Michael Gove

[LadyBlaBlah]

Does anyone get the impression that the list detailing which school building projects were going to be axed wasn't given much thought?

Sounds like a bit of an arbitrary list done in a haphazard fashion.

Really, how could he make such a fundamental clerical error if the list had been given any thought at all?

Typical

Brightest and most articulate? He honestly did not come across as either of those things on Newsnight the other day. He was simply repeating the same old rebuttal for the entire time he was on the show.

Now, if he would introduce selection by ability, maybe vouchers, then we might once more have a 19th century model of education again in this country. One keeps ones fingers crossed he does not.

However, it looks as though he is!

I fail to understand how competition and market forces will drive up the standard of education in this country. Maybe you can explain how children and things such as competition and market forces sit together so nicely? How it will provide a fair and equal opportunity for all children in this country, where is the evidence that it works? What about the children with lower abilities, what will their education look like?

There is no evidence to support his reforms working better. There is no evidence that schools support his idea either.

"I fail to understand how competition and market forces will drive up the standard of education in this country. Maybe you can explain how children and things such as competition and market forces sit together so nicely?"

Lego - I think I could explain it - but I expect you still wouldn't understand it.

Perhaps a better question to ask is - why after 3 terms of Labour government is our education system not providing our children with fair and equal opportunity?

Maybe, chasing equality and fairness is not the answer. Instead putting the focus on creating more good schools will improve the education of our children.

'Lego - I think I could explain it - but I expect you still wouldn't understand it.'

That's a bit patronizing isn't it?

Actually I don't mean to be patronising. Just IMO you either believe that competition improves human endeavor or you don't. It's ideological rather than factual. And belief systems are hardwired, in my experience.

Legostuckinmyhoover - what's that? A 19th century education system that turned out higher rates of literacy and numeracy than our present one? Yes please!!

BarmyArmy
are you his wife?

What Lily said. I haven't got the energy to argue with the so many wrong things said by some people here. My greatest concern for this supposed shiny new world Gove thinks he's creating is where does it leave the children with special needs. If you select by ability what happens to them? If you run a so-called free school and claim you drive up results, then you're not going to admit kids who will bring those results down are you. The Tories are the same as they ever were. If you're somehow weaker and more vulnerable you lose out. And don't start quoting Cameron on his son at me now.

Did it Barmy? I wonder which history books you have been reading !

If you agree to everyone paying for their education and the church picking up the pieces for the poor, children wearing dunce caps, children out to work at age 12 if not before, children being hung from baskets and wearing logs around their necks, then thats great! I am guessing that you were joking right?

However, I guess I have absolutely no idea about how children learn well. I also now stand corrected that equality of opportunity for everyone and fairness has little role to play in education for our children . Purleeeeze!!!!!

Reintroducing selection into education would simply mean that the children who got into the 'good' schools were the ones whose parents could afford to pay for extra tuition. There is a lot more disposable income around than in the 'good old days' of the grammar school, and parents are ever so much more competitive and willing to pay ££££ towards their child's education. Wouldn't solve a thing imo, except for guaranteeing that only the rich could access the good schools.

Lily - but now we have selection by bank balance. With children from more affuent families getting the best of the state education.

Of course in the current system, affluent children have an advantage in preparation for 11+. But, recent research from the Sutton Trust has shown that top comprehensives are more socially exclusive than the remaining grammar schools.

Yes, he should have checked the list - but then again, Labour should have checked that they actually had the money to pay for the programme in the first place.

jackstarbright - there is always going to be an element of that. But reintroducing an 11+ exam would accentuate it, I have seen quite how much money parents are prepared to throw at it in the hope of not 'having' to pay school fees, not to mention the pressure put on the kids to 'perform'.

One option could be to do the selection by banding currently used by academies - an entrance exam is taken, and the children put into banded groups, and a number are taken from each band. If this was done for EVERY school then that would ensure every school had a complete cross-section, and if streamed appropriately would mean that every child should have an appropriate peer group.

I'm not saying this would work - but it might do. Would certainly be better than the 'all or nothing' of the 11+.

