Prof Becky Francis ands education

[ChristinaXYZ]

Labour are commissioning a curriculum review from Prof Becky Francis. Far from ending any culture way this is a move determined to take it right into every classroom.

In her own words via the Telegraph:

"Professor Francis – who has accumulated a CBE – has co-produced a number of compelling texts on race, gender and class. Her classic book Understanding Minority Ethnic Achievement in Schools, coauthored with Louise Archer, quotes the work of Stuart Hall, Michel Foucault and Judith Butler, not household names but well known within lunatic asylums. “In line with the discursive, social constructionist approach to ‘race’ and ethnicity,” they write, “we… subscribe to a theorisation of sex, gender and sexuality as non-essential, fluid, contested, processual and produced through discourse.”

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/07/22/labour-is-about-to-wreck-your-childs-education/

Hmmm.... She has run the EEF for several years: I have huge respect for them and their evidence-based approach to reducing the achievement gap between those in disadvantaged circumstances and the rest.

So ... do we think this Telegraph rant is justified? Book quoted seems to be 2006 so is she still in thrall to Judith Butler et al? Or has she moved on ... and been doing some sensible things?

Personally I am very excited by Labours stated aims:

• reducing gap between most disadvantaged and others, both academically on mainstream subjects, and on the broader range by increasing sports, art, music and drama in schools
• being evidence-led re exclusions/enabling the most disadvantaged to engage with eduction
• making education more relevant eg introducing concepts of budgetting and ranking football teams in primary school maths

If they manage these without being influenced by wokery, I will be thrilled.

What do others know???

Well no one will be teaching a child of mine that bollocks. Any more than they will be instructing them that the bread actually turns into the body of Christ and they risk going to the fiery eternities of hell.

Both would be indoctrination of a highly contested religion, led by that religion with the aim of 'catching them young' to enforce conversion.

And fuck that. It's 2024, not the bloody 16th century.

Nor will I be happily chowing down on the shit sandwich of 'here are the nice benefits of our policy for your kid which comes at the price of you swallowing religious indoctrination, mania and alternative reality'.

The law is clear on political impartiality in schools. This appointment should be thought through again.

but is she still so "woke"???

What evidence do we have of recent thinking and implementation rather than something that's almost 20 years ago??

Is this article anywhere else? I can't access the telegraph link

Have to say the article is a hit job. The quotes are from Butler et al not Prof Francis.
Here's a more measured piece from the Telegraph.(not by Tim Stanley)

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/other/feminist-professor-to-lead-shake-up-of-national-curriculum/ar-BB1qfuuv?ocid=BingNewsVerp

I'm prepared to wait and see.