Scotland demonstrates the necessity of schools reform

Faceless Bureaucrat

And it took the Scots to have the 'cajones' to drive this forward.

I've become 'tearful and dewey-eyed' after reading this post...

Thom

"How can the left possibly have against giving the poor being the same choice of schools as the rich?

Because, Fraser, it has never been about improving the lot of the many but of improving the strength of the yoke that holds them; the hand they've held has always been, ultimately, the hand that holds them down.

We are approaching a time when it be up to the individual to pick themselves up, to bite the hand that feeds them and to revolt against the "consensus". Sadly being that areas of Glasgow only ousted NuLabour for the even more statist SNP I am not holding my breath.

Doug

How can you use "powers to reject reform introduced by Blair in England" when education in Scotland is entirely devolved from England and Wales? There is nothing to reject and therefore no powers were used.

The main difference in Scotland is that all parties and the vast majority of people believe in the state system. There are only a smattering of lone voices who are trying to create the same wedge issue, class divisions that scar England and the people don't want it.

I wonder why if the Scottish system is so bad there are such huge opportunities for Scottish educated people in the South East and across the world. There is obviously a demand which is surely the ultimate standard. When I went to university, not so long ago, I and my fellow Scots were a year ahead of what English pupils had learned from their A-levels compared to our Highers and CSYS (now advanced Higher). In fact, as I and friends learned, arrogant administrators at English unis regularly put Scots students in remedial courses by default and then discover to their shock that we blew them away in short order and got reassigned to advanced courses. Scotland has not had the same wild grade inflation South of the border.

And best of all the Scottish system has been relatively free of interfering politicians, left or right, wishing to impose their grandiose political ideologies. All political led change is based on political ideology, just like the above mentioned plan.

Rob C

A voucher based system for ALL education is long overdue. It would offer a real choice for parents and provide a much needed economic boost as well as raising standards. Even a system that provided a voucher for 75% of a private education would be a welcome boost. We are paying for my son (5yrs old) to have a private education despite a joint income around £16,000. It is infinitely better than the state provides and worth every penny. Smaller classes, better discipline and much better attitude. Our job as parents is to provide the best start in life for our children and that means some sacrifices. A large number of other parent's at his school are in a similar position and the majority are not rich. The old stereotype that private education is for the rich is a socialist myth - it is far more of a measure of which parents care enough to make personal lifestyle sacrifices for their children. The state under New Labour has utterly failed the next generation - not only is their education sub-standard, but to add further insult, they are inheriting debt of titanic proportions. Typical of Gordon Brown who gives £500 for a trust fund, but then leaves them a post-dated bill for 100 times that amount in future taxes to pay for his bloated and squandering state today!

ChrisD

An unreformed system?

I went through the excellent Scottish state education system back in the 70'&80's, now I want to weep at what various politicians and their education advisers have done to this once great asset.

And to suggest that further eroding it would be a good thing fails to understand the geography and scattered population.

You highlight a few area's in Glasgow without mentioning the current other elephant in the room with regards education in that area. This could end up being a very poor decision with a lot of unintended consequences.

We should be looking at what we did wrong, and how it can be reversed. But, please, no more experimenting using our kids as guinea pigs. And no more comparisons with England either, we had a different system whereby all children benefited from an excellent education up here, and without the need for grammar schools etc.

Verity

Could British bloggers who want to use the word, please learn how to spell cojones. And there's no reason to put it in quotation marks. It's just a word.

The Masked Marvel

This voucher idea sounds good on paper. Who can argue with the idea of giving poor families the choice to enable their dreams for their children?

But how many private schools are there, versus how many school-age children? If you give £10K to every child in Scotland, which private schools would they all go to, exactly? Something's missing in the equation.

JR

Fraser - I am going to comment on the post but.........did you see page 3 of the FT? "Private welfare-to work schemes failing".

Not sure if you remember me trying to tell you in a comment that a central plank of the Conservative (and indeed Purnell's) welfare reform plans would likely fall apart in a coming recession? You didn't respond at the time but as the most interested media commentator I'd really like to see you give a take and reflect on the imminent market failure in welfare reform provision. It's been a challenge to my views but I've reached some conclusions and there is an interesting way forward.

