I've posted before about this government's catalogue of failure when it comes to our children and schools and unfortunately it's still going on.
Sir Kevan Collins, the government- appointed schools catch-up tsar has just resigned over their complete failure to accept his recommendations and their pitiful offer of a programme worth only one tenth of what he said would be necessary to alleviate the impact of the pandemic on children's education. www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-57335558
Holland are spending £2500 per child for their catch-up programme, the US £1600. How much do you think the Tories value our children? It works out at £50 per head, and some of the proposed 1.4 billion is going on teacher training rather than tutoring initiatives so won't have an impact for years.
For the much vaunted national tutoring programme, have the government hired experts to provide this? No, according to Sam Freedman, former education advisor to Michael Gove "The DfE have also ballsed up the procurement of the National Tutoring Programme by scoring quality too low vs price so it's going to be run by a Dutch outsourcing firm called Randstad. They undercut all the orgs who actually understanding tutoring. So a lot of the high quality UK charities and organisations providing support to the tutoring programme will now likely pull out. Proper shitshow."
At the same time they have been cladding new and refurbished schools in Grenfell-style cladding www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/may/30/dozens-of-new-school-buildings-in-england-have-combustible-insulation, and have rejected calls from fire safety experts to install sprinklers in new school buildings. www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-57335558
In January, Johnson unexpectedly announced the cancellation of exams for Y11 and Y13. There was no plan for what would replace them and the buck was passed to Ofqual. By March, Ofqual admitted that they had no idea what to do, and so it fell to teachers and individual schools to set, mark and grade GCSEs and A-levels - tasks normally done by exam boards who are still charging exam entry fees this year for doing what appears to be very little. Scotland is paying teachers £400 each for this extra work, England is, of course, paying nothing. Parents are reportedly already gearing up to appeal teacher assessed grades while the government dodges the blame for the impending fiasco.
As I have posted about before, the government have cut Pupil Premium funding by millions, so in practical terms the most disadvantaged children now receive less per pupil than in previous years when there wasn't a pandemic. www.mumsnet.com/Talk/_chat/4227538-See-how-much-the-government-has-just-cut-free-school-meal-funding-by-in-your-area
And on top of everything else...GAVIN WILLIAMSON IS STILL ED SEC. It's inexplicable, he is widely regarded as completely useless and yet while others involved in education resign around him, he gets to keep his job.
YABU: This government really cares about education and children
YANBU: This government do not give a shit. Not just incompetence, they really don't care.