Newsnight education debate shows the potency of parent power

Nick

What is it with Labour politicians that they refuse to apologise even when faced with a situation where they might gain credit for magnanimity.

Balls could just claim he had been misinformed about Gove's comments and that he therefore apologises for a misunderstanding.

Similarly Gordon Brown in PMQs yesterday could have won plaudits across the House had he disowned himself from Dennis Skinner's nasty remark about the Army top brass all being Tories. Yet instead of doing the statesmanlike thing Brown just attacked Cameron over Ashcroft.

strapworld

I thought Cameron just about held his own in the grueling ordeal of his interrogation by Alan Titmarsh yesterday.

I hear his next television interview is with Ainsley Harriott followed by that real test of nerves with Ant and Dec.

Wot a leader.

Stonewall

I know its early for you "strapworld" (that tower of intelligent liebour trolling), but we are discussing education here. You know adult subjects...do try and keep up!

strapworld

stonewall, well what was your discussion point on education then?

FYI I was a member of the Conservative party! Was a conservative councillor! Was a Conservative Chairman! But the conservative party led by the liberal Cameron is no party for me. Now, that has increased your education!

djw2009

>>"there was an awful lot of people"

Make that "there were". Why not go back to primary school and learn some English?

SUSAN HILL

NuLabour's mothers never taught them my lesson which my children knew by heart. If you break a precious dish by accident and you come to tell me, I won`t be cross and you will be able to stand tall. If you hide the bits under a cushion and lie to me that you didn`t break said dish, I will be very very angry and you will look very very small.
Smalls Balls.

SUSAN HILL

Or Small Balls even.

Moriarty

Strapworld has managed to do an awful lot with his life considering he's obviously about 12 years old.

Richard

Watched newsnight and to be honest the whole show was woeful. Too much time given to the politicos and not enough to those who really know about the subject.
The head teacher (sorry I didnt get his name) was excellent and I can see why he is so respected, I am certain he got his knighthood on merit.
The Balls v Gove was on balance a 2-1 result for Balls.
The big question is the finance issue for Goves...he cannot explain the money and it left him wide open, 1.5 billion funding gap!
Balls did well on the point that when Labour came to power the schools were falling down, teachers were demoralised and the children were failed by the system.
Today there are no crumbling schools the teachers are well paid, they are now fighting for the futrue of the children not themselves. That took billions to reverse Tory cuts and under funding. Nobody would say that everything is right in the system but it's far from broken and it is far far better than it was.
I feel the big issue is what are we training children for? what are we trying to achieve? the question posed by Paxman.
Is it the basics 3 x R's or is it a life long thirst for knowledge, in other words is it filling the pail with facts or starting a fire in the brain that feeds on knowledge. Work based or cultural improvement?
I am happy to leave education to the heads if they could all be like the guy last night.

Stonewall

Strapworld.....my doctor only allows me 56 tablets at a time on prescription; something to do with cutting the costs of medication.
Perhaps you are subject to the same constraint so why do you not increase the dosage...now cut along you must be late for your anger management course. LOL, now get off my back!

A Schoolmaster writes...

@djw2009: 'There was an awful lot/a lot...' is correct. Similarly, 'there were lots' is correct. '*An* awful lot' is singular, even though it refers to a group of people. Substitute 'big elephant' for 'awful lot' and see how it reads.

Unless perhaps you are advocating the use of northern English demotics, as in 'Eee, 'appen it were a right laugh.'

strapworld

Gosh the Cameron Conservatives are getting very touchy! They though they were going to walk into power.That they will have to fight, like the old conservative party fought, is proving a daunting task. Especially when their leader has no backbone.

One cannot call anything chaired by Paxman a 'debate' it is an insult to ones intelligence. Actually I thought the Liberal Democrat chappie was the best!

Stonewall, two attempts and still nothing to add to the education debate.Keep taking the tablets.

Moriarty, now that was intelligent. You must be a script writer for Ant and Dec!

NoMentionLordP

Gove did very well by actually saying very little.

Never interrupt when your opponent is making a mistake!!!

Balls is really awful - it is tragedy that he was parachuted into a relatively safe seat, as his electoral downfall would be BoxOffice !

westlondoner

I don’t think that any of the politicians came across well, although I think that the Lib Dem maybe did the best on education (he was not so good on the Lib Dems’ spending plans in general), possibly because his policies have had less scrutiny. But I thought that Michael Gove did very badly, much worse than I expected. He struggles to articulate the ‘free schools’ policy in a very convincing way and the cost is obviously a real problem that he can’t answer – I don’t think anybody believes the money is just there and can be spent without cutting anything. If he could articulate his policy as well as the parent from Yorkshire did, he’d be fine! People generally seem to see Gove as an asset, but I am not convinced that he comes across well with the public.