Lily - The Sutton Report finds that Top comprehensive schools more socially selective than grammar schools. Following this logic more academic selection will decrease social selectivity to some degree.

If your main objection to 11+ selection is the test - then Fair Banding is not the solution. To a child a test which you pass by being clever and hard working is clearly understood (although - yes it can be tough). A test which results in the bright hard working child failing to get into the best school, whilst her disruptive, less able class mate wins a place, must be suspect at best.

And there's some evidence that parents, realising the 'lower bands' get filled last for the better schools, are encouraging their dc's to perform badly.
That's got to be more damaging than the 11+.

If you really want to ensure a truly 'balanced' social intake - then ballots are the only option. But I really can't see that happening.

If every school operated banding then the schools should be fairly uniform,so would be fairer.

Reasons I dislike the 11+;
encourages wealthy parents to get their kids through by tutoring
is too much pressure on kids, especially if they are aware that if they don't 'perform' then it will be crap school or parents paying ££££££ for independent
discriminates against children who may bloom in Y7-9, for whatever reason - August birthdays, inadequate primary school etc. In a banded school the possibility exists to change band.
takes the 'clever' children out of the system, artificially lowering standards in other schools

The summer born point re: 11+ is wrong as most grammar schools ensure their exams take account of relative age (unlike sats - but that's a whole other thread).

But, yes I agree with the late developer point (though the old grammar schools often had entry at 13+ to allow for this).

As to the pressure - if there were many more grammar schools there would be less pressure.

Having said that - I would not argue that selection at 11 is in anyway a perfect system. Just that (ironically perhaps) it is less socially selective than our current system.

"If every school operated banding then the schools should be fairly uniform,so would be fairer"

I strongly disagree with this. There is a wide variation in the quality of state schools and so there are admissions winners and losers. Any system which allows parents to 'fix' outcomes (as fair banding does) will result in continued variation.

Many parents might be happy for their dc's to share their local good comprehensive school with poorer children. But, would they really be prepared for their bright dc's to be bused to a failing school in the hope that their attendance will lift standards and eventually improve the school? Would you?

lego... I was more keen on the strict application of standards, the enforcement of discipline and the academic rigour but hey, mock my suggestion with recourse to all the negative aspects all you want. You only demean your own position by so doing.

And, moving on....

We should re-introduce the Bell curve also - abolished by the Tories in 1987. It prevents grade inflation and would allow universities and employers properly to compare abilities/potential.

But many people loathe such ideas for fear that they expose their own little darlings as not being quite the geniuses that they had hitherto presumed.

Gove is just another right wing ideologue who thinks he is an expert on education because he went to school. He clearly has no talent for careful, methodical analysis or even proofreading, which is shocking for a journalist. That was a big, amateurish balls-up.

But where are the Lib Dems? I can see more resistance from Tory backbenchers than from the Lib Dems.

Gove was caught out over the expenses scandal and had to pay quite a lot of money back. He was rather shamefaced about it in his column in the Times back then.

So his honesty and judgment were in question way before this latest screw up. Bit much for a tea leaf to start bleating there's no money left.

One of the schools on the list of cancelled projects had not only finished building, David Cameron had actually launched his educational policies there!

It is true that the BSF programme has been ludicrously expensive but that's what happens when government tries to get into bed with the private sector - look at PFI hospitals. And any govt. IT project you care to mention. Far cheaper, easier, and simpler, for the government just to build its own ruddy schools using state funding. Still creates employment in the private sector, but doesn't enrich people who just shuffle money around at the taxpayers' expense.

An example from a different area. When my Dad was a manager at British Rail, he managed to open an entire main-line station for less than it now costs, under privatisation, to build a fucking foot-bridge. Because you have the contract and construction broken up between lots of different organisations, all of them taking a cut.

edam Should the State manufacture the pens which are used by nurses and doctors in hospitals? What about the staplers? The phones in reception? The computers and printers? The X-Ray and MRI machines? The waiting room chairs?

