Lunch time reading

I was half way through a new post when I cam across this article.

Here a quote - "Far too many young people are wasting precious years in a university system taken hostage by the cult of egalitarianism, when in fact they could be doing something useful with their brains."

Its well worth a read this lunch time. I have to pinch myself that its in the left-wing Independent.

Update: And perhaps its also worth finding out why the Chinese are convinced we're lying to them about our education system.

The Martyrdom of Miss Snuffy

As I feared the left are moving to punish and crush Miss Snuffy - the ex-Marxist teacher who has realised that left wing attitudes are really just keeping poor children poor and dared to stand up at this years Conservative conference to say so.

She has been sent home for the rest of the week whilst the governors and head try to figure out "what to do".

Her current head is one Dr Irene Bishop who apparently allowed a certain political activity at her school a while back. ( However - a certain cycling Mayor has taught a Latin lesson at her school - so perhaps we shouldn't jump to conclusions ! )

The Left are viscous(H/T Tim Worstall - duh) vicious and desperate to defend the pain and damage they think its their right to inflict on children - as part of their campaign to bring about the destitution that will allow their socialist utopia to be created.

Many people think they are just misguided, but I'm becoming convinced that the damage they do is deliberate.

I dare say Katharine Birbalsingh's career will continue, but perhaps not where she is most effective.

Update: Iain Dale has more information on the political activity of Irene Bishop in his update here.

See also: Tory teacher sent home from school.

I wonder if the BBC has anything on it - off to look .... Just had a look (12:30pm 8Oct10) - not a sausage. No real surprise there I suppose given the BBC's left wing editorial viewpoint.

7pm Fri 8th Oct - looks like she's going to be allowed to return to work. The Telegraph reports that parental support has been key. Too right - all of us parents want to see teachers like Miss Snuffy teaching our kids ! I fear however this won't be the end of the trouble she will get from the left.

Still nothing on the BBC of course ....

9Oct - Katharine Birbalsingh has written a short article in the Daily Mail reiterating her points here. Looks to me like she's not going to let this go...

Labour betrayal of our young people

Yesterday evening Man in a Shed had a very agreeable few hours chatting to some friends who are both employers of recent science graduates.

They made the same complaints about new science graduates:

1. They often did not understand the basics, despite having glowing qualifications that said they did.
2. They were almost unable to take criticism or boredom ( a staple part of most new jobs at the bottom of a company )
3. All of them took at least 6 months to become useful, at a considerable burden to the staff around them.

Some of these criticisms have their roots in Labour education, education, education children schools and families policies.

Specifically:

1. The lack of real challenge and the experience of failure as well as success.
2. The over use of praise and prizes for all - the impact of Labour's grade inflation ( which is now an established fact with everyone except Ed Balls ).
3. Poor structure of knowledge. Science is no longer taught systematically from a historical perspective, but from the confused mishmash a relevant issues that make a radio one public information campaign look rigorous.

Into this abject failure rides the Department of Business Innovation and Skills with its advice to parents to show tough love to their recently unemployed but graduated offspring.

Its exactly what Labour failed to do for them over the previous 12 years by destroying education standards, turning education into entertainments and punishing teachers who just took control of their classes and made people learn things ( not pupil directed learning enough - showing engagement - to much talk from the front etc ), and encouraging large numbers of unsuitable people to go to University who have been doubly robbed of the skilled future they could other wise have had and raising expectations to a level that can only be dashed in the future.

Having created the mess - Labour would like parents to sort it out, indeed it can't be long before they blame those "evil middle class parents" for the whole thing. ( See this advice here ).

Such is life under the rule of the princes of lies and spin.

Labour's adoption of Conservative education ideas is driven by electoral tactics not education strategy

The Gordon Brown election fighting blue print is leading to a rerun of his standard election tactics.

Reduce the gap between the parties by copying as many of the Conservative policies as you can, and leaving a few chosen dividing lines.

Hence on education Ed Balls has been trying to create the equivalent of the Russian Concordski copy of the Tory Education Concorde.

Groups of schools are to be allowed to remove themselves from LEAs and now the national plans for teaching national strategies are being dropped.

Labour must know that the public is very dissatisfied with the current state of education with failing schools and worthless qualifications which 12 years of "education, education, education" have produced.

I suspect there is also a wish to smash the controls of state rather than hand them over to a Conservative government.

This is in part the explanation for why the Conservatives have kept much of their manifesto under raps. Brown just copies much of it and leaves his big lies to win the day.

