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Hurrah, someone speaks some sense

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    Hurrah, someone speaks some sense

    Let us hear it for Dr Anthony Seldon, Blair biographer and headmaster at Wellington school. I have banged on about this ad infinitum and in so doing I believe that I have pulled the rug from every nasty little socialists feet who has dared to come on to this site and suggest that socialism enjoys some sort of "moral integrity" (it does not). My main example to show how socialism creates so much of societies problems has always been education.



    Anthony Seldon, the political historian and master of fee-paying Wellington College, Berkshire, said an obsession with league tables and testing had led to teaching being replaced by "little more than exam indoctrination."

    He said meddling by the Government was destroying education for millions of pupils and it had also undermined discipline in schools.

    In a report written for Policy Exchange, Conservative leader David Cameron's favourite think tank, he will call for all schools to be made independent and liberated from Government targets and controls.

    Dr Seldon said: "The state experiment has failed. State schooling, with schools run from central government, has been a terrible failure and the children who have lost out are those from the state sector.

    "In the last 10 years we have seen a doubling of money for state education yet the improvement in results has been just 9 per cent.

    "The chief inspector of schools says that improvement has stalled. Let's be honest now and say we need independent schools for all."

    The Policy Exchange report will include proposals to give every school in Britain freedom from state and local authority control and they would become accountable directly to parents.

    Head teachers would be given blanket powers to expel unruly pupils and teachers' pay would be raised by 30 per cent to attract better candidates.

    Parents earning more than £25,000 a year would be required to make a direct financial contribution to the school their child attends.

    There would also be "all age" schools teaching children from ages three to 16 to make it simpler for teachers to monitor the progress of pupils and for older children to be mentors.

    Dr Seldon said: "It is not until they pay that you get the kind of direct involvement from parents in a school that you need. We have to sort out discipline and get expulsion back into schools."

    Dr Seldon said Tony Blair's reforms in education had been hampered by caution during his early period as Prime Minister.

    He said: "For years state schools have been hampered by bureaucracy and state intervention. The independent schools' success story has been largely ignored until late.

    "A key ingredient of their success is the freedom that head teachers have to run them as they wish. If the heads are no good, they have to go. If the schools are no good, they close."

    Dr Seldon has praised Conservative plans to free hundreds of state schools from local authority control, giving them the power to set their own budgets and curriculum.

    It would allow them become autonomous academies with the aim of raising standards and improving discipline.

    Under the scheme, based on the Swedish education system, parents would be given the power to create new schools and successful ones would be encouraged to take over failing establishments.

    Michael Gove, the shadow children's secretary, says up to 3,000 new schools could be built by private companies.

    Dr Seldon said the Conservative plan was "courageous" and a move in the right direction but was too "tame" and should go much further.

    A spokesman for the Department for Children, Schools and Families, said: "Free state education is the bedrock of our society."


    Amen.. and look at the little weasel cliche at the end of the article from the "spokeman for blah, blah blah"
    Let us not forget EU open doors immigration benefits IT contractors more than anyone

    #2

    Comment


      #3
      Originally posted by DodgyAgent View Post
      Let us hear it for Dr Anthony Seldon, Blair biographer and headmaster at Wellington school. I have banged on about this ad infinitum and in so doing I believe that I have pulled the rug from every nasty little socialists feet who has dared to come on to this site and suggest that socialism enjoys some sort of "moral integrity" (it does not). My main example to show how socialism creates so much of societies problems has always been education.



      Anthony Seldon, the political historian and master of fee-paying Wellington College, Berkshire, said an obsession with league tables and testing had led to teaching being replaced by "little more than exam indoctrination."

      He said meddling by the Government was destroying education for millions of pupils and it had also undermined discipline in schools.

      In a report written for Policy Exchange, Conservative leader David Cameron's favourite think tank, he will call for all schools to be made independent and liberated from Government targets and controls.

      Dr Seldon said: "The state experiment has failed. State schooling, with schools run from central government, has been a terrible failure and the children who have lost out are those from the state sector.

      "In the last 10 years we have seen a doubling of money for state education yet the improvement in results has been just 9 per cent.

