Now he tells us

Darius

academies have demonstrated what any tecaher could have told us. Effective discipline policies that do not require teachers to "engage" disruptive students to the cost of their professionalism, ensure a learning culture. Academies are of course priveledged in that they do not have to pay the fines that are imposed by Local authorities on schools who permanently exclude students who have exhausted all opportunities make the best of their learning. The fact that academies have this facility is looked upon with envy by state school teachers. Woodhead's own OFSTED model exacerbated this pressure by condemning schools with high numbers of exclusions, further increasing the manic need to include at all costs

caged vole

I'm almost too dispirited to comment, except just to say you're right, Melanie.

Groovy Times

It's not the philosophy of fairness that is eroding education, but the obsession with targets. Our public services have been politicized, head teachers are now trojan horses who are moulded in the government's own image. These aparatchiks are far removed from the reality of what goes on in the classroom, they force their schools into a perpetual state of change in the name of progress, treat their schools like their own private feifdoms in a parody of Alan Sugar's apprentice, bully and cajole those members of staff who don't share their "vision", and everyone cooks the books in a climate of fear to feed the insatiable appetite of bureaucracy. And how do I know? I work in Newham, a flagship borough of New Labour educational control.

David Raynes

Yes, and worth remembering that both main politial parties have tolerated this decline in standards.

Simon Denis

Once again, you hit the nail squarely on the head. One might be tempted to despair were it not for a feeling that all sorts of far left chickens are flocking home to roost - the "comprehensive ideal" among them. It is now plain to all but the snottiest mandarin that lumping children together in purposeless pens has dragged them all down. The academic are bullied and bored; the non-academic untrained and idle; the remedial categories languish in corners and the delinquent are in effective control. The conservative party has not quite realised it, but we might be in for what the left will arrongantly and resentfully describe as a period of profound "reaction". In other words, their sacred cows and shibboleths will be summarily dismissed. Privately insuring one's health; privately educating one's offspring in selective schools; freely and happily putting up Christmas decorations at the appropriate time of year in public libraries despite the sour faces of PC officials - all this will become blissfully normal again - for the vast majority. I looked forward with rapture to the collective sigh of relief which might escape the country when it has ditched the socialist straight jacket.

David Bouvier

Groovy - the decline pre-dates New Labour and "targets". The Conservatives tried but failed. I suspect Tony Blair sincerely wanted to change things, but failed miserably. And it gets worse and worse.

Alf Tupper C.R.O.F.

In British school staffrooms it is forever 1968.

Annette Thornton

Yes, and the next attack is going to be on those parents who educate their children at home because of their despair at what is offered by way of state provision. The government is moving towards interference by state gauleiters in home-schooling families. Within the last few days it has said that it wishes to send officials into private homes to interview home-schooled children without their parents being present - and more horrors of a similar kind are threatened. It is clear that the EU is behind this latest enormity and we, the public, have until October 19th to express our views. Much good that will do, but I guess we should try nonetheless. This government cannot stand the fact that home-schooled children are usually very successful academically, as well as in other ways, that they often come from deeply Christian families or from families with other strong religious ties and that they are clearly a group of tall poppies whose heads should be cut of without more ado.

Augustus

To the apt phrase 'the lunatic delusion of an egalitarian utopia' I would add, and the politics of envy. Envy not just of 'toffs' and people who speak
'proper like', but even of those who show an above average intelligence and a willingness to learn. I understand that the abolition of the state Grammar schools may have had something to do with it. Labour governments have certainly not been kind to Britain's youth.

hadrian

I have nothing against 'Comprehensives' in principle- provided they are run along strict, predictable disciplinary lines and have 'streaming'. The removal of the latter from nearly every department except perhaps maths has been an unmitigated disaster. Egalitarianism at its most pernicious. Its all too inevitable ugly offspring has been dumbing-down. Its grandchild will be an educationally impoverished nation consequently economically impoverished. The Left once again screw up.

Dave s

My grandson is finishing his first year at school. He is what used to be called a very able child. He can read and write well and is hungry for knowledge about the world.
My son has just shown me his report. It grudgingly admits his obvious ablility but is more concerned that he does not upset his classmates by displaying it and I get the distinct impression that his teachers would much rather he was not so able.
We cannot afford private education. My son fears for the future of my grandson in a system that no longer values intelligence. In China or Japan or in many other countries my grandson would be cherished for the future contribution he might make to the world. Not here I fear. Here the irrationality of the state apparatchniks will see him as a threat to their absurd belief that their prime task is creating the "equal society" .
Truly this country has no future.

Suki

What Ralph Tabberer demonstrates is how Labour has so wrecked our education system that even people who can see what's going wrong dare not speak out.

What's worse is they've produced a generation so ignorant and so semi-literate there is little chance of reversing the malaise. That, I fear, was part of their social engineering gameplan.

Fearless Frank

"Tough on education, tough on the causes of education..." That was the promise, wasn't it?
Oh yes, and "Crime, crime, crime..."
Election pledges fulfilled, you must agree.

ThomasR

Another big issue in education at present is the current attempt by Messrs Badman and Balls to regulate Home Education out of existence.

