https://www.icslearn.co.uk/blog/gcse-and-a-levels/gcse-resits-the-complete-guide-to-retaking-gcses/
So this may be somewhat interesting for people who have considered in the UK or foreigners who want to compare their own education practices. I've long suspected this anyway due to how universities are run, but for fuck's sake, the setup is a joke.
Imagine you're somebody who's really earnest about fixing your broken arse education and I wouldn't be surprised if there was a lot of people like that and you see that it costs £1,000 just for tuition in that area meaning you're probably better off just learning online by yourself since the teaching is often garbage anyway.
Also looking at the prices of exam centres the average shown is £100 an exam, obviously you go for it with the intention of passing. Though I have to wonder with the exams and the way they work a bunch of other stuff as well because if you can take exams online how easy is that to exploit? Though perhaps they have enough sense that you need to take them in person at an exam centre. I still think that with modern tech your average exam now is probably rife with exploits generally because there's nothing to say the questions can't be leaked online and then you have easy access to the information beforehand.
Looking at the topics they have for GSCE maths too, yet again even in 2023 my complaints about them using abstract maths on students remain valid because you're going to be using a fucking venn diagram and the Pythagoras theorem in all walks of life you monumental dipshits. I'm also somebody who has actually studied Pythagoras theorem for the maths I was looking at with my influence rings in programming but it turns out I didn't need it.
I bet going to a tradesmen school of any kind of variety would probably give a much better maths experience than this because it's stuff you'd actually use like measurements.
Upper level education has always been just a paper indicating you are qualified for work. It's been bastardized by tons of unnecessary requirements, sure. Teachers also suck in a lot of cases. There were many times I had to take it upon myself to learn on my own. I'd say that should be fixed, but I'm not sure I have a solution either. Maybe they could quit worrying about their rainbow alphabet but even before that teachers sucked.
The Pythagorean theorem is an awful example though. If you asked me to present someone with a piece of paper indicating they are qualified for a ton of technical jobs, including programming, a basic understanding of trigonometry is a must. Yeah, sure, it might not get used in everything, but anything 3D is going to use it, and I'm not being asked to present someone with a certificate that they are good to work on a single specific programming project.
Not being familiar with UK testing, I looked up what's on the Maths test. It's pretty basic. Are we really suggesting degrading education to require less than this to pass? If it's not needed in the job then maybe the job shouldn't require passing of it.
I'm definitely not advocating a degradation of standards because then you'd create a new generation of retards even worse than what we have now. I just think everything should be far more relevant. As an example on practical topics, everybody needs to know how to use a computer and thanks to smartphones even the younger generations have no idea how to use anything. If they ever had Linux put in front of them they'd be completely fucked and all of us in tech know how much back end infrastructure relies on Linux. Part of that problem is that the teachers are even more retarded and tech illiterate than the students so they wouldn't even know how to start teaching them.
The thing is though you do kind of proved my point with Pythagoras Theorem by admitting. Yes I get it, if there's perhaps one example somewhere somehow it might be 'useful' to know, but even for lots of maths I've never found it relevant in my life and I'm somebody who knows two different programming languages. I also do 3D art and a proper understanding of topology patterns and co-ordinates systems in a 3D axis is far more important which you use every day when modelling in Blender.
I would be far more impressed if I had a student give me a working understanding of that than any of the shit I've seen schools throw at students. Again, it falls back to my point of abstract math vs practical maths and schools almost always make students do abstract maths which is why they never get any real use out of it. Even stuff like PI calculation is way more useful to you in every day life because especially for DIY depending on what you're doing you may inevitably have to know how to cut something to accurately fit it around a circular shape.
I meant to mention vectors and 3D coordinates but forgot. That's something I struggled to grasp for a while until it just clicked. I would also put a basic understanding of computing into education. Do I really expect them to be able to configure an http server in a Linux command line? No. Might I teach that as a school exercise? Yes. I wouldn't test for it but I might test for basic command line things or some simple configuration type things.
I would budge on trig though, which I lump Pythagoras in to because in the end it's still just triangle math. It's very useful in 2D games where in a ton of cases you wouldn't bother with much more complicated math because a couple square roots is a ton fewer cycles. For example if you're wanting to get a the player velocity from a 2D movement vector. It's also how 3D works. There's a reason everything is triangles. Raycasting is in a lot of ways applied trigonometry. Outside of computers, engineers use it, surveyors are basically just trig calculators. I'm sure I could come up with more.
Blender artist of course is not going to use it. An engine programmer is not going to survive without it. I'm not trying to shit on things and a there's a ton of success that can be had without it. I've not touched trig working on my game in an existing engine yet. Someone has to create that engine though, and in this case I'm being asked to provide a paper that says someone is qualified to be a programmer.
This is a prime example though of why such generalised education is actually garbage for a good number of people. The teachers and bean counters don't give a fuck though, they're just looking to fulfil quotas and have as many warm bodies in the seats as possible so they can get their funding at minimal expense and piss it away on their own salaries and pensions which is what the education system is about at the end of the day.
I agree with that and that's why if I were to restructure education it would be pushed down quite a bit, where pre-teens all learn the basic requirements to exist, i.e. read/write, arithmetic, history, government and such. I'd take most of this out of schools entirely. Teenagers on it gets more and more specialized such that an accountant is not learning geometry and an engineer is not learning creative writing. Stringent barriers for entry though in a lot of things. We can't have everyone in a coddle-fest.
Programming would never lose math though, because I'd never want to hire one for a game that couldn't tell me how to get the speed of an object beyond "playerspeed = object.speed;". Be able to break it down at least a few layers even if you don't have to do it in practice, because that way I know you'd understand. I'd probably never be in a position to hire programmers anyway though, because I'd want to throw stuff at Javascript framework monkeys.