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

How do you know most applicants are teachers? All the teachers/educationalists I know wouldn't touch free schools with a barge pole. Where would any teacher find the time to run a free school?

"But Fiona Millar is right that instead of cancelling the school building plans in one stroke they could have found ways of slimming costs down. Why couldn't they have taken longer to review all projects carefully instead of rushing an announcement and getting the list so badly wrong?"

Actually, agree with you. But why confuse that sensible message with half truths about Academies and Free Schools? And why the gratuitous references to yummy mummies?

West London yummy mummies and daddies . This to me is the epitome of what I dislike about the free school concept.

MissM - but you do know that Toby Young's (the yummy daddy?) Free School is not the reason for the BSF projects being halted don't you?

You might not like West London Free School idea - personally I don't know why he doesn't just privately educate his children. But he seems to believe in state eduction and wants to prove that it can be as academically strong and inspiring as the best independant education.

Also from BBC Online

"720 groups have expressed an interest in starting schools - half of them teachers."

Well of course! I was just picking up on the yummy mummy comment. I think the same as you about Toby Young, and also wonder why he is doing this as he himself has said that there is a perfectly good state school in Acton already. But I digress.

Am amazed that any teacher would want to start their own school. Where on earth would they find the time?!

MissM - Reading between the lines - I think the Action school is a bit 'child centred' learning for his tastes.

He went to a state comprehensive in the 1970's and then he transfered to a good grammar school and onward to Oxbridge. So it's easy to see what's influencing him.

As an aside - the Swedish Free schools opening in the UK are uber 'child centred' learning. So it looks like diversity all around. But I don't see it as the black and white two tier world painted by Fiona Millar.

Btw - many private schools are set up by teachers. I assumed the teachers on the Free School list feel they know more about education than the state does.

But private schools are set up by people in order to earn money. And they're not pretending otherwise - parents pay for their children to go to them. The free school concept implies that if you're an individual (as opposed to a company, charity etc) you do it out of the goodness of your heart but with a wedge of money from the government for all the obvious costs. I'm confused as to why people with other jobs would start a free school when there wasn't anything obvious in it financially - unless they can either afford not to work or - erm, can't think of another reason!

I also think that the endless comparisons with Sweden are clouding the issues. In Sweden the schools are run for profit (or at least some of them - I'm a bit hazy on the specifics). Plus children start school at a different age and there are different attitudes etc to education, the curriculum, faith etc. etc. So to compare a free school system here with an established one there is completely missing the point and misleading to my mind.

Looking at Toby Young's plans I do wonder why he doesn't just send his kids to private school. He is ostensibly setting up a grammar/private school model with all that emphasis on Latin! And who does he intend to attract? Call me cynical, but in my mind the answer is 'people like him'. So in other words, not the multicultural, diverse community of the rest of Acton.

MissM The admissions policies are not allowed to discriminate, and the pupil premium will encourage free schools to attract pupils from poorer backgrounds.

Not to mention the main benefit - existing schools will have to compete with a new free school, bounding with energy and enthusiasm, with the head firmly in control. That alone will force all the existing schools to improve, or lose pupils and funding. There will be much less room for those bad teachers who are more interested in coasting than in good teaching. And the power of the teaching unions, the single biggest roadblock to better education, will be much diminished.

What isn't to like?

"But private schools are set up by people in order to earn money. And they're not pretending otherwise.."

Most private schools are 'not for profit' organisations set up to educate children. I have a teacher friend who set up a private school as she was frustrated with what the state schools were offering her own children. Many years later - her school is still providing it's pupils with an excellent, nurturing and fun education. She has never been motivated by money and keeps fees as low as possible, so as to widen access to the school.

I think if the Free School option had been available at the time - she might have taken it.

"And who does he intend to attract?"

Probably all the 'multi-cultural' West London kids who undertake the one hour commute each day to attend the 'super-selective' grammars in my corner of London.

''What's not to like?'' Well in my opinion lots and lots of things, but I'm not going to get started on them!

The admissions policies to free schools may not be allowed to discriminate, but let's be honest - the kind of school Toby Young is intending to set up is going to be more attractive to the middle classes in his area. Why? Because that's who will know about it, that's who'll like the idea of learning Latin, that's who will hear about it via the chattering class grapevine.

Jack - I don't doubt your friend's motives and obviously there are people out there who aren't just out to make big bucks. But what would be the incentive for someone with a day job to run a free school?

He might also attract people like Fiona Millar - whose old school Camden School For Girls is very proud of it's extensive Classics Curriculum

he's an arse
depriving existing schools of improvements to poor buildings whilst throwing money at pushy parents to set up new schools which will inevitably mean even less funding for the rest
makes me want to spit

I quite like him.

I agree with throwing money though, I mean, look how high the standards have been raised by the Labour government throwing money at education.

