to ask Tory voters (genuinely)

[rhubarbcrumbles]

What do you think that the Tory government of the last 9 years have done to improve the education in schools?

Genuinely, I am interested to know what you think.
As a school governor I am not keen on the way they have treated schools so I'd be genuinely interested in the alternative perspective without a bun fight.

I did GCSE's back in the 90s and I coasted to 8As (my crap comprehensive only offered 8) back then - lord knows how much easier they had gotten by the time they were reformed.

Genuinely, I am interested to know what you think.
Of course you are.

Yes, quite. You may as well ask when those horrid Tories stopped beating their wives too.

Pritt That's all very well, but what about the 50% of children for whom A levels isn't the aim? Couldn't the government (Gove) have found a way to keep GCSEs suitable for the wider range they were intended for.
For example

• intermediate tier in maths
• enable mix and match of tiers in combined science
• wider range of text choices in Eng Lit
• keep some mainstream BTECs in progress 8 calculations (I think they have gone but I could well be wrong on this?)

Genuinely... Nice try OP

I don’t understand the need to change stuff all the time.

It's the nature of the Department of Education. Secretaries of State are here today, gone tomorrow, all on the way up or on the way down and wanting to make a mark by leaving something behind, like a naughty puppy.

Yes, quite. You may as well ask when those horrid Tories stopped beating their wives too.

Is that a question that has any relevance to teaching?

I don’t think the torys have done anything recently to improve schools. But then again it’s not a personal concern

Education is everyone’s concern. Or it should be. We are a small country, set to remove ourselves from our nearest neighbours in the not too distant future, so to continue to compete in a global arena, we absolutely must be sure that our future generations receive a quality, rigorous education. Bluntly, consider our size and potential number of great minds compared with, say China, and their potential number of great minds in comparison. If we want to keep up, education is key. If you are not concerned about education, you really have no care for the future of this country.

Genuinely... grin Nice try OP

Funny how the ones who doubt that I am genuinely asking are the ones who can't offer anything useful to the debate.

If I wasn't genuinely interested do you really think (as a non-Tory supporter) I'd be starting a thread to give the Tories a chance to say how good their education policies are?

Yes, quite. You may as well ask when those horrid Tories stopped beating their wives too.

biscuit Is that a question that has any relevance to teaching?

Your OP was a very widely known logical fallacy called a loaded question effectiviology.com/loaded-question/

You then followed up with several faux-naive "golly jeepers shucks, maybe there aren't any good things after all!" comments when people called you on your blatant bad-faith post. You don't seem to have engaged with anyone who has give you the examples/evidence you asked for.

Given the vast numbers of people playing the same boring game lately, it's really very obvious to spot.

The question was:

What do you think that the Tory government of the last 9 years have done to improve the education in schools?

It’s perfectly straightforward. You list the improvements of the last 9 years.

Tory voter what is the option the nasty terrorist hugging Marxist - no thanks!

The Careers Strategy and the introduction of the Gatsby Benchmarks was a great addition. Careers education and guidance is sidelined too often but these changes have raised it's profile...helped enormously by careers now being part of the ofsted inspection.

however, the coalition govt. decimated careers ed in schools so they are partly repairing something they broke in the first place.

Phonics is a lot better taught (this is by far the most important thing). There is much more emphasis on behavior in schools and schools have got stricter. Standards in many subjects especially maths appear to have become more rigorous.

There are a lot of bad things too, esp the crisis in teacher recruitment and some narrowing of the curriculum in primary. On the other hand, the ability to read is so absolutely fundamental to everything else, that reducing the number of reading failures is probably enough to "counterbalance" a lot of other issues. For the moment!

If we want any further improvement, we will need to do things like rebalance the curriculum at primary and make sure we can get and retain good human resources in teaching. Easier said than done....!

By the way, I am not a "Tory voter" and the central premise of your question is naive--the idea that politics is supposed to be this partisan split-down-the-middle where everyone supports every policy of "their party," and the only voters who can possibly support anything ever done by any Tory administration must be "Tory voters." I have never voted for this party, but I'm capable of being honest about the fact that certain aspects of their education policies have probably worked (just like certain other aspects have not been so good).

Irrelevant which way I'll vote, but the Pisa tests show that the UK ranking was 25th the in the world for reading in 2009 and is now 14th. Science and maths have also improved.

My DC were taught during the times when course work could be redone until the required mark was achieved. Exams could be resat, and there's was very little incentive to work hard in the first instance when everything could be repeated if needed.