Nick Clegg - do as I say, not as I do!

[Twincam16]

RYH64E said:

In my opinion, one of the key reasons why state schools underperform is due to the parents and the home environment of the children.

Perhaps, but having worked in them I'd say a bigger proportion of it is the result of years of left-wing meddling with the system, and Blair's government-by-statistics approach to everything that resulted in qualifications worth bugger-all. Then there's the separate issue of not enough vocational subjects, and a vocational path being automatically seen as somehow less worthy and somehow inferior to going to university.

Like I said before, back when I was at school under the last Tory administration, there was little to differentiate the quality of teaching between my school and the private school across the road. Frankly all they had over us was a posher blazer and a swimming pool, and there was actually another fee-paying school a stone's throw from our comp that had inferior GCSE results.

The key to it was teachers being able to just do what they did best and teach. They didn't have to split their lesson plans down into five separate chunks to appease Ofsted. They didn't have to put up specific 'learning objectives' for that individual lesson if you were working on a longer project. They didn't have to deliberately crowbar 'multimedia' into the lesson (a specific requirement now) if it didn't merit it. They just drew on years of experience, taught to the level of the stream (streaming was still allowed back then), and commanded authority simply because they were the teacher and whatever punishment short of whacking you was their preserve.

Nowadays, public schools still do this. They aren't subject to the same local authority pressures, and the teachers work in pretty-much th same way as mine used to. Also, as private employees public school teachers are less likely to be members of shouty, militant, extreme-left Labour-aligned unions like the NUT and NASUWT, but more academic bodies like the ATL and NAHT, so there's going to be a more considered, intellectual approach to any proposed new schemes, rather than them being treated as a New Labour 'inclusiveness' edict from on high to be followed unquestioningly to the letter.

I went back to my old school to observe and teach during my unfinished PGCE. Despite trumpeting a 98% A*-C pass rate, the place was grotesque. Every lesson was seemingly designed to appease hyperactivity and encourage shortened attention spans. Nearly every lesson was conducted on an internet-enabled computer so all the kids would drift onto IM as soon as they got the chance. The library had gone, replaced with a handful of set-text books in the English classrooms, the room it occupied was now full of computers.

I asked the head of English where kids were supposed to get books out from and he said 'we don't expect kids to read books these days. I mean, when was the last time you read a novel?' When I replied that I had two plus a non-fiction on the go, he looked at me like I was some kind of perverse weirdo.

It was when I realised that nearly every state school had ended up like this that I decided to pull out of teaching. During my course I contacted my old English teacher for advice, and she told me she'd taken early retirement once she saw the extent of the changes to the curriculum being made by Blair's government and propogated by the teaching unions. She'd voted Labour her whole life.

Personally, given the rock-bottom that education hit under New Labour, I can't see how things could get much worse. I hope every school aims to become an academy, and that people learn to stop seeing GCSE pass rates as some kind of barometer as to how good the school actually is compared to what it actually offers their kids. The fact that a school can boast a 98% A*-C GCSE pass rate without having a library on its premises says it all really. Same goes for the a la carte menu of exam boards offered to schools so they can choose the ones their kids will find easiest to pass, rather than forcing kids to learn rigorous things with the threat of future destitution as a motivator.

The current 1.05 million-and-climbing rate of youth unemployment at a time when employment is rising is the nail in the coffin of Labour's educational credibility. This is the party that reconfigured the school system to churn out kids with meaningless qualifications and no life skills, forced 50% of them through a university system that only served to put them in masses of debt, and then stood in Parliament crowing in that talk-over-everyone-else zeal about how they'd made everything better because the statistics said so.

Bring on the academies, I say. The whole Free Schools thing was a total joke and I doubt it'll make any long-term impact, but if we can crowbar the local authorities (and, by association, the more left-leaning unions) off the backs of the state sector, then IMO we'll be well on the way to a far better education system.

[The Don of Croy]

Twincam16 said:

Much stuff

Any chance you could go and post that on CiF/Guardian, Mumsnet, and the TES online comment section?

That is where this kind of rationale needs to be heard...

[Twincam16]

The Don of Croy said:

Twincam16 said:

Much stuff

Any chance you could go and post that on CiF/Guardian, Mumsnet, and the TES online comment section?

