Changes to the admission code to allow popular schools to expand and free schools to prioritise poorer pupils will not improve social mobility, school leaders say.Well, not if they have anything to do with it, I'm sure. And we should listen to them, as they are experts in
General secretary Brian Lightman said: "When the last admissions code was published, ASCL said it was too long, too detailed and too complex. Therefore we welcome the intention to shorten and simplify it..."Really? Strange sort of 'welcome'.
However, the changes must be fair and give all pupils an equal chance to receive a good education. We fear the proposed changes will have the opposite effect."And just why is that?
"It will create sink schools in many areas of deprivation and hit hardest those children whose parents do not or cannot take an interest in their education," he commented.And just how can you make them take an interest, Brian? Do you have any answers?
"Those schools left with the most challenging pupils, who need the most intensive support, will suffer a slow spiral of decline and their pupils will lose out on life chances. The effect will be another generation of haves and have-nots.Aren't choices part of parenting, then? Don't parents have to make them all the time?
"Allowing free schools to prioritise students on free school meals is an arbitrary measure and unlikely to have an impact on the majority of low income families, who must actively make the choice to remove their child from the local school," Lightman continued.
And I'm seeing lots of complaints, but absolutely no suggestions for any...
Ah:
H/T Laurence via email.
"Sadly these tend to be the parents who are least likely to engage with their child's education. In most cases, a pupil premium of £430 will hardly be enough of an incentive or a supplement for schools to provide the additional support that these pupils so often need."So, what you really mean, Brian, is: 'Give us more money! Or we won't do our job properly!'.
H/T Laurence via email.
Whatever happened to schools just teaching the three Rs with a bit of history, geography, biology and science thrown in....testing knowledge and grading it then letting youngsters loose into the job market to take their own chances in life ?
ReplyDelete...
Schools have forgotten they are only supposed to educate our children. It is for parents to raise them...social workers to deal with any social problems...and police to deal with enforcing the law all round.
...
The common denominator here is money. The more you can claim a child to be a victim and impress the necessity of your involvement in it's life...for the greater good, of course...the more cash there is to be grubbed from the public purse.
Seems to be today's theme AP - I feel like I've woken up in 1984. This is just more on the weird theme of unemployment down those claiming jobseekers up, more jobs than soft Mick being created but we'll need to spend £12 billion more on benefits. Maybe our schools are doing Double speak and double entry book-keeping?
ReplyDeleteIt is quite impossible to deal with teaching unions who simply see education as a producer interest and damn the mandatory consumer (ie the kids). Given that, reform should be radical, swift and final, viz:
ReplyDelete1. Abolish all LEA's tomorrow morning, thus saving a fortune on rad tape.
2. Issue all parents with education vouchers to be spent where they want
3. Make all schools private self-governing entities, again tomorrow morning.
4. Remove school planning appliactions from Council competence since they will always torpedo expansion plans by denying planning consent.
They can teach what they want, for as long as they want. The good ones will survive, the bad ones will fail
This is simply the downstream consequence of incentivising fuckwits to breed for benefits - and then not incentivising them to raise them..
ReplyDeleteThis gives the Lefties a hard-on as it indulges their fantasy - the state in the role of parent.
However the rest of us in the real world deal with the outcome - there's just lots of useless feral scum who will be economic and social deadweight for their entire lives...
Which of course the lefties will say proves that we're heartless bastards...
"Whatever happened to schools just teaching the three Rs with a bit of history, geography, biology and science thrown in...."
ReplyDeleteThey realised they weren't particularly good at it, and have been searching for something else ever since?
"Maybe our schools are doing Double speak and double entry book-keeping?"
:D
"It is quite impossible to deal with teaching unions who simply see education as a producer interest and damn the mandatory consumer (ie the kids)."
I can foresee a lot of upheaval ahead, and I'm afraid I don't think The Dave is going to be as forthright as Margaret Thatcher in confronting the unions...
"...it indulges their fantasy - the state in the role of parent."
Which, amazingly enough, it often performs far worse than the feckless.
SAOT: remarkably, that's pretty much the prescription I recommended back in 1994 or so, when online fora first started to become available. It's heartening to see how much progress has been made in this arena. So heartening, in fact, that my pledge in 1997 to quit the UK and never come back makes me look like goddamn Nostradamus.
ReplyDelete(weirdly, the WV turns up an actual word, which it must do from time to time, but here it was excesses, which is highly improbable.)
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ReplyDeleteXX The effect will be another generation of haves and have-nots.XX
ReplyDeleteGOOD! We need SOMEONE who does not think it "beneath them" to sweep the fucking streets.