Blairite Chutzpah

In the Independent John Rentoul attacks John Major's record on social mobility in comparison to St Tony. There is much in the article that strikes me as nonsense but this is particularly disingenuous:

But what did Major do to work to change the system while he was Prime Minister? He sneered at Tony Blair as “another public school-educated Socialist” in his 1995 Tory conference speech. That would be the Tony Blair who sent all his children to state schools, the first prime minister to do so. The Tony Blair who raised standards in state schools especially in London, under Major an under-invested disaster area for the education of working-class children. The Tony Blair who introduced academy schools to replace schools that had failed their disadvantaged pupils.

The state schools that Blair sent his children to were hardly "bog standard comprehensives", but the what is really incredible is praising academy schools.

Academy schools are a great idea but when Labour introduced they weren't exactly an entirely new idea. They are almost identical to the Grant Maintained Schools introduced by the Conservatives which flourished under John Major and were then abolished by Tony Blair. To compare Blair to Major favourably by pointing to Academies is simply ludicrous.

Failing To Understand The Concept Of "History".

Lester Holloway isn't happy that Michael Gove wants school history to have more Cromwell and less Seacole*:

The 2012 Olympics were surely evidence that he cannot turn back the clock to a bygone age.

Er, that is kind of the point of history.

* Mary Seacole seems to have been a remarkable woman but the apparent role she has in school history is out of proportion to her importance as a historical figure. Also school history needs to give a rough grounding in the development of the nation rather than projecting current obsessions with race and sex backwards.

Educational Standards In Britain Today.

This is a genuine text conversation I had this week:

Stranger: Is dis ross?

Me: Yes. Who is this?

Stranger: Its fran ave u go ne ringin cred

Me: Sorry I don't recognise the name "Fran". Are you sure you've got the right Ross?

Fran: Haha u tryin 2 b funny, sum1 jst gave me da numba so its obv u,jst a txt 2 say du kev a favour nd keep away frm im cz me nd is bruv dnt want im goin bk 2 jail nd im sik ov im liein 2 me nd e onli seems 2 du it wen es waiv u

Me: Seriously I don't know you. My guess is that someone had my number on their phone along with this other Ross and got them mixed up.

Fran:  Ye alryt ross

Jody MacIntyre

A good piece by Autonomous Mind on the unravelling story of Jody MacIntyre- the disabled student protester who was pulled out of his wheelchair- who far from being a innocent disabled protester who was brutally assaulted is actually a serial thug who has, inevitably, popped up at the Tottenham riots.

He also is being encouraged by Guardian hacks to provide rolling coverage (so to speak) of the event.

The public faces of the student protesters do seem to be spectacularly unlikeable:



Jody MacIntyre- a serial liar caught on camera attacking police who then brazen played the disability card to make out that he was incapable of violence.

Johnie Marbles- Universally reviled twat and self styled comedian who was surprised that assaulting an 81 year old man didn't meet with widespread acclaim.

Charlie Gilmour- The epitome of the spoiled overclass demanding that he be taken seriously.

Alfie Meadows- Poor guy struck with a police baton- or a violent thug who got hit by friendly fire from his own side.

Edward Woolard- Fire extinguisher chucker.


They have managed to earn contempt for the movement they represent not least because of the mealy mouthed apologetics over their actions by their fellow travellers.

"Even"?!

Belinda Webb writes of the government's proposal for "Free Schools":

Even the National Union of Teachers thinks the whole idea is questionable.

 

Won't Someone Please Think Of The Children?

Or the nonces will get them:

A "disturbing gap" in the Government's proposed changes to the vetting scheme would give paedophiles "a golden opportunity of targeting innocent victims", the NSPCC has warned.


The reforms, announced earlier this month, were part of Government attempts to end a "13-year assault on hard-won British freedoms" and would see only those working most closely with children or vulnerable adults having to undergo a criminal records check, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said.
But the NSPCC said a loophole in the proposed legislation would give sex offenders access to children.
Under the proposals, a teacher who has been barred but not prosecuted for inappropriate behaviour could become an unpaid, supervised, voluntary worker in a school without any checks revealing the previous behaviour that led to them being barred, the leading children's charity said.

