BS: How to kill off hope.

Subject: BS: How to kill off hope.
From: Lox
Date: 29 May 10 - 05:44 AM

Here's how.

You take an education budget that is needed to rebuild and support failing schools in poor areas, and you redirect it into affluent ares so it can be spent by well off parents who have no experience in education or how to run schools.

Just as the new British gvernment is going to do with its new "free" schools programme.

(To clarify, by "free" they don't mean no fees, they mean unfetterred by the concerns of local education authority professionals with a lifetime of experience)

The first victims of the post credit crunch austerity measures will be poor children.

And the bankers who should be taking responsibility, will instead, after benefitting from unprecedented profits, have access to the public purse to build exclusive schools for their kids.

This team are gonna make Thatchers team look restrained.

Institute of Fiscal Studies.

Subject: RE: BS: How to kill off hope.
From: Bobert
Date: 29 May 10 - 07:14 AM

Same on this side of the pond, Lox... We have government vouchers for kids to go to "charter schools", i.e. "private" schools... Yeah this tax money that could go into public education that is taken away to support private education...

(But, Boberdz... Some of them vouchers go to kids that aren't wealthy...)

Yeah, they do... But it doesn't change the fact that the money has to come from some place... Ain't comin' outta the militart budget, that is fir sure...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: How to kill off hope.
From: Lox
Date: 29 May 10 - 07:46 AM

Thing is - in the UK the top schools will be rewarded for making the change.

So it'll be easier for kids in Well off areas right from the start.

Also, realistically, the areas which are most likely to get organized are well off areas where people already have the money and spare time to commit.

Poor working families who commute and can't aford childcare and live in broken communities have infinitely greater obstacles in their path.

Who loses?

The most vulnerable sector of society - disadvantaged children - the ones for wom education reform is most needed.


Then once all the good state schools have gone private and the bad state schools have become worse due to their funds being siphoned away, the tories will say: "look - see - those schools who opted into our program have improved so much - those schools which remained state schools got worse - this proves that local education authorities don't work and that our idea was better for schools."

You wait and see.

Subject: RE: BS: How to kill off hope.
From: Bobert
Date: 29 May 10 - 08:12 AM

Same here, Lox... Most of the "underperforming" schools are in areas with large numbers of kids from families living under or at the poverty line... These are the same schools that are being closed??? Yup, rather than try to get them to perform better they are punished or closed... The problem is that there are greater reasons why kids don't learn at the same speed than just the schools... To ignore the socioeconomic aspects is rather short sighted...

Yes, there are some schools in in those areas that do do better just as there are in afflunet areas but that isn't reason to close schools down... Fix 'um...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: How to kill off hope.
From: Rapparee
Date: 29 May 10 - 08:30 AM

Dammit, Bobert, you some kind of tax-and-spend liberal? You'd take the bread out of the mouths of children just because their parents make over $250,000 a year? Do you want to deprive some child of his or her inalienable right to a dirt bike or a family vacation at Hilton Head with their nanny? Besides, everyone knows that poor kids aren't as smart of the children of well-off families and...wait a minute. my family wasn't well-off...hmmm...never mind.

Subject: RE: BS: How to kill off hope.
From: Leadfingers
Date: 29 May 10 - 08:51 AM

The Conservative Party have ALWAYS stuck to the good old Biblical precedent - To he that hath shall be given even unto abundance , to he that not shall be taken away even the little that he hath !

Subject: RE: BS: How to kill off hope.
From: Bill D
Date: 29 May 10 - 11:03 AM

They follow The Golden Rule.

"He that hath the gold, makes the rules"

Subject: RE: BS: How to kill off hope.
From: GUEST,999
Date: 29 May 10 - 04:13 PM

This shit's been going on for close to thirty years. The time to stop it was then. People bought into the so-called "business model" of education, and education has been seriously fucked since.

