Should Gove be using children as pawns in his school privatisation plans?

First topic message reminder :

When anyone asks me which Tory I hate most, it’s such a difficult choice. Sometimes I think it’s Osborne, the Bullingdon Club idiot doing his work experience as Chancellor of the Exchequer and displaying total incompetence. Sometimes I opt for Lansley, who has been secretly planning to destroy the NHS for the last seven years, while taking money from private healthcare providers both for his own office and that of the Tory Party. (I hope that when this government is thrown out, its corrupt members follow Chirac, Berlusconi and possibly Sarkozy into the dock to face criminal charges.) Cameron himself is a strong candidate, for all the lies he’s told both before and since the election, and Clegg, though not officially a Tory, has allowed so many appalling policies to be implemented, that he's always a major contender. But inevitably I settle for Michael Gove.

Gove was a Murdoch journalist who was still on the payroll long after he ceased working for News International. What he knows about education can be written on the back of a postage stamp, but that doesn’t matter, he’s on message and knows what has to be done to destroy our state education system.



It was the responsibility of Willetts rather than Gove, but when this rancid Tory-dominated coalition first came to power, it in effect privatised higher education at a stroke and then tripled student tuition fees. That made sure that not so many people would get a university education, which the Tories have always believed should be reserved for the rich and privileged – with just a few token scholarships made available to some intelligent children of those they view as ‘plebs’.

Meanwhile, Gove has set about privatising state schools. Firstly, he put up the threshold for determining that a school is failing and requires intervention. Previously the threshold was a 35% pass rate A-C in 5 subjects including Maths and English; now it’s 40%. Then to make sure that even more schools ‘fail’, he manipulated the exam boards to change the grade boundaries, so that fewer children pass English. So hundreds of schools are now eligible for intervention and will be forced to become academies run by chains favoured by Gove and no doubt donors to the Tory Party.

Schools that become academies are not bound by the same pay and conditions agreements that the teaching unions negotiated. At the moment the academies pay the going rate, because otherwise they wouldn’t get the staff. When enough schools are academies they won’t need to worry about that.

Gove couldn’t give a damn that the collateral damage here is to real children. Whatever you think about GCSE exams, moving the goalposts in the middle of the game seems a particularly cruel thing to do, especially when the victims are children. So children have been deliberately failed in order for Gove to be able to privatise schools.

In 2011, 1,100 disabled people in the UK died after being declared fit to work by the minions of this vile government. Every time I think they can’t become more depraved and despicable, they do. And the Liberal Democrats just let it keep on happening.

Source used:-
http://liberalconspiracy.org/2012/08/23/by-downgrading-gcse-results-today-michael-gove-plans-to-sell-100s-of-schools/

I am over the moon since hearing about this but GCSEs are still linear than modular. I rather teach GCSEs than what Gove envisioned.

Call me old-fashioned, but I think teachers should know the syntax of putting a sentence together in the English language. Though perhaps only two errors in a message deserves an "E" for effort.

Well, you are old no doubt. It does show.

Thank you for the E.

The concept of baccalaureate has been corrupted by the notion of PSHE mixed with work experience and a folder of self-marketing. The European Baccalaureate was on the other hand the equivalent of 5 or 6 A levels and allowed young people to have a broader based eduction at a high level, preparing them for narrowing their choice more at university.

The change from spoon fed GCSE teaching to AS level expectations is often not grasped by students first time round, when they think that if they are getting good marks in course work their exam results will match. The down-to-earth crash that comes with the results is a wake-up call, and in resits they can currently push themselves to their proper level.

To deny young people this eye-opening second chance is another blow to kids who aren't getting extra tuition at parents' expense in order to get good grades first time round.

Teacher training does seem to be very comprehensive though, encompassing a range of different teaching methodologies and testing student teachers thoroughly in the process. Having a range of teaching approaches also benefits students. Turning teachers into tick-box clones isn't the way to raise standards of teaching though ultimately grades are the proof in the pudding...

Apparently the government are beginning to get things right in balancing education?

Great news for all progressives: a private school has been effectively been nationalised. Queen Elizabeth Grammar in Blackburn, founded in 1509, is to enter the state sector as one of Michael Gove’s free schools. Education that had previously been affordable only by the rich will now be open to all in Blackburn. It’s one of 104 free schools expected to open in 2014, bringing choice in education to a total of 130,000 pupils.