Best we suspect everyone just to be on the safe side.

Reading, Writing & Rioting.

Over at Liberal Conspiracy there is consternation about the suspension of a teacher accused of encouraging her pupils to go on demonstrations. However the same site has run about a dozen stories highlight alleged violence by police against the student demos, such as these police horses gently trotting toward charging at students. In other words teachers should be free to encourage pupils to put themselves in dangerous situations if it matches up with their politics.

The Blame Game

The school that suspended teacher Katharine Birbalsingh after she spoke at the Tory conference, is to be closed down due to a drop in applications. Naturally they've responded to this news by reflecting on whether their behaviour towards critics and inept management contributed to this decision blaming Birbalsingh for her speech:

Canon Peter Clark, the chairman of the school’s governors, said that her attack on incapable teachers “blinded by Leftist ideology” had dealt a fatal blow to the school. “The publicity that she generated was very unhelpful, which certainly didn’t help in terms of pupil recruitment,” said Canon Clark.

He added that an inspection of the school held shortly before Christmas had shown that “nothing that she said was right”. 

 Yes, clearly her references to them being "blinded by Leftist ideology" were way off the mark and the school only suspended her because she brought the schools name into a political debate, unlike the head teacher who had previously let her school be used as the venue for the launch of Labour's 2001 General Election campaign.

The Horror!

Students are protesting against the abolition of the EMA grant:

"I would have had to get a part-time job if I hadn't had the EMA,"

Oddly enough the Guardian now seem to have removed this quote from the article.

Masterminding Equality

David Lammy writes about the low number of black students at Oxbridge. I think he underestimates the role of the media in perpetuating stereotypes about black academic performance, for example I remember seeing a comedy sketch featuring a black guy on Mastermind who kept giving comically wrong answers to really easy questions.

Seriously though most of his arguments are demolished in the comments so I won't go over every wrong fact and unsafe assumption- although the fact he uses different definitions of "black" for the number of people who apply and the number accepted is telling. The fact that other minority groups are statistically over represented is also interesting.

However one thing that is always worth remembering is that the differences in academic performance are evident from before children even start school, so it isn't obvious how higher education institutions can have proportional numbers of different groups.

Trashing Your Product

In the East Midlands one of the adverts that is on local radio stations constantly is for the University of Derby. It is plugging some kind of 12 week business courses. It features an employer being very impressed by the applicants commitment in attaining these qualifications whilst the applicant knows that it was actually just a three month course.

In other words they are essentially advertising as a feature, not a bug, of the course that employers might mistake the qualifications for something deeper and more expansive. So they are effectively telling employers that their qualifications are a bit of a con, and presumably diminishing the value of whatever proper students come out with.

Good work advertisers!

Important News

As the usual blonde A Level students blogger hasn't said anything yet allow me to just confirm that attractive blonde teenage girls are still doing very well in their A Levels.

Break Up The School Year.

I was reading something about the effect of being born at the right time of year has on a child's chances of becoming a professional footballer- my view is that the evidence for such an effect is pretty strong even if the biggest populariser of the idea, Steve Levitt, probably bungled the data by lumping together a bunch of countries where the cut off date for school is at different points in the calender.

Anyway sport is trivial in the grand scheme of things so that isn't too important, except for the fact that it reveals a more important underlying truth- that being born later in the school year hinders children's development more generally:

Research by the Institute for Fiscal Studies two years ago found only 53% of girls and 47% of boys born in August reached the expected educational level at age seven in state primary schools in England, compared with 80% and 70% of those born in September.