Politics aside this looks like a good idea - if and only if - schools are given real control over their staff. I was talking to a teacher a week of two ago who told me that two teachers in their department were so hopeless that they weren't teaching any pupils, but because of the closed shop practices and Union domination in education couldn't be sacked. Hence the school and most of all the children are made to pay for left wing unions refusal to accept the norm int he productive sector of the economy that you do the job or you leave.

Personally I think Labour will fluff this necessary part of the reforms and leave a powder keg of Union resentment and educational inefficiency to go off on the Tory's watch. ( Like much else they are messing up and destroying right now. )

Ofsted has become a lever of power for the Govt rather than an inspection agency

For a few years I've been a school governor. Its an introduction to the public sector that has sent friends who have been Labour voting all their lives ( with a little Lib Dem moonlighting ) to vote Conservative for the first time in their lives, but I digress...

That's why I have full support for what Chris Woodhead is saying now about Ofsted.

Ofsted inspection reports make or break a school currently. Get a bad report and your put in special measures and every prospective parent can read about your schools failure for years to come. That reduces you intake and leads to financial problems at the school, which will lead to redundancies.

Ofsted are now the high priests of the national curriculum. No school dares to do otherwise than prepare to impress Ofsted. Rumours and indications of what Ofsted inspectors are paying particular attention to are eagerly listened to by schools eager to avoid the disaster of "a poor Ofsted".

Hence the misuse of Ofsted is now a key tool of the government social engineering agenda, as it abandons education and instead embraces the class warfare struggle and remodelling society, which for some reason doesn't seem to require standards or measurable capabilities.

The latest two theme from the Commissar Ed Balls are Diversity and Community Cohesion.

If you kids are at school right now you'll have noticed a sudden increase in "international weeks", "cultural awareness festivals" etc etc. Its the schools trying to avoid the infamous "Bad Ofsted".

Thus the national curriculum and Oftsed inspectorate have become part of the command and control from the centre, which no school or teacher can stand against.

Now I know the national curriculum was a Conservative idea, but where it has gone to has now become more than a danger to our education system ( notice Labour don't even talk about Education any more they are so ashamed of their failure here ) and to our society and democracy. Ofsted has become the political control department enforcing the latest mad edict from the class warriors who are Labour ministers.

As such something will have to be done about both by an incoming Conservative government.

Does anyone listen on education ?

If you read the "To Miss with Love" blog you might conclude no one who runs education from the political level does.

This post here shows the an inner city teacher's view of the latest headline grabbing half backed initiative from Labours education / children's / social mobility / soviet oppression dept. Snuffysnuffleupagus makes the vallid point that the £10k for good teachers bonus is half funded from the school budget ( which for those challenged by socialism means less teachers ), and of course that it will be expected of all teachers. ( She also takes David Willetts to task - which I can't really object to either. )

This initiative will fail - and fail big - and fail expensively, but worse of all fail the kids it was meant to help. But by then Ed Balls and Mr Milburn will have had their headlines.

That's how Labour works - cynical, manipulative and ultimately at best ineffective, at worse disastrous.

Education, education, education ?

They're so embarrassed by the result that they had to rename the department responsible and hide its function from its title.

See also Post "More of your money being wasted to buy Brown votes - this time the £10k teacher scam"

'A' levels - the gold standard ?

On hearing Ed Ball's latest ploy to try to destroy objective information with his social engineering diploma scheme I was going to write a rant about why anyone needs 4.5 A Levels anyway - at least of the difficulty which was the standard when I took them in the mid 1980's. ( 3 A levels could get you into Oxford or Cambridge in those days ).

But then I saw a quote about Michael Grove referring to 'A' levels as the gold standard, and thought a bit more about what he was actually saying. Reference to a gold standard doesn't mean gold as in coming first or being expensive, but in terms of be convertible into something of intrinsic value. 'A' levels, at least in the sciences, used to lay the ground work for understanding science, defining its language and philosophy as well as a bit of history and a few facts. This had convertable value to many of the applied subjects that you could study afterwards as well as keeping on with a more narrow range of interests in the pure sciences.

I wonder if the new Diploma will be 'convertible' to something of worth ?

I worry as I see how my children are now taught. Arithmetic is now re-branded numeracy and is hidden behind a range of woolly concepts that are not clearly defined like number bonds, differences sharing out etc. Gone is the clarity - in is the muddle that many primary school educationalists probably felt themselves when they failed to get qualifications in maths and the sciences.

