Gove's school reforms get off the ground

strapworld

Today at 6am were their usual selves, Without any evidence they made statements that Gove knocked back,later, quite well.

Today is allegedly a news programme, but indulges in supposition and rumour day after day. The Bigots Broadcasting Corporation has got to be sold off in its entirety. World Service Broadcasting should be a part of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

Newsnight is just awful. Political coverage is just biased and Robinson, who is a legend in his own mind, should be sent to cover Jamaica immediately.

It is time the left wing malcontents that control all aspects of the BBC be thrown out into the private sector. It would be very interesting to see how they all survive.

stephen

IMHO This is one of the most exciting areas of what the new Govt is about. Great stuff watching the parents outside an empty rundown building they want to turn into a school Their complete positiveness was in stark contrast with a relic of a soon to be bygone era an old fart from a teachers union!

Robert Eve

I agree with strapworld.

GeoffH

Re The BBC.

Gove was on the BBC News Channel at around 8:00. The interviewer read out questions from emails.

All were anonymous assertions without evidence. All critical of anything Gove was about to say. All 'claimed' to know the truth about existing Academy Schools. All were used as incontrovertible evidence that contradicted anything Gove said.

This tiresome approach infects the BBC from top to bottom.

It contrasts markedly with the immediate post-1997 approach to the Blair government when the BBC management instructed its news editors to 'go easy' on the new government on the grounds that it deserved a fair wind.

Time for some serious thought about the future of the BBC.

Pete

The problem with BBC questioning is that they just do not know how to ask "open questions" (like David Frost did in his prime).

Whatever their own politics they give the impression of "wordly weary cynicism" and the extreme conservatism of "new ideas never work". [You can imagine them ridiculing Christopher Columbus on his impending voyage.]

I think their problems would be solved if they just received some training on how to question people. They are just not as good as they think they are.

libertarian

Wot know grammar skools!

Without selection this is just deck chair rearranging

Moriarty

Strapworld, did you happen to catch Paxman's "interview" with Cable on Monday? A total waste of time. The entire slot was taken up by Paxman asking when Cable had changed his mind re the spending cuts timetable. As if it matters. It is a necessary condition of coalition government that participants change their minds: it's called compromise. For the BBC to keep prosecuting this agenda (along with the astonishing Tories and LibDems don't agree about everything agenda) is just juvenile.

Chuck Unsworth

@ strapworld

Yes, and remarkable that yet again the pre-recorded interview was terminated by some sort of 'technical fault'. Have we not seen the political leanings of these 'technicians' before?

Fabian Solutions

Unlocking the talent and potential of each and every young person is at the heart of Labour’s vision for education. Since 1997, Labour transformed education; young people are achieving some of the best ever results at 11, 16 and 18. We more than doubled investment in education from £30 billion in 1997 to £73.3 billion in 2008/09.

Key achievements:

Labour has doubled the amount spent per pupil since 1997 from £2,900 to over £5,850 today.

Labour has delivered over 40,000 more teachers and 116,000 more teaching assistants than in 1997.

Our investment has enabled 100,000 more 11 year olds to master literacy and 93,000 more to master numeracy since 1997. Today, 81 per cent of 11 year olds reach the expected level in English and 78 per cent in maths. This compares with 63% for English and 62% in maths in 1997.

Labour has seen 470,000 more young people gain five or more good GCSEs. The proportion of young people achieving five or more good GCSEs is up by nearly 20 percentage points since 1997.

The number of schools where less than 30 per cent of pupils get five GCSEs at A*-C grade , has fallen from more than half of schools in 1997 to just 440 (around one in seven) today.

Over 1,100 new schools have been built, rebuilt or refurbished.

We have offered every 16 and 17 year old a ‘September Guarantee’ which means we are funding a guaranteed place at school, college, training or in an apprenticeship for every 16 and 17 year old that wants one.

HJ

Fabian Solutions - Are you Gordon Brown?

It would be nice if you would engage in the discussion rather than just spouting questionable tractor production figures. We really have had enough of this inability of supporters of the last government to do anything other than repeat their assertions.

So please, if you don't like Gove's reforms, could we hear your arguments?

Snowman

if you have a minute, click on the Daily Telegraph today, then Comments, then Stephen Pollard, then we talk.

(I’ve tried to paste the link, but it refused to go through).

Andy H

Fabian Solution.
Here is one statistic that is more important than everything else you mention. 71% of the population disagree with you. I suggest you think about this figure before spouting you meaningless nonsense.

You had the chance, you spent it all, and your idiotic experiment in social engineering failed. I suggest you find something else to do.

Goodbye.

Occasional Ostrich

Since we're up for giving the Beeb a good kicking here, did anybody notice Mariella Frostrup's complaint this morning that the Beeb is "full of misogynists"?

