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.

My state school has 1 lesson of PSHE/Citizenship a fortnight. This includes stuff like bullying, relationships, learning to learn, finance, politics, depending on the year group. Sex ed is a couple of lessons during PSHE time in Y7, and a couple in Y9 I think.

I think this is fairly standard.

Focusing on the basics has led, in France, to the current situation where children read almost no books in primary school and don't write essays until they are at Lycée (15).

Returning to the OP, the thing that I find confusing is it seems to be generally accepted in some quarters that the majority of teachers are left wing. If all of these right wing people are so hopping mad about sink schools, surely the clear solution is that they should become teachers and go and teach in them.

Conversely, if this isn't true, and the majority of teachers are right wing, what is the problem? Surely with Michael Gove in power everybody is in agreement and the NUT are just a rather vocal minority.

'I don't know how accurate it is'

If it's in the Daily Mail, I expect it is as accurate as can possibly be.

Bonsoir, I'm not aware that there are many graduates with good degrees and a private school education (who themselves are likely to have come from very affluent backgrounds) who would be thrilled at the prospect of a heavy workload as a teacher for less than 50K a year (considerably less than this outside of London and the South East), which is what the majority of teachers in ordinary private schools will be earning, even after several years service. A few of the biggest and more prestigious private schools pay considerably more than teachers make in the state sector, but this is absolutely NOT the case across the board. And often their pay and conditions are worse than teachers working in the state sector.

"It's difficult isn't it? It seems either the home is filling in for what the child isn't learning at school, or the school is filling in for what the child isn't learning at home."

Yes - this is absolutely true!

As an educated parent I expect to have to do a lot for my children educationally, and I expect them to achieve, even if their school is not stretching them as much as I would like.

Obviously it would be better for my high achieving ds if I could clear half of the children out of his classroom (he currently has 31 kids in his class). Preferably all the ones with special needs, or those who don't have English as their first language, and those who are not as bright as my ds. The ones who slow the pace of learning down for the rest of the class by demanding a disproportionate amount of the teacher's time and attention. DS's learning experience would then become very similar to that of children in the schools that Moondog probably holds up as examples of excellence in education. Fast-paced, challenging, creative, rigorous.

I don't blame DS's teacher for the fact that DS is not having an optimal experience of education. It's really, truly not his fault or the fault of his training.

I'm not at all convinced that you are right, minifingers. I know quite a lot of teachers working in the private sector and they were all privately educated themselves - which is of course where they learned the ethos of private education that they are now imparting.

It is interesting that no-one at all cares that schools fail the highly gifted.

I think the problem is that the left think the problem of failing schools can be solved by more and more money and resources. Not the case.

Excellent post mini fingers - that sums up my experience of teaching in both state and private. I and my colleagues in both types of school were broadly state educated, and were of a very similar calibre. Private school teachers are not any better than state school teachers. That's not what you're paying for. You pay for the exclusivity. To have more attention from the teacher, smaller class sizes, less riff-raff. It is sooo much easier teaching in a private school! And in my experience (London) less well paid. There are lots of unqualified teachers in private schools who wouldn't get a job in a state school - or last five minutes managing the wide array of needs in front of them.

I hate this idea that free schools will magically emulate private schools. Private schools have money to spend on small class sizes and targeted groups - the state sector doesn't. So as state schools start to look and feel like private, with beautiful PFI academies springing up, the results will never match up.

In what sense 'fails'?

At my dd's inner London comp (which is not an academy, has a higher than average intake of poor children and children with special needs and EAL) they get a good old handful of kids into Oxbridge and Russell group unis every year.

Even some of the worst schools in the country will have exceptional children who achieve highly. The worst school in our borough (a school fingered as in the bottom 15 schools in the whole of the UK) had a Eastern European student last year who obtained 10 A*'s in his GCSE's proving that if f children have a strong work ethic, and a gift for learning they can find a way even in difficult circumstances.