I am told by a science teacher that the situation is far worse in GCSE sciences and now A levels. A trip to the BBC's revision web site should show you that.

Gone are the convertible underlying principals. In are trendy subjects designed to make scince more relevant and interesting - but unfortunately impossible to carry out as you are not actually getting an education in science any more.

Our education system has suffered grade inflation, curriculum dumbing down, debasement by widespread and systematic cheating and even the subject of the curriculum is now longer valid.

The use, ie proof of convertible ability, skills and understanding, of these qualifications has been reducing for years. They are no longer held to any standard. You can only suspect that the diploma's will be worse as they are provided by the same liars and cheats who ruined the current system and whose motives for that destruction are the same as they were before.

Now what the government should do is let people choose whatever qualifications they like and let the market decide. But then it would be harder to damage middle class children's futures with you socialist hate and spite that way wouldn't it.

A serious political allegation

Man in a Shed must do far more work this week and far less blogging (the story of his brush with public transport this weekend may be a latter exception).

However this post deserves attention from Guido Fawkes - it is the basis for a devastating line of attack on the Gordon Brown debt culture and spin government.

You can tell how good it is by the fast reaction of the Labour trolls in the comments.

Well done Guido !
(Picture from that post).

Really Darling, you should blame you predecessor.

The spin and misdirection are in full flow from Labour now - desperate to avoid their black Wednesday:

First there was Sybil the cat - the cuddly side of Alistair Darling ( they new what was coming ).
Then the pre-emptive warning about banks getting back to good old fashioned banking ( blame the banks - this from the man who only a few weeks ago was insisting on new types of financial products to get people on the housing ladder - at least for long enough until his boss could call a general election ).
There's a need for international regulations - no mention of why ours failed. ( The subtext - its not a UK govt issue alone - spread the blame.)
The American's are really to blame.
Crisis what crisis ? Keep your money in Northern Rock - even though no one else will lend to them and the pound is on the slide based on market worries. ( Remember the bank of England is getting the rights to the best mortgages in return for its money - so they won't lose out)

Lets be clear - this is a full blown test of the banking regulation and monitoring system imposed by Gordon Brown (when he altered the Bank of England in 1997), and its been found wanting. Gordon Brown has failed and as ever other people will need to pay the price. Like those people whose pensions have been taken to fund unreformed public service bloating or the failure to reform the civil service. All those non-public sector people who now need to work till they are 67 ( or preferably dead as its cheaper ) to help pay for Gordon's payroll vote. Remember you pay 91p to a public sector workers pension for every £1 you have to risk on the stock market and with bonds for your own.

Much must be sacrificed for the career of Gordon.

I warned about debt under Brown earlier - now those chickens are heading home.

Time for some gravitas Mr Cameron - put Zac back in the kinder garden where you found him and come and play for the high stakes.

One that line - this article in The Sunday Telegraph is interesting .... thats more like it Dave !

Plans to further Balls up education

Softly and bit by bit Ed Balls looks like he's going to undermine Tony Blair's academy schools. Not directly - as the socialist have become cowards about outlining their ideas in the light of day - but by stealth ( wonder where he learnt that trick ?).

Universities are to be bullied into running academies. Now the headline might sound good but if you have some experience of universities the idea should fill you with horror. ( Perhaps Ed Balls privileged private school education and time at that most a-typical of British universities Oxford has blinded him to the problems.)

Now Universities have enough problems running themselves. Many academics can hardly teach - let alone administer things. The trendy academic educationalists are who cause a large amount of the break down in standards and achievement in our education system - putting them in charge is just madness.

Anyway why should Universities be any better than LEA's ?

But its a good stalking horse to remove the cash requirement for setting up the schools. It also provides a route for Brown/Balls to do their social engineering so that those school's pupils will get favoured entrance to the Universities, by taking the places of gifted children whose parents vote the wrong way - just like Eastern Europe under Stalin.

The BBC quotes Balls as saying:

"The test of whether an organisation can be a potential sponsor should not be its bank balance, but whether it can demonstrate leadership, innovation, and commitment to act in the public interest," said Mr Balls.

Which other potential sponsors does Balls have up his sleeve - Trade Unions perhaps ? The government will no doubt give them more money like the Union modernisation fund - so the Union's will have more money to give to the Labour party.

Having said that it would be fun to watch the NUT try to run a school - as long as my Children don't have to go there.