Why is it only the right that gets angry about how state schools fail the poor?

[longfingernails]

A truly fantastic article.

blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2013/06/christine-blower-the-nut-and-the-bigotry-of-low-expectation/

My favourite snippet:
This is what separates British left and right now. The left, in their post-Blair phase, is no longer very worked up about the poor doing badly at school. (?It may matter or it may not,? Blower said about poor children not going to top universities). The standard left response is to talk philosophically about inequality in society, as if this has the slightest bearing on whether the concept of a sink school ought to be tolerated in this day and age.

By contrast, the right are hopping mad about educational inequality. When the subject is raised in front of Michael Gove, it?s like flicking a switch. He blows his top. When I last interviewed him and raised the subject about whether it poor kids should be expected to do as well as rich, he replied in a crescendo of anger.

'shortage of parents happy to send their child to school A'

"School A staffed by ex business people and soldiers and School B staffed by teachers who have never done any job outside the education system."

We already have dumbing down due to New Labour, but I think that school A would lead to even more dumbing down. Is there any other country in the world that follows such a model?

Our infrastructure and our services are being dismantled and the result will be worse service for the customer. Our Royal Mail is one of the best, reliable postal services in the world and if we privatise it and allow competitors to enter the market, we risk ruining one of the great service institutions of our country.

We have to solve the dumbing down in our education system and there has to be change, but it should not be so radical that it throws the baby out with the bath water and ruins a system that has served us well.

I think 'training' and 'qualification's have become so arse covering that most no longer mean very much. Combine that with the inflated sense of self of those sitting on professional councils and licensing bodies and it is little wonder that we are in the position we are in.

An ability to exercise 'reflective practice', fill in pointless paperwork, and learn how to pick up a box correctly, stand for more than whether or not the job is actually getting done.

A coup by teachers? Sounds great. It would quickly deteriorate into the establishment of yet more layers of 'regulatory' bodies, where the sharp elbowed scramble to the top of the heap. The sad fact is, many public sector workers don't want to be at the coalface. They love all that time wasting, sucking pens, and sitting around flipcharts and developing 'ice breaking group exercises'.

As someone pointed out over the fiasco with Staffordshire and the CQC, the only likely outcome is the establishment of yet another tier of management to oversee the CQC.

Pathetic.
I am rapidly veering to a nihilistic model of politics. Outcomes likely to be far better and cost considerably less.

Thus my conclusion is that an ex soldier/navvy/pole dancer could quite possibly do a better job at teaching than many of the current crop who are of course the pawns in the game. They know no better because no one trained them properly to do the jobs they do.

I'd be giving School B the very widest of berths, personally!

School B is the one with teachers.

School A is the type of school Tony Blair might like other people's children to go to - one full of ex-business people, philanthropists and soldiers

School A is probably a charity or social trust supported by third sector taxpayer funding.

Ah, sorry - it's school A I'd be avoiding then! I think it's Gove et al who like the idea of soldiers and business people in schools, rather than Blair, though.

Yes you're right, it's not Blair who wants that, it is Gove.

"Thus my conclusion is that an ex soldier/navvy/pole dancer could quite possibly do a better job at teaching than many of the current crop who are of course the pawns in the game. They know no better because no one trained them properly to do the jobs they do."

Bollocks. The super selective state grammar that all the local parents want their children to go to is staffed almost exclusively by people who have spent the bulk of their career working as teachers. They train in the same institutions as those teachers in the rough comp down the road. And yet the grammar school sends dozens of children to top universities every year and excels in sport and music. Can you imagine parents whose children plan to train in medicine or do a phd in English or go on to music college will find it acceptable that their children should be taught by people who are neither experts in their subjects, nor fully trained teachers? Or is it that these sorts of arrangements will be fine for ordinary kids, but not for bright and well supported children who by and large do very well in the state sector, particularly if they are in schools which exclude low ability children by selection.

Have to ask you moondog - you are a teacher, yes? What sort of schools have you taught in?

'Can you imagine parents whose children plan to train in medicine or do a phd in English or go on to music college will find it acceptable that their children should be taught by people who are neither experts in their subjects, nor fully trained teachers?'

Yes I can. In your fit of pique, the point made earlier has eluded you. Many of the best private schools are staffed by people who have not gone through the TT sausage machine. They prefer it like that! Less likelihood of some dullard banging on about 'reflective practice' or 'experiential learning'.

I should know.
I went to one.

My DD's class teacher this year was not a trained teacher. She was a trained actress, who had been employed by the school as a supply teacher for a couple of years. She fell into being my DD's FT teacher because the teacher employed in the job was ill with cancer.