Bit rich, considering that, with little discernible talent, she still holds a job with them.

John Goode

@ Fabian Solutions

So basically what you are saying is that
(1)Labour spent a lot of money on education (2)Labour has a lot of "statistics" to claim success.

Success in the real world is whether or not those students end up being responsible and productive members of society. Things are not a success just because you say they are

Simon Stephenson

Pete : 10.13am

"The problem with BBC questioning is that they just do not know how to ask "open questions" (like David Frost did in his time)"

This is not just the BBC. Just about every non-sycophantic interviewer seems to feel that his purpose is to knock the politician off his perch in as unintellectual way as possible, as if this is the essence of what political contest is all about.

In the time of David Frost, there were at least some political journalists who understood that their main function was to open up and clarify the lines of thinking that went into policy-making, so that the public could become more aware of why policy followed the path that it did.

dave, surrey

fabian solutions: how the left love their tractor production statistics. (long may it be so). What you fail to understand is numbers like this are meaningless on the human level, to parents (like me) at the school gate who see a light weight curriculum, disruptive pupils intimidating teachers, lack of choice at the local level and so on.

Dan

Fabian has obviously just come back from the pub.

I'm a teacher (honestly). The vast majority of us think Labour were useless and Balls an absolute disgrace.

dave, surrey

FS: further to my above point, when my daughter comes home from school and tells me they weren't able to do much work because so and so was causing trouble, I don't think 'never mind, Labour has seen more than 470000 young people.. '. See what I'm trying to say?

Tiberius

"Nutty groups"? Well the British education system has suffered at the hands of them already, so now it's time to let people not compromised by left wing dogma to have a go at educating our kids properly.

Simon Stephenson

Fabian Solutions : 10.57am

"Since 1997, Labour transformed education; young people are achieving some of the best ever results at 11, 16 and 18."

You then go on to quote various statistics that indicate an improvement in standards of numeracy and literacy at age 11, and in more general terms at GCSE level.

There are some of us, however, who have good reason to doubt that Labour's statistical claims are quite as pure as they are made out to be. Can you support your claims of educational improvement with an independent confirmation that politically-motivated upward grade creep did not occur during the Labour years? If so, then you're entitled to enter the discussion - if not, you should stay in the arena of the gullible.

Victor Southern

Fabian - Labour did not invest anything in education - it was taxpayer money and borrowings. Since the schools built were all on PFI then there has been no capital investment - just expenditure. The two are not the same.

Since the population may have increased by about 3-million since 1997 with at least 700,000 of those being school-age children it is obvious that more teachers were needed.

You have not "offered" every 16 and 17 year old funding for a guaranteed place etc, etc, - your lot are not in power. In any event this was just another meaningless Labour concept - a promise to be broken as it was uttered. It actually took the form of a compulsion, not an offer. Those who habitually truanted ignored it, of course.

I have no idea who you think you will influence by your unending stream of pro-Labour spins. Your lot messed up big time and you must pay the price for failure.

David Hatfield

Sorry Victor S, We nust pay the price of failure.The rest-spot on.

Fox in a box

Fabian Solutions,

tractor statistics?

yawn...

Verity

Pete writes, with a superior smirk, "[You can imagine them ridiculing Christopher Columbus on his impending voyage.]"

Well, he did go the wrong way, didn't he? He never did find India.

THX1138

Monbiot, has a cracking column on how to raise education standards, increase social mobility and it won't cost a penny more.

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2010/05/24/universal-cure/#more-1262

Far too simple and sensible to ever implement!

CS

Fabian Solutions, sweetheart, if you want to contribute, try saying something of your own instead of doing a cut and paste job from Labour's election literature.

Q Rius

Fabian Solutions

Could you tell us...

Did the Queen really say "No don't sit down you won't be stopping"?

Dimoto

We should bear in mind that the BBC are also in "scorched earth" mode. They know that they are far too compromised to escape their fate, so are just indulging their last Labourite tantrum.
This morning there was a discussion of the World Service (the ONLY relatively uncontaminated part of the BBC) taking "budget cuts of 25%".
This should be vetoed immediately.
The cuts need to be restricted to the dire "mainline" services, starting with the mass sacking of the whole top tier of "executives" (Labourite placemen to you).

EC

"deck chair rearranging"

Privatising the best LEA schools won't achieve much without tackling the awful national curriculum and especially the dumbed down GCSE and A level exam curricula.

PuppetMaster

Without delegating power from Westminster under some kind of written constitution, these reforms are meaningless. All Labour will do if they get back in, is take them all back into the state sector. If there was some kind of vote of approval required by parents before any future change of status of the schools it might be worth doing, otherwise it is a waste of time.