to hope that the predicted cabinet reshuffle kicks Gove out of education

[creamteas]

he has done so much damage so far, I am really hoping he gets his walking papers.... even the devil we don't know has got to be better surely....

[epeesarepointythings]

wobbly I work in an area with three major independent schools nearby. Two of these are academically selective - they will not take anyone who does not achieve L3 at KS1. Easy to be successful, with an intake like that. The others, though not academically selective, are dealing with the children of parents who have invested financially in their education. Many of them will be well-paid professionals who are able to support their children well at home. Even those who are not well-paid and who are making enormous sacrifices to send their kids private will have an enormous investment in their kids' education -perhaps even more so. I say again - easy to get stellar results with that intake.

Which leaves the state sector to deal with virtually all the children whose parents can't or won't give a stuff as well as those who have SEN, as well as all the ordinary folk.

And of course you are one of the 'all-state-education-is-shit' brigade - and that is very much not the case. Instead of marketising schools into 'private-lite', we should be looking at those state schools which do well and rolling out what they do - not all of them are leafy, after all. Introducing shareholders who will want a profit out of our children's education is not the way to go - we should look at what the state sector does well and yes, be pretty damn forceful about making everyone else implement that.

I agree with you that really poor teachers should be dismissed - but the procedures are there. The problem is that they are not rigorously followed. Capability doesn't take that long as long as the school's leadership has the guts to see it through. We need to find a balance between weeding out genuine incompetence and preventing the 'face does not fit' kind of dismissal that happens all too often in the private sector. I'm not in favour of absolute protection for all employees, I've seen some seriously awful people in the public sector. However, their continued employment was mostly down to the spinelessness of management, not the rules for dismissal themselves.

Lastly, why do you think it is OK for all these changes to be rushed through without planning ahead? If Gove is serious about changing the system, he should do a proper job of it, but he won't because once again education is his political football. Taking the politics out of education is the only way that anything will ever change.

[BoneyBackJefferson]

"Answer: Adam Smith and the fact that the people who have the most interest (parents) holding the cheque book. NOT the unions or the LEA. The schools give them what they want, see? And what they want, is for their children to get a good job at the end of it. Hence the Sutton report that identifies that independent schools respond quickest to market forces. It really is not rocket science."

Its interesting to see that you only mention the children as a product of what the parents want.

You don't mention them as an entity in their own right or as someone that has needs, or wants.

You don't mention how schools that are paid for can get rid of disruptive elements or poor performing pupils or remove them from exams with no bother at all.

I do agree however that the parents have to be a driving force they have to be interested in their children's education and in the policies of the school, strangely enough you never hear of a parent of a child in a private school arguing about the uniform.

[Abitwobblynow]

whose parents can't or won't give a stuff - well, they must be made to give a stuff. At the moment there is this split, whereby the 'state sector' bitch and moan about 'privilege' without any recognition of the sheer hard work that happens in those places. What you put in, is what you get out.

We are all actually argueing about the same thing. I am at the attitude of state parents when it comes to investing in their children - this seems something 'the school' should be doing, even when they have smart cars on their driveways. The private parents with their V reg bangers put their hands in their pockets when it comes to their children and education.

I believe this is because they are removed from the funding. Education is something that is 'provided' to them rather than something they invest in. The LEAs decide where their children will go, it is ridiculous. If parents funded (through vouchers or whatever) their own children with a top-up required, the attitude of the schools to them and their attitude to what they want, would drastically change.

Jefferson: that is parents doing their job. Children are not, and should not, be put in a position where they make life changing decisions without the maturity and judgement to make the correct decision for themselves. It's a balance. You listen to them and take them seriously, but you don't give them decisions that are beyond their capability.

And the answer to badly behaved children is expulsion. The answer to well behaved children is selection. It is so obvious that only ideology can get in the way of it.

Pointy: no I am not of the 'all state schools are bad' ilk. I am very strongly of the 'LEAs need to be abolished and teacher's unions to feel the force of reality' brigade. It is marked that no government, not Blair and Adonis or Gove could take them head on they are so entrenched. Hats off to Adonis for coming up with academies (to take them out of the LEAs), but really! That's what it has taken, to outmanoevre them?

[BoneyBackJefferson]

"that is parents doing their job. Children are not, and should not, be put in a position where they make life changing decisions without the maturity and judgement to make the correct decision for themselves. It's a balance. You listen to them and take them seriously, but you don't give them decisions that are beyond their capability."

Children making decisions is not my point, The child is an entity within his/her own right. With behaviour paterns, learning styles, learning difficulties.

Your post seems to assume that we put them in a good school with good teachers and education will just work.

[wherearemysocka]

Wobbly I don't entirely disagree with you, although I'm wondering how happy you'd be for your taxes to increase to the level they'd need to for state schools to rival the class sizes and facilities of private schools.

[Abitwobblynow]

Socks - the facilites of the private schools are IMO part of the market forces to attract their clients, ie unnecessary.