This policy stands firmly in the progressive tradition. Clement Attlee put it clearly:

http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2013/05/exclusive-clement-attlee-backs-goves-free-schools/

It is such an obvious waste of the Nation's resources to ignore the ability of poorer children, the only question is why it's taking so long to replicate the many scholarships by which philanthropic Victorians invested in the future.

In fact the last Labour government addressed this issue in a number of ways. First of all, funding was set to follow disadvantage, instead of Gove's 'evening out' so that rich boroughs get as much, or more, than poor ones. Secondly through the Excellence in Cities programme, which has boosted performance in London to the best in the country, despite having some of the worst disadvantage, and thirdly the Gifted and Talented programme, which actively sought able but underachieving pupils from poor backgrounds and provided targeted support. All gone, now, under Gove.

Nevertheless I am heartened by the realisation that Mr Gove has now made it possible for people like myself to recognise a new examination environment which was very familiar to me when I was at school.

A backward step of fifty years is apparently to be hailed as "progress".

Hallelujah!

Next modernisation to be Dame Schools and the horn book.

Gove, a Murdoch journalist who is undoubtedly the worst education secretary in living memory, thinks that rote learning of lists of facts about the glorious days of the British Empire is better than being taught skills. Josef Goebbels would have been proud of the arrogant imbecile.

Malcolm
Thanks for the timely reminder - there were many relatively small scale interventions under the last Labour government that were very powerful in terms of addressing the evils of social exclusion.
To the examples you have put forward I would add Sure Start, which was very influential in enabling mums from poor backgrounds to support their children's learning, and gathering together a range of professional expertise, which meant that by the time the very youngest children arrived at school parents had a chance of understanding and becoming involved in their child's education.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sure_Start link to Wikipedia article

Yes, I overlooked Sure Start. Probably one of the most important planks of the whole education platform.

Put simply, Gove fancies himself as Prime Minister. He may well be on the right course in flattering fellow Tories by reminding them of how things were in their own schooldays.

God knows, they're not exactly sophisticated thinkers.

It seems that even Labour luvvies are beginning to think Gove (quite rightly) is giving our failing education system a kick up the a**e. Try the following from Carole Malone.

Give Michael Gove an A for O-level plan
16 Jun 2013 00:01
He is quite rightly putting a rocket up the system not because he wants to hurt kids but because he wants to help them

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/give-michael-gove-o-level-plan-1955102

tlttf

http://www.labour.org.uk/no-school-left-behind


Not sure you, or the journalist you cite, have read the full speech by Steven Twigg - you might like to have a look at it. I found it convincing and quite reassuring - no mention for example of giving anyone a kick up any part of their anatomy, but plenty of examples cited of excellent practice in schools and evidence based good practice.
Checked the NUT website too, they are giving it a cautious welcome.

In relation to the article you cite, is the lady who wrote it a teacher? I haven't been able to find the statisitics she quotes, but maybe you would be able to post a link. to demonstrate
I notice she doesn't explain how the proposed kick up the personal parts will actually improve outcomes - given that quite a significant number of kids, in the halcyon days of 'O' levels were compelled to leave school without any qualifications as the format of 'O' levels is of course biased in favour of children with an academic bent, or children whose parents can afford private tuition.
I can't remember the actual numbers, but based on my memories of being educated, it would be in the region of at least 60% of kids leaving school without any qualifications.

Life isn't fair.  Too often, our experience corresponds with the notion "survival of the fittest".

We shouldn't be surprised at this, there are few prizes for coming last.  Society needs Leaders, but it's unrealistic to train everybody for Leadership.  There has always been an equal requirement for the hewers of wood and the drawers of water, but our education system makes little provision for essential services. 

Why is that?  Has nobody in government noticed that skilled tradesmen can earn more than an MP?

The Right of free speech involves having to listen to quite a lot of claptrap from the chattering classes.

As other posters have commented (notably Ivan), the biggest problem our society faces is inequality.  The Rich get richer while the Poor get the blame, underlined by the fact that Manufacturers of the Gentleman's carriage such as Audi, Mercedes, BMW and Jaguar etcetera are reviving the Shooting Brake.

Downton Abbey will soon be madly contemporary.  Did I hear the dinner-gong?

If state education with it's dumbing down agenda geared to keeping the working class in place was/is so good why do politicians from across the board send their kids to private schools. Please don't highlight the London Oratory as a state school (you have to be loaded or well placed to get your kids there).

Boatlady of course kids left school with no qualifications in the day of the Grammar, most went on to technical colleges and became apprentices. The moment you accept all kids are equal then you have started on the road of dumbing down expectation (becoming slaves of the government and welfare state). We need to challenge kids intellect and prepare them to challenge the system in turn.

