thanks

you know when mrs t won her election and stood on the steps and said something like “we need to remember the folk in the inner cities” i really had hope, hope that the values of freedom from the conservatives would also help the kids going to the worst schools in the country, hope that we would see real chances for all, sadly that vision largely fell by the wayside

cost cutting and efficiencies which john is laying out will only be a success long term if the electorate can see a real chance for their kids to improve on their lot, and im afraid much better education is one of the few ways of doing it

its also the only way for the country to be economically viable long term

we shouldnt be devaluing education, we should be ramping up the quality, being more tough, but more tough in a way which gives more opportunity to all, and which does to some degree counteract the imbalances in the system, not in the stupid ways the labour party does it by dumbing down, but by (for instance) writing exam papers taking into account a much wider set of backgrounds amongst the kids

we need a conservative party which is pro people getting on in life, pro helping them help their kids, pro the hard working

it just needs rounding more from the point of view of genuine folk stuck on a poor council estate or similar, trying their best to escape, and frustrated that no matter how clever their kid is even if they are the brightest in a school of 2000 they will still never get a decent education or chance in life, these realities need to change

im all for cutting down management overheads, but these policies need rounding with the issues that matter to the people through the generations, issues which most of the labour party politicians have no idea about either

At least at 14 I knew enough to be ejected from a live performance of “The Merchant of Venice” the school had taken us to, for rather vocally telling the Prince of Morocco to choose the lead casket. I doubt the kids of today would get the joke (though in all fairness my English teacher at the time didn’t seem to entirely see the funny side if memory serves).

The difference between aptitude and ability as I see it is that aptitude you are born with and it can be almost entirely hidden and eventually lost by a rotten education ; ability you already have.

This is the “problem” with my private educated daughter ; her aptitude is probably about middling, but her ability now after 3 years private is way ahead of her peers in the local state school.

I think she could have done her GCSEs at the end of Year 8. She did Common Entrance and the difficulty looks about the same ; maybe CE is slightly harder.

Seriously.

While all state schools suffer drastically from targetism and bureaucracy (see all JR’s recent posts !) and a politicised massively simplified curriculum (it’s embarrassing) the real problem is behaviour.

At it’s worst it is worse than you can possibly imagine. Even the ‘good’ schools have problems.

This is almost (IMO) entirely down to the children’s rights mob. For example, the regular demand for ‘fun’ lessons. When I was at school we had fun lessons (e.g. Science practicals) but we understood they were balanced with hard ones (e.g. Science theory).

Eg Oxford makes great efforts to encourage state school pupils to apply, as I know because my own daughter having gone to Oxford from a comprehensive, along with several others from the same school in that particular year, was later asked by the university if she would go round all the local comprehensives to do just that – positively encourage their pupils to consider the possibility of applying to Oxford.

It was hardly her fault, or Oxford’s fault, that most of the schools she approached didn’t accept her offer, with a couple not even bothering to reply to her.

I agree with both you and Mike. The left simply cannot admit there is a problem with the state system because that would be admitting all the “investment” was money down the rat-hole of a fundamentally broken system.

(*Although to be fair, I did learn a great deal about self-defence during the various break times due to the behavioural problems you alluded to)

What I do not agree with is that A-Levels should have such an impact BEYOND university studies. I have achieved a 2:1 LLB and a Merit in my LLM and yet many trainee programs I attempt still focus on the A-Level results. It seems that intelligent graduates, not such high flyers at school, who excel at university will find it perpetually difficult to get a look in – there is such a thing as late blooming after all.