Nicholas

Richard:- "the teachers are well paid, they are now fighting for the futrue (sic) of the children not themselves."

Agreed. Dominated by centralist dictation, trying to turn them into model socialist citizens, unquestioning, obedient, parroting the mantra of the socialist state and the great leader Chairman Brown.

"I feel the big issue is what are we training children for? what are we trying to achieve?"

Refer above. It is obvious that in the socialist state of Brown, Balls & gang, education means political indoctrination. Labour, "the political wing of the British people". Suborn the independence of the teaching profession through Labour unions and dependency on centralised funding, edict and payroll/pensions ("they are well paid") so that they cease to be apolitical. Roll out a national syllabus constructed from a revisionist Left wing/Labour perspective. Embed political activism in schools and generate a Marxist style critique and morale boosting style of teaching. Shouldn't be too difficult to find "dedicated, professional" teachers mortally opposed to radical change from the centre-right and/or the independence of schools. A useful political bloc at the heart of sowing the seeds for the future. Left of centre? Pull the other one. It has been Marxist cultural revolution by stealth all the way.

"I am happy to leave education to the heads if they could all be like the guy last night."

How magnanimous of you! And perhaps revealing that you are indeed part of the Labour apparatus oppressing us (and boring us to death at the same time).

Chris, Birmingham

Richard for once is very informative - wrong but informative. This Government has spent billions on Schools and paying teachers more for what? The results are the same (i know I know they get better every year, do you believe that) but the same teachers both good and bad are paid the same increased salaries to teach in new buildings.

I have been involved in Building Schools for the Future and basically it has not been a case of white elephants, not of make do and mend. I have seen perfectly good buildings knocked down, presumably so the local Labour MP can say "Look we built a new school!" It has been a colossal waste of money. Some new schools were needed, but in general major repairs were needed, but that is not a vote winner.

Leftie ideology says that pupils are better off with expensive new buildings and better paid teachers and the same results. I say that the increased taxes requires reduces their life chances as it business creation.

Leftie ideology says that spending more is better. I say that spending what is appropriate and getting value for money is more important. Properly repairing and maintaining every school in the country is much more important than any number of new school buildings where they are not strictly necessary.

Richard

@Nicholas

Nick you have some very good points .....it's a shame you didn't put them in your post.

Ludwig von Crises

@Richard: If teachers' morale has improved that is hardly surprising. My teachers in the seventies and eighties were almost uniformly socialist in tendency - not difficult to detect even as a boy - and many were active proselytisers for CND. They were dominated by unions in thrall to the worst Gramscian and stratist dogma. In 1997 they were gifted a government entirely in sympathy with those views. Mr Balls is a perfect example.

And you really love hyperbole, don't you? 'There are no schools crumbling...' Of course - because there are only failures when the Tories are in power, and the Tories aren't in power. When Mr Brown and his henchmen tell you that war is peace, freedom is slavery and ignorance is strength I'm sure you'll let us all know.

Percy

If this is what is going to pass as debate then this election campaign is going to be very long. At least Gove and Laws look like they are making an effort, but Balls! What an utter slob this guy is slumped in his chair like an unpleasant know it all, trying to put off his opponents with his constant childish sniping, a real 24 carat twat.

Nicholas

Percy: "What an utter slob this guy is slumped in his chair like an unpleasant know it all, trying to put off his opponents with his constant childish sniping, a real 24 carat twat."

Is that Balls - or Richard? Or should I say, in mimicry of his Lefty patois attempt to be both familiar and patronising - "Ricky"?

Excellent posts by Chris and Ludwig, both with hands on experience of the subject matter. When it comes to the Leftist view of education the ideology is more important than the children.

Marbury

None of the pols came off well. Balls lost it, as you suggest, at the first question and was generally nervy and aggressive. Gove, whom I like, is simply not a good performer on TV. Too weedy. Stars were Lesley and William Atkinson. Best thing Tories could do is get Lesley or someone like her in front of people on behalf of their policy.