It is thick kids we should reserve our concern for, as these children can't compensate for the educational disadvantage engendered by learning in massive classes, and disruption and have limited life chances to begin with. I would like to see the charitable status of private schools being removed from private schools that fail to provide bursaries for mediocre children from poor and unsupportive backgrounds, as these are the ones who really thrive in a more supportive educational environment and need smaller classes. Instead these schools offer bursaries to the sort of clever and well supported children who actually tend to do very well anyway in the state sector.

Vivienne - if smaller class sizes didn't make a difference then private schools wouldn't consistently sell this to parents as an advantage of stepping outside the state sector.

Reducing class sizes costs A LOT of money.

I agree with that Minifingers. But I don't think it's just down to funding alone although schools should be adequately funded the money must be spent wisely.

Yes Vivienne and giving individual schools freedom to spend money how they wish isn't the answer. Teachers need freedom, commissioners who buy equipment and services categorically do not. Academies are wasting money left right and centre because school management - who are either promoted teachers, or managers from business brought in - are suddenly trusted with millions. The results are terrifying. I know of a school first-hand who have committed to spending over £10k a month on Internet access and wireless networks, because they were fleeced. No-one has to face responsibility for this - it hasn't been covered up, it's just one of thousands and thousands of crap business decisions taken by non-business leaders. Which is just a ridiculous use of human resources. What the hell was wrong with centralised funding, ie LEAs, for stuff like that? PFI and schools running their own finances will be the ruin of state education.

SirChejin - many private schools are up to 30% bursary now but it not going to happen overnight cos they need to raise the funds - unlike the wind farms who are wrecking the landscape and environment for an outmoded and useless way to generate electricity - 500 million was the cost of one smallish wind farm a few years ago (to a Danish company, not British) and precious habitats lost to wildlife forever under tons of concrete.
So agree - money would be better spent on education

Harris City academy in SE London have a head on 250k a year. It hit the headlines last year as the first state school to gain a 'perfect' OFSTED, getting 'outstanding' in all categories. It's the most oversubscribed and richest state school in the area, with more teachers per pupil than any other in the borough. So on the surface a real success story - it used to be one of the worst schools in the country.

However, scratch the surface and you find that it takes only a fraction of the number of children on free school meals when compared to all three of the nearest primaries, the lowest number of statemented/school action plus children of any school in the borough (3.9% - the average for the three nearest primaries is over 20%) and admits three times the number of high ability children as the nearest also supposedly non-selective school one mile down the road (70% compared to 22%). And yet the average GCSE grade for these high achieving children is lower than at the bog standard non-selective comp a mile in the other direction.....

Point I'm making is that there are people making themselves rich in the public sector. Money is being wasted on an EPIC scale and all the Tories want to do is change the rules regulating how schools/hospitals are run to make this sort of sharp practice easier.

Sounds like a success story to me, Minifingers, not an epic waste of money.

How can you see a success story in a school rolling with money and short on challenging kids that isn't getting the expected results, Bonsoir?

I am confused about that too Noble!

Also re. teachers educated/trained in the private/state sector - if they're trained at all (which of course is not a given), then it must perforce have been in the state sector, obviously.

How is it a 'success' when it has a negative 'value added' score?

Theoriginal - most private school teachers teaching qualifications. Almost all UK educated and qualified teachers will have had their teacher training in a public sector institution.

Very good points by Amazinggg and Minifingers about the possible waste of public funds. I hope the expenditure is all transparent and people are accountable, because the mood of the nation has changed and waste of public funds and taxpayer money by state bureaucrats or business people profiting at the expense of the public is now one of the public's major concerns.

Mini that's what I mean - if you trained to be a teacher, you did it in the public sector, right?

Instead of setting up a parallel structure of schools which have more freedom, why not reorganise current state schools and give them more freedom?

Do they think that free schools are better than state schools and if so what are they going to do for the millions of children in state schools?

Bugger only knows, Claig!

Claig, isn't that what Labour was saying the other day? Give those freedoms to all schools without forcing them to become academies?

www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-22931238