Ethically, is there any difference between buying a house in a good catchment area and just PAYING fees?

[Fillyjonk]

Seems pretty much the same to me

Both ways you are paying for an edcuation

Both ways the intake of the school is limited, one by catchment (local, expensive) one by just upfront paying fees.

Thoughts? Justifications ?

(this got posted in SEN for some reason. Not sure how. Apologies)

We used to siphone children off so that poor children basicalyl got shunted into middle class grammar schools, removed from their kind of station or point in life and "up" sometimes to bad effect as that meant they were different from their families and fitted in nowhere but often to good effect. My own parents went to state grammar schools because they passed the 11+ and then on to university only because of that chance.

The Government is trying to do some silly pointless things like make clever gifted children attend extra classes in the summer - what normal child wants lessons in the summer holidays? but basically this country in most areas decided that taking children up and out ( a bit like the Aborigines children removed from their homes to white homes in Australia) was a bad move, divisive and not fair on those children left behind.

Are we saying comprehensives fail? I never said that. 96% of children go to state schools and nearly 50% of Oxbridge entrants are from state schools. That's a pretty good success. Children are passing more exams too.

I'm not saying that all comprehensives fail either. What I am saying is that the problems go back to the wooly thinking that surrounded their introduction in the '70's. There were alot of militantly left-wing teachers (well there were ime) who branded subjects like Latin as 'elitist' but thought it perfectly appropriate to offer Russian!The same people scuppered the chances of well-behaved bright kids by refusing to introduce streaming and using those bright kids as ''cannon fodder'' to quote DominiConnor's earlier post.

Xenia - law and medicine are vocational degrees (although, of course, it is not an absolute requirement in England to have a first degree in law to qualify as a solicitor or barrister). A modern languages degree, like most UK degrees, is not "vocational" in the sense that it forms an integral part of a training course - though of course it's pretty much indispensable if you want to train to be a translator, interpreter or teacher of modern languages. Modern languages are also indispensable in many international business careers, so in that sense a modern languages degree may be more helpful for getting on the graduate trainee scheme at L'Oréal, LVMH etc than any other non-vocational degree.

I certainly don't know anyone with a modern languages degree AND ambition who ended up being a secretary - on the contrary, the ambitious modern languages graduates I know have gone on to have rather interesting lives in many countries and occupations. The unambitious will, whatever their first degree, end up in the less exciting jobs. And maybe they are happy with that, too.

"The Government is trying to do some silly pointless things like make clever gifted children attend extra classes in the summer - what normal child wants lessons in the summer holidays?"

I can't let this pass without comment. The G&T are not 'normal' so they do want lessons in the summer holidays. Many of them refer to Summer School as "life changing" because, for the first time ever in their mega-boring dumbed-down academic lives, they have been intellectually challenged and they love it.
They also finally get to meet the peer-group that you are usually so keen on, Xenia.

I'd love to agree with wychbold. But if you look at this year's summer school they have a big chunk of places for "media studies".

Law isn't completely vocational in quite the same way as medicine, there is some genuine academic stuff. My wife did a more demanding degree, and did the vocational equivalent of a a law degree in one year rather than three.

Wheresmysuntan is sort of right. But the advent of comprehensives moved the average up, not down. Because they had so many working class kids like me, they got less funding than those where councillors (of all parties) sent their kids.
Comprehensives aren't a bad idea, but the problem was that they were run by Brits. Not going to end well.

"if you look at this year's summer school they have a big chunk of places for media studies."

Which list are you looking at? Are you looking at the current 'places still available' list? Maths, science, philosophy etc are oversubscribed and get snapped up pretty quickly (therefore they are not on the current list) but media studies and the like are usually the last to fill their places.

Fair enough, I'm corrected ,but please explain to me why there are any Media Studies places at all ?
If there is more demand for non-daffy subjects, should not the resources go to them ?

