Fear for your children's education under the Tories

[MissM]

Ed Balls' letter to Michael Gove today

This is the end of huge amounts of hard work by committed professionals in the education sector with the best interests of children at heart. Vote Tory for higher teenage pregnancy rates, financial mismanagement and boring teaching.

Oh well I didn't fancy compulsory home school agreements or statutory PSHE anyway

I'm sure the home ed crowd are happier without registration

I would rather have Gove than Balls in charge of education, frankly.

Registration and licenses aside, the rest of the bill represented really good stuff that would enable kids to have a much better educational future.

Just out of interest though, what will Gove give the education system exactly?

He's serious about ending the dumbing down. Labour have allowed standards to slip in our exam systems so they are becoming an international joke - our A Levels and GCSEs in most subjects are no longer comparable with the international versions, and universities are finding the system no longer fit for purpose in selecting students.
Unless something is done we are going to be outcompeted by the rest of the world simply because they are properly taught in schools and our kids are not.

what is PSHE?

I'm delighted! Vote Tory if you want to keep your rights as a parent!

Perhaps Ed should consider why children are failing behind as opposed to promising 1 to 1 when they do.

I want someone who will think seriously about inclusion and how children are expected to cope in mainstream without decent support. Why parents have to fight tooth and nail for a suitable education.

I want someone to stop pissing about with the curriculum and let teachers teach.

My children have pretty much gone through the education system under Labour (the youngest leaves this year) and it's been crap frankly.

PSHE = Personal, Social, Health and Economic education

PSHE, well, from the look of the new RE GCSE syllabus, that's now covered elsewhere.

Don't like the idea of teacher licences; surely that is what we get at the end of our NQT year, we are qualified to teach, and if we get CPD, we shouldn't need the licences.

Fail to see why teaching would be boring under the Tories - it'll still be the same people teaching - they won't change their styles, and I was taught under the Tories and had some gloriously non PC teachers who brought my education alive.

Why financial mismanagement? Under the Tories hopefully the nasty Labour habit of funding the urban Labour areas more for education than the non Labour rural areas will cease.

Teenage pregnancy rates are higher today than when I was a teenager in the 1970s/80s under the Tories. I could walk into a clinic and get the pill with no problem. Now that contraception is freely available in some schools, and parental consent is not sought for it to be dispensed, why has the teenage pregnancy rate shot up? Condoms are readily available as well in supermarkets and chemists, just as they used to be. I would suggest it is more to do with the ease of getting help with your child through the benefit system and knowing you will be housed and financially supported by the State.

Compulsory home/school agreements would still be ignored by the parents who don't give a toss and who need intervention anyway, and are just another stick to beat the parents with who are bothered.

Labour have had 13 years to sort out schools/education and haven't - all they've done is politicise the curriculum, introduce Citizenshit and get exam boards to alter the content of the syllabus so that we are not teaching subject matter, but government propaganda.

Glad the Home Ed potential intrusion is going as well. Charles Clarke has been the only competent Labour Sec of State for Education. Balls is a waste of time and space and doesn't know what he is talking about.

thing is OP, you say 'vote Tory for boring teaching', but most of the intelligent children I know in normal state schools are already bored, and not because the teachers are bad but because the curriculum is so unchallenging, even at A Level.

you can see the draft Tory policy on schools here

I'm all in favour of more rigourous teaching (and higher entry requirements for teachers coming into the profession); more discipline in schools; less central meddling and more ability for headteachers to run their own schools and support their teachers.

I like the idea of parents being able to set up a school if they want one too. Lots of talk from Labour on this but it's not really happening.

Also believe that the national curriculum has been endlessly tinkered with and that testing has become a ridiculous box-ticking, target-meeting exercise with little meaning - symptomatic of the current Govt's approach in most social policy areas.

The news this weekend carried an item about pupils' involvement in their schools and how things are run, including feedback to teachers. One child was complaining that a lesson was too hard "because we had to do the work on our own. The teacher didn't help us to do it and we didn't get to work in groups, we had to do the work all by ourselves." This is exactly what is wrong with the current approach to education in my opinion and change can't come soon enough.

So Gove doesn't want to support a Labour bill in the month before a general election. Hardly a surprise. That's got nothing to do with education and everything to do with politics.

I'll be thrilled if Ed Balls is removed. Whoever gets in will have three years to start undoing all the damage and the dumbing down labour have caused before my ds starts school.

Fingers crossed.

sorry I mean the child's attitude sums up what is wrong. I don't believe that all work should be done sitting around tables discussing what it felt like to be a soldier in WWI rather than learning about why the war was fought, how it was fought etc etc. Bit of old fashioned learning is required. I am going to stop harrumphing now before I turn into some sort of old fogey rustling the newspaper.

EldonAv

Facebook and twitter are like a home ed party!

Here's hoping Labour don't get back in seeing as Ed has said they'll bring the bill right back.

LOL at Citizenshit . I've not heard that one before, but sounds about right!

LOL

The teenage pregnancy rate is one of the great failures of Labour, the Tories would be hard pressed to do any worse!!!

Labour has spent £300million on trying to reduce teenage pregnancy by handing out contraception and expanding sex education.

However, pregnancy rates among under-18s in England are now higher than they were in 1995 - four years before Labour launched its Teenage Pregnancy Strategy and three years before 1998, the year the Government uses as its ' benchmark' for measuring progress.

There are suggestions that Labour chose 1998 because it had an unusually high number of pregnancies following a scare about the contraceptive pill.

In 2007 there were 7,715 conceptions among girls between 13 and 15, who are below the legal age of consent. This was the highest since 1998.

Under-16s now account for one in 100 of all pregnancies. Some 8.3 in every 1,000 girls in this age group became pregnant in 2007 - the highest rate since the benchmark year.

And in the month that has seen national concern over 13-year-old father Alfie Patten, the figures showed pregnancies among under-14s leapt by nearly 29 per cent from 295 in 2006 to 380 in 2007.

Labour has utterly utterly failed to make any headway, despite wasting millions of pounds on the problem - but then thats the keynote of Labour, millions of pounds wasted on all sorts of problems with no results to show for it.

The Tories cannot do any worse. Labour most certainly can and will. Pretty clear who to vote for!!

I taught Citizenshit for long enough to know exactly how I and the kids felt about it!

Agree with goingpostal as to raising standards. I am glad to see the Tories will allow IGCSEs to be taken in the state system. Bring back O levels!!

Citizenshit

Wow, this is the first thread I've seen where everyone agrees!

"There are suggestions that Labour chose 1998 because it had an unusually high number of pregnancies following a scare about the contraceptive pill."

really, I thought that was 1996?

It's the declining social mobility I find hardest to forgive. And the fact that it is perfectly obvious how Labour education policies (league tables which polarise schools, allowing selection by house price in the name of 'choice' though not academic selection, dumbing down) make it harder than ever for bright kids from poor backgrounds to do well.

Good point Seth. Educational attainment is now determined by a child's household income. Good schools determine how much a property in the catchment area is worth. It is a complete farce and Labour should be ashamed of itself for letting the situation get this bad.

Mind you, the whole economy for the last 13 yrs has been built on over inflated houseprices so Labour has had not incentive to sort this mess out.