Athesius the Facilitator

Richard a much better post by you than normal because there are constructive comments and it's less partisan and childish. Stick to doing that and people on this site may stop thinking your a "dick head". You have a long way to gobut should you reach that zenith then perhaps I will be persuaded that you are not Ed Balls the well known privately educated champagne socialist who puts his party before country.

Ketih

How right you are Percy - Balls is a smug little tw@. But there is undoubtedly something sinister about him. He is one of those manipulative toads who always flourish under totalitarian systems.

Yosemite Sam

I am very sympathetic to many of Gove's ideas in the field of education but some are half-baked. The proposal that only those with a 2.2 or better can become teachers is one example. Never mind that he has fallen at the first hurdle over Carol Vorderman's third, the proposal ignores many years of experience of what makes a good teacher. Years ago I taught for two years in a secondary modern school. On reflection, I pity the poor pupils under my tutelage. However, I can say that in that school I saw the best group of teachers it has been my privilege to see. They had one thing in common. They had all been in the forces, and they had been trained under the one-year emergency training scheme. They did not have high academic qualifications (at least at the outset), but they did have determination, discipline and drive. How well their pupils did - across all subjects. It was a pleasure to behold. The lesson, I think, is that the qualities of a good teacher are discipline, determination and drive - together with a belief in the quality of the pupils.

Victor Southern

Many of the fee-paying and grammar schools in England are housed in old buildings, Victorian or earlier. It is the ethos of the school that counts not the shininess of the building.

Teachers are not much better paid now than they were 15 years ago except by reason of inflation. Individuals will mostly have progressed by seniority.

15 years ago they did not incur a tuition debt - under Labour they do.

More than 80% of new schools built under Labour were funded by PFI and are rented expensively on the nation's credit card. Often the school ownership remains with the contractor at the end of 30 years or so.

Labour's claimed grade advancements do not make pupils fit for the widest possible range of employment. At least 40% of the children who leave school are only educated to the level of menial jobs.

I do not absolve the Conservative party of blame for this state of affairs as during the 18 years they held power they simply went along with the liberal/left deconstruction of educational basics.

John Bracewell

I thought the most telling comment in the debate was made by the business man when he said 'I get applications from young people and they all have A*s and it is impossible to choose between them on that basis'. It is this aspect of the failure of the education process which shows up the present Labour doctrine - make the hurdle so low that most pupils are deemed world beaters until they go to university or into work when it becomes evident they cannot spell or do simple mental arithmetic i.e they are completely underprepared for life.
But Labour parade the exam results as if that proves that education is on the right track, it currently is not.

Eddie

Fact of the matter is, most parents are part of the problem - they are mostly idiots who spoil their adipose, ill-mannered, loutish brats and know nothing about education.

The problem here is that anyone bothers listening to them at all. What parents want is their moronic kids all to pass everything and to get As - and nothing is ever their or their kids' fault is it?

Sadly, democracy equals bribery, so every politician has to pander to paranoid parent power. What a joke...

And teachers only stay teaching their annoying spawn because they have no other option to earn that dosh...

Richard

@Nicholas,

Sorry you feel the need to make personal attacks..do you behave like this in public?
Maybe you need to be re-schooled in the acceptable behaviour befitting to constructive debate. Your are in the right Party though, after all it's not known as the nasty party for nothing!
Perhaps if you adopted a less superior attitude and accepted that not everyone shares your views (even on this board) you might discover that argument is not about force of arms but solidity and reason.
I am sorry that the wheels seem to be falling off you teams campaign, it's not even a fair fight now momentum will see the lead rapidly become a defecit. Now go away and do the heavy lifting and reconstruct your party with credible arguments and truely engaged representatives.... theres a good chap run along and find a cat to kick......toodle pip!

JONNY

One cannot call anything chaired by Paxman a 'debate' it is an insult to ones intelligence.

Frankly strapworld, in your case not even Paxman could work that miracle.

JONNY

Just trying to imagine of which Conservative Council friend strappers might have been Chairman?
Might it have been Bognor Regis?

Nicholas

Ricky, you really don't need to apologise but for the record I am not a member of the Conservative party.

Yes, I bet the idea of "re-schooling in the acceptable behaviour befitting to constructive debate" is right up your street!

Nicholas

"Nasty party"? Yawn. This from the mouthpiece of a party that has introduced 3,000 new laws, puts pensioners in prison, spies on everyone, thinks that money needed to protect British soldiers fighting a war they started is better spent on diversity co-ordinators and wants to steal £10,000 from you after you are dead.