The thing about Britain that is actually deeply sad, is the ingrained idea that the State should be the provider and sole arbiter of what is fair. That the thought that bureaucracts not running things produces PANIC that things will become unfair, when the reality on the ground is that the bureaucrats produce an unfairness that is not noticed at all! We bitch about social services, foster care and adoption (for instance) without once noticing that these issues have arisen since THE STATE took these provisions away from Barnados and the National Children's Home, and the churches and gave them to bureaucrats! Social workers no longer work for charities, they work for the government. It is this sort of blindness.

If we in Britain could get our heads round the fact that the State, despite it's best intentions is a wasteful and inefficient provider of services, then we could start looking to solutions (that do not involve the bureaucrats of the state).
But we simply cannot. It is a kind of brainwashing.

[limitedperiodonly]

wobbly You are SHOUTING and using screamers! and bolding.

Try to remain calm. It's detracting from your otherwise excellent arguments.

[wherearemysocka]

The exam boards are private companies. They have been competing for exam entries so they made the exams easier to encourage teachers to use them, as the schools themselves scrabbled to get any and all qualifications they could to look good in the the league tables.

The league tables themselves were introduced to bring some elements of the 'market forces' you so love to schools, i.e. schools competing with each other. Rather than focusing on a rounded, whole education for children, schools were forced into teaching to the test.

I do not think that our state schools are perfect, but I am not in any way convinced that more private sector involvement is the answer.

[epeesarepointythings]

Actually wobbly I agree with you - for one thing, removing the state from education would take education out of politics. However, that isn't what Gove is doing - he is taking direct control. Under his reforms, he is the sole arbiter of what is good and what is not, and his idea of what is good is, as I have said, based on a 1950s model, not on evidence.

Take for example his aversion to modular exams. Now I agree that allowing unlimited resits is insane and should be stopped. However, when I hark back to my A-levels in Holland, they were undoubtedly modular in nature. Using my French A-level for an example, it went something like this:

At the end of my fifth year of secondary, I sat the first module that would count towards my final mark - it was the history of literature. It was a solid two-hour sit-down exam that you had to revise for, and it included a hell of a lot of material - the kind of exam Michael Gove would like to see, in other words. But it was only one module of the whole.

Then in the first term of my final year there was writing - two separate pieces, produced under exam conditions, one a formal letter, the other a free-form piece that could be fiction. Both were marked for content, spelling, grammar, and punctuation. Very rigorous - but yet another module.

Next came fluency and pronunciation, a 20-minute oral exam on a text from a French broadsheet - think Le Monde or Le Figaro. Literature was next, half an hour on my list of chosen books, 3 of which had to date from before 1900, one from before 1800, one had to be a play, one had to be a book of poetry. Again, an oral exam in which I was expected to display knowledge of the material and argue my case in-depth. Yet another module.

The previous modules were averaged, which led to a single mark for all my 'coursework'. The final exam, sat by all pupils taking A-level French, was text comprehension and was multiple choice, which sounds a lot easier than it is. The mark for the final exam was added to the coursework mark and the result divided by two - that was my final mark.

I'd say that was a very rigorous set of examinations, combining reproduction of facts, the display of genuine language skills, the understanding of a range of literature and the ability to read and understand complex texts. But it was without a doubt modular in nature.

I did not take the equivalent of GCSEs because under the Dutch system you're streamed for A-levels at age 14 and so you skip the GCSE equivalent altogether, but the structure for GCSE equivalent exams was much the same. Modular, but rigorous.

That's the kind of approach we should be looking for - it allows everyone to display their strengths whilst forcing them to address their weaknesses, instead of forcing through a one-size-fits all idea of what an exam 'should' be to be academically demanding.

[Abitwobblynow]

Sorry, the emboldening is because this is a very, very important point, that the UK just does not get:

good intentions mean nothing. UK really doesn't get this.
The state has good intentions, but it is really rubbish at providing. All governments are wasteful and inefficient. This really isn't a party political broadcast, all of them are wasteful and inefficient, and respond to this inefficiency by creating more and more layers of bureaucracy, the NHS being a perfect case in point. This is the cause of the decline of the Roman Empire, and the West is going the same way. There is no doubt the West is in decline.

So whilst you berate me for shouting, did you say you got it? Didn't think so.

After two world wars we British are very used to being pushed around and told what to do by 'the authorities'. It doesn't seem to occur to us, it seems, to think outside the box. That, actually, they aren't the final arbiter of what is good and fair. British people just don't get this, despite a lot of evidence to back it up!

[noblegiraffe]

wobbly where's the evidence that the private sector is the answer to all our woes? They've made such a good job of banking, no?

[limitedperiodonly]

No, still don't get it.

[TakingBackMonday]

SOOOO glad Gove still in education, doing a cracking job. Now just to bring back grammar schools...

[BoneyBackJefferson]

Abitwobblynow

"respond to this inefficiency by creating more and more layers of bureaucracy, the NHS being a perfect case in point. "


This really does cement that you don't know what you are talking about. The NHS has one of the shallowest management trees.

[SiriusStar]

But if they start the gcses earlier, say in year 9 , won't they still be able to re sit the whole thing in year 11? It would mean sitting all the exams though.

