Westminster: Brexit is the hard right's weapon of mass distraction

[BigChocFrenzy]

The fervour and divisions over Brexit have suspended normal party politics.

The staggering incompetence & unsuitability of Corbyn as a leader, together with the resulting impotence of Labour has removed the normal checks & balances in UK politics.
There is a vaccum where the Official Opposition should be, so Theresa May is under pressure only from her right.

I fear Thereas May and the Tory rightwing are taking advantage of Brexit to complete the destruction of the post-WW2 social contract and the welfare state.

Meanwhile, the constraints of civilised discourse have been loosened and those with racist or social Darwinist views now feel free to spout their poison openly.

Putin is pouring petrol on all the fires and Arron Banks is lurking < sinister emoticons required >

Zoe Williams:
"Behind a smokescreen of bogus patriotism, ideologically driven cuts to the NHS and all our public services are unpicking the bonds of nationhood"

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/05/brexit-theresa-may-falklands-war-nhs-cuts

"We should be marching against the crisis in adult social care, the closure of care homes, the systematic exploitation of carers, the £4.6bn cut from social care budgets this decade.
We should be .... asking:

“What exactly is the plan, if we’ve decided we can no longer afford to care for the elderly and the disabled?
What do we do with them instead?”

"We should be marching against cuts in education funding"

"Every morning we wake up to someone on the radio explaining, despairingly, that you can’t fix the hospital bed crisis until social care is fixed, and you can’t fix that until council tax brings in more, and it can’t bring in more because wages are too low."

"But when everything breaks at the same time, that is not a coincidence: it is a plan.

As surely as Margaret Thatcher had an economic plan on employment, rights, industry and wages,
this century’s Conservatives have a plan on public services, which is to smash them beyond all recognition."

And the same applies to selective faith schools except substitute sitting in pews for tutoring. At least they are not allowed to select on whether parents clean the silver, oh wait the Catholic Church is taking that one to Judicial Review

LH Who would negotiate with a premier who has not won an election?

EU counterparts are well aware of their forced role in an internal conservative party dispute. They are all watching far right's 'power grab' across Europe with this in mind.

I cannot see a way given the legal need for fair and transparent admissions processes

Not a legal need, sadly ron in fact wide open to questionable practices:
"Because these grammar schools are academies, they are all their own admission authorities "
www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-views/theres-something-rotten-state-school-admissions-and-its-affecting

Re grammar schools, I was part of the last or maybe last-but-one grammar school intake at my inner London secondary school - it subsequently converted to a comprehensive (and a bit of the school split off and went private). The grammar intake was overwhelmingly middle class students from out-of-borough; there was a parallel "CSE" intake (showing my age here) of students who would previously have gone to secondary moderns. These classes were dominated by local students from the disadvantaged areas around the school, many of them black and Asian.

Thanks to the comprehensive reforms, many of these students were able to move from the CSE stream into the O-level stream; some of them went on to do extremely well.

even the tests of ability are tutorable.

I can't imagine why anyone would think otherwise. Even proper IQ tests are perfectly "gameable", and there is a known effect from retaking them at too close an interval.

I note that the Chancellor is predicted to make plans for Free Schools and Grammars the centre of his budget. I know it's not normal to vote down budget proposals, but in this case - the Government has no mandate whatever for Grammar schools. They didn't put them into their Manifesto. So will the Lords vote this down, I wonder?

All I can see happening is that some middle class areas will have Grammar schools, areas where there is absolutely no shortage of places. Alternatively, I could see some struggling Independent schools decide to become Free schools and turn themselves into Grammars. I can think of a couple locally who would be candidates for this.

In twenty year's time we will be saying 'what a bl**dy mess' and realise that we have to reform. Another wasted generation.

Place marking

I went to a single sex grammar for 3 years (England), then finished off in a mixed comp (Scotland).

I do appreciate that it equipped me with aspiration

^ like whatwould, that was my biggest gain from Grammar.
Aspiration, and a belief that we could do 'anything the boys can' was drilled into 'us girls' constantly.

Saying that, the comp made me streetwise and a jack of everything with a much broader knowledge - which was lacking in the grammar.

No one size fits all & it's a difficult subject really - both types of school have advantages, but also their weaknesses.

I really would not like to see a mediocre Grammar School like mine return ever. As a Comprehensive it's been a million times better. As a grammar, my school never sent anyone to Oxbridge in all the time I was there. Now as a Comprehensive it does. The Head is also pleased to celebrate the success of the students who get BTECS and go into work, who would have been written off a generation ago. Oh, as well as producing an Olympian and a Paraolympian - completely unheard of in my day. We did have one who had an ambition to play at Wimbledon - she was given short shrift for having ideas above her station.

Prettybird, thanks for the love earlier

I honestly don't take things personally (for the most part!) just sometimes I see a post that triggers me so I have a wee tantrum then it's all good.

I'm a good old comp girl. The entire grammar thing totally confused me. Grammar didn't exist in my county but did in the next county that we were a border town too. Some people went for the 11+ but it was solely parental choice and wasn't really the done thing. We were lucky in that our town boasted one of the best comps in the country at that point so it was deemed pointless by many.

