WARNING! This website is no longer actively maintained. It is an archive of 2 years work by Doug Belshaw who now blogs at dougbelshaw.com...
I’ve been neglecting my feed reading a bit recently. I caught up on my education news today and found that schools may get business managers (boo!), teachers want smaller schools (hurray!), plans to raise the school leaving age are still being pushed through (hmm…), ‘compulsory’ lessons shouldn’t be (great idea, if done properly), and pupils are facing too many tests (well, duh…). 
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I have to confess that, much as I find the whole business of exams inappropriate, part of me still mutters “bunch of wusses” when I hear people in the UK complain about the amount of testing the kids have to undergo at school.
The education system in South Africa sees kids sitting formal exams in every subject 3 times a year from grade 4 all the way through school. And if the child doesn’t pass enough of the end of year exams, they have to do the whole year over again.
Oh, and the teachers have to set and mark all these exams. It is only when they come to their final year that they take external examinations, set by the various provincial authorities.
Of course, I’m not saying that this is the right way to do things, but having survived that system myself, and watching my family members still grappling with it, I confess to moments of “You don’t know you’re born” as the expression goes…
I kind of like the idea of a business manager - school is too complex an organisation for a head to do all the things. Maybe if we get rid of govt control, then we wouldn’t need to have people to help heads deal with the endless bureaucracy…