The document summarizes two texts about teaching work-related skills to students. Text 1 describes Grangeton, a fictional town run by primary school students at Grange Primary School to provide them with early work experience. The students are responsible for businesses like shops and a newspaper, and learn subjects like math, English, and history through their work. Text 2 discusses a survey finding that employers feel young people lack basic skills. It calls for making work experience a mandatory part of the secondary school curriculum to better prepare youth for employment. Both texts address the importance of work experience for students.
The document summarizes two texts about teaching work-related skills to students. Text 1 describes Grangeton, a fictional town run by primary school students at Grange Primary School to provide them with early work experience. The students are responsible for businesses like shops and a newspaper, and learn subjects like math, English, and history through their work. Text 2 discusses a survey finding that employers feel young people lack basic skills. It calls for making work experience a mandatory part of the secondary school curriculum to better prepare youth for employment. Both texts address the importance of work experience for students.
The document summarizes two texts about teaching work-related skills to students. Text 1 describes Grangeton, a fictional town run by primary school students at Grange Primary School to provide them with early work experience. The students are responsible for businesses like shops and a newspaper, and learn subjects like math, English, and history through their work. Text 2 discusses a survey finding that employers feel young people lack basic skills. It calls for making work experience a mandatory part of the secondary school curriculum to better prepare youth for employment. Both texts address the importance of work experience for students.
The document summarizes two texts about teaching work-related skills to students. Text 1 describes Grangeton, a fictional town run by primary school students at Grange Primary School to provide them with early work experience. The students are responsible for businesses like shops and a newspaper, and learn subjects like math, English, and history through their work. Text 2 discusses a survey finding that employers feel young people lack basic skills. It calls for making work experience a mandatory part of the secondary school curriculum to better prepare youth for employment. Both texts address the importance of work experience for students.
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Reading
3 Read two texts about teaching certain skills and choose the correct answer, A, B, C or D.
Text 1.
WORKING IN GRANGETON
Grangeton in Derbyshire isn’t actually a real town but it has most things that you might expect to find in one. When a new head teacher took over at the Grange Primary School, he found that both students and staff had become demotivated and disinterested. He knew that the school needed something special and Grangeton certainly is.
Grangeton has businesses and services like any other town but these are all run by and for the school’s students, five days a week, every week of the school year. There is a town council and a mayor, who is elected each year from the Year 6 students. The council makes all the important decisions on how the town is run, just like in any normal town.
So, what can you find in Grangeton? There is a newspaper, a museum and two shops. A café opens on two mornings a week but it is a Parisian café and French is the only language that customers can use when ordering food there. There is another reason for Grangeton, apart from motivating the students. Although they are only primary students, with a maximum age of eleven, the school believes that they are the right age to gain some early work experience. Normally, students have to wait until they are fourteen before getting any work related experience, and even then, it depends on the school. The students of Grange School are too young to go to companies to work but, with their own businesses to run, they don’t have to leave the school premises. The school also invites guests to talk to the students and help them. The BBC helped them to set up a TV and radio station and local politicians talked to them about democracy and decision making.
The school is able to find the time to do all this because the work the students are doing is closely related to the school’s education curriculum. As well as practising a foreign language in the café, the students use Maths when running their businesses, English when writing their newspaper and even History in special projects such as when the council voted that the shops should sell food from different past times.
Grangeton is now considered a great success and a model of how to use children’s creativity to involve them in the learning process. Even people who you may expect to be critical of such non- traditional education methods are unable to find fault with what the students do.
1 Students at Grange Primary School
A leave the school to work in Grangeton.
B show a lack of interest in Grangeton.
C are responsible for what happens in Grangeton.
D only work in Grangeton when they reach Year 6.
2 Students at Grange School benefit from
A advice from local business leaders.
B more opportunities to visit companies than other primary students.
C earlier work experience than other students.
D the chance to learn a number of different foreign language.
3 The businesses and services in Grangeton
A give the students a chance to practise their normal school subjects.
B take up time that could be spent learning.
C will provide employment for students when they finish their education.
D have received criticism from some people.
Text 2.
A WORRYING LACK OF BASIC SKILLS
A recent survey of 3,000 companies has found that employers have a major concern. They say that more and more young people do not have the basic skills necessary to get on as employees. These skills include such things as being able to communicate effectively and work as part of a team. Because of this, many employers think it is risky to offer work to inexperienced young people, preferring to hire staff who have already had experience of a working environment somewhere else.
In order to help to prepare young people for work, business leaders and employers are asking the government to include work experience as part of the curriculum in all secondary schools. Some schools do offer work experience to their older students but they don’t have to. As it can cause problems with timetabling and because schools are judged on exam results rather than how well their students do once they leave education, work experience is not seen as a priority by many head teachers.
Politicians of all parties have come out in support of these proposals and schools are encouraged to invite business people to talk to their students and to offer more careers advice but, so far, no laws have been changed. Not surprisingly, opposition party politicians have promised bigger changes if they are voted back into power in the next election.
Whoever is in charge, it is clear that businesses are no longer willing to spend time and money teaching young people how to communicate and cooperate with their colleagues. Youngsters need help before they apply for their first job and schools and the government should be doing all they can to provide this assistance.
4 Which of these is not true?
A Schools can refuse to offer work experience to their students if they wish.
B Political parties disagree about the importance of work experience for school students.
C Companies are often unwilling to take on young people who lack work experience.
D Academic achievement is the most important factor in determining whether a school is
performing well. 5 Both texts are about
A motivating school students to learn.
B the importance of work experience for school students.
C what business people think about young people they employ.