If you stick a post up I'll obviously drop in to comment....

To the post in hand.....I'm becoming less convinced by a standard value voucher. I think you might need to weight it in fact towards poorer pupils (i.e. means testing) to make it work best for everybody.

But that would be political unacceptable because a large degree of the momentum behind the project is from middle class people wanting the best for their children not from some alturitic wih to improve the lot of everyone.

That's fine (and a completely understandable urge from middle class parents) but I believe strongly a single priced voucher would fail and engrain educational failures particularly in London.

bergen

Verity-there was a Spanish teacher in my home town years ago whose name was-Mr C O Jones (truly).

Needless to say,much schoolboy sniggering.

Wilhelm

Schoolteacher Verity

You tell them boss.

Fraser Nelson

Doug, I had health reform in mind. Scottish Labour also opted out of City Academies - although the Labour MPs voted for them. And I am at a loss as to how you think the Scottish exam system has been shielded from interfering politcicians -have you seen the curriculum recently?

ChrisD, how does this erode the state system? Reform Scotland wants to let private schools enter the state syetem and provide state education. It is the rejuvenation of the state education system - whereby the state pays for it, but does not necessarily provide it.

Finally, the "experimenting" would end under a liberalised education system becuase politicians and local education barons would have no system to "experiment" with. Education would be a contract between parents and schools.

Forlornehope

When I was growing up, about 50 years ago, it was generally accepted that the Scottish education system was superior to that in England. The matter is no longer clear. However, the 2007 TIMSS reports for both countries would indicate that England has now moved ahead.

http://www.nfer.ac.uk/research-areas/timss/timss_home.cfm

This is a large scale random survey. There were a few comments when it came out about Kazakstan. Before laughing too much, just remember where the Soviet space programme was based.

When looking at international comparisons, and working with people from different countries, it is clear that the top and the middle in the UK is actually quite good. The problem is that the bottom is too big and performs too poorly.

Alfred T Mahan

You're absolutely right in the planning ahead point - a new Conservative government will need to start seeing the fruits of a voucher policy within one parliament, and that's a pretty tall order already, let alone if potential school operators have to wait until after the election before being certain of the future. Otherwise there's a risk that the following election will come just at the point where the upheaval is at its greatest and the benefits haven't yet materialised.

They also need to reconsider the ban on profit-making companies running 'state' schools. For the life of me I can't see why this is necessary as it cuts out a huge pool of funding and general expertise which could be invaluable.

Ray

Not introducing a voucher system for educating poorer children was one of the great lost opportunities of the Thatcher years.

Fergus Pickering

Why should children rom poor backgrounds get a bigger voucher than anybody else? If the ordinary voucher covers the costs of the education anyway, the extra money is just a freebie, isn't it? Why should poor people get free money just like that? Or have I misunderstood the full inwardness and subtlety of the Scots? I think, by the way, that the days when a Scots education was something superior, as in my day in the 50 and 60s are long gone. It's just as crap up there as anywhere else UNLESS you can pay.

Frank P

Verity

"Could British bloggers who want to use the word, please learn how to spell cojones. And there's no reason to put it in quotation marks. It's just a word."

Best use orchestras instead. At least that's English, albeit Cockney, which is not always the same these days of course - or ever was, come to think about it. :-)

Nick Kaplan

Most worries about a voucher system seem to come from the left and are predicated on the view that it will lead to inequality of opportunity and variable standards. What the left neglect to mention is that we face a choice between high quality schools and uniformity in education; you simply cannot drive up standards without inequalities developing. This is for a couple of reasons:

Firstly, there is no such thing as ‘uniformly high quality schools’ because what counts as quality to some will be different to others. The point of a voucher system is that it allows people to assess what qualities are important to them and drive standards up accordingly (e.g. by demanding schools that specialise in certain fields), thus standards will be higher across the board, but not uniformly so.

