A children's centre set up by Labour to provide care for local youngsters has been forced to close... because the families using it were judged too middle-class.Nice going, Labour!
Summer's coming, you know. Want to send some goons out to the beaches, maybe kick over the sandcastles of any under-fives whose parents look a little too affluent as well?
Yes, under-fives. This government knows how to pick its targets...
Paint Pots Arts Club was established in 2000 under the Government’s flagship £7billion Sure Start scheme, with the aim of teaching under-fives to paint, draw and sing.Note that: '...caters for 500 children of all backgrounds...' Pretty unequivocal, no?
It is one of the busiest of Britain’s 3,500 Sure Start centres and caters for 500 children of all backgrounds who live within a two-mile radius.
However, it seems someone didn't get that message:
The area covered by Paint Pots is one of the most diverse in the country, including deprived council estates and houses worth £1million.So, she duly leafleted nearby estates held meetings with the local Turkish and Kurdish communities. They didn't bite.
Paint Pots director Ella Ritches said the Learning Trust, which runs 19 childcare centres on behalf of the Government, ordered her to target more deprived families in 2008.
And:
...in January this year, Mrs Ritches was called to a meeting with officials from the Ann Tayler Children’s Centre, a larger Sure Start programme which the Learning Trust used to fund Paint Pots.Ahh, now if only the guardians of educational achievement put that much ingenuity and hard work into, say, teaching the kiddiewinks to read, write and add up....
She discovered that the Learning Trust had scanned the postcodes of all parents using the centre and decided the home addresses indicated users were not sufficiently ‘vulnerable’.
Ahh, now if only the guardians of educational achievement put that much ingenuity and hard work into, say, teaching the kiddiewinks to read, write and add up....
ReplyDeleteAre you stark raving mad Julia? Are you an anarchist per chance? Subversive thinking there I think.
John dim but Nice.
At the risk of stating the bleedin' obvious. Of course anything like that will have a high uptake from the better educated and therefore better paid etc etc.
ReplyDeleteThis is the same government who introduced university tuition fees and then demanded the universities took more kids from poor backgrounds.
You know who the real casualties of decades of socialism are? The working class. The genuinely working, decent types who want to better themselves and have a better life for their children. They have been utterly stuffed because they were not suitable pets for the socialists. The underclass are much more fitting for the role.
There came three wise men from the east, and so it came to pass, the shepherds found the wise men a bit middle class.
ReplyDelete(with no apologies to John Hegley ;-D )
Forty years ago they closed down my very well attended Boys Club in north London. Shortly afterwards it re-opened as the Black Community Centre, did we feel hard done by? Yes, actually.
ReplyDelete'Poor','disadvantaged','vulnerable' - translation follows:
ReplyDelete'can't be arsed:jus gis de money.'
"Subversive thinking there I think."
ReplyDeleteIt seems they put most of their efforts into excuse-finding and blaming others...
"You know who the real casualties of decades of socialism are? The working class."
Indeed. I notice the ones most upset at grammar schools are the ones able to home-educate or send their children to private schools.
"with no apologies to John Hegley"
Lol!