How do we ensure all UK children regardless of back ground/ability receive high quality education?

[happygardening]

Contrary to what some may think I'm not anti state ed and as someone who works with disadvantaged children it really matters to me that they receive a high quality broad education and they fulfil their potential. But sadly in many cases they are not (there are I know exceptions) frequently their parents cannot assist them for a variety of reasons.
Is there an answer to this problem or are they condemned by their circumstances which are not of their own making to remain at the bottom of the heap?
No judgey DM comments please.

" fewer people will be able to afford private education and ensuring that the pushier parents are lending their support to state education"

While we are at it why not prevent developers from building houses in naice areas? That way those pushier garden centre loving MC parents will be forced to live in not so naice areas. They will then be motivated to make your areas naice as well.

I think that it is wishful thinking to imagine that the abolition of independent schools leads to parents insisting that state schools improve. In France, where there are practically no independent schools (although there are private schools, but they have to teach the NC), the big winner is private shadow education.

In the UK, where there are quite a few independent schools, the big winner still appears to be private shadow education.

MomOfTomStubby - I think you'll find it's the garden centre loving MC parents who are busy trying to prevent developers from building houses in naice areas, because too much housing in a naice area stops it being naice in the way garden centre lovers like (you do, after all, need a bit of a garden to love garden centres).

Interesting. It is an immigrant issue then - Bonsoir's own French is presumably really good, but can never be like a native speaker and the same with the many people in the UK who have learned English in homes in the UK where Hindi is spoken or Polish for that matter. Their children often work twice as hard as my lazy things and yet in spoken and written language mine can be very much better, because of the influence from the grave of my late mother in a sense drumming into us that you never say "for free" and about the 10,000 other rules she taught us and we teach our children. In other words you get to be in the club in a sense and presumably anyone can over a generation or two over time in any country or culture if they can bothered or if they want to. I certainly agree English changes. We have a good few words in English we slotted into our language from the days of the Raj even.. none coming to mind - tiffing? bungalow? Often I have no knowledge of the reason why something sounds wrong as I learned most of my grammar in French and German lessons not English, but you just kind of know.

That is one helluva generalisation Xenia.

Purely anecdotal but I have Indian friends where English was rarely spoken in the house given that they lived in households with a mum and grandma that spoke little English. I suspect that they would have wiped the floor with your 'lazy little things' when they were the same age.

"Socially excluded" was the "in phrase" for a while, but seems to have fallen out of favour. Low SES (socio-economic status) still makes the rounds. I like Underclass, says what it means.

Xenia, hijack a thread? No, never....

LOL Xenia you are getting a bit carried away. I write French a lot better than my 100% DP (who has all the sort of social credentials you seem to value so much!) and am always the one who writes joint correspondence, helps the children with their personal statements etc. Outdated clichés do not great language make...

I'm surprised your intuitive sense of what's sloppy and what's not lets 'kind of' through, Xenia!

Books are not just about pages of mashed up trees.
They are a symptom of curiosity and the desire to learn - or lack thereof.

When I got my first copy of Expedia on disk I loaded it up onto my Windows 95 PC and left it so my colleagues could have a look and went for lunch.
An hour later they had not clicked.
They had no curiosity or urge to learn.
THAT is why there is an underclass. Closed minds in the parents.
How does one open them?
(and pedantry about finer points of grammar is an extra padlock by the way)

Grammar helps people understand what others say and what words mean. It is certainly not a barrier to clear thought and communication.

Children whose parents do not want to learn and have no curiosity can be inspired by library books, the internet or teachers or friends.

Talkin - You judged and labelled your colleagues based on the fact that they weren't wowed by your new Encarta disk and preferred to enjoy their lunch break doing some like, you know, taking a break from 'brain' stuff?

Tomstubby
that was merely a symptom of their lack of curiosity about everything

Yes, I agree Teach First isn't perfect and is very well marketed but compared to a lot graduates coming off training courses, (a lot of unis have under subscribed BEds or PGCEs), they do have an edge.
It is not that they bring their better subject knowledge, but they are prepared to listen and take on advise, put in a lot of commitment and tailor their teaching to the fact they are in a deprived area.

The teach firsters I have met have all been primary and two stuck out. They had done education or child psych/childhood studies related undergrad degrees and all were highly committed and knowledgeable about working with children. Some of them saw teaching as their long term plan and had big ambitions. They made fab teachers. It is the (few) with the stereotypical attitude that it will launch them into the city jobs and be a fun start to their career that struggle, but I have seen Teach First filter them out. Friends DC who have applied who are arrogant, clearly not in it for the teaching/mission and not at all equipped for teaching, do not get a place.

Also, one final point(!) TF DO train their teachers a huge amount before putting them in the classroom. DDs best friend did a large number of essays and school experience time before the Summer Training, then 6 weeks of the residential summer training which was a lot of the content of a PGCE, with essays and tasks to do during the summer. Then when she started she was heavily supported, off on training evenings, weekends and days, and in the holidays had weeks of training.

Not saying it is at all perfect, but neither are the other routes.

The contention that forcing middle-class children out of private education would make stated education better is just hot air. Speaking as someone who has had to threaten her LEA with legal action on 3 separate occasions in the last 12 months to get them to do what they are legally obliged to do (and I'm as middle-class and sharp-elbowed as they come), I find it utterly laughable.

On the one hand it's quite a compliment. On the other it's so patronising.

I'm of course referring to the often repeated argument that state education will only improve if we MC parents push aside the WC parents and take over the PTA and the board of governors. And of course the WC kids will now have our naice MC DCs as role models.

It certainly implied there is some kind hallowed golden gold dust on the private pupils and if the state ones were lucky to sit in a class with my 5 they would have rub off on to them the magic dust.,.. whereas the reality is that private school parents save the state a fortune and take a morally good course.

Xenia, high priestess of morality.

at "we have to privately educate- it's out moral duty". Heard it all now!

We would get a good system if we could do the impossible and have it designed by someone who was going to come to Earth without knowing which strata of society they were going to belong to, how much money they would have, how intelligent they would be and how intelligent their children would be.

No society in the world has cracked this nut by the way.
Because people like Xenia do not realise that people like Gove are narrow minded ill educated little ratbags.
You need to have travelled ALL OVER the UK and other countries and been to ALL types of school to even START getting a handle on the issues.
DH has spent 15 years doing that.
Most of the advisers at the Department for Education were still at prep school 15 years ago.
They think they have the answers
DH knows he doesn't

What's his solution, talkin?

Very true, exotic!

I don't think middle class children are made of gold dust or any such thing. I just think it would be better if education wasn't divided on the lines of wealth. I think it's an odd way to organise things, and not to anyone's advantage really.

An odd thing to say, but actually I think if my children and xenia's children were at school together, it would be better for all concerned! Would balance out the extremes that both their mothers come out with

Just so long as the three of us aren't on the PTA committee.........!

I don't say haitch, if it helps!