Astradt1, so what if Malone worked for the NoW, you'll never find her supporting the tories, she;s an hard nosed realist who wrote that piece in the Labour rag top (Mirror).

state education with it's dumbing down agenda

Where's your EVIDENCE for this breathtakingly sweeping assertion???

Please try to find out what people who actually KNOW something are saying if you want to rubbish an entire section of society and a profession with a huge amount of skill and knowledge.

In the 'good old days' when kid who couldn't manage 'O' levels 'went on to technical colleges and became apprentices', there were, if you remember, apprenticeships for them to go into, trades for them to learn and jobs for them to get. Back in the day, we had manufacturing industries, mills, coal mines, steel works, ship yards, all that good stuff.

Kids aren't all equal, but all have an equal right to the best education, leading to the best life chances.
Currently a huge proportion of them seem to be doomed to zero hour contracts in the service sector, if they're lucky. Bit of a waste of potential talent, wouldn't you think?

Excuse a small drift off-topic (there is another "Gove" thread on the board) but although Education is of fundamental importance, the Tory-led coalition are desperately aware that the Nation's Economy is not going to improve significantly before the next General Election, and will have to make further cuts in expenditure particularly in the Welfare sector. 

Gideon is about to produce another of his forecasts, which will rely heavily upon the possibility of flogging a few odd bits of the Banking Industry so painfully acquired in 2008. He will no doubt make much of anticipated gains that can by now only accrue AFTER the election.

The trumpeted "Universal Pension" that was to equalise entitlement is already undergoing metamorphoses, meaning that the intended uprating of 2½% a year is no longer quite so "automatic" as it said on the tin.

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/06/its-time-hold-ministers-account-their-waste-public-money-starting-gove


Interesting article in this week's New Statesman - I was quite clear the Austerity measures were proving expensive - wonder how many realised how much more expensive Mr Gove's ideology driven, evidence free tinkering with the education system is?

The economic news for Britain today is that inflation (meant to be kept below 2%) has risen to 2.8% at a time when most wages are static.  Main components were food prices risen by 4.4% over last year (memo start that diet ASAP) and Air Fares - upon which the Passenger Taxes were increased by Gideon Osborne in each of the last two years.  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travelnews/9158289/Budget-2012-Air-Passenger-Duty-rise-confirmed.html

Can the Education budget survive the next round of cuts?  What do you think?

Being an excellent tool for dividing the voters and spoiling the life chances of working class kids, I'd guess Gove's budget is fairly safe

boatlady, my apologies if you believed I was faulting teachers, I wasn't. However even the best of teachers can only teach within the agenda they are allowed, it's the interference from local and national government that I'm against as both (even if accidental) are unable to stop petty interference purely for political reasons, as such education has suffered badly and Gove is doing what Labour hates and freeing the individual to think for themselves rather than be indoctrinated.

(see also interference in the NHS; interference in allocation of local resources; interference in Planning decisions; interference in Transport measures; interference in Police administration; interference in Public Broadcasting; interference in use of Public open spaces and school sports facilities, etcetera, etc., etc.)

freeing the individual to think for themselves rather than be indoctrinated.


not sure where rote learning comes in here, which seems to be one of the main planks of Mr Gove's philosophy of education (unless I've completely failed to understand what he's been saying)

To be able to free think a person first needs the tools to use, unfortunately examination and understanding the basics of English, Maths, Geography and History are the basic tools of education.

Sorry, didn't realise you were a teacher

No need to apologise boatlady, how are you meant to know based on a few posts. lol.

Have your emociocons  stopped working?

Recent Press comment suggests a direct correlation between the number of teenage dropouts and the number of children entitled to free school meals.

After so many years of compulsory free education, the outcome seems to  depend as much on family background as it does upon the quality of teaching.

Who's tackling that problem?  Not apparently the divisive Coalition.

I think Sure Start was beginning to have some effect with the pre-schoolers - I certainly had the impression that parents were beginning to feel more engaged with the school system and more able to speak up if they felt their child was not getting fair treatment. The Careers Service, too, was doing some good work with NEETS
Institutions are sometimes slow to change, and kids who see little future for themselves may well find it difficult to engage with education, or with the disciplines imposed by schools. The enjoyment of learning for its own sake is I believe rather rare - most people learn stuff they need to get on in life - if you don't think you're going to get on in life, I guess learning the Kings and Queens of England, the chemical composition of water, the full text of a Shakespeare play may seem a bit irrelevant to some.
I have been married to two people who failed maths at school, but later got quite good at it once they had a pay packet to open and a house and garden to look after.
Yes, tlttf, emoticons seem not to be working.

