Council leaders described the collision between two new government education policies – the introduction of free school meals up to the age of seven, and pupil premium payments to help schools teach pupils from poor backgrounds – as wasteful and inefficient.Something local councils should find very familiar, then?
But this is, of course, another fallout from the Clegg ‘bright idea’ to feed all the kiddiewinks regardless of circumstance:
Pupil premiums are awarded partly on the basis of the number of pupils receiving free school meals, but since the government introduced free meals for all infant schoolchildren in September, authorities have been left struggling to convince parents to apply for them in order to qualify for the funding.Because why would they? It’s not worth it to them; their kids are getting fed for ‘free’, without them having to lift a finger, aren’t they?
Some schools have resorted to offering prizes to eligible parents to convince them to continue to sign up for free school meals.Fabulous! Schools are actually resorting to bribing the feckless benefit classes in order to score more government funding! It’s like a merry-go-round of waste & bureaucracy!
One officer at Surrey council said: “It was hard enough to persuade parents to sign up in the first place. But this is a bloody car crash.”Ahahahahahaha! If I wasn’t paying for this (indirectly) I’d laugh even harder!
A Liberal Democrat source close to the schools minister David Laws said: “The pupil premium and infant free school meals are two of the policies Liberal Democrats are most proud of – they would simply not have happened without us in government. As such, there is absolutely no question of us standing back and letting schools lose out.
“Schools have consistently proved the naysayers wrong on this policy, and over the last year have had a huge amount of information and guidance on how pilot areas successfully managed the change. That said, if this does prove to be a problem, we will take further action to fix it.”What part of ‘this is a problem’ in that article did you not understand, Lib Dem source?
No problem caused by state meddling is so big or so complicated that more state meddling can't make it worse.
ReplyDeleteXX That said, if this does prove to be a problem, we will take further action to fix it.”XX
ReplyDeleteSuch as, making it compulsory?
Suffer the children to come unto Clegg.
ReplyDeleteAnd I mean "suffer" in the more modern sense. This is a total 4pi rad fuckeroony. I saw this coming and I've got no kids but it was obvious.
What was also obvious to me was the Clegg-plan was predicated on assuming parents can't be trusted to feed their own children which is sinister.
All your children are belong to Clegg! It is state baby-farming.
I wonder what the Clegg brats eat?
"But daddy, this caviare wasn't Beluga! Cameron minor had Maine lobster!"
As others have said elsewhere this was real back-of-a-fag-packet stuff.
ReplyDeleteIt won Clegg some good headlines the day after it was announced, and that's it.
On top of the costs of the meals, and the loss of pupil premium to schools, there was also the costs of additional equipment.
And work to extend kitchens (an issue of time as well as cost).
And finding somewhere for the extra kids to eat.
And their older siblings who, though not eligible, will now want school dinners too.
All with (in the end) about a term's notice to the schools of where the money's coming from.
In other words a total f*ck-up.
Whatever happened to leaving headteachers to run their own schools?
This is one of the few LD ideas that I agree with. Adding the cost of a simple meal to the cost of education in general is insignificant. It saves admin costs and adds economy of scale. Ours are too old to benefit, so I have no personal interest, but we always paid for them to have a proper cooked meal at lunchtime. The fact that it screws up the pupil premium just exposes that as a shitty way of allocating funding.
ReplyDeleteJulia, how could you use the words "LibDem" and "understand" in the same sentence?
ReplyDeleteI believe it was Ronald Reagan who said that the ten most frightening words in the English language are:-
ReplyDelete"I'm from the government and I'm here to help you".
"...that more state meddling can't make it worse."
ReplyDeleteTru dat!
"Such as, making it compulsory?"
I wouldn't be at all surprised.
But maybe abolishing the stupid measurement you've just made obsolete would be a start?
" This is a total 4pi rad fuckeroony. I saw this coming and I've got no kids but it was obvious."
Ditto! So how come our highly-paid, deserving of their high salaries and index-linked pensions civil servants didn't?
"As others have said elsewhere this was real back-of-a-fag-packet stuff."
ReplyDeleteI don't think they even bothered with the fag packet!
"This is one of the few LD ideas that I agree with. Adding the cost of a simple meal to the cost of education in general is insignificant."
It's not. See Vir Cantium's list.
And that's before we get into the whole concept of the government taking over the job of feeding our offspring.
"I believe it was Ronald Reagan who said that the ten most frightening words in the English language are:-
"I'm from the government and I'm here to help you"."
He was a wise man!