This government is taking a sledge hammer to state education. Hands up who's disgusted...

[Shamster]

Just wondering how people feel about what the new government are going to do to our state school system. I'm a teacher and the Special Needs Coordinator and every teacher I've talked to is in dismay at what the government are rushing through including:
scrapping the brilliant new curricuum that has already been printed and circulated to every school in the UK (serious amount of money wasted). Free schools can be set up in shops and houses taking money away from local schools and possibly being funded also by businesses too. Local LEA schools can become academies if the Governers fancy without consulting parents or teachers. These free schools and academies will not be able to access the SEN services that the LEA provide to schools without paying for them. This will lead to two waiting lists to see Ed Psychs etc where one client is a paying client and one isn't. Which do you think will be seen first? Any thoughts?

the trouble is with the education threads that provision is already so varied between good schools/bad schools, parts of the country with lots of choice/places with no choice at all, etc etc, that your take on it is going to differ widely just according to that. The people I know IRL who are most worried do seem to be the ones who happen to live in the catchment of great schools and I do see why they are worried! The govt are welcome to take a sledgehammer to our local provision at secondary level, however.

Builde I'm old enough to have left school in the 70s and children could not leave until they were 16.
Obviously I can't comment on how far Cornwall was behind in building schools but certainly in this area many secondary "modern" and "technical" schools were built in the 50s.

I'd defy anyone to come up with an education system that could not be manipulated and turned to the advantage of the children whose parents were involved and pushy/determined about their child's education. In such a system children with parents who don't really care and send them to the nearest school and don't bother are going to be disadvantaged.

This is why the education of the mother is such an important determining factor for a child's sucess in later life...if your parents invest time in their child's future the child is nearly always going to get better outcomes.

DH was very bright, but his parents just wnated him to leave shcool and earn money at 16. So he did.
If he had had my parents he would have done A levels and gone to university.

The government wants to save money first of all, and says it wants to give a better education but I think they are relying on a group of motivated parents and teachers to set up the schools and do the LEA's work for free.

Of course the knowledge children gain has to be used as part of 'real thinking' and should not just involve a list of facts. I don't think anyone would dispute that. But 'knowledge' is dropping out of education and I don't think it should.

Does "scrapping" the new curriculum mean that teachers must keep old (not "creative") curriculum, or does it actually mean scrapping any centrally set curriculum requirements?

I cannot see that many Freeschools will be set up; too much time and effort involved from volunteers. Locally they may distort things badly, but I don't see that they'll have a big overall impact.

ps: I know a bit about a "Charter" as in "Free" school in California that is run very badly!!

mloo it means we will continue to follow the current National Curriculum (either creative or otherwise is up to the school to decide) aslong as we fulfil the statutory bits.

Does anybody really think there will be many free schools. From the little I have heard, it will take enormous amounts of time and effort from volunteers and I know from experience of a volunteer playgroup that most people may complain about lack of provision but will not actually put the hours in to provide it.

If there was an area where school provision was absolutely dire with really crap schools then maybe a free school would work as parents, other interested parties may see enough of a need to committ to it. But in that scenario it cant be worse than the provision already provided!!!

www.educationengland.org.uk/history/timeline.html

School leaving age raised to 16 in 1973.

Quite an interesting time-line....GCSEs first proposed about 20 years before finally implemented in the late 1980s.

Yes mloo, it means exactly that. keep the old, outdated and quite frankly overly prescriptive and dull curriculum. The new one really was exciting and very much a scaled back one. It specified the skills that needed to be learned around six broad curriculum areas, much like the Foundation Stage one does now. It linked up perfectly. It allowed children and teachers to design an excting curriculum that could be taylored to take advantage of children's interests.
The present curriculum has no link up whatso ever with the Reception one.

We find the present curriculum open to interpretation.

Didn't Gove say a while back that "most people" wanted a 50s-type education- rows of desks and reciting kings and queens?

Not me ta very much. I want a return to 70s education. It did me no harm

...Gove scares the life out of me. I read something really alarming in the Guardian not long ago re his wanting a revision in how history is currently taught- ie to emphasise the benefits of Empire rather than its negative legacy

Shittington! I took two of my dcs out of school recently- something we saw as a temporary measure

...I get the feeling now with this lot that my dcs will be out of the school system for a bit longer than we initially anticipated!