BBC NEWS | Education | Teachers jeer children's minister

BBC NEWS | Education | Teachers jeer children’s minister

Rona Tutt, a delegate from Hertfordshire, had asked the minister what she was going to do to reform the “test-ridden education system”.

Ms Hughes responded by saying headteachers’ views were important “but it’s not the only perspective”.

She said: “The views of parents are also important.”

They really are making it easy to get political today. Headteacher’s views are indeed not the only perspective. There are class teachers, the majority of whom think the tests are too much. Parents, who think the tests are too much. Children, who think the tests are too much. Are you spotting the pattern yet? In fact, about the only group who seem to think the tests are judged right are politicians, many of whom don’t have a clue what mainstream education is like as they didn’t go and they didn’t send their children either.

(Incidentally, the article appears to have been edited while I was writing this and now reads very differently to how it did 45 minutes ago. Sorry.)

I’m tempted to say that I think our children’s education is far too important to be used as a political football, and that only ppl who have actually have experience of it should be involved in deciding policy, but I think you get a whole load of fools involved that way too. What I am sure of is that the current system of plucking ideas out of the air and implementing them across the entire country without paying any attention to the stakeholders (parents and their children, and to a lesser extent, teachers) is absolutely ludicrous and should be stopped.