If Cameron isn't careful, Brown will outflank him on education reform

Richard Shackleton

Better still Fraser, why not brush up the 2005 Tory education offering? This didn't just rely on new schools to "ginger up" the educational offering in any one particular locality but handed over full autonomy to all (ie existing as well as new)schools to decide on admissions policy, curriculum etc. This Big Bang approach would speed up the desperately-needed change process compared to the incrementalism inherent in restricting autonomy to new schools only.

TGF UKIP

Fraser, I note that this is a topic on which you post more frequently than anything else and that you are becoming ever more messianic on this Tory/Swedish schools policy. It does seem to me though like all the other political animals, Blair/Adonis, Cameron/Gove you are most fascinated by structure and process. Choice of schools like house prices probably is a staple of middle class dinner party conversations but for many ordinary parents, badly under educated themselves in the 70's/80's, all they want is their local school to provide a decent education. Choice confuses and against what background do they choose when their own educational background may have been so poor. It does seem to me that all this fixation with process is another smokescreen not to attack the root cause which is the quality of teaching and teacher training in the UK. The other related factor which is rarely mentioned is that present day kids are obviously less tractable and malleable than a generation or so ago. I do readily accept, therefore, that being a teacher today is a tougher job with children much less fearful of parental, let alone teacher disapproval. On the Tory policy itself, correct me if I'm wrong, but hasn't Dave ruled out school operating companies from making a profit. That would certainly fit in with the ethos of the anti-business, anti- free market capitalism Cameron Tory Party.

Ian C

So long as the NUT are calling for the state to teake over the private schools, when what is clearly needed is the reverse, Brown & Adonis will never convince anyone that their education policies are the right one. Foregt it Fraser, the outcome of the education debate will only benefit the party that is incumbent when the benefits of reform actually appear. This governemnt has been in power too long for that to attach to them.

Nicholas

For all the bluster I still cannot see how anything that has been introduced since the demise of the 11+, secondary modern and grammar schools is an improvement on the education delivered then.

That may seem reactionary but it is a genuine challenge and the current angst of the debate seems to justify it. What do they say - the path to ruin is littered with good intentions?

It is a generalisation but surely all the comprehensive system did was to reduce all state schools to the model of secondary moderns, except where the goals and ambitions of ordinary teachers made a difference. The dumbed down peer pressure in these schools worked against those children capable of so much much more, a destructive process aided and abetted by the role models foisted on the country by the BBC.

The perceived solution to The Great Mistake was to deny it by tinkering with the examination system to spin success where there was none. I am frequently horrified by the ignorance displayed by people who have passed successfully through the education system and even university in the last 30 years.

Once again the socialist politics of envy, masquerading as laudable idealism, wreaked havoc to a perfectly viable but discredited system. And we have talked about it ever since.

The grasping of privatised straws is not the answer. Human beings are naturally competitive and status seeking, even lefties (who are mostly in denial about it). Time to accept the fact and create realistic and pragmatic solutions where gifted children are fast tracked, average and thickies who want to learn are nurtured and thickies who don't want to learn are not allowed to foul up the system.

George Steiner

There is much benefit in having a second rate edu-system in Britain. It is easier to sell snake oil to the great unwashed. It is easier to justify the BBC to the sheep. There is no real need for educated Britons. There can be interminable learned discussions of the "how many angels on a pin" type. But as long as you fellows are having a good time, there is no harm.

Cogito Ergosum

Well said, Nicholas 3:57pm.

Max Kaye

Nicholas - well said.

TGF UKIP

Well said, Nicholas, I agree with every word (and I hope that does not distress you too much!) BTW, are you going to share the secret on how you achieve the paragraph format?

Fergus Pickering

I tell you what, Fraer. I worried like anything over my girls' education. It's what good parents do. But I didn't worry about the SCHOOLS, They went to the Primary School down the road and then they went to the Girls' Grammar School. The ducation was probably not as good as it would have been in an expensive school like The Kings at Canterbury but IT WAS FREE and it was OK, just as myown education had been You see, we live in East Kent and we have GRAMMAR SCHOOLS.

Nicholas

TGF - not at all! I just hit the return button twice when I want to start a new paragraph. I use a Mac and browse with Safari if that makes any difference?

An Accountant

Dear George Steiner You of Real Presences must know that angels are form and existence: Ideal Presences. I always thought that Grammar Schools were like the ladder at the end of Wittgenstein's Tractatus.

Craig

Surely you won't send your kids to an academy, will you? Private all the way; it didn't do you any harm! Also, with these schools in office buildings: what about school playing fields, drama facilities etc?

David Lindsay

I don't know where you ever got the idea that the Tories were in favour either of this or of Wisconsin-style welfare reform. They have never said that they were, and they are not.

Still, the right-wing press has now spent the best part of a generation insisting that the Tories were somehow less than fully Eurofederalist, a proposition not merely lacking in evidence but positively contrary to reams and reams of it.

As for Academies, have a look at the strange role of Hilary Armstrong, and now even Tony Blair, in the one coming to Consett. It's high time that that story made the national media.

Fergus Pickering

Nicholas is good. I think part of the problem comes from taking school educaton too seriously. There are people who will always get nothing much out of it, natural rebels who can't stand being told what to do by people who may well be less intelligent than themselves and people who quite benignly just can't get on with it, like G.K. Chesterton and Winston Churchill and (so I hear) Albert Einstein. Failure at school is not failure in life and success at school is not success in life. The Comprehensive system was an attempt to bring in Socialist heaven - laudable idealism my bum. Sheer stupidity. It doesn't matter WHAT we replace it with so long as we get rid of it. You seem to set a lot of store by the Swedish stuff. I remain unconvinced but it'll do. I think the most important thing is to make the schools SMALLER and the second most important thing is to separate sheep from goats as soon as possible or the GOATS WILL WIN. Grammar schools (there he goes again), or something like them, and prisons are the cornerstones of a civilised state. As for George Steiner, he's just being obstreperous, allowable in we oldies surely.

James Wetz

Parents are beginning to sense that schools could be different.
My report funded by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and to be published in the Autumn, titled 'Urban Village Schools as Learning and resesrch Communities' calls for human scale settings where a greater emphasis on relationships, building community,can be achieved within current cost settings. Some of the ideas of the report were illustrated in the recent dispatches programme 'The Children left behind' on Channel 4 in February which I authored and presented.
James Wetz
Visiting Fellow at Bristol University Graduate School of Education
Fellow of the Centre for Social Policy Dartington.

Mother of girls

In American state high schools, only 25% of the pupils are involved in school sports, so holding classes in office buildings will probably not adversely affect as many kids as you think.

Also, if the school PURCHASES the office building, there is nothing stopping them from converting one or more floors of the building into sports facilities. I was in one such school, and one floor had a roller skating rink, another floor had basketball courts, etc. The school also purchased some land outside of the city for a football field, track, etc. I'm sure it is politically incorrect to mention this, but as many high schools in Britain are segregated by sex, it should be possible to open a number of small all-girls high schools with indoor space devoted to dancing, fencing, volleyball, etc. Girls can live without the playing fields more easily than the boys, and many of them would be glad to do so if the money that would have gone into playing fields was spent instead on things that the girls were more interested in: music, dance, drama, art, etc.