Subject: RE: BS: How to kill off hope.
From: Dave MacKenzie
Date: 29 May 10 - 06:51 PM

There are still some people around here living in hope - "Hope (Welsh: Yr Hob) is a small village in Flintshire, north-east Wales. The village is located approximately 3 miles / 4.5 km from the Wales-England border, on the course of the River Alyn.

Hope belongs to a small group of closely related villages in its local area, including Caergwrle, Abermorddu and Cefn-y-bedd. One of the major features in the area is Hope Mountain (Mynydd yr Hob), to the west of the village, along with the extensive farmland of Shordley. At the 2001 Census, the population was 2,522."

Subject: RE: BS: How to kill off hope.
From: Ebbie
Date: 29 May 10 - 08:56 PM

And 137 people living in hope in Alaska:

"Hope is located at 60°55′10″N 149°38′31″W / 60.91944°N 149.64194°W / 60.91944; -149.64194 (60.920280, -149.64028)[1] (Sec. 33, T010N, R002W, Seward Meridian). Hope is located in the Seward Recording District.

"Hope lies on the northern end of Kenai Peninsula, on the south shore of the Turnagain Arm of Cook Inlet. The community lies on the 17-mile Hope Highway, northwest of the Seward Highway, near the mouth of Resurrection Creek. Winter temperatures range from 14 to 27; summer temperatures vary from 45 to 65. Average annual precipitation is 20 inches.

"According to the United States Census Bureau, the CDP has a total area of 51.8 square miles (134.1 km²), of which, 51.7 square miles (133.9 km²) of it is land and 0.1 square miles (0.2 km²) of it (0.15%) is water."

So let's not kill off Hope.

Subject: RE: BS: How to kill off hope.
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 30 May 10 - 06:08 AM

Yep.. Trusts and Academies run by quangos of affluent business men and women.

Some Local Authorities are already itching to rid themselves of the Schools part of the Schools, Children and Family burden. Social care is being outsourced. Why shouldn't Education as well? Those education professionals cost a lot of money and have the "gold plated pensions" everyone is whinging about.

Getting very scary in Essex. With internal services that help the real services taking over more and more.

We have EPF, taking over all the buildings owned by Essex County Council and the budgets and on site posts for managing the buildings. Another layer to get through in order to get any kind of repair done and now that they have empire built up their portfolio, they are considering selling to some company to manage it.

We have Communications team taking all the budgets and work from specific officers who market and create literature for respective services. These officers have specialist knowledge that Comms doesn't. We have CDS doing all reprographic work. We have Finance and Procurement centralising, taking budgets, removing specially trained staff from services and controlling who we can purchase goods and services from. All of these internal teams charge us for the work they do leaving less money for providing actual service to the public. So audience development officer may not design brochures for her team any longer or use a local printer who may be cheaper, do better job and supports business in the community, to publish print goods.

We are forced to use substandard generic ink cartridges which break our printers and we pay the same price for them as we would name brand products. Admin spend hours working through labrynthine systems for purchasing, receipting, invoicing, booking travel, recording comments and enquiries, often duplicating same work in several systems and having to pay for the privilege of having the system installed on PCs and staff trained to use it. Well the council has to pay for the development or purchase of these systems somehow, so it comes out of moneys that deliver front line public service.

Yet the council members (majority tory) just voted themselves an 8.3% raise for expenses. They have a special restaurant with black tie wait staff where last year £41,000 of public money was spent on their meals (including wine and not the cheap stuff). They spent £7,000 on biscuits, £15,000 on tea and coffee. Workers have to pay for their own tea and coffee. \you telling me councillors can;t afford to put £ 3 to£5 per month into a tea club or buy from a vending machine like everone else? Oh yeah! They have free vending machines. Don't want that KitKat break to break them, now do we?

It all makes me sick. Where I work, we have dubbed it Biscuitgate.

sorry... anger affects my ability to diagram proper sentences... but you get my drift.

Subject: RE: BS: How to kill off hope.
From: Bobert
Date: 30 May 10 - 08:28 AM

Sorry, Rap, musta lost my head???

