Comments on Guy Fawkes' blog of parliamentary plots, rumours and conspiracy: Help Form Labour's Education Policy

Martin and Innocent Abroad,Isn't it about time tha...

2006-01-31T15:37:00.000Z

Martin and Innocent Abroad,
Isn't it about time that failing headteachers were removed or perhaps retrained because what the headteachers do now a days has very little to do with actual teaching.

School results tables should NOT be used to ascertain whether a school and its headteacher are failing. School results tables I think should be scrapped as they don't reflect some schools' true successes. My old school had lower success rate than a school in the neighbouring town but my school didn't select pupils on academic prowess as a result there were some real ignorant thickies going to my school and even they got some GCSEs but unfortunately not high enough grades to make the school look great.

Choice is great but it shouldn't be required in education for normal* children. Extra funding should be supplied to diagnose A.D.D., Dyslexia and other problems which might hamper a child's education so they get the extra help they need.

*-Not those with serious mental health problems which would effect there educational development. Choice maybe required to find a school best suited to dealing with their specific needs.

MartinI agree, schools are about heads. I remember...

2006-01-30T19:20:00.000Z

Martin

I agree, schools are about heads. I remember being a governor (LEA appointment) on a panel for appointing a deputy head teacher, because I was a ward councillor, I suppose. The process was a farce - the head knew who she wanted and so we did as she told us - when I asked the Vice-Chair of the Education Committee (this was in the bad old days of unpaid local councillors) - why we had wasted an evening, she told me it was because we could claim expenses for a selection panel!

A few years later, in the early 1980s, I was briefly an ILEA governor of a Catholic girls' school, and I still have fond memories of watching the Head (a nun, of course) squirm when I asked her what the Archdiocese of Westminster's policy on computers in schools was...

The trouble is that what the average parent means by "the best education my children can have" is, all too often, "better than other people's kids' education."

Hopefully Martin's school has a good Head who isn't looking for a better job elsewhere. One parental choice no party will ever offer him is the choice to transfer his kids to the school the head has moved to...

If all animals are equal, that doesn't mean we sho...

2006-01-30T16:39:00.000Z

If all animals are equal, that doesn't mean we should all be animalized.

NBAY,I have never seen a good school that has beco...

2006-01-30T16:38:00.000Z

NBAY,

I have never seen a good school that has become so because of the Government or a Civil Servant (and I have been to a few).

The reason has almost exclusively been a strong leader (Head) with some determination and vision.

There are schools where that has not happened and they stay in the doldrums and/or go on the slide.

Choice is about giving parents a way out of that situation because, by and large, they cannot influence it. It is also about sending a message to a school when it is in the doldrums (through declining numbers).

I should add that my kids go to the local Comprehensive (where I am a Governor).

what inequality?and how should it be eradicated?

2006-01-30T16:21:00.000Z

what inequality?
and how should it be eradicated?

I never understood this obsession with choice. If ...

2006-01-30T15:37:00.000Z

I never understood this obsession with choice. If politicians and civil servants did their jobs correctly and competently the public wouldn't need choice because all schools would be of the same high quality. This arguement could be applied to the health sector as well. When are MPs going to stop worrying about choice and start tackling what creates this need for choice; inequality.