From what I'm told by media types who interview MS "graduates", only particular skill in blow jobs will actually get them into their chosen specialism.
I don't count myself a prude, but I don't advocate summer skills in oral sex.

"explain to me why there are any Media Studies places at all?"

That?s a complicated question. I don?t know the detail of the SS contract but, basically, NAGTY arranges with various Uni to provide courses but does not dictate content. The trade-off is
(1) NAGTY get something exciting for their members to do.
(2) The Uni get to ?show off? their pet subjects to potential students. So you will find that one site will major on, say, scientific subjects and another site will major on quote-daffy-unquote subjects.
I think that SS are running at 8 sites this summer: only 4 of them still advertising some of their courses.

I've been a subcontractor for the government, if my company had decided to spend a large % of it's money on something they hadn't told us they wanted, they wouldn't have paid.

I don't expect them to detail content, any more than HM Treasury would have told us what encryption to use. But if we'd told them that a large % of the price was to pay pretty girls to sleep with potential hackers to steal their secrets, they would not have given us the contract.

So does "gifted" Media Studies teach how to give especially good blow jobs ?

Like I said DC, it's complicated. As you may be aware not everyone signs up to the idea of G&T. When NAGTY was first formed there was a fair amount of pussyfooting around trying to (a) get people on board and (b) not to appear too elitist. Some Uni were brave in signing up to the experiment so I suppose that the quid pro quo was allowing them to promote their favourite subjects.

I don't know anyone who has been on a Media Studies SS but I presume that NAGTY have some sort of quality control to maintain standards. If things weren't up to scratch the kids would let them know pretty sharpish!

I ran into the elitism myself. A while back the local 6th form college wanted to do a summer school bringing in people to teach more advanced/applied stuff.
I did a detailed proposal on an advanced programming course for those teenagers who were actually good at it. I do some teaching in the private sector on a course that costs £12K (250 quid per lecture), and have done some stuff that might impress a little bityou if you were a fellow geek. I made it clear I was going to do it for the talented, and I 'd do it for free. If you wanted me for 2 weeks would normally cost quite a lot. Didn't say that explictly, but my job title made that clear.

Yep was elitist.
What got my goat was that if I was a professional footballer making the same offer, they'd be over me like a rash, ditto if I was a member of a serious orchestra. But elitism in techie or academic stuff was unacceptable.

It's a cop out. The G&T children should be sent by the state to schools like North London Collegiate where my daughter went for a proper education or be educated i state grammar schools where only the brighterst 15% go rather than have to rough it out with very thick over children all year round with some sop that you can by the way have less summer holiday. G&T probably just means in many cases you're clever, like a lot of us here but instead you're singled out as some kind of child genius which is silly. Of course at any school even my daughter's NLCS one some children are hugely out of the range - as bright as can be 11 A* GCSE, 6 A levels at A and that's properly gifted but a lof them in G&T are just clever and would have got to grammar school, that's all and if they're rounded and nice and normal the last thing they want is extra lessons in holidays. It's like a punishment for being good.

It's a shame that they diidn't take you up on it. I presume that the problem was the grown-ups, not the kids that would have benefitted from your knowledge.
There ought to be national network that matches up mentors and mentees.

P.S. Get your jargon right. Put simplistically, 'talented' refers to artistic subjects (music, drama, art, etc). I presume that your course was aimed at the more academic (maths, science, etc) kids who are referred to as 'gifted'.

In my experience, gifted and talented children can and do get a 'proper education' in state schools and do not have to 'rough it out with very thick children'. That's quite some generalisation going on.

My children get challenged and stimulated at their comprehensive, well above the demands of what is expected from the 'average' student if there is such a thing. None of this settling for 5 GCSEs at C grade, which is what some people seem to think schools do.

All the secondary schools in the town join together for workshops/special teaching in various subjects for the gifted and talented. Sometimes run by school staff, often with external leaders.