I HE because I can't afford a private, classical education. This is the best option for us. I set the curriculum because the NC is shit!

If there was an affordable free school near me, which offered a challenging curriculum, I would definitely consider it.

Gove, over Balls anyday!

MissM

Well, if other local schools start losing their pupils to the free schools because of the chattering class grapevine, then they will have to do something about it.

If there was such a demand for teaching Latin amongst parents, then they would have to start providing for that demand instead of brushing it off. If Latin is desired by middle-class parents, why shouldn't middle-cass parents get Latin in the state system? Especially as doing so helps non-middle class kids in the same school and all the surrounding schools, because competition drives up standards.

Anyway, most of the free schools are going to be set up and run by teachers, educational charities, and school federations - not by parents - middle-class or otherwise.

It won't just be failing state schools that get a kick up the backside from Free Schools. Independent schools will have to work harder for their fees too if a good Free School sets up down the road.

I think a lot of parents would be very interested in not having to pay fees.

BeenBeta To some extent, yes - I certainly think that private school fees will come down if good free schools are set up locally.

On the other hand, parents of privately educated pupils already exercise considerable choice. Free schools give poorer parents some access to similar choice.

Somewhere over the last 30 odd years it seems we've forgotton that 'comprehensive schools' are there to educate all children and that includes the most academic.

If children need to study Latin or all 3 sciences or further maths or whatever, in order to achieve their potential, then shouldn't the school provide it? Or are we happy fof many parents to see the private sector as the place for academic dc's?

No of course not, but Michael Gove has a point, that the NC has been dumbed down and is so prescriptive that the joy of learning is removed. That, coupled with the fact that almost everything is modular and 'achievable', that the qualifications children leave with are worthless.

We had to learn everything for the full 2 years and retain it for the exams at the end. The same for A levels.

My DN is expected to pass everything at A or A* level GCSE and his awareness of the world and general level of knowledge is disgraceful!
Multiple choices instead of writing answers...load of crap!
Not bothering with spelling, grammar etc is disgraceful.

The schools system is failing and something radical does need to be done.

We need to stop trying to make all kids the same and acknowledge that some will be very good academically and should be challenged and encouraged thus. Others have different skills, which should be nurtured in a different way.

Snorky - I agree. Have you read John Abbott's book Over schooled and Under educated. I've just started it - but it looks very interesting. He seems to be arguing that the current approach to education is totally wrong.

Oops - sorry sorky

I haven't no, I opted out of the state school system and decided to Home educate. Will have a look at it thanks.

John Taylor Gatto wrote a very interesting book a long time ago called Dumbing Down, which was a damning indictment of the American school system. John Holt also influenced our decision to home ed. There are other much more recent texts, but these had a profound effect on us.

I'd love to see the NC scrapped altogether, for OFSTED to merely have a guiding role in teachers competencies, but for league tables and SATS abolished altogether.
I'd love to see teachers be able to teach as I'm sure they would love to teach. Inspiring kids to learn for the joy of learning, not because someone told them they had too, or teaching something because the government felt it would be useful.

I want to see schools become much more community based. When we were at Juniors for example, people popped in all the time to give us talks or to teach a specific class, pottery for example.
Now, it's all red tape, insurance and CRB's. You can't even go in and assist with reading to free up some of the teachers time without going into the far end of a fart-type paperwork....it's crazy.

Latin is taught in some state schools. It certainly was in a Lambeth comprehensive I worked in, and my DS2 does it at primary school.

WRT funding, I am doing some academic research on this very topic now, but I was to see that the parts of Boston in the US with the most charter schools appear to spend double the amount of public money on education that the ones with the fewest do. Unless I have misunderstood the data, that's a scary scenario indeed.

Sorky - you'll enjoy Abbott's book. Although, I suspect like me, you'll find his decription of Finnish, community based schools 'bitter sweet'. How can they get it so right when we, so often, get it so wrong?

Boffinmum- I found this research on the Kipp program. Kipp Charter Schools. I imagine there is a great variation in the US in Charter schools - but these ones look encouraging.

Boffinmum - sorry, I've just realised that the research is nolonger free - the linked article only gives a summary (and no funding info).

Latin was taught at the bog-standard comprehensive I went to (a hundred years ago). I did it for a year but then opted for German where I learned far more about grammatical structures than I did from the Cambridge Latin Course where we had to act out playlets set in Roman villas. The cases were numbered 1-7 rather than called 'nominative, accusative, vocative', etc. German was more satisfyingly technical!

So sod Latin, there's been a crisis of language teaching generally in schools since they took it out of the national curriculum. Only 30% of children on average take any language at GCSE level. Now there aren't enough graduate language teachers to cover French well enough, let alone Latin, Chinese or whatever other specialism.