Focus Group

I conducted a small focus group using an open telephone conversation (every one was on speaker phone and could therefore hear each other's comments). I spoke to two former language teachers, Mr Alistair Pearson and Mrs Lesley Pearson. I wanted an unbiased opinion and therefore settled on teachers who did not teach any of the core subjects - Maths, Enlgish or Science, or the creative subject - Dance or Drama.
The question I put to them was 'why are academic subjects favoured in education?'. Alistair Pearson responded by saying that maths and English are transferable subjects that are used as everyday life skills. Both, however agreed that what is necessary as a life skill, is not what is being taught. Pupils who do not intend to pursue further education or a career in Maths or English literature, are currently spending up to eight hours a week, being taught information they are unlikely to ever have to access. This conversation has lead me to propose that pupils should be given the option to choose whether to study Maths and English as they currently stand, or a 'life skills' based syllabus of 'Arithmetics' and 'Literacy'. These lessons would concentrate on areas such as multiplication, addition, grammer, spellings, punctuation and writing skills. This would then free up timetable space for pupils who wish to concentrate on other areas more frequently.