So if we want to increase standards in schools and help all pupils achieve their potential, why not split the school year up? Instead of each class consisting of a cohort born within a 12 month period, why not have them born within a 6 month period? It might be more expensive, although only for smaller schools, and it would probably require a rejigging of the whole school calender, but there isn't any reason that should be set in stone. The expense may be offset though by having fewer behavioural difficulties and needing less in the way of additional assistance for late born children as they will be less likely to be misdiagnosed as having special needs.

Plus we could end up with a better football team!

More Than Buildings

With the school buildings budget being cut expect to be deluged with stories about classrooms with leaky roofs over the next couple of years.

I have to say that judging from my own experience at school the importance of shiny new facilities is vastly overrated. Some of the best schools had primitive labs that predated the discovery of electricity and so many mobile units that they resembled a former POW camp or a Butlins. Whereas having modern buildings was no guarantee of actually being any good.

Joseph Harker Writes About Racism- Who Would Have Guessed?

Joseph Harker is upset that racists are allowed to teach in schools, in particular members of the BNP. I'm also upset that members of the BNP are teaching- because they are largely illiterate. The number of BNP members in the teaching profession is so small that the fuss over the issue smacks of a moral panic anyway and besides people should only be sacked for their beliefs if they intrude into how they do their jobs.

Of course as Joseph Harker has previously stated that all white people are racist by definition he might not be the best person to make the case as presumably this means that white people should be automatically excluded from the teaching profession.

The Best Wankers In Spain.

A Spanish region's new approach to sex education has provoked anger by suggesting children be taught "self-exploration and self-pleasure".

Teaching teenagers to whack off is a bit like teaching fish to swim, although I'm sure once Ed Balls realises the potential to increase pass rates we will have a GCSE in the subject in this country too.

I did like this comment:

"Extremadura should be pleased with itself," Pilar Rahola, a columnist in the Barcelona-based La Vanguardia newspaper, wrote.

"It may have the most unemployed young people in Spain but they will be the best at masturbation."

I like this story too much to check whether it is actually true, so let's just assume it is.

Because 'Progressive Thinking' Has Done So Much For Our Schools Already!

There are many reasons to be sceptical about Ed Balls and his proposals to revamp the primary school curriculum, but none of them are as damning as this claim by David Aaronovitch (or his sub editor:

The call for a new primary curriculum has met predictable opposition. But it is in a fine tradition of progressive thinking

Sorry Thickie You're Staying.

I'm not quite sure that I see the point of the one of the Conservatives' new education proposals (although much of what Cameron has been saying is excellent):

Underachieving children could be forced to spend an extra year in primary school under proposals unveiled by the Conservatives.

Eleven-year-old pupils would be compelled to resit their final year with children a year younger, while their peers started secondary school.

Why are the children failing in the first place though. If it is the crap teaching then what could will another year at the same school do? If they are as thick as pig shit (politicians rarely acknowledge that some kids are simply dumb) then what good will it do, will they have to stay for another year if they are still failing? The only circumstances where it might be useful are where a child has had a particular but temporary problem that has been addressed satisfactorily and can now move on.

Come to think of it I really don't think this is the kind of policy that should be decided centrally for the entire country, leave it to individual schools or to local authorities to set the policy. It does at least mean that Labour put the repellent Education Children's secretary, Ed Balls, on the television to respond which should be worth a few thousand votes for the Tories. Balls's moronic underling Jim McKnight had this to say:

Proposals for what the Tories have called a ‘remedial year’ would stigmatise the very children who need extra help. They would increase class sizes and make it difficult for teachers and parents to plan ahead.”

How would it increase class sizes, does McKnight think that the 'stay behinds' are going to split amoeba like into two separate entities if they stay behind?

Young Turks.

Turkish children are one of the poorest performing ethnic groups in London's schools and the BBC is mystified as to the cause of this unhappy situation.

BBC News education reporter Hannah Goff visited a school in Hackney, east London, to find out why.

Several weeks ago nine-year-old Duygu didn't want to wear her traditional Turkish outfit at a special musical performance at her school.

She thought it was "uncool" - that she would be left out, her mother Canan explained.