Secondly the process by which standards can be improved are necessarily non-uniform. The competition that results from a voucher system incentivises schools to achieve higher quality services as defined by children and their parents, by forcing schools to respond to parents demands or risk closing down. The current system (or any conceivable alternative) will not involve the price mechanism and consequently it destroys the link between customer and provider, parent and teacher, with the result that we see all around us; arrogant teachers unions more concerned with serving themselves than providing the service they are actually paid for. There are currently no important consequences for offering a bad service and hence no incentive to offer a good one, as a result all we get is stagnation or decline.

To achieve uniformity or ‘equality’ what is needed is state control and the crushing of individual initiative and competition. Uniformity thus invariably means ‘uniformly rubbish.’ The concepts of ‘high-quality’ and that of ‘uniformity’ are therefore incompatible as the means of improving quality are inherently non-uniform; this is the fundamental truth socialists will never accept. As a result one has a choice between high-quality services or uniform ones, socialists who, to paraphrase Churchill, bizarrely favour equality of misery over inequality of blessings, always favour the latter and the result is a failing education system geared towards social engineering rather than educating children.

hadrian

As a former schoolmaster in the Scottish system I can only say the system's been swamped with political initiatives. The examination syllabus beggars belief for the 'dumbing down' it represents. Just compare 1960s past papers at Ordinary Grade and Highers with the more recent equivalents to see the glaring difference. Nor has this academic dilution helped to address how best to channel the gifts of non-academic pupils, particularly as they're forced to stay on longer and longer in the system instead of getting out and learning a far more relevant trade etc. The courses at Universities are just as depressingly simplified to accommodate all those who really aren't true academics.
As for Scottish schools not being subject to social divisions, I must say the segregated RC schooling is rather a glaring example!
As ever, my own decided view on the secret of success lies primarily with the quality of family encouragement and discipline- both in the family and the school. Loss of corporal punishment remains a self-inflicted handicap. Of course cash can help but few are the schools genuinely starved of sufficient funds.
Schools, finally, are there primarily to impart information, not as experiments in social engineering.

Verity

Wilhelm - The English language is vast. There is no reason for people to pretentiously use foreign words they don't know how to spell. If you're going to use a foreign word, spell the sucker correctly.

Frank P - How very nice to hear to from you! I don't understand the 'orchestras' reference but, knowing you, it will be robust! Hmmm ... bands? ... cellos? ... brass, er, triangles? ... percussion ... surely not clarinets, flutes or oboes???? Cockney rhyming slang for string quartets?

hysteria

cojones shmojones

both my kids went to state schools in Scotland - one went on to a top English University and got a First Class Masters Degree in difficult sums......

I accept that there is evidence of a decline in standards - but it is not universal and bright kids can still do well and have opportunity

emma2000

I grew up in Glasgow in the 1950s and 60s. Went to a Senior Secondary = grammer school in England. Background council house, solid working class, dad steel worker. Thanks to a first class education there and at Glasgow uni free and with a grant I could live on. I have had a very comfortable career and lfe. I just wonder if the same opportunities are open now. Still that was an era when education was revered by most working class parents and they wanted better for their children. That seems in short supply now too among those content to live off the State for life. That option was not then available and most would have considered it shameful. I live in the South East now and rarely go home but it does seem that things are very different now.

Fergus Pickering

Ah, Hadrian. You are quite right about corporal punishment. Of course you are. A simle examople. I pushed a boy into the swimming pool,because I was dared to do so. What is the right punishment for this. Three strokes of the belt delivered by the PE teacher, a long-suffering man, perfectly formed and rathergentle. However he put his back into the three strokes. I regretted my action for quite some time.

Fraser Nelson

JR, Sorry, didn't see your post until now - you still reading? Let me know and we can use this thread to talk welfare reform....

Matt

It is a disgrace that a faceless journalist like yourself can condemm a population of 15,000 people in Castlemilk to the status of "scummy estate" with absolutely no social conscience. I myself live in this estate where houses have recently sold at the £250,000 mark. Maybe you should actually visit the area before commenting thus. The recent school for report for Castlemilk High, the Queen's Award for Voluntary Service to Castlemilk Timebank, the award winning Castlemilk Stables Project, and the International Scotswoman of the year to Mary Miller, founder of the Jeely Piece Club are all examples of what people from this area can achieve.