European school system question

[HotJob]

Hello folks! The wingnut community has a LOT of really bright individuals from several European countries. Here in the United States, there is an ongoing problem with low student achievement in the public school system. While there are many different ideas about what to do to increase achievement, and a lot of people admit to not knowing what to do about it, it is becoming apparent that the majority cause of low student achievement is: low quality students. Many students don't care about academics, engage in criminal activity, or are just dumb. However, schools cannot get rid of disruptive students, as all children are guaranteed an education, school attendance is mandatory, and schools get funded by the number of students attending each day.

My question for our European brethren is: how do European schools handle low achievers and/or disruptive students?

Ich sprecha ein bichen Deutch, aber nict ser gut. Ich bin ein bichen rostich.

 

[Madman]

Hmm, I'd say that the british system suffers a lot from the same problems as the american, the best schools i've seen simply offer teachers who can enthuse the children. If a child is interested in the subject, they tend to work harder. Not much to go on though!

 

[AD]

A huge part of the problem with the education system is that students aren't one-size-fits-all when it comes to the way they learn. Simply excluding them doesn't solve anything, but neither does shuffling the students along through grades when they don't deserve it for fear of hurting their feelings or some such nonsense. Frankly there just isn't the money available to properly address the specific learning needs of every type of learner in the public system in the US or Canada or nearly any country I can think of.

Honestly a lot of this has to be addressed by the PARENTS. They need to be actively involved in getting their kids the kind of learning environment that will help them thrive, but there's too many parents that don't care about their kids and essentially use the school as free babysitting. If the parents don't care, it's pretty hard to expect the kids to care about their education.

Finding better way's to divide classes along the lines of individual needs of the students could go a long way to helping improve overall performance where certain students need much more attention than others. This would be a lot more preferable to just shutting outa large portion of the student population.

 

[cff]

Basically we are just as clueless as you are. Ist just that the US is maybe a decade ahead on the problem scale. We'll probably catch up soon.
Generally I think (violent) criminal activity ist just a lot less here as - well - good question. It seems that the threshold is just higher to use violence compared to at least bad cornes of the US. Also far more restrictive weapon laws might reduce the outcome quite a bit. Finally, while school attendance is mandatory you can still be thrown out of a particular school. After a while you'd probably end up in a special youth program or be forgotten in a school for handicapped...

As soon as you are 15 you'd just be thrown out of school, end there. So no problems with disruptive students.

 

[LeHah]

And here I thought that the Brits just stuck all the troublemakers into Slytherin House...

 

[iCe]

I'll try to explain it as simple as possible. Here in the Netherlands, disruptive kids or kids that cause trouble can be placed under supervision of the state (well, country actually). Parents that cannot, or will not, take care of their kids can lose their parental supervision. The children are then put under supervision by another parent, or in an institution. This sounds a bit abrupt, but a judge looks at each individual case and decides what's best in the child's interest.

So, when a kid is a criminal and doesn't listen to his or hers parents, they can be placed in a boarding school or even juvenile detention. It all depends on the factors surrounding the child what is decided by the judge.

The low achievers (if it's their choice or not) are integrated into our scholar system. Unlike other countries, the Netherlands have a whole system that has several levels of education. During the last year of elementary school (around the age of 11/12) you take a test and the test score more or less decides which secondary education is most fitting for that child. I won't bother you with the school system here, because it can be very complicated to explain. I'll let Wikipedia do it

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_the_Netherlands

 

[Dyret]

60% of my school were disruptive students.

It was awesome!

 

[Ijuin]

What sucks in American schools (particularly California, where I live) is that the teacher essentially has no authority to punish the student for disrupting classes--even just commanding the student to sit quietly can result in the student getting his/her parents to file an official complaint with the school district and the Parent-Teacher Association. Also, if the student is of a socially protected group and the teacher is not (e.g. white male teacher vs. an ethnic minority or female student), then the teacher will also get accused of being prejudiced against the student's protected group. I have actually witnessed instances in which, for example, a minority student is listening to his MP3 player and singing AND dancing along during the lecture, and when told to stop, he claims that the teacher is engaged in illegal discrimination against him for "denying him the right to express his ancestral culture"--AND the parents back their son on this claim. In essence, the teacher can not enforce penalties on the students in any meaningful way without first going through huge mountains of bureaucratic approval processes or else somebody is going to call "foul" and bring a lawsuit.