Monday 12 October 2009

Labour's Default Defence: Lie, Lie, Lie...

There's uproar in schools at the DCFS Census that teachers are asked to complete:
Ministers were last night accused of mounting a ‘Big Brother’ operation by asking schools to supply details of the cars driven by teachers.

The bizarre request for the make, model and registration number of vehicles is among a series of sensitive personal questions included in a new Government ‘census’ of school workers, which has been greeted with fury by teachers’ leaders.

Pilot trials of the census, ahead of the scheme’s roll-out next year by Education Secretary Ed Balls, have also included requests for staff passports, their mobile phone numbers and details of their ‘ethnicity’, ‘mother tongue’ and ‘disabilities’.
Unsurprisingly, this has been challenged by, among others, Mike Kent, the head teacher of Comber Grove Primary in Camberwell.

And the DCFS response? 'Please sir, some big boy did it and ran away!'
Last night, the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) denied asking for car registration details and claimed that the questions must have been included by the school itself.
Sadly, that didn't wash with the profession used to 'The dog ate my homework' and 'Mum said I couldn't do PE because I've got a dicky heart', so enquiries were made.

And guess what?
But a spokesman for the local authority, Southwark Council, confirmed that neither the council nor the school had added in the questions and said the form had arrived directly from Ed Balls’s department.

‘Southwark Council does not ask for extra information over what is required by the Government in the School Workforce Survey and has not asked teachers to submit car colours or registrations,’ the spokesman said.
Which prompted this 'clarification':
The DCSF then issued a second statement, saying: ‘What might have happened is that the software provider of the survey has added these questions in for other schools at their request – many schools want to collect this data for their own purposes – and they’ve left them in accidentally.’
Well,yes. It might.

And the more likely explanation is that you snivelling weasels in the DCFS thought no-one would mind giving this information, or that teachers could ve bullied into it, forgetting that this government is now utterly without credibility, and thrashing around like a wounded tapir in a stream full of piranhas.

Everyone's queueing up to take a piece of you.

It's going to be a long six months, Gordon. Death by a thousand cuts for you...

11 comments:

woman on a raft said...

The DCFS had every reason to believe the teachers would comply for the simple reason that every single year in every single state school they issue a pupil information request to check the data held on contact point, and teachers do as they are told.

The questionairre asks:

What is your ethincity
What is your home language
What is your religion

So Mike Kent, the head teacher of Comber Grove Primary in Camberwell, is a big, fat, smelly hypocrite for complaining when doesn't like questionnaires being sent to him, but cheerfully handing out the same twaddle to the parents and - I will bet you - failing to explain that there is no compulsion to answer impertinent and irrelevant questions.

Anonymous said...

Is there enough space in the "answer" fields for "Fuck off and mind your own business"?

w.v. = parysts. Quite.

Dick Puddlecote said...

"Everyone's queueing up to take a piece of you"

So very true. And after today, approximately 50,000 convenience stores and newsagents will be added to the list unless there is an unlikely backbench rebellion or government climbdown.

Glorious.

Anonymous said...

It's "DCSF" (Department for Children, Schools and Families). It used to be called the Department for Education, but obviously education has little place in their objectives any more.

Jax said...

@AdamCollyer Some ppl prefer not to let schools come between families and children...

Anonymous said...

Instead of lining up to take a piece of Balls, everyone should simply take their own pieces and refuse to give them to this corrupt bunch of pathological liars.

The fact is that these people have no real power without your willing consent. You keep paying them to enslave you and when they enslave you you complain. Stop cooperating by obeying their rules and paying for their enforcement.

Until everyone wakes up and takes their money back PERMANENTLY and stops obeying their rules these people will continue to destroy you until you are living in the ultimate nightmare dystopia.

Unknown said...

I've got no time for "teachers". Bloody socialists the lot of them.

TDK said...

The thing about boiling live frogs is that you have to do it slowly. Heat the water too fast and the frogs jump out the saucepan.

What we see he is the logical extension of green fuckwittery. We already know that great store is set by not driving or, if you must, driving the right car (electric is the best). There has even been moves to ban the wrong colours.

Quite obviously, this questionnaire was meant to go out after Copenhagen. By then there would have been a media blitz involving lots more hand wringing about cars and by then the teachers union would have been onside.

Turn the gas down a notch and then proceed as before.

JuliaM said...

"The DCFS had every reason to believe the teachers would comply for the simple reason that every single year in every single state school they issue a pupil information request to check the data held on contact point, and teachers do as they are told."

Ah. But as you point out, it's different when it's them.

No reasons needed. It just is...

"Is there enough space in the "answer" fields for "Fuck off and mind your own business"?"

Meh. Just write outside the lines. What are they gonna do?

"...unless there is an unlikely backbench rebellion or government climbdown."

Let's hope they blunder into this trap yet again...

JuliaM said...

"Quite obviously, this questionnaire was meant to go out after Copenhagen. By then there would have been a media blitz involving lots more hand wringing about cars and by then the teachers union would have been onside."

I think there's a new mood of 'Up with this, I will not put!' in the air.

TDK said...

I think there's a new mood of 'Up with this, I will not put!' in the air.

I hope you're right but I fear there's a lot of people who feel that all our problems can be solved if only we sacrifice just a little more freedom.

Teachers, particularly, are overwhelming in the "we need more government" corner.