Would you be prepared to pay more tax to get better state education for all?

[happygardening]

Any other suggestions welcome to ensure that all where ever they live and whatever their background have access to education of the highest quality.

So, more money on Pupil Referral Units, then, so that schools CAN do something about disruptive children who still need to be educated??... No point paying someone more to deal with children they aren't trained to deal with and don't want to deal with however much you pay them - pay someone else who IS appropriately trained to deal with them. But that costs extra MONEY, surely?

Recruitment and retention encompasses far more than salary alone. It would address low status (which is at the root of the things you mention above). One way of improving status would be to raise the bar for entry into teaching and continue high quality training thereafter. An excellent headteacher would offer support and be unlikely to be unsupportive without reason.

This wouldn't, I accept, simply solve the societal problems implicit in the events you mention, which teachers are expected to deal with, but it would be a big step in the right direction.

I do not mean to suggest that teachers are underqualified and undertrained at present - there are so many talented and dedicated people in education - but there could be a greater consistency in quality.

There are definitely not enough good HTs around. There aren't even enough HTs for all our schools. There's nothing worse for a school than a bully of a headteacher who tells staff what to do but provides no support to enable them to do it - but with the increasingly silly, arbitrary targets set by government and ramping up of pressure, there are bound to be more and more HTs so stressed out by it all that they dump all their stress on their staff. In fact, the government in general is behaving like a bullying headteacher which sets silly targets for everyone without providing them with any support.

more money on Pupil Referral Units, then, so that schools CAN do something about disruptive children who still need to be educated??... No point paying someone more to deal with children they aren't trained to deal with and don't want to deal with however much you pay them - pay someone else who IS appropriately trained to deal with them

Yes. I can't help feeling this would be more useful to society than taking out the top few percent of academic performers. But then I (think I) value social cohesion more than I value the rights of a putative elite.

Absolutely, slipshodsybil and rabbit. These threads always focus on the top 5%-20% - and that is not where the money and the attention needs to go.

I'm not entirely sure of that seeker - I think children in the middle often get overlooked.