but as I barely saw the children today, I can’t really 
However, I have been doing some very educational research on my own part. You may have noticed that there’s been some talk in the press about an education White Paper, and some rebellious MPs who’ve written their own response. I was quite irritated to say the least that that was all I could find in the mainstream press – despite mention of a document, a website and a campaign, I didn’t find one link to it. I found several ppl who were also rather disgruntled about the lack of information though, and eventually, one individual discovered a link to the alternative paper on the Socialist Teachers Alliance site. The original white paper, a rather hefty document, can be find on Direct gov.
Now, I haven’t waded my way through the full paper, but I found the response rather depressing. Seemed to me that all the rebellion is about is LEAs losing control – haven’t noticed them being particularly accountable to the population anyway, so can’t see that that is going to make much difference one way or the other. I also find it depressing that nothing really fundamental is ever talked about – I read a wonderful report the other day about a school which is teaching in ability bands rather than age bands, but is anything along those lines being discussed? Nah, it’s just more of the same. Forgive me, but the statistics that are churned out at the beginning of the white paper are exactly what statistics are famous for being – utterly meaningless. And there’s an awful lot of forgetting that there won’t be one government minister’s child in any of the coasting or failing schools that are talked about.
They aren’t interested. The tories are even less interested. They all just want to maintain the status quo, and go on talking about the real world without ever going anywhere near it. And porting policies that have failed in America so that they can fail here – wonderful idea. Why didn’t I think of that.
Right, I’m not back in the office until Weds next week now, although I do have a day and a half of work to do, so expect something vaguely resembling normality to return here over the next day or so.
g’night all.
