STUDENTS ARE REVOLTING

Dear oh deary me. Stoodents are smashing up Millbank in protest at the education fees.

I have said time and time again that this is not the right way to advance higher education. There are too many students doing too many ridiculous courses. There is never a good reason why 50% of 18 year olds should be going to University except to massage the job figures.

WE need a return to Uni, poly, higher ed colleges and apprenticeships if we are to finally succeed in making a decent future for all.

By chucking people into hairdressing degrees for three years, we are depriving them and the universities.

That is what students should be protesting about, not the fees.

ONE OF US

According to the Bish, Miss Snuffy, aka Katharine Birbalsingh who spoke so passionately about how the State education system has failed children at the Tory conference, has been sent to work from home - suspension by any other term.

Now it should be pointed out that there could have been breaches of child confidentiality but I do suspect that it will be the hook to hang her on because she dared to speak out.

Once again we see how the orthodoxy outweighs any such high minded ideals like, erm, free speech.

Time and time again I have argued that free speech is not a pic n mix, either everyone has it or no one has it.

The left-wing educational establishment freely allows its Marxists to criticise, threaten and cajole us all but as soon as one stands up and says the Emperor has no clothes, the principle of free speech goes out of the window.

Miss Snuffy was no longer "one of us" and had to be punished.

Once more the educational orthodoxy fails children. Instead of looking at the issues behind the critique and looking inside itself to see how there are a bunch of feckless, ruthless kids who are barely able to read and write, it punishes those that fail to tow the line.

It is the educational establishment that should be sent home, not a teacher who's passion for teaching has led her to 'out' herself at the Tory conference in the belief that children should come first.

UPDATE: Dizzy has pointed out that the head teacher at Snuffy's school allowed Blair to use her school to launch his 2001 election campaign!

And to quote Iain Dale:

Quentin Letts's new book "Letts Rip!" includes an account of the day Bishop allowed her south London school to be used by Tony Blair for the launch of the 2001 general eleciton campaign. It notes that "Mrs Bishop is a fanatical Blairite who considers him the most wonderful Prime Minister in the world".
The piece describes how Blair used Bishop's school remorselessly for political ends. For Birbalsingh now to be accused of political agitation is unbelievably hypocritical.

Indeed!

EDUCASHUN

Now THIS is how to deal with parents



HT: Got

TEACHERS

Expect the teachers' unions to go ape this morning after the Tories launch their manifesto.

I know it is traditionally left-wing but the attitudes of some teachers beggar belief. They are meant to be there to educate children, not indoctrinate children to fit with their own world-view.

Also, why, when standards have fallen, has no-one looked at the actual teachers involved?

It cannot just be the system at fault. My kid goes to an excellent school and although extremely bright, she was behind on her reading. A combination of being the youngest in her class and a fear of failure (she's a perfectionist, must get it from her grandparents!) contributed to this.

So her school gave her extra tuition and now you can't move in our place without falling over a pile of books that she carts around the flat!

So if one set of teachers can do this, surely it is reasonable to assume that in bad cases, there are teachers that are failing in their primary duty - isn't it?

On a lighter note - how kids in America were wished a happy holiday by their Maths teacher

HT: Geekchic

LOAD OF...

Balls, that odious creep was on the Vine programme today.

Apparently there are funding cuts but funding will increase over the next three years (somehow)

It is not his fault, anything, nothing is his fault, it's someone else's.

Well done the GCSE examiner for hammering Balls for the fall in standards in English literacy - the examiner damingningly described some 16 year olds of having the literacy of an eight year old.

One thing that did come to mind was the energy bills for schools. Surely, if each borough's schools grouped together, they would be able to get substantial bulk order discounts from energy companies, or am I missing something?

ANOTHER BRICK....

“There is a false debate around exam results from people who forget that we have moved from a system that was preparing an elite to run society to public expectation that a very large number of people will gain good qualifications.

John Dunford, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders attacking claims of grade inflation.

I'm sorry but what?

I'll repeat the quote

“There is a false debate around exam results from people who forget that we have moved from a system that was preparing an elite to run society to public expectation that a very large number of people will gain good qualifications.

What planet is this bloke on?

In a briliant article in the Sunday Times, this quote just lept up at me yesterday,
"There is an expectation that a very large number of people will gain good qualifications" ?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

I am a parent and my expectations for my daughter is that she will get the best education available - if she gets the best education then results should follow.

I want education to be elitist - that is tailored to the best abilities of each child, not dumbed down to such a lower level that they have to tinker with gradings to hide the intellectual deficit that is being served up - our children deserve better then the dross that is being served up by self-interested parties such as Dunford.

