Interesting article and associated talking point on the Beeb website today – one very close to my heart.
I posted this:
The education system is utterly flawed – we concentrate resources on remedial education for the lowest performers, and provide little or no opportunity for the best and brightest – in the name of being ‘fair’.
our utterly lacklustre nation is the result – we champion mediocrity, celebrate idiocy and regard intelligence as something to be mocked.
Is it any wonder that so many of our graduates emigrate at the first chance?”
If the usual Beeb policy is anything to go by, it won’t be posted on the BBC, but that’s the beauty of your own blog – editorial control!
David Cameron has signalled his intent to have more academy schools, but to end selection. I’m torn. The Academy Schools have been disastrous, essentially handing over complete control of schools to religious fundamentalists like the Vardy crowd, at the same time, they spend dramatically more money per child than regular schools – no bad thing.
It’s an interesting point – and highlights wonderfully the odd nature of Secular/Atheist politics. When the Academy programme kicked off in anger, there was a variety of responses to it – including this one. The Vardy god botherers have had a much more free run of things, largely because the opposition to them is so fragmented.
I’m part of the problem on this one – I couldn’t really bring myself to support this campaign fully, nor in fact any of the others which appeared around the same time. Ultimately, I have nothing against Academy schools – I agree with selection, I agree with removing schools from local council control (although I would rather go the other way and have national control of schools) and I certainly agree with spending a bit more on education per head.
My own experience of education was disastrous – I experienced the very worst of labour controlled education: Strikes, the PC restriction on competition, poor materials, poor classrooms and demotivated staff.
It’s the sort of thing that leaves an impression.