The Tories STILL don't give a shit about your kids or their education

[noblegiraffe]

One in a long running series of threads of failures on the part of the government to put any money into schools.

Earlier this year, the government-appointed covid-catch-up tsar resigned in disgust when they refused to take his recommendations on board for a £15 billion programme of recovery for children, including extra sport and extra-curricular activities. They instead pledged about a tenth of that, with the main focus to be on catch-up tutoring.

The DfE then made the inexplicable decision to award the tutoring contract to Randstad, a Dutch HR firm because they were the cheapest by far, and about £40 million below what the DfE had budgeted. (Where did the rest of that money go?)

Randstad's woefully inadequate systems led to catastrophic failure: “They’re doing it on the cheap and the quality of what they’re doing is very poor — completely under-resourced, and shambolic,” the leader said. “I’m absolutely in favour of the profit motive, but this is the worst sort of bargain basement capitalism.” twitter.com/samfr/status/1465239826534440964?s=21

Leading to only 8 percent of the targeted children receiving tutoring since September. www.tes.com/magazine/news/general/covid-catch-tuition-92-adrift-year-end-target

Remember, this is the government's BIG PLAN to help children recover from the educational damage caused by the pandemic. So basically, most kids are getting fuck-all extra support.

The Head of Ofsted said that that majority of catch-up would happen in classrooms in normal lessons with the class teacher. Presumably instead of teaching them new content? Won't that just create gaps that need to be caught up?

And the people in government who should be kicking off about this are instead trying to get a bill to force schools to stay open even if all the staff and most of the kids are off with covid.

How? By asking retired teachers to come back and work for free. Seriously. "Mr Halfon also urged the Government to mobilise an army of volunteers to keep children in the classroom if teachers are off sick. “The Government should set up an army of education volunteers of retired Ofsted inspectors and former teachers who are tasked with going round the country and fill in where teachers are off sick,” he said. “The vision has been there for the NHS with volunteer-run vaccine centres so why can’t it be done for education?” (From the Telegraph)

There were so many outraged threads about school closures and poor education provision. The government is doing nothing to fix those issues.

YABU: The government cares about children and education

YANBU: This is a scandal

Did the Tories ever really care about education? This is yet another example of poor procurement, and that probably they did not ask Randstad and others what they really needed.

@OnceuponaRainbow18

Our school has basically encourage a lot of struggling year 11s to drop a GCSE and do extra English and maths lessons- run by support staff. A kid I work with got told to drop Business and said they’ve been watching Netflix with an LSA ever since…!

Oh wow. And yet on another thread posters were queuing up to tell an OP not to worry that her kid was being taught by a TA because they were probably even better than a qualified teacher.

@noblegiraffe

Yup… I didn’t actually believe the kid at first; so did a few ‘learning walks’. Basically if the students In the class write 4 lines they can choose any Netflix programme to watch. It’s mainly the struggling kids so actually they are quite enjoying this but a total waste of their time.

Whilst at the same time a younger student who should have 1-1 support isn’t because their LSA is watching Netflix with year 11s

YANBU of course. But the current problem with children falling behind in schools was caused more by the Teaching Unions not the current Government. They’re the ones who were pushing for closures and restrictions.

Parents should be kicking off about that, particularly the one who has lost the LSA.

I do sometimes wonder how little they know about what goes on in secondary schools.

@SweetBabyCheeses99

YANBU of course. But the current problem with children falling behind in schools was caused more by the Teaching Unions not the current Government. They’re the ones who were pushing for closures and restrictions.

😂 at the idea that the government pays any attention to the teaching unions.

@SweetBabyCheeses99

YANBU of course. But the current problem with children falling behind in schools was caused more by the Teaching Unions not the current Government. They’re the ones who were pushing for closures and restrictions.

Nonsense

Literally the only thing any of them care about is themselves. They don’t even try to hide it anymore.

