More abuse of power by Gove

[Rosebud05]

Here

m.building.co.uk/5039212.article?mobilesite=enabled

Gove scraped the 'Building for the future' improvement plan for schools more or less as soon as he got into office, saying it wasn't working. This report shows that it was working very well indeed and significantly improving standards in some of the most deprived areas. The current government has tried to suppress this report.

This is on top of the report from the Met Uni published yesterday saying that the City Challenge has been more successful at improving schools in socially and economically deprived areas than sponsored academies. Very much more in fact, especially in London.

Why on earth is this country sitting by and letting Gove and his pals continue to divert public money in the already well-padded wallets of his friends and cronies and destroy our education system (and NHS for that matter)?

Maybe beacause the electorate is tired of dumbed down state education, Maybe many of us are sad that Labour's promises came to nothing and we have to pay for private school so that are children don't have to suffer the rubbish national curriculum delivered in classrooms where there is substandard teaching and pupils one step away from feral. You can massage statistics all you want- as I'm sure that august institution of higher learning has. What you can't avoid is the evidence of your eyes. Stuff like that.

I agree, in my city it is fine to fund a whole new building for an academy, but not to maintain maintain buildings at other schools that are leaking, dangerous and have no disabled access.

But then, they are the Conservative Party. All those fools who voted for them, you got what you wanted!

horsemadmom - there are some amazing state schools out there, and some really appalling private schools. If you want your children to only experience life among the wealthy, fair enough. Oh, and if you are going to be patronising about education, you should know you meant to say our children not are, among a number of mistakes. But then maybe you were educated in the 'dumbed down' state system?!!

Yes horse, all poor children are feral (and smelly and stupid) and all state school teaching is substandard. Can see why you had to send you DC private

horse, have this .

DD1 will start a school in September which was on the Building Schools for the Future list. They will now get nothing and be stuck in crumbling prefabs for God knows how long. Despite that they have rapidly increasing GCSE results, a very good 6th form and superb extracurricular activities.

I may train DD to be feral around certain parts of the population who need a . It will be hard going, since she is a lovely, well-behaved, hard-working child.

Oh, and have I given you a yet?

And the 90-odd percent whose children attend state schools are not part of the electorate, horsemad?

I think you may have missed my point. We wanted to send our children to state schools. We live in inner London and found that the only non-faith options were really grim. Crumbling buildings, 30+ in the classromms, no provision for gifted and talented....Even in an area where 24% go private, they still don't have enough places in the state schools. We had to beg for years to get police posted at the secondaries because the gang fights and vandalism were out of control. Do I think that scrapping the building program was a good idea? No. Locally, though, I have seen that money trickling in. Schools that had their funding withdrawn have been getting it back. We have to face facts. The economy is terrible and cuts have to be made. I would prefer ALL children to be educated to the highest standards with excellent, highly qualified teachers using a curriculum that stretches the best and brightest. This doesn't need to happen in a high tech palace. What I do see are my children's state educated friends steered into courses that won't get them into top universities and dealing with classroom disruption and teachers frequently 'off sick'. Oh, sorry about the spelling errors. I was educated in an excellent state school- frequently in porta-kabins.

I also live in inner London. This is an article in the Daily Telegraph about my DD2s school which a lot of middle class snobs won't touch with a barge pole. There are a lot of outstanding comprehensive schools in inner London nowadays...www.telegraph.co.uk/education/9145646/The-shocking-truth-about-state-schools-theyre-good.html

www.telegraph.co.uk/education/9145646/The-shocking-truth-about-state-schools-theyre-good.html

Sorry link didn't work

horsemadmom - thank you for coming back and explaining your position in calmer terms, we now know where you are coming from. Your original post came across as very anti-state school and labelling all state schools and their pupils in the same way, which was not helpful.

It's dreadful that there has been so little support for good state school provision in big urban areas, and successive governments of all colours are guilty.

The only part of horsemadmoms post that rings a bell with me is the reference to crumbling buildings. Otherwise classes were max 30 and there was provision for G and T. when she says

"We had to beg for years to get police posted at the secondaries because the gang fights and vandalism were out of control." When, where?

The state secondaries I know of have never had problems like that.

Building schools for the future worked really well in a school I know well. Yes they have a fantastic new building, but they are also left with so much debt they are having to go through a redundancy exercise. They also have no outdoor space as they can't even afford to get the two old buildings knocked down, even after someone torched one of the buildings!
What a wonderfully thought out scheme labour used! Hmmm

You don't think the debt was caused by the govt pulling agreed funding with no warning part way through? The scheme was very well thought out - so well that the Coalition had to demolish it as soon as they came into power, just in case it was thought that any body other than a private company could improve state schools.

If I had a school like Holland Park as a secondary in my catchment I would send my children there without batting an eyelid. There are amazing state schools offering a great deal to children for free. However the reality is that these schools often have very small catchments and are not within the reach of many.

Our local comprehensive is a struggling school, it struggles with drugs, teenage pregnancies, results are very poor, high staff turnover, behaviour issues, and the list goes on. It was also on the "schools for the future programme" as it is a crumbling building, it feels and looks depressing.

I would love to know if any of our wonderful MPs or politicians would have the courage of their conviction and send their own children there. I know that anyone who can around here avoids the school but sadly not many have the choice. And with all the best will in the world, and having been local here for a while now, I haven't heard of any Oxbridge/success stories coming out. There are still schools like that who fail children every day and it is really sad.

just in case it was thought that any body other than a private company could improve state schools

But using private companies to improve state schools is exactly what BSF was about. Most of the works were PFI funded. It allowed financiers, construction companies and IT companies to take control of public assets from LAs.

Hi Pointy and nlondon,
Sorry. First post did sound hostile. I've had a lot of years to resent paying fees because our local schools are crap. Just a correction for nlondon- we did our investigations into the local primaries 15 years ago. So, yes 30+ in a class and no, no G+T. From people who are far nobler than we and with children far younger we have -heard that this hasn't changed. Happy to PM you with which school has police. Thankfully, they also have them on the buses before and after school as the muggings were out of control and for OAPs and people with small kids, the buses were unsafe. Theft from local shops is also a huge issue. The Head thinks that none of this is his problem. However, they do have some lovely new buildings.

But obviously not the private companies owned and managed by cronies of the current government. The planning was managed by the govt/LAs - it was somewhat more regulated and accountable than handing £££ millions of public money over to friends of David Cameron.

Evidence? If you are referring to the academies/free schools programme, that is far more regulated and accountable than BSF ever was.

Rubbish.