That is where this kind of rationale needs to be heard...

Not Mumsnet or the Graun, but otherwise I do (albeit in smaller chunks as those sites seem to accommodate it).

You'd be surprised how much the TES Online section is broadly in favour (there seems to be a correlation between the people who disagree and their membership of the NUT and NASUWT. The ATL seems way more level-headed).

[ClaphamGT3]

Twincam16 said:

The Don of Croy said:

lockhart flawse said:

Well if you edit the part about the so-called upper-middle class "ghettoising" their kids I think you would ellicit 100% agreement to your post.

Agreed. I've never earned more than £50k in a year, but so far we've put three children through prep school and one through secondary private, with another lining up for it. My wife drops youngest off in her 8 yo Jazz and I drive a 10 yo Volvo to work (or the 9 yo MR2). We have an interest only mortgage so we'll have to move as and when to pay off the capital. We have one holiday per year, perhaps another weekend away another time if I can fit it in with a business trip. And my wife does not do paid work - she seems to be busy enough looking after our children.

When socialising with other parents we have never failed to meet other people in very similar positions, as well as some who can afford it no problemo. Much like wider society in fact, except that it is very rare to meet anyone who does not take their children's education to heart.

Twincam you speak much which is sensible but it is leavened by the sniping at 'privilege' as manifested by bank balance.

And the fact that you see £50k a year as somehow humble and average shows how skewed your view of normality is.

How would you manage to do the same on half that? Y'know, like normal people.

I'm not 'sniping', I just think that the PH view of what constitutes 'average' and the actual reality is dramatically different.

[ClaphamGT3]

Twincam16 said:

RYH64E said:

Twincam16 said:

And the fact that you see £50k a year as somehow humble and average shows how skewed your view of normality is.

How would you manage to do the same on half that? Y'know, like normal people.

I'm not 'sniping', I just think that the PH view of what constitutes 'average' and the actual reality is dramatically different.

It doesn't have to be one earner on £50k, it could be two on £25k each, or £30k/£20k etc. It is affordable for many families if they are prepared to make the necessary sacrifices, and the fact that parents care enough to make those sacrifices is a better indicator of their child's chances of success than the actual income declared by said parents.

Right. So I must have got where I have in life despite my parents not giving a st about me, clearly.

With respect, I think that you're being somewhat obtuse. Any reasonable person knows that very many parents of children educated in the maintained sector care passionately about their children's educational achievement and work incredibly hard to help them to succeed. I am a PCC governor of our local CofE primary school and the lengths some people will go to in order to get their children in is astonishing. That said, those children with parents unwilling or unable to support their education are far more likely to end up in the maintained sector than in the independent, where almost all parents will have a passion to see their children perform and will frequently make incredible sacrifices to do so.

To the point of accessibility in the independent sector, in our childrens' independent pre-prep, I would say that in each class there are one or two families who are properly - by any measure - rich and one or two where you wonder how they do it. The remaining 10 families are just normal families with parents working hard and making sacrifices to give their children the best education. In the independent HMC school of which I'm a governor, we have a large number of children whose parents access some level of charitable support (bursaries/grants/scolarships etc etc) to meet the fee bill and we always select on the ability of the child.

Finally, a bit o/t I know, one of the most spiteful and doctrinaire acts of the spiteful and doctrinaire new labour era was the abolition of the direct grant system that opened up the opportunity of the best possible education to the talented children from families of modest means - this, as much as anything should redound to Blair's discredit for all time.

[lockhart flawse]

Twincam - last post...agree every word. It's actually ratrher depressing isn't it.

[Twincam16]

Just to give those who aren't aware of the kind of teaching techniques state-sector teachers are plagued with having to use, this blog by Tom Bennett (who posts weekly on the TES website and seems to talk a hell of a lot of sense about everything, but like many people who know what they're on about in education are completely overruled and ignored by the DfES, local councils and left-aligned teaching unions) does a pretty good job of explaining the frustration at the heart of it all:

http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storyCode=631275...

His blog archive is a selection of nails hit firmly and squarely on the head, too. Well worth a read.

http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storyCode=630876...

Edited by Twincam16 on Wednesday 13th March 13:52