Politics, politics, politics (so long and thanks for all the fish)

[thfcsteff]

There are a lot of depictions of violence in the bible, but mostly in the old testament (the bit shared with jewish and islamic texts). I am not religious but i was brought up as a catholic and taken to Sunday school and mass (in latin) every Sunday until my grand parents died.

The teachings of Jesus are pretty much entirely against violence and "those who live by the sword will die by the sword" was coined in the bible.

I know mate...that was generally my point...

 

[scaramanga]

I


I see the reasoning behind your view on employment, and historically it is hard to argue. I think where Ai will be the most damaging is in the creative/artistic fields, and I fear that TBH.

I agree that 'protected' bricky teachers need to be made redundant and not protected by a vehicle not designed to specifically protect them.

I have not done the numbers, but a 5k tax rebate would not make private education any
more affordable to those who want a better education for their children but find private school too expensive I don't believe? Maybe a tax rebate reflecting 50% of the total fees per year? Bear in mind I am in 'spitball' mode and this could be an awful suggestion for many reasons...

I chose £5k as it cost around £8k a year to educate a child in the state system - there's room for that number to increase, but it would be a good way of proving the point. This is probably enough to tip the balance for a decent number of parents but would leave the state with more money to spend on educating those that remain.

It's such an obvious win/win and could be implemented with almost no admin. In fact, I'd bet the independent schools would do the admin on behalf of the taxman in return for the increased submissions. They'd only have to submit the NI numbers of the parents that have kids in the school.

But, unfortunately, we live in an era where the display of politics is far more important than the efficacy. There are still far too many bitter, envious Labour voters (although Reform probably have them now) for them to put through such a policy. Far too many people would see their own child's education suffer than see others succeed (see the popularity of Reeves's raid on the independent sector).

Edit:
BTW, your "half the annual fees" is pretty much exactly the £8k the government would save, based on the average yearly fees for private education. I think the principle still works, but I think the number has to be smaller to show that for each child entering the independent sector, the govt has more to spend per child in the state sector.

 

[scaramanga]

Don’t disagree with your first point and can see some truth in the second point. For me, though, the biggest problems facing education today are:

1. The prevalence of poor parenting skills, frequently - but not exclusively - linked to technology use, both by pupils at home and their parents. This is also linked to the desire of many parents to be their child’s best friend, rather than their parent.

2. The difficulty for schools in dealing promptly with those who disrupt the learning of others.

3. The hollowing out of state services has led to teachers having to work in areas (such as social care and mental health) in which they receive only the most basic training, and which take up far too much of their focus in lessons.

All of that is very true.

Parents always have been, by far, the biggest indicator in the likely outcomes to a child's life. My wife used to teach in some terrible, sink estate state schools and was always the first person to suggest to A* pupils that college and university were possibilities. I think I'm staying the right side of data protection if I tell you that one kid she taught got a scholarship to an Ivy League university when his parents weren't even considering college. She bumped into a friend of his a few years later and found out he was working, fixing pavements. "Because that's what his dad does and he never needed university"

But even the perfect measures to fix that are, by their nature, a generation away from taking effect. They also need to be combined with some joined up thinking and departmental cooperation () on benefit reform.

Solving the parental issues would go most of the way to sorting the behavioural ones. Some of it can be dealt with by making the curriculum more relevant to those kids too though. That's where the grammar school system worked so well. Those suited to an academic education got one, without disruption from those more suited to learning trades and skills that would benefit their likely career paths. Those teachers who were freed from the pressures of academic education could spend more time focusing on behaviour management.

But the politics of envy will always make such improvement impossible. For the last three decades the focus has been on providing equality by dragging down the top, rather than just giving each child the best education possible and ignoring comparisons.