barmy schools plan

**English assassin** · 10-11-2005, 16:03

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4330806.stm

By the end of this third term, I [Blair] want every school that wants to be to be able to be an independent, non fee-paying state school, with the freedom to innovate and develop in the way it wants and the way the parents of the school want, subject to certain common standards."

The forthcoming White Paper from the Education Secretary Ruth Kelly is expected to suggest ways in which schools can innovate and which parents can have more choice.

Do my ears deceive me? A Labour government is going to impliment what was basically the Tory education policy at the 2001 election, ie abolish LEAs in all but name?

Have they gone mad? I couldn't bring myself to defend that policy when it was ours, because it was so obviously not going to work. Who was going to plan to match numbers of places to children? Who was going to look after special educational needs? Where were all the extra thousands of switched on governors etc going to come from when each school was essentially a stand alone business? What were we going to do when "parental choice" turned out to mean "mono-ethnic fundamentalist religious schools"?

OK, the Labour government is now officially more right wing than I am. More stupid too, but then I already knew that.

**BDC** · 10-11-2005, 16:18

Nothing wrong with this in theory. If my school had kicked out about three kids from my year I would have had a much better time at school. But they couldn't because of stupid government targets. So they stayed in school until they failed their GCSEs.

**Big King Sanctaphrax** · 10-11-2005, 16:32

This whole parent choice idea is complete rubbish. Parents are going to choose-suprise, suprise-the best schools. So, assuming the schools aren't improved, nothing's going to change. You're just going to have the better schools able to pick who goes to them, and the pupils they discard being forced to go to sinkholes no-one wants to touch.

I suppose it will prevent people moving into catchment areas and stealing places, but I don't think that's that serious a problem anyway. The solution is to actually make schools better, rather than setting up fudges like this.

**English assassin** · 10-11-2005, 16:45

This whole parent choice idea is complete rubbish. Parents are going to choose-suprise, suprise-the best schools. So, assuming the schools aren't improved, nothing's going to change. You're just going to have the better schools able to pick who goes to them, and the pupils they discard being forced to go to sinkholes no-one wants to touch

In a nutshell. At the risk of repeating myself, the idea of choice and a market to drive up standards is fine, IF you are willing to let the market do its thing. That means bad providers have to be allowed to fail and collapse.

Now that's OK for something like a sandwich shop but its a bit tough on the kids who happen to be at the school while it is failing and collapsing. Sure, a better school may emerge in five years time, but that won't help them much unless they feel like being the only 23 year olds in sixth form. And they can't go to the better schools now because (and now I am repeating myself) schools aren't scalable. There are only so many children a good teacher can teach, only so many classes a good headteacher can manage, and so on.

**Geoffrey S** · 10-11-2005, 16:49

It seems to be the Labour Party's style nowadays, to edge in on what would traditionally be Tory policies. The way this policy would work would divide schools ever more sharply into the 'good' and the 'bad' schools, with bad schools struggling to keep up.

**Duke Malcolm** · 10-11-2005, 17:02

Tsk Tsk, Tony's stealing Tory plots... Some independence to schools would not be altogether bad, but complete control isn't good, especially if they abolish the LEA. It must be better than what they are doing up here, though. They are abolishing the school boards, and making a city-wide (or region-wide, I think) forum of parents with no actual power and a mere advisory role...

**King Henry V** · 10-11-2005, 17:23

Damn it, I say bring back grammar schools and sencondary moderns, and those going to grammar should be the only ones allowed to get into proper universities, not glorified polytechnics such as Bournemouth and Luton.