Idiots still insist on voting them into power. I understand why the rich do, they can afford not to have the nhs or state education. But I have no idea why the majority of ordinary people vote for a party that despises them

Cos they are easily taken in.

@SweetBabyCheeses99

YANBU of course. But the current problem with children falling behind in schools was caused more by the Teaching Unions not the current Government. They’re the ones who were pushing for closures and restrictions.

Come on now. You don't really believe unions have that much power do you?

Quite impressive that both the unions and the immigrants have been blamed for failures in government policy/ procurement.

I guess Nadhim Zahawi is an immigrant, but the Randstad contract happened under Gav.

This army of volunteers thing is a ridiculous idea. A) schools can't get paid supply nevermind free staff B) why would retired teachers who statistically would be at greater risk of covid enter a school where there's so much covid their teachers are off? C) it ignores the fact that not having your usual teacher and/or a subject specialist has an impact on the quality of education.

As a parent and a teacher I do not want schools to close. But this plan won't work.

Not only enter covidy schools, but travel around the country to do so, for free.

I think even vaccine volunteers got to work in a local centre.

This plan for retired teachers might attain the dubious distinction of being even more absurd than the gazebos and buckets of water suggestions of Summer 2020.

No they don’t, but ultimately parents are responsible for ensuring their dc receive an appropriate education.
If you can afford to have sahp and your child is receiving a substandard education , then for the most part that’s on you.

Tbf the buckets of water weren't being suggested by the Chair of the Education Select Committee.

I think.

You don't really believe unions have that much power do you?

Some people genuinely seem to believe what the Daily Mail tells them about the government in battle with the powerful teaching unions who are demanding x, y and z.

They can't explain why if teaching unions are so powerful teachers have had a real terms pay cut of 17% since 2010.

I read that article and it both enraged and depressed me. Getting decent teachers to deliver these risibly badly funded programmes is impossible. Do they really think retired teachers and inspectors would want to come in to teach in Covid petri-dishes for free?
The Telegraph also had a piece today hammering schools for putting in Covid circuit breakers (which they'd only do on the advice of the UKHSA), cancelling nativities and tightening up into bubbles. The tone was so unpleasant when schools are just trying to do what they can to prevent infection rates running amok and children and families having to isolate throughout Christmas.

13% of posters voting think the Tories give a shit about education. Weird. Why?

@noblegiraffe

13% of posters voting think the Tories give a shit about education. Weird. Why?

They must be the 'all hail Boris' crew. For some, he can do no wrong.

I'd hate for people to think that Gav (who was widely acknowledged as shit) was the problem and now that he's gone, everything is fine in education.

The application form for the National Tutoring Programme did not ask for teaching experience, only qualifications.

They also only wanted people who could work full-time.

There are very experienced teachers who wanted to support the catch-up effort, but who were not considered because whoever designed the application form didn’t understand how to design application forms.

There are also very experienced tutor agencies who were not able to be considered ‘Approved Providers’ because they wouldn’t have capacity to deliver tuition to ‘a minimum of 50 schools’, who were prevented by this from contributing to the programme.

These skilled and interested parties are still around (and still providing children with effective tutoring) if anyone in government did want a second go at getting this programme to make a difference to the children it was intended to help.

Historically and statistically it was believed a less educated generation are less likely to be/become left wing voters (ie not been to university)

I know this isn’t strictly true and that plenty of educated people are conservatives so please know I’m not attacking or trying to shame anyone here - more modern research suggests, quite obviously, that this is not the case.

But this is a tactic the current government are using, quite openly, like many right govs have used around the world many times before to future proof themselves in the misguided belief that it IS a trend.

And that’s what I think is going on here. It’s not about our kids now, it’s about what’s best for the party over the next decade.

I also echo what another poster said upthread. My school employed tutors to work in the core subjects. They’re just being used as cover supervisors. At the moment cover is so stretched that the data manager is covering lessons.