46. A) Read the sentences below. Arrange them in order of importance. Compare your ideas with your partner.

The top 15 benefits of homeschooling

You get to...

1) Control what your children learn and when they learn it.

2) Show your children that learning is not boring, but exciting.

3) Build intimate and meaningful relationships with your children.

4) Tailor your teaching to fit your children’s dominant learning styles.

5) Give your children in-depth, personal attention in any subject with which they struggle or excel.

6) Create a weekly schedule that fits your needs and allows you to do things without the constraint of a traditional classroom schedule.

7) Transfer your values and beliefs to your children and address their questions when they have them.

8) Protect your children from the negative influences they may encounter outside the home.

9) Teach more effectively by interacting with your children.

10) Nurture your children’s natural (musical, artistic, mathematic) talents so they thrive and grow.

11) Address “big issues” with your children when you feel they’re ready.

12) Share with your children the common, everyday joys of life.

13) Help your children mature through the difficult times in their lives.

14) Share the joy of teaching your children with your spouse.

15) Take vacations during the school year and make them educational.

The top 10 potential disadvantages of homeschooling

You may have to...

1) Spend 24 hours a day with your children for several days at a time.

2) Justify homeschooling to family and friends who oppose your decision to learn at home.

3) Be very patient with your children when it seems they aren’t learning anything at all.

4) Deal with the frustrations of sometimes being behind.

5) Spend more money on your children’s education than you’re accustomed to.

6) Get out of your comfort zone to learn how to homeschool effectively.

7) Encourage your children even when you don’t feel like it.

8) Seek advice from other homeschooling parents when you encounter problems you’re not equipped to handle.

9) Research a few curriculum programs before you find one that works for you and your family.

10) Put more effort to find children with whom your children can build quality relationships.

b) In pairs discuss the benefits and disadvantages of homeschooling. Use the Essential Strategy Language.

Educational problems

47. Read the text below. Choose from sentences a-f the one which fits each gap (1-5). There is one extra sentence which you do not need to use. Compulsory secondary education in Ukraine

A The most critical of them is inconsistence between the educational legislation and the actual regulatory base as to implementation of the external independent assessment system in Ukraine.

B Knowledge assessment in the testing format was aimed at revealing the real knowledge level of school-leavers and ensuring equal and fair access to studying at higher educational establishments.

C Another problem that caused an ambiguous reaction in society is implementation of the external independent assessment in Ukraine as an element of the public educational policy.

D Fortunately, it did not influence the results but it should be avoided in future.

E Different views on this matter exist in society, which caused relevant reaction of various political forces in the course of the presidential election campaign in 2010.

F Positive changes in the Ukrainian community require systematic reformation of the national system of education.

Among the pressing problems facing the general secondary education system development is the transition to a 12-year term of getting a general secondary education. Today, the amount of study load per pupil in Ukrainian schools is about 10,300 academic hours, which on the whole meets the average European educational standards. (1) _____. For instance, a draft Law of Ukraine on amending several laws of Ukraine as to returning to the 10-year term of acquiring complete general secondary education was submitted by one of the candidates for the Office of the President of Ukraine at the presidential election in 2010. It aroused a strong protest of the Board of the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine that unanimously passed an appeal to the Supreme Rada of Ukraine as to impossibility of returning to the 10-year study term in secondary education, as it was at the time of the USSR, for the following reasons:

• The twelve-year study term has preserved children’s health, standardized the study load, enabled implementation of a five-day study week while the ten-year study term will provide for returning to a six-day study week which endangers pupil’s health;

• Over 100,000 teachers will automatically become unemployed;

• The international community will not recognize school leaving certificates or higher education diplomas as it violates the UNESCO recommendations on the minimum 12-year term for acquiring secondary education;

• 1.5 billion hryvnias has been spent on textbooks. Replacing them will require even more taxpayers’ money;

• Profile training in high school will be cancelled. It will be extremely difficult for pupils to enter higher educational establishments.

(2) _______. The main instrument of this process is testing techniques usage. Testing to assess knowledge was first applied in Ukraine in late 20s – early 30s of the XX century to solve a number of pedagogical problems. Testing was used again in 50s, 70s, and 90s, but no expected results were obtained because testing methodology was not developed enough. External independent assessment by means of testing was applied in Ukraine again as an experiment in 2002 on the basis of pupils’ voluntary participation in Kyiv, Lviv, Odesa and Kharkiv regions with the financial and expert support by the International Renaissance Foundation. Today, the Ukrainian educators develop their own model of carrying out assessment of school-leavers’ study achievements.

In 2008 mass external assessment of pupils’ study achievements using a new procedure developed by the Ukrainian Center for Education Quality Assessment was carried out for the first time in Ukraine. (3) ______. At the same time, the practice of external independent assessment that is consecutively forming in Ukraine has defects as regards to both its content and organization and needs systematical improvement. Analyzing its implementation, attention should be paid to some fundamental deficiencies in this work. (4) ______. To standardize this issue, it is necessary to urgently make amendments to the Law of Ukraine on Education, Law of Ukraine on Higher Education, Law of Ukraine on General Secondary Education, etc. It is also inadmissible that, as opposed to developed world countries, professionals who are engaged today in the Ukrainian education assessment processes are not certified. The problem is that the higher educational establishments in Ukraine do not, till now, prepare specialists in the field of pedagogical measurement. At the same time, the increase in number of people involved in carrying out the external independent assessment (people responsible for testing facilities, instructors, and other participants of the process) and their lack of adequate experience led to violations of the procedure for carrying out external independent assessment. (5) _____. Therefore, it is necessary to review the practice of training and certifying persons involved in carrying out external independent assessment.

An important constituent of successful external independent assessment is marking the test participants’ scripts. First of all, it concerns marking open questions. This was a problem in 2007 and has remained as such till now because no mechanism has been elaborated for examiners’ involvement and payment for their work yet.

Much is written today about equal access to quality education. A constituent part of this process is to ensure equal conditions for all school leavers when carrying out external independent assessment, namely in observing the citizens’ constitutional right to choose their education language. This problem also remains unsettled due to its political context.

48. a) Listen to the speaker talking about educational problems in the USA and answer the questions by choosing TWO letters A-F.

1) Which two of the following problems are causing concern to educational authorities in the USA?

A difference between rich and poor students

B high numbers dropping out of education

C falling standards of students

D poor results compared with other nationalities

E low scores of overseas students

F differences between rural and urban students

2) According to the speaker, what are two advantages of reducing class sizes?

A more employment for teachers

B improvement in general health of the population

C reduction in number of days taken off sick by teachers

D better use of existing buildings and resources

E better level of education of workforce

F availability of better qualified teachers

b) Listen again and complete the table below by writing no more than THREE words and / or a number for each answer.

USA research projects into class sizes

State	Schools involved	Number of students participating	Key findings	Problems
Tennessee	about 70 schools	in total (1) ____	significant benefit especially for (2) ____ pupils	lack of agreement on implications of data
California	(3) ____	1.8 million	very little benefit	shortage of (4) ____, especially in poorer areas; no proper method for (5) ____ of project
Wisconsin	14 schools with pupils from (6) ___ families		similar results to Tennessee project