But my half sibling lived in the next county. She went to grammar school to much fanfare from the family. Apparently there was no point in my full sibling and I going to this phenomenal school because ours was the best but then no point in half sibling coming to ours

I realised later in life it was due to an attitude difference between my parents. DF was brought up with the grammar school system. DM was brought up abroad and very narrowly wasn't pulled out of school in order to care for her younger siblings and was forever thankful she got to stay to get her certificates so valued a good education regardless of where it came from.

All three of us have done fairly similarly in education and career terms. Maybe the schools were equivalent, maybe it was our class, god knows. I'm still confused about grammar schools in general though.

In fact, we were told not to attempt certain questions in exam papers ' those are for candidates who are trying for Oxbridge'. Instead, droves of girls went into Teacher training, for which at the time you only needed 5 O levels. Nothing wrong with teaching, for those who have a vocation, but as the default option no. I can't help wondering if that push into teaching helped to devalue education.

semi the question isn't whether you are for or against streaming (I'm in favour) or instilling qualities like rigour and aspiration, but how you do it, and who gets left behind.

My kids attended (youngest is just finishing) a very deprived middle school in France. The middle school system here is bollocks - there is no selection and usually no streaming - but their school, thanks partly to the additional resources granted on the basis of deprivation, was able to offer small-group tuition to the least able students while offering a decent education to the brightest ones.

It's all about resources and how you allocate them; I'm encouraged by Macron's programme in this regard (he wants 6-8 year olds in the most deprived areas to be taught in classes of around 12 students). Throwing money at middle class students wins votes, but educationally there are better ways of spending money.

woman As the article says the Grammar Schools select overtly so they have to conform to certain legal precedents as well as fair admissions. That means basically that they have to have the same tests for all which produce objective transparent rankings. The selection comes in the tutoring required to do well in the tests.

That is a little different to making your admissions criteria so complicated that you need the cultural and intellectual capital (as aired on Mumsnet) to find a way through it and the (social) selection is covert. Faith Schools come into that category as well as academies

Alternatively, I could see some struggling Independent schools decide to become Free schools and turn themselves into Grammars

On who will might make money from this public service:
www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-news/exclusive-academy-chains-planning-pupil-premium-grammar-schools

Specifically Inspiration Trust and Dame Rachel de Souza, who has had previous problems:.
schoolsweek.co.uk/inspiration-trust-set-to-take-over-failing-norwich-school/

Did some one once say something about selling the family silver? I wonder how Michael Gove will be involved? He's set to be returning to cabinet.

Peregrina, I'm in a different part of Oxfordshire than you & my kids are at the local comp.

Their school was the main reason I didn't move away when me & their dad split up a couple of years ago (apart from access for him too, obvs!).

It's a brilliant school, partnered with local tech college & just as much pride in the btechs & vocational successes as the academic ones - also a massive focus on independence and self-motivation for the pupils rather than massive over-invested-parent input.

I cannot praise it highly enough tbh.

We digress in a way, talking about Education when our thread is about Brexit. Doesn't it just show the Tories complete lack of direction? We want to trade with the rest of the World. Where are the plans to improve industry? Where are realistic plans to educate and train the staff who will be needed? Grammar schools for the middle classes won't achieve that.

Sorry, xpost misti - I think I tend to agree.

Rigorous streaming and good vocational routes alongside academic routes are the best option.

objective transparent rankings

Objective only in the sense that they rank 11 year olds in order of their performance in a test known to be a poor indicator of underlying ability, on a particular day in their lives.

I believe that adjustments are made for chronological age and gender, otherwise grammar schools would be populated by girls with autumn birthdays.

How transparent and objective is selection, really?

We have some amazing community comprehensives in this area that do a good job of instilling aspiration and their top sets do just as well as the Grammar Schools that supposedly cream off the top 2% in the ability range. They clearly do not from their results at GCSE and A level and anecdotally that is because the pupils who have spent years being tutored in reasoning tests, a process that is almost entirely without educational value, were ill equipped to handle the literacy and numeracy curriculum and needed tutoring through school too. Now they have admissions tests in literacy and numeracy too but the pupils are still being tutored at every stage

Mistigris I agree with you completely, objective and transparent insofar as they stand up to appeals and court cases.

How does bringing back Grammars lead to better vocational education?
Apart from the person who mentioned the Thorne Scheme, the 11+ does not attempt to assess for any vocational skill.

It's a brilliant school, partnered with local tech college & just as much pride in the btechs & vocational successes as the academic ones - also a massive focus on independence and self-motivation for the pupils rather than massive over-invested-parent input.

I'm a big believer in making technical education more valued. One of the good things about the French system is the existence of technological baccalaureats which combine academic and vocational teaching. Unfortunately, they are widely considered (by parents) to be inferior, with the result that DD's science bac class contains a significant minority of students who to be ruthlessly honest would be better off doing a more vocational course.

How can anyone claim grammar schools are anything but divisive??

Woman...
As long as it's Irish whiskey 🍷