      "The chief inspector of schools says that improvement has stalled. Let's be honest now and say we need independent schools for all."

      The Policy Exchange report will include proposals to give every school in Britain freedom from state and local authority control and they would become accountable directly to parents.

      Head teachers would be given blanket powers to expel unruly pupils and teachers' pay would be raised by 30 per cent to attract better candidates.

      Parents earning more than £25,000 a year would be required to make a direct financial contribution to the school their child attends.

      There would also be "all age" schools teaching children from ages three to 16 to make it simpler for teachers to monitor the progress of pupils and for older children to be mentors.

      Dr Seldon said: "It is not until they pay that you get the kind of direct involvement from parents in a school that you need. We have to sort out discipline and get expulsion back into schools."

      Dr Seldon said Tony Blair's reforms in education had been hampered by caution during his early period as Prime Minister.

      He said: "For years state schools have been hampered by bureaucracy and state intervention. The independent schools' success story has been largely ignored until late.

      "A key ingredient of their success is the freedom that head teachers have to run them as they wish. If the heads are no good, they have to go. If the schools are no good, they close."

      Dr Seldon has praised Conservative plans to free hundreds of state schools from local authority control, giving them the power to set their own budgets and curriculum.

      It would allow them become autonomous academies with the aim of raising standards and improving discipline.

      Under the scheme, based on the Swedish education system, parents would be given the power to create new schools and successful ones would be encouraged to take over failing establishments.

      Michael Gove, the shadow children's secretary, says up to 3,000 new schools could be built by private companies.

      Dr Seldon said the Conservative plan was "courageous" and a move in the right direction but was too "tame" and should go much further.

      A spokesman for the Department for Children, Schools and Families, said: "Free state education is the bedrock of our society."


      Amen.. and look at the little weasel cliche at the end of the article from the "spokeman for blah, blah blah"
      What absolute pish!

      Yeah turn all schools over to the private sector, that's a good idea......NOT!
      It'll all turn out like the utilities, railways, banks et al, that is, a pile of keech that the govt will end up bailing out.

      Comment


        #4
        So a posh headmaster at a posh school says state schools are rubbish? Next the pope will tell us he's catholic.
        Cooking doesn't get tougher than this.

        Comment


          #5
          Originally posted by TheBigYinJames View Post
          So a posh headmaster at a posh school says state schools are rubbish? Next the pope will tell us he's catholic.

          Spoken like a true chippy leftie
          Let us not forget EU open doors immigration benefits IT contractors more than anyone

          Comment


            #6
            Targets have ruined education and the NHS while also wasting billions.

            Comment


              #7
              Originally posted by Cyberman View Post
              Targets have ruined education and the NHS while also wasting billions.
              I agree with you (should we commemorate that in some way?).

              I don't see anything in the article that is necessarily about socialism or state education. I can't speak about English state schools, but in Scotland it mostly works, because Westminster mostly stays out of it.

              Comment


                #8
                Originally posted by DodgyAgent View Post
                Spoken like a true chippy leftie
                I went to a private school. I have no axe to grind about them. Unike posh headmaster there.
                Cooking doesn't get tougher than this.

                Comment


                  #9
                  Originally posted by DodgyAgent View Post
                  <snip>
                  skim read it seemed like old news
                  </snip>
                  This has been said by many people in various ways for a few years now

                  Teaching to the exam doesn't work
                  Teachers have too much red tape
                  Schools need more freedom to run themselves for the benefit of the pupils and the greater good
                  Coffee's for closers

                  Comment


                    #10
                    And what do parents know about education? What experience do they have in running a school?

                    It would seem the most articulate parents on the school board will end up running the show; whereas the bright child with stupid parents would be left behind.

                    What happens if an influential parent doesn't like it when their vicious Johnny is punished for thumping some innocent?

                    What happens if the 'paying' parents take umbrage with the 'sponging' parents and demand their Johnny is in the computer club because 'they are paying for it'?

                    However the most glaring omission is the lack of commitment to academic selection- the only true gateway to a better world for the brightest.

                    Comment

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