Pure Balls

Forlornehope

But no change will deliver if schools are still tied to SATS, an over detailed national curriculum and wildly over complicated key stage frameworks. Just look at some of that stuff and you will see why good teachers are being driven up the wall.

travis bickle

SO WHAT ?

Publius

I don't think most adults quite realise the amount of ideological brainwashing that now goes on in state schools.

Mitch

If balls is worried I'm for it, the mans an idiot he is proof that you cannot polish a turd.

Fergus Pickering

You CAN plish a turd. Youcan polish it to a brilliant shine. But the point is that it is still a turd. Any school system AT ALL would be better than the one we have. Lookat the results Look at us sliding down theinternatonal performance tables. Why is this? Is it because Englsi schoolchildren are naturally stupid? But I thought they were getting cleverer and cleverer. So we have been told. So why can't they erad and write? Why can't theybloody SPELL or write grammatical sentences? What is thereason that the standard of English in the Daily Telegraph is so much worse than it was thirty years ago. I assume it is because the young journalists have been badly educated, unless like fat Balls, they went to private schools.

Henry Rogers

Mitch,
He isn't only a turd and an idiot, he is also a would-be tyrant. We can probably afford to tolerate people who are merely unwise and unpleasant. We'd be most unwise to tolerate would-be tyrants.

Tom Pride

I wouldn’t worry too much about Balls and the education brief. He will be moving to No. 11 in the re-shuffle. The pasty porker wants his credit card back.

Victor, NW Kent

First secure wide support for educational reform. Most parents will support that - or at least those who will bother to vote.

Then we can set about breaking the inertia and acceptance of failure as normal that besets our system. Once success has become a worthwhile and laudable objective we can set future generations free from grinding poverty of means and of spirit.

Thomas Cussans

Fergus,

You can plish a turd.

You have quite set me up for the day.

Thanks

Michael Booth

Schools reflect the society we live in - which just about says it all. Broken society, broken school system. Twenty-five years of government micro-management, targets, and bullying have got us where we are. Ed Balls hasn't a clue: 'Balls - it says what it does on the tin'

David Ossitt

Do remember that when and if he is elevated to the job at N/O 11.

We will no longer have a Chancellor of the Exchequer; in his stead The Minister for Finance, Pocket Money and Bio-degradable Piggy Banks.

The last of these will be the cause of riots breaking out in Bradford, Luton and Islamabad.

Dee

Balls is as always speaking a load of bollocks. At least we know that he is hanging on the left.

Chuck Unsworth

Schools do not reflect the society we live in, they reflect the ambitions and stupidity of the countless politicians who have been responsible as Ministers of State for Education. These people have been aided and abetted by officials who, like their political masters, will never be held to account. They have relentlessly imposed their 'ideas' on the nation, and we are now seeing the results - our children leaving school unable to read, spell, communicate by writing, count, or even speak whole sentences. Ministers have come and gone within a few short months. The past decade has witnessed repeated changes, so much so that we have now travelled almost the full circle.

Why have we given over the schooling and education of our own offspring to the whim and fancy of these 'politicians' and their henchmen? Who are they to determine 'excellence'? What are their credentials? Why should they be trusted at all?

Wily Trout

Everything Chuck Unsworth says is right. But sadly the problem arises in part from the apathy of a large tranche of parents who couldn't care less what education their children get, wouldn't recognise a real education if they saw it, and are only interested in getting their kids out of their hair for the day so they can get down to the pub or slob about in front of the tv. Much of the discussion about education is voiced by the middle classes, who care about their children. But I'm not sure that people who care about their children's education are in the majority any more in the UK. And it is in the sink estates and like places where a real education is most important. The relationship between school and parent will certainly need to change, but not purely in the direction of empowerment to the parent. I can't see that the thousands of parents who make no effort to support school discipline are going to set up schools where the kids don't have to turn up, don't have to pay attention to lessons, and don't have to respect their teachers. These are the people best supported by the current govt education arrangements.

mac

It's not mere whim and fancy, Chuck: what has been imposed follows Gramsci's prescription pretty deliberately. See Gramsci's "The Organisation of Education and Culture," in 'The Modern Prince and Other Writings'.

The Laughing Cavalier

I keep asking for evidence that this man is as clever as some commentators allege him to be. No one seems able to produce any evidence.

David Lindsay

“Why bother voting Blue Labour rather than New Labour?”, they sometimes ask in the comments on sites such as Coffee House.

And the answer has been “Michael Gove’s Swedish-style school reforms”. Well, Tory local government has now risen in revolt against that. I had been wondering how long it would take.

These days, there is once again rather a lot of Tory local government. The Tories have become like the Lib Dems, with grassroots activists used to leading councils, chairing education authorities and all that, but “led” by people who have never run so much as their own baths.

The former know the state education system intimately as past pupils, as parents, as governors, more often that you might think as past or present teachers, and so on. The latter, by contrast, are rather less familiar with it…

Of course, the same principle applies to every other public service. Grassroots Tories use it, sometimes work in it, are often accustomed to running it.

Whereas the allegedly more senior Tories know not the first thing about it. And are therefore susceptible to the equally ignorant, fundamentally adolescent outpourings of the think tank boys.

Such as “Wisconsin-style” welfare “reform”, although that seems to have gone by the by. And such as “Swedish-style” school “reform”.

Between them, the teaching unions and the (often Tory) local government side of education have seen off such formidable figures as David Blunkett, Charles Clarke and Alan Johnson.

David Cameron and the rest of his foppish dilettantes haven’t a hope in hell.

So there is no reason to bother turning out and voting Tory rather than New Labour at the next General Election. Simply none at all.

R Mason

The Gove plan is great. However, Gove plans to ban selection. This will not work. Some desirable schools will be beseiged and will have to select. If they use residence it is tantamount to wealth and that wil not do. Far better to do it by ability and behaviour.

Mixed ability schooling is the most destructive education dogma of the 20c. It's premise is that all will be made more equal by being educated together but the opposite has happened. Children are moving further apart socially and in performance. Record numbers drop out as soon as they can whilst far more at the other end of the social scale go to university. A third of children leave junior school unable to read, write or add up properly.

Mixed ability schooling forces the teacher to teach to the lowest level of the class because he cannot let the dim fall behind the bright at the end of the term. Thus, the bright are neglected. They are punished for being bright which is pretty demoralising. The dim meanwhile are forced to spend their schooling with those who can do everything better, faster and easier to them which is also demoralising.

Far better to select on ability. I do not mean grammar/secondary modern; that is just two groups when ability, however it is measured, is with the vast majority in the middle with little to choose between them. Only a minority are super bright and a similar number super dim so free selection would mean a few schools for the super bright, a few for the other end and most in the middle with little to choose between them. All children would then get the education directed at them, it would be far easier for the teacher who would not have to cater for different abilities. This is the main reason for the success of independent schools. They don't do mixed ability.

The really difficult would have special schools, or boarding; smaller, better staffed, more money with their own regime.

It is also silly to have one size exams for all, where many drop out rather than face them and just as many sailing through them with ease. We need a variety of curicula for different groups then all can do what they are good at.