首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
Schools outside cities [A] With its sandy beaches, charming ruins and occasionally blue waters, the Isle of Wight is a perfect s
Schools outside cities [A] With its sandy beaches, charming ruins and occasionally blue waters, the Isle of Wight is a perfect s
admin
2017-12-08
21
问题
Schools outside cities
[A] With its sandy beaches, charming ruins and occasionally blue waters, the Isle of Wight is a perfect spot off England’s southern coast. Wealthy Londoners sail their boats there. It seems odd that such a place should contain some of the worst-performing schools in England. But it does: and in this, the Isle of Wight is not quite as strange as it seems.
[B] Provisional figures show that last year just 49% of 16-year-olds on the island got at least five C grades, including in English and maths, in GCSE exams. That is fewer than in any of London’s 32 boroughs (行政区), or indeed anywhere in the southern half of England apart from nearby Portsmouth. In the previous year the Isle of Wight was second to bottom in the whole country. Just 23% of pupils entitled to free school meals (a representative of poverty) got five decent grades, compared with a national average of 36%. In September the island’s schools were deemed so bad that Hampshire County Council took them over.
[C] Part of the explanation is distinctively local. Luring good teachers to an out-of-the-way spot is hard. In 2011 the island endured a confused transition from the sort of three-tier school system common in America, with primary, middle and secondary schools, to the two-tier one that is standard in England. But its results were bad even before that change. The Isle of Wight’s real problems are structural. It suffers from three things that might appear to be advantages but are actually the opposite. The island lacks a large city: it has some, but not many, poor children: and it is almost entirely white.
[D] England’s worst schools used to be urban, poor and black—or sometimes Asian. But these days pupils, including poor ones, often fare better in inner cities than elsewhere. In Tower Hamlets, an east London borough that is the third most deprived place in England, children entitled to free school meals do better in GCSE exams than do all children in the country as a whole. Bangladeshis, who are concentrated in that borough, used to perform considerably worse than whites nationally: now they do better.
[E] Poor whites are now the country’s signal educational underachievers. Just 31% of white British children entitled to free school meals got five good GCSEs two years ago, fewer than poor children from any other ethnic group. They fare especially badly in suburbs, small towns and on the coast—places like the Isle of Wight.
[F] Although the island contains pockets of poverty, it is hardly poverty-stricken: overall it comes 106th out of 326 local authorities in England on the government’s deprivation index. A bigger problem is a pervasive lack of faith in education as a means of self-improvement. Steph Boyd, who runs a new free school on the island, says some parents doubt whether the education system can help their children— not altogether surprising given the island’s failings. A few are more anxious for their offspring to go out and get jobs. And nearby career options are limited, points out Pat Goodhead, the headmistress of Christ the King College, the island’s best secondary school. The jobs pages of the County Press, the local newspaper, are filled with advertisements for care workers, barmen and cleaners.
The advantage of deep poverty
[G] Oddly, the Isle of Wight might do better if it were poorer. Truly poor parts of England receive large amounts of government cash. Schools in Tower Hamlets get £7,014 a year for each child, compared with £4,489 in the Isle of Wight. In addition, secondary schools get £900 for each poor child thanks to the "pupil premium" introduced by the coalition government. Poverty-stricken spots also benefit from energetic, idealistic young teachers. Teach First, a programme that sends top graduates into poor schools for at least two years, started in London in 2002. Then it expanded to other big cities such as Manchester. Last year it started sending teachers to south coast towns, but in tiny numbers. Of the 1,261 graduates who joined the programme last year, just 25 were placed on the entire south coast, compared with 553 in London.
[H] Poor children do best in schools where they are either scarce or very numerous. Where they are few, teachers can give them plenty of attention. Where they are numerous, as in the East End of London, schools have no choice but to focus on them. Most ill-served are those who fall in between, in schools where they are insufficiently numerous to merit attention but too many to succeed alone. The Isle of Wight’s six state secondary schools are all stuck in the unhappy middle: between 9% and 17% of the children in them are entitled to free school meals.
[I] One woman, who moved to the island from east London with her young daughter, suspects that the Isle of Wight’s lack of diversity is itself a problem. She may be right about that. Illiteracy among white British children can be easier to overlook than illiteracy among immigrants. Where schools are forced to help the latter, natives often benefit too, says Matthew Coffey of Ofsted, the schools inspectorate. That seems to have happened in Lincolnshire, which has seen a surge in Portuguese and east European immigration.
[J] The government and Ofsted are increasingly worried about the gap in attainment between poor white Britons and the rest. The Department for Education reckons changing the way schools’ success is measured could help. The current emphasis on grades of C and above encourages teachers to focus on children on the edge of attaining that grade, at the expense of those who do really badly. Beginning in 2016 schools will have to track more closely the progress of each child, no matter what grades they are predicted to get. That should raise attentions of schools that have been able to coast along, ignoring the neediest, to give them more attention. But such reforms may not make much difference on the Isle of Wight. Schools there have struggled even against the current benchmark.