As usual, more means less.

tlttf wrote:-
Gove is doing what Labour hates and freeing the individual to think for themselves rather than be indoctrinated.

What utter bollocks; Gove is doing just the opposite. He's turning History teaching back into the rote learning of 'kings and things', the way the subject was taught until about the 1950s. Learning in parrot fashion lists of facts about the so-called glories of the British Empire is indoctrination - that doesn't teach anyone to think about and question anything.

Natalie Bennett, the leader of the Green Party, asks when Gove is going to take responsibility for failing free schools and academies and resign. This is a part of her article:-
 
"It is important that we look at the trend in what’s happening here: identify it and highlight it: the importing of the ethos of the City and the financial sector into schools – that the ‘superhead’, some kind of ‘educational master of the universe’ can transform through their will and brilliance an entire educational community, and in doing so they have a free hand. Of course we know how well that ended in the City: fraud, mismanagement and chaos.

The idea of more freedom for heads could and should be a positive – if Mr Gove stopped trying to dictate teaching methods (such as phonics), stopped shoving children through endless exams as though they were sausages, and dictating what literary texts they should read.

But that doesn’t mean there doesn’t need to be oversight – which should be local and democratic. Schools are there for their communities –and they should be controlled by those communities, through democratically elected councillors."
 
For the full article:-
http://liberalconspiracy.org/2013/10/07/when-will-michael-gove-take-responsibility-for-failing-free-schools-or-academies/

She does write rather well, doesn't she?

The Grand old Duke of York,
He had ten thousand men,
He marched them up to the top of the hill,
and he marched them down again.

Pre-dates modern educational administration by a couple of hundred years. but how well it describes the process.

“Free schools are a dangerous ideological experiment”, says Tristram Hunt
 
Extracts from an article by Nicholas Watt:-
 
Tristram Hunt, the shadow education secretary, has written to Michael Gove about the al-Madinah free school in Derby. He believes the school highlights one of the central flaws in Gove's free schools initiative – that there is minimal oversight.

In his letter to Gove, Hunt writes: "I know that you will be concerned as I am that one of your free schools has failed to provide the quality of education we should expect for our children. In this school, as well as others across the country, your policy is being exposed as a dangerous ideological experiment which has been allowed to run completely out of control."

Hunt said that he supported the right of parents, teachers and social entrepreneurs to set up schools. But he said Labour's parent-led academies would be different in three key respects: the new academies would open only in areas where there was a shortage of school places; they would have to employ properly qualified teachers; and there would be proper systems of financial accountability and transparency.

On the Andrew Marr show, he said: "What is going on with the al-Madinah school is a terrifying example of the mistakes of Gove's education policy. You have a system which allows essentially financial irregularities, allegations of extremist curriculum, teaching ideas contrary to British values because there is no oversight there."
 
For the full article:-
http://www.theguardian.com/education/2013/oct/15/free-schools-tristram-hunt-michael-gove

Such establishments seem to have been created more for purposes of child conditioning than for education.

Michael Gove deserves a kick in the privates from the heroes who work in our state schools
 
Extracts from an article by Fiona Phillips:-
 
“Gove pronounced this week that he wants state schools to be as good as their private counterparts. Oh right, you mean those educational establishments masquerading as charities, thereby securing tax breaks, yet turning down special needs pupils for fear of a downturn in their exam pass rates? The schools that charge for the privilege of taking their entrance exam, then ask parents to stump up fees as high as £30,000 a year? If only state schools were as good as that, Mr Gove.

The fact is, they ARE. And it is a huge insult to teachers who’ve chosen to teach in the state sector because they want educational equality, to say otherwise. It is massively offensive to abuse state teachers with this shaky private versus public comparison, when there is no comparison.

Private schools are a business. They profit from education. Class sizes are small. There’s not much need for pastoral care, or delicate management of damaged children. There are no special needs skills needed. They do not spend time knocking on doors trying to coax children into school for their exams; nor dealing with abusive or addicted parents, or providing clothes for those who come in ill-equipped for life, never mind education. They have not had to face funding cuts while Mr Gove ploughs money into the setting up of unregulated free schools.”
 
For the whole article:-
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/michael-gove-deserves-kick-privates-3123460