Whether you think home education is a good thing or not, the fact that the state is trying to take full control of childhood affects everybody.

Forcing schools and parents to give way to its expanding curriculum and targets is likely to prove disastrous in the long term.

However, beyond that, it means that family autonomy and privacy are being heavily damaged. Our values and our judgements about what is best for our children are being pushed aside by sectional interests such as teaching unions, local authorities and quangos.

Please, we mustn't let this happen. We must retain our parental responsibility to determine how our children are educated.

Barry

But will Cameron reverse this deeply embedded malaise? This has not come about in the last twelve months; the ratchet effect started 40 years ago.

Tancred

We see educational establishments banning members from being in the BNP.

Wouldn't it be far better if they also banned people who belong to the Labour Party the Communist Party and any other Left leaning organisations ?

We can clearly point to the negative effects Left wing ideologies have had in public life, not just education.

That should be sufficient grounds for banning such people.

If it can legally be done for one group then it can be done to the Left.

PS I love the comment by Alf Tupper C.R.O.F.
June 15th, 2009 5:53pm

"In British school staffrooms it is forever 1968."

Emmet

I taught for ten years in the Comprehensive system in London. Ten years of hell. Ninety percent of my teaching time was taken up trying to "engage" a minority of pupils who basically behaved like wild animals. Eventually, the pupils who wanted to learn gave up also. My school was deemed better than satisfactory by Ofsted. Some of our real star students went on to murder and rape. And this was a Catholic school! Truly, the lunatics have taken over the asylum.

Margaret Muller-Johansson

In Britain they mix all the kids together one school one big class about 35 kids, the kids who do their homework and the ones who don't do their work are in the same class, it is true they are obsess about fairness and equality, I notice they want to hold back the clever children who are trying their best to learn and putting the same class the ones who are not trying and late going to school, some of the children in the cities are like a homeless walking around in the streets some of them are only age 7 or 11, the parents are busy having fun somewhere, the government is closing down many schools, and they are saying the schools was not doing well, and those kids come from the bad schools that the government close down are going the good schools but they don't improve, now the good schools are not so good anymore except private ones but you have to have a lot of money to send your kids to a private and sometimes the private ones are not all good, the head teachers are not respected, the teachers are not respected either, things are different then they used to be, I think some people with little children should think moving out of the inner cities

Original Tony

Here's my theory...the ruling elite pine for the days of compliant serfs running around serving their every need.

Suddenly, these serfs can think for themselves and fight back.

'How to retore the status quo?' they say, scratching their heads.
'Why not dumb them down with a poor education and X-factor-mania?'
'Good idea!' they chorus.

Lo and behold, the dictatorship-in-waiting is about to have 60 million plebs do their bidding for them.

FF

The OECD country with the best educational outcomes, by a long way, is Finland. Both high and low attainers do well there.

Finland has a resolutely comprehensive system - private schools are strongly discouraged and you get free school meals etc. Costs of the system are about OECD average.

England has improved in recent years, but still suffers from low attainment at the bottom end. Perhaps too little emphasis on fairness - not too much.

Other countries do well with different systems from Finland. But it's worth getting past ideology and start analysing the facts.

James Hodson

One of the points I gleaned from Melanie's All Must Have Prizes was the difference between equality of opportunity and the equality of outcome. (Not that that thought was particularly radical to my mind.)

My late mother won a scholarship to a grammar school. Because of her hard work and subsequent effort as a not particularly senior civil servant, I was able to go to a middle-level public school.

But I'm a lazy so-and-so.

Because of my laziness I ended up achieving far less that I was possibly able. More fool me.

I had way more than my fair amount of equality of opportunity but the pathetic outcome was entirely down to my idiocy.

Indeed, my examination results and twice-tried suicide are not totally unconnected.

I do hope that some youngsters read Mel's articles and also take note of my comments here. Kids, please do just make and effort for a small number of years.

James

FF,

At age 15, Finnish children are separated into academic orientated upper-secondary schools and vocational schools. Academic selection is an important part of their system.

You should get past ideology and start analysing the facts.

NJS

Simon Denis - "privately educating one's offspring in selective schools ... will become blissfully normal again - for the vast majority". Strange definition of selection - the "vast majority" get selected? The trouble with selection of course is that it is the minority who get selected, at age 11, and the rest (known as "other people's children") do not. Both daughters at Uni (Durham, Oxford), prducts of two different comprehensive schools.

If you are running a private system, like Tabberer, you depend on rubbbishing state provision. Otherwise you get no clients.

Joanna

I went to a comprehensive school and I'm now at college. We were setted, but that didn't really help things. I still found myself finishing ahead of everyone else, and most of my teachers couldn't be bothered to give me extra work, with one or two exceptions. My science teachers got utterly sick of my questions, to the point that I just got fed up of asking, would sit there, do my work as quickly as I could, and get out a book to read. Not the best way of being popular, but it was more interesting than staring at the ceiling. Thank goodness for college is all I can say. Now my teachers actually make me do more work if I finish, and my maths teacher has no trouble at all in giving me extra questions, or explaining why things work which is all I wanted off my secondary school teachers. Just tell the government to keep their mitts off colleges.