And yes, they do get offered lots of the day and residential courses. These are in no way seen as extra lessons in holidays - my son's friend describes them like summer camp with a focus on something he really enjoys!
And in actual fact they are quite often not in holidays at all - one girl I know quite often goes on 3-5 day maths courses in term-time. Possibly because the main centre hosting these courses takes children from 3 counties, so co-ordinating half-terms etc can be tricky.

Some children love these courses and go on lots. Others see them as irrelevant, some are indifferent.

We tend to take a middle ground - mine have gone on a few that they really wanted to go on, and where they fitted in with family plans (and budget!), but I don't see them as the be-all and end-all.

I don't find our school singles anyone out as a genius, they just recognise that some children are particularly talented in certain areas and give them lots of support to help them reach their potential.

portonovo- once again I am impressed by the level of organisation in your area. Our local city schools are all either in special measures or verging on it (bar one), although they are all in spanking new PPP premises.

I also have objections to calling a child gifted and talented when actually most of them aren't. They're just a bit cleverer. Gifted is someone like Ruth Lawrence going to Oxford at 12. Being clever enough in the old days to pass the 11+ and be in the 15% that got to university is not G&T and it gives children an over inflated sense of their own abilities to label them like that. Although there's an interesting issue about whether it's better to be much cleverer than most people you are at school with which might help your confidence or go to schools like my childre went to where 100% are in Blair's terms very G&T and being middle of the class with a good few Ruth Lawrence types above you.

What is G&T exactly? It has to be mean something more than just very bright surely? Or is it a way of getting more cash/resources into the schools? A different kind of statementing?

Apparently Schools are encouraged to identify the top 5-10% of each year group as gifted or talented, regardless of the general level of ability within the school. This means that my DS1 would now be called "gifted and talented" whereas he was always described as "very able" when at primary school. He is just one of the thousands of pupils each year who get the top grades at exams, go to good universities etc. He did know some gifted pupils at his secondary school - these were probably in the 0.5% bracket.

As far as I'm concerned, much of the G&T programme is about palliating the deficiencies of increasingly dumbed down expectations on young people. There is some pretty solid evidence to suggest that children are losing cognitive ability at an alarming rate (ie an 11-12 year old is now several years behind what it was 15 years ago). So G & T increasingly means "just slightly cleverer", but not/ no longer catered for by mainstream schooling. That is the concern that many of us with slightly above average children have nowadays- that their limited facility is increasingly being seen as freakish and needing to be catered for outside school, as though they had special needs beyond those of "normal" children.

In truth all the has happened is that the government is desperate to retain the bright-ish middle-class children who make up the bulk of this "G&T& group, and yet again increasing social division- what street smart slightly above average child will willingly submit to being ribbed by his/her mates for being a "boff"?

The kids who will attend these programmes, yet again, will be the above average children of middle class parents- ie those who give a damn, and the extremely bright children of parents stuck in awful situations, probably already marginalised from their own communities because of their unusual interests. Way to go to include the "G&T"!

wychbold, I'm going to stick to "talent" for programming. It's not a raw brainpower thing, though that helps as in all things.
I've taught people who aren't very academic, but long ago I got someone with 4 A grade A levels (back when that meant something), a couple of Ss, etc.
He thought he could do programming.
He was wrong.
I tried to help, and frankly he didn't enjoy it. He had a close to photographic memory, way better than mine, but he lacked the "talent" to express himself creatively in code. Programming is a creative process, just as much as sculpture.
Or rather as sculpture used to be. I recall reading how Michaelangelo was a serious expert in the nature of marble as a physical substance.
There is evidence that he could visualise the internal structures of a stone block in a way that scientists couldn't replicate for centuries after.

duchesse - I quite agree on the issue of declining cognitive ability in children.

To what do you attribute it?

The brain is a physical system that works on feedback, if you use it less, it develops less.

Aside from the dumbing down in education, I think it's the long hours culture and (dare I say it) more mums working. Kids need the right stimuli to develop well, and that's largely one-to-one work.

DC - I don't often agree with your POV. But I do this time.