Presuming the answer to all the above is no, what do you believe is unique about building construction and infrastructure that makes it cheaper when done by the State than by private companies? And do you have any non-anecdotal evidence of this? All the evidence I have seen from the Public Accounts committee and elsewhere seems to suggest that the State is usually hopeless with these big projects. Of course there are singular examples of well-run projects which come in cheap and on time, but they are very much the exception.

I do agree that PFI was a disaster - that was because risk was not really passed on to the private sector. The private sector got all the reward but took none of the risk, the contracts were totally inflexible and overly generous, and the liabilities to the taxpayer weren't properly disclosed.

Well, if I want to buy a pen, then I probably want a reasonably priced one which is fairly reliable & longlasting.

I might veer to one end or the other of a spectrum between 'jolly pricey but lasts a lifetime' & 'ten for a quid, but four of them won't work', & I might have idiosyncracies which lead me to especially favour bendy pens or green ink, but essentially, I'm buying 'off the peg'.

If I'm buying a school, then I'd like to start with a wishlist & proceed to negotiating exactly what I can have, what I probably can't, how it's all going to fit together & how much it's going to cost. That's bespoke.

Your analogies don't really hold up, because the relationship between the organisation buying chairs, say, & its chair supplier, is fundamentally different from the relationship between the organisation commissioning a building & the organisation fulfilling the brief.

There is just a tad more to constructing a school than there is to choosing a biro.

Of course I was being facetious. There is a big difference between buying commodity and bespoke. Bespoke is always harder to buy than commodity. But is it more difficult to build a bespoke school than a bespoke state-of-the-art MRI machine? I would say no. The private sector manages to procure both commodity and bespoke items, from pens all the way to buildings, far cheaper than the public sector. Why?

And whilst of course every school is different, the basics requirements of classrooms, science labs, and libraries don't require brain surgeons, and certainly not dozens of overpaid and underworked planners and management consultants.

The ridiculous centralised overspecification, byzanthine planning procedures, and bizarre lack of local discretion in the BSF programmewere combined with outrageously expensive architects who thought they were Corbusier reincarnated. I shudder to think of the mountains of wasted taxpayer money thrown at this programme.

FGS, longfingernails, you are being deliberately obtuse. I clearly wasn't saying teachers should get their spades out.

Just that BSF is indeed overly complex and expensive and a huge money maker for finance companies. The state should just directly employ project managers and building firms rather than muck about with everyone taking their cut. FGS, it's perfectly clear and has been said by inquiry after inquiry that rail privatisation was a disaster and has killed people because maintenance and the oversight of maintenance and track operations were split between too many different organisations. See Potters Bar or the Virgin train that derailed in Cumbria. Simpler, safer and cheaper for the state to just employ sodding building firms.

But no doubt you are happy to sacrifice safety and efficiency to the dogma of privatisation. Look at PFI in the NHS - the private companies involved have made far too much money at taxpayers' expense, and then flogged the contracts on to make even more money, while we will all be paying for 30 years.

Btw, anyone who works in construction will tell you major building projects always over-run and always cost more than you'd anticipated. Partly because you don't know the condition of the site until you start digging.

Try speaking to an architect or a structural engineer before you get all hoity-toity about how easy building projects are.

If there are universal cost-overruns in the construction industry, then their clients aren't being very clever. Especially a client with so much repeat business as the government.

If a construction company can't build one site on budget or on time, then they shouldn't get any further government work and the deal should be structured in such a way that all their other government contracts can be cancelled. Simple as that. That in itself would stop companies putting in deliberately low bids.

Choice and informed judgements are great things.

I think everyone agrees that PFI was a disaster.

However most genuine privatisations (BT, British Gas, BA, etc) have been incredibly successful. The rail privatisations were totally botched, but even those run much better than under the BR days.

Personally, I would like to see the Department for Education shut down. Anyone wonder why the release of the Gove lists was botched?

It would save money and if the education budget was distributed direct to parents as a voucher then more money would end up with schools and say 50% of the deparmental overhead of the DforE saved could be used to pay down Govt debt - that would be a bargain.