DD has had the best year ever at school and a truly fabulous teacher and has made huge progress. This teacher has been more popular with parents and DC alike than any teacher I have yet come across in her (huge) school.

I don't see what is so wrong with reflective practice.

Often after I have taught a lesson I will take time to reflect on how that lesson went and to consider if it could have been improved.

Yes, and I am sure that anyone who is as naturally gifted and talented as some here purport all teachers to be does not need CPD* to learn how to do that.

*All public sector drones will know what this is

Public sector guff

Plenty more where that came from

All of these are notable in that they exist to tell folk how to do the job that they are doing in the first place.

"Many of the best private schools are staffed by people who have not gone through the TT sausage machine. They prefer it like that!"

Moondog - any clever person with a good personality and a love of their subject can teach a class of 16 intelligent, compliant children. Fuck - half the time hey teach themselves! You throw children like this a morsel and they run with it.

You need a completely different skill set to deliver education to 30+ children of whom in a good number of schools a fifth or more will have specific learning difficulties and emotional and behavioural problems, while others will have English as an additional language. In my son's class (of 31) there are 3 children who need additional support. The ability range goes from my ds, who has autism and went up into juniors with a level 1C in his writing (ie, he's hard pressed to write a sentence) to a little girl who is half way through writing her first novel. You NEED training or long experience teaching in a similar environment to work with a class like this.

And yes - there are exceptional people who can thrive in any setting. But most people are not exceptional - by definition! Doesn't mean they can't be good at their jobs, dedicated and hard-working. But they need training and support.

Your ire about 'reflective practice', and 'experiential learning' - why so angry? These things have their place in teaching. I've found them quite useful concepts in my work of teaching (in the private sector) generally highly appreciative professional adults, who (according to the feedback I get) seem think I'm farking marvellous.

I agree Mini.
Able kids teach themselves. The staff have very little to do with it, however much they flatter themselves otherwise with Dead Poets' Society vignettes in their heads.
The morsel throwing analogy is perfect.

It's the other kids who suffer and those are the people who most interest me.
I know a fair bit about delivering measurable evidence based intervention to children with complex needs. The tragedy is that most of those charged with teaching them don't and are afraid to admit it. Thus they hide behind their smokescreen of 'framework's and 'toolkits' and workshops and 'experiential learning' and multi sensory' approaches, all the while thinking
Very few are brave enough to stop and say out loud
'I haven't got a fucking clue what I am doing here, because no one taught me how to help these kids properly. I am really angry about that.'

I work with many brave teachers who do say that.

I'm a teacher. The children in my class make good progress, but would make so much more if our years were not filled to the brim with 'enrichment' activities. The school day is already stuffed full with all the subjects we need and the P.E. requirements. Then you add in displays (a lesson of their time and 2 hours or so of mine each - 8 in the classroom, three outside, termly!), workshops (literacy/numeracy lessons missed for these), sports weeks (again lessons lost), art week (ditto), enterprise week (whole week gone), trips, class assemblies to prepare (take at least five lessons of their time and these are termly), music assemblies (time out of the curriculum), a school play (up to 3 weeks of afternoons) x 2 in the year, assessment week once per half term (so if there're 5 weeks to teach in you only get 4!) etc etc. All these things are lovely for the children, but there just isn't room in the curriculum, and important time is lost.

If you add it all up, there are 37 weeks in which to teach per year. You will easily lose about ten of these. That's more than a quarter of the available teaching time! It drives me mad, and we try to streamline everything we do, doubling up activities to keep up the learning.

Some things you cannot change though. Children who read regularly at home make faster progress, children who have support with their homework also. They get additional 1:1 time with a parent so of course this accelerates their progress. We do what we can for those who do not get this, but it is never enough.

Good examples Zirca.
Most of that stuff is a waste of time.
Who ever looked at classroom displays?
They are there for one set of adults in a school to impress another. set of adults in the same school
No kid cares.
They're all put far too high up for a start.

I use my displays all the time in my teaching. My displays are all at eye level.

My students often out up my displays for me, they like doing it and seem to care. They often take great pride in seeing their work up

Love the description of 'class of 16 compliant pupils' where was that stereotype dreamt up? The usual MN orthodoxy is that they are arrogant entitled brats - hardly 'compliant'. And I don't know any indie with secondary classes of 16.

My DS who has SEN found all of those things very difficult, zirca. He was often quietly sidelined when these things were going on because he found them so unsettling.

We took him out of the state system.

When I last interviewed him and raised the subject

If OP is a journalist with enough clout to interview Michael Gove, why are they stooping so low as to provoke & trawl MN for content?

Low?
What is 'low' about finding out what a representative example of parents think about education?

Good grief.