Not sure about robots, but it needs lots of reform.

And not the progressive, hippy touchy-feely crap of the 1960s or the top-down bureacratic nonsense beloved by politicians.

It's crazy that we are still having the same debate about education as we were in the 1960s (people on here have mentioned corporal punishment!) while the world of business and technology has moved on completely.

Technology has to some extent entered the classroom, but you just need to look at the way entrepreneurs or blue chip corporates gather and use information, tools and resources to see that (most of) the stuff kids get taught in classrooms is just not useful anymore.

Take exams, for example. Teaching kids to hold as much stuff as possible in their heads is not only pointless (we have more information immediately accesible at our fingertips than we could possibly process in a hundred lifetimes), it's counter-productive. Any businessperson worth his salt knows he needs to free his head from mundane information he can keep elsewhere (in a calender, in a database, in the cloud) so he can use his brain for having ideas and thinking in new directions. But we teach kids that they need to memorise stuff. Madness.

The problem isn't really being dealt with. When the freeze ends, I can't see the Unions or public sector workers who've been pay frozen for 7 years, just accepting a slight increase - they're going to want, and I think rightly demand, something that compensates for the fact that for nearly a decade they've been losing out year on year in terms of real value.

I'd imagine they'd be expecting a significant hike after 10 years of 1%.

I have worked for the same company now for 7 and a half years....no pay increase...so what about me,nurses and emergency services yes give them more than 1% by some way.
But why should some pen pushing t*** get the same.

I never really understood this race to the bottom bulls*** that an awful lot of righties spurt. I fully accept that life is probably pretty s*** for a lot of private sector workers right now. Most members of public sector unions support those in unions for private sector workers. Just because life is s*** for you doesn't mean you should say 'ha you have it easy, my life is crap so you don't deserve any better.' Instead you should be saying 'how can we make life better for all workers having a s*** time of it?'.

My working day begins at 7.30 when I get to work. Before the kids get in at 8.45 I spend an hour and a quarter making sure all 31 kids have all the resources they need for the day ahead. I make sure I continue to plan for the weeks ahead and analyse which kids might need interventions (booster sessions) in order to help them stay in touch with the brighter kids (this often rotates so it's not always the same kids who are struggling). I have to make sure that things are set up for the 7 children in my class that have some kind of special educational needs. For a dyslexic child (I have two) this is relatively easy and just requires printing out their resources on coloured paper and making sure they have coloured overlays. For an ASD (autistic spectrum disorder) child this might include changing their visual timetables, making sure all equipment is in place (trust me, one thing being out of place can cause a major meltdown), making sure that you've changed their 'Now, next, then' cards etc. You then need to make sure that everything is in place for your EAL children (children for whom English is not their first language). For these children you have to be very careful to check tense and verb agreements.

When you finally start the day you need to present four or more 20 minute presentations to an audience far more cynical than any sales pitch crowds and make sure that each of the 31 has understood and maintained engagement and that they can take part in the independent activity. You then need to continue the teaching for a focus group of children for another ten or so minutes. After this, you must see the work of every child in class to see if they have understood your input, quickly address all misconceptions, before finally moving the children forward with a five minute plenary. Bare in mind you may have had children screaming at you throughout this lesson distracting both you and their peers. Don't forget that many teachers are also responsible for lunchtime clubs as well. When you finally dismiss the children at 3.15 you must mark their work. Certainly for English, this means correcting most of their spelling and grammar mistakes, seeing if they achieved the objective of the lesson (and recording this) and providing them with a 'next step' (essentially a question which either helps the child progress or consolidates their learning). This is for effectively 124 pieces of work.

After marking you often have to input data on a MIS database and sometimes analyse. By now it's often 6pm and you are getting chucked out by the caretaker. When you get home you must make sure any other responsibilities for school are taken care of, catch up on any marking which has slipped, made sure that lesson plans (often long, medium and short term) are written and amended depending on what happened during the day. Most days when I finally clock off it's around 8 at night. I tend to do at least three or four hours each weekend. This is for a normal week, add on to that all of the paperwork that revolves around class trips.

I lead the history curriculum at my school. This means I am responsible for a budget, conducting regular audits, observing other teachers's lessons, conducting book scans and writing reports. This is all at no extra pay.

I fully accept some people in the private sector have to work harder than I do. That they get paid less than I do. But why try to race to the bottom when we should be trying to ensure a fairer way of working for everybody not just the rich.