[pinkteddy]

'children whose parents can't or won't give a stuff - well, they must be made to give a stuff' I'd be interested in your ideas for doing this wobbly!

'And the answer to badly behaved children is expulsion'. Gove is actually going to make this harder for schools. I'm not sure exactly when this comes in but schools are going to have to pay pupil referral units the cost of educating the children they exclude. So schools won't be able to afford to exclude as the cost will be so prohibitive. It will also threaten the future of pupil referral units (which I assume is the outcome Gove wants).

[noblegiraffe]

Gove has no objections to students resitting in sixth form. In fact he actively wants students who don't get a C in maths or English to keep resitting it up to the age of 18.

[flatpackhamster]

noblegiraffe

wobbly where's the evidence that the private sector is the answer to all our woes? They've made such a good job of banking, no?

I think it should be remembered that the banking collapse would have been a pain, but manageable, if the governments hadn't intervened to bail the banks out. As a result we, the taxpayer, are buggered. And all because Gordon Brown wanted to save jobs in Labour constituencies.

So yes, the private sector gets it wrong, and when it gets it wrong the price should be failure. It shouldn't be bailed out. That's what 'private' sector means.

[pinkteddy]

@flatpack, re the banking bailout, the govt were in a rock and a hard place. The banks were so interlinked, had they not bailed them out major banks would have collapsed along with a great deal of the population's money. Literally cashpoints would have closed overnight, there would have been major runs on all the other banks as well as everyone would have wanted to withdraw their savings. Its not quite the same as letting say Marks and Spencer collapse...

[flatpackhamster]

pinkteddy

But the problem is still there. All this money that we've chucked at banks all over the world? They're still fucked. All Brown did was spread the contagion from his polluted banks to good ones like Lloyds. Lloyds was fine until it was forcibly merged with HBOS.

The banking crisis isn't over, it's just been pushed a few years down the line. All our money has bought us is five years. But there'll be no bailout next time because there's even less money than there was the first time.

It's introduced a huge moral hazard, too. Now it's clear to everyone that you shouldn't be prudent, save and work hard and live within your means. Might as well run up the bills because the government will bail you out.

[Abitwobblynow]

The banking collapse was a 50/50 split between the wrong people being rewarded in banking, and Gordon Brown's tripartite regulatory system (packed with his cronies, because he is such a control freak).

That man was a complete disaster for Britain.

As for the private sector argument? Results, dear girl. The trouble with the state sector as it is currently set up is that the funds are not linked to the consumers. So teachers, and LEAs are totally cushioned from the consequences of their decisions/beliefs/ideologies, in a way the INDEPENDENT sector, isn't. You perform poorly, your clients leave. So they react very, very quickly to incidents, bad teachers etc.

[noblegiraffe]

wobbly please don't patronise me, I am well aware that the private sector gets better results, but that is because they get the pick of the clientele. Education has to be for all and the private companies are not going to be interested in the disaffected, disadvantaged and the troubled students that the state sector takes care of. They're probably not even interested in the bog standard average student.

Take the pharmaceutical sector as an example of the private sector dealing with something as vital as education. Pharmaceutical companies are mainly interested in diseases of affluence: obesity, diabetes, heart problems and is on. Or the big cancers that guarantee a good income. The state has to intervene to ensure that orphan drugs, and less profitable diseases are researched. Charities do a lot of work here too.

Basically, the private sector is not right for education.

[limitedperiodonly]

wobbly I don't recognise your rosy picture of the private sector.

I've spent my entire working life there - and an aggressive part of it too.

I've met more than my fair share of incompetents, arse-coverers and wasteful empire builders. Many of them have been responsible for projects which failed, costing their companies a lot of money.

Friends in a wide range of unrelated private sector companies, including education, report the same thing.

It happens in both private and public sectors because organisations have no will to fire incompetent staff - even the psychopathic ones.

Actually, those ones often find it easier to get new jobs because many people mistake an aggressive, disruptive personality for someone who gets results.

Fair disciplinary action, leading to dismissal if necessary, is the main thing that I would change about all management.

And it's not to do with red tape, unions or EU legislation that it isn't done. It's to do with the fact that all organisations are riddled with people who are cowardly, too lazy to build a proper case for disciplinary action, owe their own positions to patronage or have personality problems themselves.

All or any of the above may apply.

And in my experience people who patronise others generally do so because they cannot make a valid argument.

[ItsAllGoingToBeFine]

and the answer to badly behaved children is expulsion

Bollocks. These are children we are talking about. Bad behaviour does not occur in a vacuum. All children, even the badly behaved ones, are entitled to an education. What is needed is more money in state schools to help those who need it.

Gove is a twat and is deliberately dismantling state education in line with Tory policy that state is bad, private is good.

I am very glad to live in Scotland

[epeesarepointythings]

Does anyone on here blaming Labour for the banking crisis really believe that the Tories would have reined in the banking sector's risk-taking excesses?

I'm shocked to hear that schools will be charged for any of their pupils using referral units - to my mind such units need enormous investment so that we can really deal with the most troubled children (who often have the most difficult lives). This policy will mean fewer children getting help, and more well-behaved children having their education disrupted for longer. Dreadful policy.