She had also gone off playing a traditional Turkish instrument, the saz, at which she excels.

"She said it didn't sound nice any more," Canan added.

But her music group teacher talked her round just in time for the day-long celebration of Turkish culture at Berger Primary School.

Perhaps forcing children who appear want to integrate back into their ethnic box has something to do with it? Nothing like making sure children know their place, and that the place is as a multicultural decoration for their school. No doubt the school forces other nationalities to live up to their national stereotypes, and the playground is filled with French kids cycling with strings of onions round their necks, Saudi girls in burqas, and Thai boys dressed confusingly as girls,

"Now she wants to wear special Turkish trousers too and she wants to play her saz every day.

"Thanks to the music teacher the cultural barriers have disappeared again," Canan said

It looks more like the cultural barriers were coming down quite nicely until the music teacher put them up again and reinforced them.

For many Turkish-speaking pupils the fact that they have two languages to deal with makes the hurdles they have to jump almost impossible without extra help from bi-lingual classroom assistants.

Children throughout history have traditionally found it easier to pick up new languages than adults, children basically pick up language from their peers, which is why most people speak in the language and dialect of the place they were raised, rather than how their parents talk. That is, it seems, until bi-lingual teaching staff are brought in. During the 19th century, educational reforms meant that in Wales schools taught their pupils in English rather than Welsh which was usually spoken in the home. This wasn't a good policy from an ethical standpoint, but it does demonstrate the effectiveness of immersing children in an English speaking environment as it largely ensured that English replaced Welsh as the first language in the principality. Would it be too much to ask that English were made the first language of pupils in London?


Update: Rereading this post and the comments, I realise that I could come across as misanthropic git who turns purple with rage when he sees 'ethnic' costumes. This is only half right, whilst misanthropy is something I strive for I have no objection to a child liking to wear traditional Turkish dress. What is objectionable is the way the article gives the impression that the child's reluctance to do so is something which must be overcome. When I went to school thankfully I was never coerced into wearing the traditional costumes of my ethnic background. Which is just as well because being Scottish on one side and Irish on the other would presumably meant me wearing a kilt and balaclava.

Education & The Race Industry

I was going to say something about this story, but I got sidetracked by a story from last year which I had missed when it first came out. Essentially the situation is that the Commission for Racial Equality have discovered that for some reason, black pupils are statistically under represented at Britain's leading universities, or as the Guardian puts it 'Black students are failing to get their share of places at Britain's top universities', I had up until now been unaware that there were shares of places belonging to each ethnic group. Phillips then does his jobs and spouts all the race industry cliches:

' Trevor Phillips, chair of the CRE, said it was now "beyond doubt" that segregation was taking place between British universities.'

'"This survey also gives a new meaning to institutional racism'

Before hilariously adding almost as an afterthought:

Mr Phillips suggests much of the trend is down to inequalities in school results

Gee Trev you think it might just have something to do with the school qualifications which been attained? It is almost as if the elite institutions attract the students who have achieved the highest grades for some crazy reason! Anyway what can be done to redress this gross injustice?

But in areas where ethnic minority students are severely under-represented, the CRE could recommend a system of cash incentives for universities to "make minority-friendly courses more worthwhile for our top universities", Mr Phillips said.

What exactly are 'minority friendly courses', I mean if Phillips weren't the head of the CRE I would suggest that there is almost an undercurrent of soft racism in assuming that academically rigourous subjects are not 'minority friendly' and the likes of Oxbridge & Imperial College ought to be replacing courses in physics or modern languages with lightweight 'ethnic studies' courses that exist at many US institutions.

As this week's Joseph Rowntree Foundation report demonstartes white boys from poor backgrounds do as bad or worse than most of ethnic minorites and several groups including the Chinese and Indians do extremely well, the divide in educational outcomes in Britain is quite plainly not a racial problem. Of course it is in the interest of those in the racial aggravation business like the CRE to pretend otherwise, because racial divides are their lifeblood.