"Perhaps if you adopted a less superior attitude and accepted that not everyone shares your views (even on this board) you might discover that argument is not about force of arms but solidity and reason."

Er, "force of arms" in blog posts? Surely shome mistake? "Solidity and reason" - you mean as demonstrated by New Labour? Plenty of brass neck solidity when it comes to withstanding multiple scandals and peddling lies but not much reason that I can see, Balls probably being the worst example (q.v. his slippery performance when Paxo zeroed in on his Hansard record) although Brown figures low (or is that high?) in the general skullduggery, scheming and dishonesty stakes too.

But in any case on the one hand you accuse me of making no arguments and on the other of my views not being shared. Make your mind up, which is it? Oh, I get it, this is just the usual priggish New Labour/Leftist attempt at belittling opponents. So why keep apologising - or is it just that meaningless socialist "sorry" (bearded, be-elbow patched, bespectacled and sandalled) that is the convention when you are about to attack someone or something? "Superior attitude"? That's rich coming from you Rich. You have trailed a litany of posts through this site trumpeting just how superior your attitude and the attitude of your political masters is.

"I am sorry that the wheels seem to be falling off you (sic) teams campaign, it's not even a fair fight now momentum will see the lead rapidly become a defecit."

There you go again with the sorry. No need to apologise but they are not my team. Your wishful thinking is hilarious though. Thanks for the laugh.

"Now go away and do the heavy lifting and reconstruct your party with credible arguments and truely engaged representatives.... theres a good chap run along and find a cat to kick......toodle pip!"

I'd much rather you go away but perhaps you could enlighten us by explaining New Labour's "credible arguments and truely (sic) engaged representatives". Do you mean the ones engaged in fiddling expenses or the ones engaged in oppressing us with stupid knee-jerk laws? And I'd much rather deconstruct your party with real force of arms than re-construct "mine".

And, finally, how come my innocent question about who the poster was describing as a "childish, sniping twat" is singled out as and ad hominem attack but the ones directly accusing you of being a "dick head" weren't? Is the latter sobriquet more acceptable to you?

Richard

@Nicholas,

"Before the cock crows you will have denied me thrice"
Poor old call me Dave

"Et Tu Brutus"

However I am sorry truley sorry...for you.

Toodle pip, chin chin and all that old chap. mind the step on your way out! Oh quick get your raffle ticket Georgie boy has a med cruise up as first prize. Good luck.

Liberty

I thought Balls showed appalling manners.
He interrupted Gove constantly and at one time interrupted Gove's answer to a question to give his own version of what he thought Gove and the Tories would say and added in his own critique for good measure. Of course, his idea of what Gove and the Tories think is full of lies and distortions. I wonder why Gove or Paxman let him get away with it. Paxman thinks all politicians are cretins so he just sniggers but I would have respected Gove a lot more if he insisted that Balls had had his turn and that he should answer the question and kept insisting, more and more powerfully until Balls gave way. Gove is a good intelligent man but far too nice to handle the thuggish Balls.

John Richardson

'Liberty'

Years ago I would have agreed with you.
Now I sadly conclude that the Conservatives in general, and Grove in particular on the above occasion*, are cowards at best.

After all, lets be honest, he is not talking about the future education of HIS children.
Oh no.

*I have not watched 'Newsnight' for years. Simply because of cowardly & dishonest Conservatives. Cowardly & dishonest BBC/Labour trash I expect.

Nicholas

Back again, eh, Richard? A veritable glutton for punishment. Feeling sorry for me is

a) unnecessary, if you really are a socialist I'm having a much better life than you are; and/or

b) typical Labour/Left patronising methodology for trying to attain superiority in what passes for debate in your world (q.v. your previous reference to "superior attitude").

Hmm. I thought the standard issue socialist hypocrisy would eventually emerge. How very predictable you commissars are.

Jason

Bored...bored...bored.... Gove came across pompous; Balls was slightly better but churlish as ever and the Lib Dem guy, whose name I cannot remember because he said little of substance demonstrated... well.... little of any substance. How on earth could you pick a leader from any of them. What a joke.

Whig

I didn't see the programme - but for me the question is not who was able to win the debate there and then, but who's policy is better and more cogent? Given the two policies as I've understood them that is the Conservative policy. All else is mere mud-slinging, spin, presentation and nonsense and should be ignored. Newsnight is invariably a bad place to have a calm, sensible and rational debate, especially as I suspect the BBC of not being even-handed, but then most humans seem to be incapable of such a thing!