[K] They might look to east London for inspiration. The dramatic improvement in Tower Hamlets resulted partly from efforts to change local culture. Schools ran programmes through mosques to tackle absenteeism (旷课). Parents were encouraged to become governors. But change will be harder outside the capital. Tower Hamlets benefits from nearby Canary Wharf, the capital’s second financial district, which supplies good jobs and middle-class advisers. The levers of change are less obvious where poor children are scattered thin. And there are fewer obvious institutions through which to try and improve the lot of the godless white majority.
Changing local culture is one of the reasons that Tower Hamlets obtain great progress in its school education.
选项
答案
K
解析
根据Changing local culture以及Tower Hamlets可定位到K段。该段第2句表示该区取得巨大进步的部分原因是努力改变了当地文化,并在接下来两句通过举例来说明。题目中的great progress对应原文的dramatic improvement,而one of the reasons则对应原文的resulted partly from,故可确定本题出处是K段。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/k3a7777K
0
大学英语四级
相关试题推荐
Ifthesalinity(含盐量)ofoceanwatersisanalyzed,itisfoundtovaryonlyslightlyfromplacetoplace.Nevertheless,someof
AnewreportreleasedbytheAmericanFederationofTeachers(AFT)remindsusofatopiceducationwritersalmostneveraddress—
Anewanalysisoffederalmoneythatpublicschoolsreceiveforlow-incomestudentsshowsthatarecordnumberofthenation’ss
Thereisapopularbeliefamongparentsthatschoolsarenolongerinterestedinspelling.Thisis,however,a【C1】______.Nosch
Thereisapopularbeliefamongparentsthatschoolsarenolongerinterestedinspelling.Thisis,however,a【C1】______.Nosch
Forthispart,youareallowed30minutestowriteashortessaybasedonthepicturebelow.Youshouldstartyouressaywitha
Forthispart,youareallowed30minutestowriteashortessayentitledReadingClassicsorPopularBooks?followingtheoutli
A、Nationalconflict.B、Agriculturalproblems.C、Populationdecrease.D、Economicproblems.D短文提到了缺水会产生的问题,其中谈到影响到发展中国家改善经济的能力,即缺水
秦始皇是中国统一后的第一位皇帝,他成功创建了壮观又巨大的(enormous)建筑工程。他促进了文化和思想上的发展,同时也对中国造成了很大的破坏。应该记住他创造的功绩还是他的暴政(tyranny)是一个很有争议性的问题,但是每个人都应该承认,秦始皇是中国历史
A、Alearnedone.B、Abornone.C、Anormalone.D、Afoolishone.A虽然四个选项都是名词性短语,但变化的是中间的修饰词,故听音时要留意对某种事物或行为的描述。男士说在心理学课上讨论过脸红这个问题
随机试题
在我国社会主义现代化建设中,改革、发展、稳定三者之间的关系是
我国第一部病案专著是( )
无甲状腺组织的先天性甲状腺功能减低症出现症状的时间是
关于真核细胞DNA聚合酶α活性的叙述.下列哪项是正确的
女,25岁。孕40周,初孕,规律宫缩2小时来院,当时宫口扩张4cm,因宫缩强,半小时后宫口开全,第二产程仅15分钟即顺利娩出一男婴,胎儿娩出后即有鲜红血流出,5分钟后胎盘自然娩出。此后出血量仍较多,有血块。此时分析其出血原因最可能为()
下列情形中,构成再次发行公司债券障碍的有()。Ⅰ.最近3年平均可分配利润不足以支付公司债券1年的利息的Ⅱ.前一次发行的公司债券尚未募足的Ⅲ.对已发行的公司债券或者其债务有违约或者延迟支付本息的事实,且仍处于继续状态的Ⅳ.累计债券
外出务工劳动力是指年度内离开本乡镇到外地就业,全年累计达()个月以上的农村劳动力。
以沃伦斯欧茨和查尔斯提布特的理论主要是从()角度出发来构建财政分权理论框架的。
小学生容易把“q”写成“p”,这说明小学生的()还不成熟。
要杜绝令人深恶痛绝的“黑哨”,必须对其课以罚款,或者永久性地取消其裁判资格,或者直至追究其刑事责任。事实证明,罚款的手段在这里难以完全奏效,因为在一些大型赛事中,高额的贿金往往足以抵消被罚款的损失。因此,如果不永久性地取消“黑哨”的裁判资格,就不可能杜绝令
最新回复
(
0
)