Elsewhere in the paper there was a claim that a child's reading age and ability to count develop a month earlier for every extra £100 a month in family income, according to a government-funded study to be unveiled this week.

It quotes Harriet Harman as saying

“[The report] provides an incontrovertible basis for us to move beyond inaccurate assertions made by the opposition ... David Cameron says that the differences in child outcomes between a child born in poverty and a child born in wealth are statistically insignificant when both have been raised by confident and able parents."

Oh dear, Cameroon has essentially said that a lot of how a child develops is to do with the parents and not the state - naughty David

She added: "But what he fails to say is that you can’t separate out good parenting skills from family income. The two are so strongly correlated. So this is an utterly misleading portrayal of the evidence.”

YES YOU BLOODY CAN YOU! How dare she say this. Why does Labour insist on servitude of the poorer classes? This woman from St Paul's for Girls has the nerve of claiming that because you are poor you may not have good parenting skills.

Let me tell you Harridan Harperson, I know plenty of good, intelligent people who were born and bred in poverty and thank their parents for introducing them to books, newspapers and civil society. I also know plenty of people who have been born silver-spooned, who in my opinion are some of the thickest, selfish, evil people you could come across.

Money does not equate good parenting - good parents equate with good parenting, be it married, partnerships or single parents.

Education, education, education

The Devil has done an excellent piece on the Tories' plan for Swedish style voucher education so go and read it and come back here.

I was talking to people last night about education - not so much the National Curriculum but what is education for and how should it be implemented.

First up - this idiocy of keeping kidults in education to 18. Now this is ridiculous and a blatent attempt to massage the NEETs figures. If a 16-year-old does not want to be in education then what do you think the effect will be on those that do want further education? Bored, angry pupils disrupting lessons, knowing that there is nothing the teacher will actually do is the probably result.

So scrap this ridiculous law.

Second - Higher education. Why should there be universal higher education. That's not what the real world is about. The net result is a funding crisis and non-courses so that the new universities can survive.

Why should it take three years to do a Hairdressing degree?

What should happen is the re-installing of Higher Education colleges, polytechnics and "proper" universities - each catering for the needs of the pupil - so you have practical, mixed and academic courses. Some people are academically minded, some are practical and some are mixed ability. Aim to get the best out of those students.

Third up was education in general. At the moment you have a centrally controlled rigid structure run on ideological grounds rather than on what is best for the pupil. There should only be two compulsory subjects post-14: English Language and Maths. That's all. people need to read, write and count if they are going to succeed in whatever course their lives take them.

Other courses should be based on ability. So, taking my older brother for an example - he was a shocking academic (we actually suspect he may have been dyslexic) but give him an engine, art pad or piece of wood and he could create like you wouldn't believe. So should he been forced to do all those academic subjects when more practical ones may have suited him more?


Pre-14, there should be compulsory maths, english, history and a.n.other. My preference would be art or a language. There should also also be intelligent streaming. I.E. Put children of the same ability in the same group. But with constant monitoring. Some kids will move on in a subject faster and earlier than others. Streaming allows tailored education to suit each group.

For instance if i was teaching a difficult maths group then once a week or so we could play darts or snooker with two of the kids as designated scorers. They would have to add and subtract without calculators. I know people who would have improved significantly if they had been taught in a more practical manner.

But this could also challenged by the child. Say he believes that he should stay in a group, he can have a month or so in the new year to prove himself capable. Give a child a challenge, a competition, most will go for it.

In my perfect world, each child would have a full basic education and then skills. whether academic or practical, would be layered on top.

But that's a perfect world, I'm interested in seeing the praticalities of a Tory government.

getting a wiki-d education

So the Governator is to push Californian children online instead of traditional text books.

Welcome to the world where educational knowledge is dependent on who is editing wikipedia ; ) Actually you could make all politicians and military go on twitter and build an e-database that would rule out the need for pesky academics.

I don't think computers are the be-all-and-end-all that many think. The tech creep that says everything e-based is wonderful, is wrong. It is a tool, and like any tool is open for abuse. Just as Panorama managed to fool people into thinking spagetti grows on trees (TV was still fairly new, authorative, trustworthy) so people think wiki is first-base research resource, it is not.

Also if you have a library with internet, just look at what the kids are looking at - it aint academia.

Now, I love books, grew up with books but there is a tech way that does have the potential to reduce costs - don't doubt that this is primarily about cost...

Kindle or other e-readers could be the solution. Latest versions of textbooks can be uploaded with significant memory to have an entire academic library for a course.

As a result, costs come down and pupils get academic knowledge which is (hopefully) more fact-based than something on a website, or blog like this!