to think Gove's ideas on education are hilarious?

[NonnoMum]

So, putting all the kids in blazers and ties is a brilliant idea (why stop there, Mike, how about boaters too?) And training up ex-squaddies to be teachers - that'll instill discipline, won't it now? Who wants James Blunt as their RS teacher (just remember kids, "you're bootiful")
What a load of tosh...
Who voted for these muppets?

Oh, yeah, and they're scrapping school sports too - woopie!

[darleneconnor]

I disagree with most of it but I agree that pupils should be smartly dressed for school. They are there to work and should be in clothes fit for that purpose, not belts miniskirts, trainers etc.

[sethstarkaddersmum]

It will, at least, provide some fun new plot lines for Waterloo Road

[Rollmops]

The man is a saviour of whatever is left of the dismal, pathetic state education system in this country.
Had bolshy Balls et al managed to claw their way back to the Government, the dumbing down of the masses great unwashed would have continued, naturally.
So say thank you to Mr.Gove.
As you were...

[NonnoMum]

If you even feel the need to refer to majority of the population as the "great unwashed," it implies that you have no respect for the majority of the population of this country, making me wonder what sort of elitist education system you might prefer?

Allow a few carefully selected intelligensia study Latin and Homer, whilst the great unwashed learn how to be servile to their betters?

Or should we just send them up the chimney again?

[woolymindy]

Gove is a cock - pure and simple

However, I agree with the uniform thing - they did do this in a school recently as an experiment and the grades did improve - they even made the sixth formers wear business wear!

Mr Gove also gave my DH the glad eye at conference!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Bonsoir]

Uniforms encourage sloppy dressing because it is impossible to look nice in them. In countries where teenagers don't wear uniform but wear their own clothes, they take much more pride in their appearance.

[Simbacatlives]

My children go to an outstanding secondary school- ht mbe etc etc.

No blazers- they are inclusive and want to ensure that poorer parents don't have additional costs.

[Scorpette]

It's all just pathetic pandering to the blinkered, Daily Mail-reading, middle-England mindset that thinks we'll return to some bullshit ruritanian ideal of Ingerland if only kids wear blazers, policemen went round on bikes hitting people and women never went out to work, etc., etc. When the government has cut people's benefits, child tax credits and so on, where are parents going to get the money from for the newer, posher uniforms? Or indeed, for any uniform?!

I personally find it sad to see kids, especially little ones, wearing uniform and what you wear has zero bearing on your ability to study and learn. At my school, uniform made it obvious which kids were well-off and which ones weren't (which led to teasing, bullying, etc.), in ways which their out of school outfits never did.

[longfingernails]

Gove's ideas are amongst the very best in the government programme.

Many of the Lib Dems agree entirely with the school choice agenda - especially Nick Clegg, David Laws, and the other Orange Bookers - actually, in some sense, they can claim to have first brought the ideas to the mainstream of British politics.

The teaching unions have been allowed to deprive children of a good education for too long. They have pigeonholed them, told them they are all the same, that Further Mathematics is no more difficult than Business Studies.

The government has dumbed down exams, allowed pupils to get away with murder in the name of human rights, and allowed parents to evade responsibility for the behaviour of their children.

If this government did nothing but dismantle the stranglehold of the teaching unions, it would be a fantastic achievement.

[moondog]

He's fantastic. I love him.
Nonsense Bonsoir.

[cansu]

It's all too depressing tbh. I heard today that Gove wants teachers to return to teaching spelling and punctuation. Of course we forgot to teach that - how silly of me! I am also rather amused that Gove thinks squaddies are perfect for the teaching profession. It's insane. I am extremely worried about the programme of turning schools into academies. I really worry about how children with SEN are likely to be treated by academies and other so called free schools.

[tethersend]

[EvilTwins]

He's a buffoon. He's obviously sat and thought about it, and has come up with the genius idea of getting soldiers in. Cos we all know how well your average teenager responds to the old Sergeant Major "do as I say and do it now" kind of routine.

Oh, and giving HTs the power to kick disruptive pupils out? Really? I'd like to see how that one will work. Presumably they'll be dropping penalties that schools have to pay for permanent exclusions then. And I'm very much looking forward to the threads on AIBU when teachers start keeping kids for after school detention without giving any notice.

Why not just admit it, Mr Gove - you want 1930s grammars back. Bring back the 11+.

[TheFallenMadonna]

I think the Minister needs to visit some more schools and talk to some more teachers.

I don't think schools tell children they are all them same. Quite the reverse in my (challenging) school. We do tell them every child matters - and we mean it.

Neither do we tell them that Business Studies is as hard as Further Maths. But we do guide our students towards the best and most appropriate course for them.

Some children have always followed the more vocational route, indeed supporters of selective education seem to want that for the secondary moderns. What we are doing is providing that pathway in the same school in which we offer Further Maths A level.

[longfingernails]

tethersend I generate taxes which pay for things like teachers. Does that mean I am not allowed to have an opinion about how schools should work?

The cult of the "professional expert" is to be avoided at all cost. I have worked with several "experts", and most of them are just as dogmatic and lazy in their thinking as lay people. It's just that their mistakes are at a more fundamental and dangerous level, because they are attached to a patina of authority, and can have far more serious consequences.

[TheFallenMadonna]

Re exclusions, it says in the BBC report that they can indeed exclude, but must sort out and fund alternative provision.

[Goldberry]

It's the first positive change to the education system in my living memory. It makes me feel a lot better about the idea of going back to teaching when I stop being a SAHM.

[HumphreyCobbler]

I really rate Michael Gove. He is excellent imo.

[longfingernails]

The armed services have a fantastic record of taking people without direction in their lives - especially young men - and through leadership, discipline and team spirit, turning their lives round and giving them a sense of belonging.

I would value experience in a leadership role within the armed forces far more than any number of PGCE "theory of learning" modules.

[BaroqinAroundTheChristmasTree]

Actually I'm kind of with him on the uniforms thing.

Local senior school was in special measures for several years (having been barely scraping through previously).

They got a new head teacher in and the first thing he did was clamp down on school uniforms. Obviously other things have happened as well to improve the school, BUT in the space for just a few years it has gone from the school to avoid to the one the most preferred school.



I think the rest of his ideas are utter hogwash

testing the reading of 6yr olds

dismissing vocational qualifications as broadly irrelevant (he doesn't want them to be included on the league tables).

Fewer modular exams (meaning we're back to the days of only the students who are good at cramming and recalling facts are really going to do well).

[GrimmaTheNome]

Oh, yeah, and they're scrapping school sports too - woopie!

No, just not ring-fencing a bit of funding.

I am also rather amused that Gove thinks squaddies are perfect for the teaching profession.

Ex soldiers who have a degree, which is who they are proposing to fund through teacher training, might do quite well though.


I think some of Gove's ideas are misguided but these glib distortions don't forward the debate.

[moondog]

Where Tether.
can't see it.
you paranoid thing-of course i'm not ignoring you. [grin ]