves learning and studying for degrees or other qualifications.

But, as a rule, you must pay for higher education, so the problem of true cost of university fees is vital. Graduates get higher salary but they pay higher taxes and spend a lot of time for education and this seems to be in effect asking students to pay twice, some people claim. Many students have to depend on their parents to finance their education. Many young people are questioning the value of a university education. Everyone seems to have a degree these days, they say, so when they graduate from university, they cannot be sure they will get a well-paid job. It follows, then, that increase in university fees may lead to a loss of a generation of educated young people.