But seriously, I do resent my federal tax dollars going to vouchers to send kids to schools where they will be propagandized to hate the government... Seems there is something drastically wrong withusing tax dollars for that...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: How to kill off hope.
From: Lox
Date: 30 May 10 - 08:30 AM

"Yep.. Trusts and Academies run by quangos of affluent business men and women."

Exactly.

And this from the Government whose platform was that they were going to save money by shutting down "the quangos".

Subject: RE: BS: How to kill off hope.
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 31 May 10 - 07:52 AM

Essex County has appx 600 schools with over 9000 governors (volunteer parents, teachers, retired and still working business people) who monitor how the headteachers run the schools, finances, policies, facilities, and educational targets. There is one governing body per school and the size of governing body is based on school type and demographic.

The people on governing bodies give up their time to make certain schools in their communities are safe, fair, efficient and effective. They help the school adhere to local and national policies and standards. They take training on their own time. Local authorities typically have a Governor Services to provide advice, support and training.

A quango is a non-government body of typically non education professionals.

Wiki snip

Criticism

Depending upon one's point of view, the separation of a quango from government might be either to allow its specified functions to be more commercially exercised, independently of politics and changeable government priorities, and unencumbered by civil service practices and bureaucracy; or else to allow an elected minister to exercise patronage, and extend their influence beyond their term of office, while evading responsibility for the expenditure of public money and the exercise of legal powers.
The Times has accused quangos of bureaucratic waste and excess.[7] In 2005 Dan Lewis, author of The Essential Guide to Quangos, for example, claimed that the UK had 529 quangos, many of which were useless and duplicated the work of others. In August 2008 a report by the right-leaning pressure group the Taxpayers' Alliance, claimed that £15 billion was being wasted by the regional development agencies, quangos set up with the stated goal of encouraging economic development in their respective English regions.[8]

end snip

I used to work in Governor Services until it was restructured in 2008, teasing the training side away from the advice and support so the training side could be combined with other saleable school services into a traded service. This break up started shortly after ECC Governor Services received an Outstanding rating from OFSTED. If it ain't broken... Fix it until it is.

When it was one combined cohesive service there was room for career growth as training side admin learned the ropes of the advice and support and creating the courses. Now advice and support has to get approval for what training the training side will produce and provide. Before we could create school specific training and set specific training for clusters of schools which gave the schools much more choice.
To make matters worse the person managing the new traded services was the head of professional development for teachers and has always (still has to my knowledge) an attitude that schools don't need governing bodies and so training is wasted on them. When we we separate, he was loath to provide tutors from his team to supply some of our training and conference workshops.

I should say that I have some personal issues with the whole thing. I really loved that job, the work and the people. I believed in what we were doing. Not many people are so fortunate.   The restructure crashed my career expectations as I was on my way to moving from admin to officer. Now at 52 I am stuck in terminal and potentially expendable admin post. But if this government dispenses with school governing bodies, then the old job was equally at risk.

It is all messed up.

Subject: RE: BS: How to kill off hope.
From: sapper82
Date: 31 May 10 - 08:52 AM

"This shit's been going on for close to thirty years. The time to stop it was then. People bought into the so-called "business model" of education, and education has been seriously fucked since."

Not sure what side of the pond you're on, Guest 999, but education this side has been seriously fucked and getting worse since the '60s when Comprehensive schools were introduced.
From my own, short lived, experiences of teaching in Derby, the biggest obsticle in the way of improving the system is the "Local Education Authority," with it's entrenched left wing bias that seems to survive changes of council administration.

Subject: RE: BS: How to kill off hope.
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 31 May 10 - 10:51 AM

I don't agree Sapper. I am from the other side of the pond and have been living on your side for near a decade.

The main obstacle to good education is apathy and poverty. Apathy tends to be a product of poverty. Historically the conservatives did not make certain that impoverished areas receive the kind of support needed. I do not see that this will change with this administration.

Subject: RE: BS: How to kill off hope.
From: Lox
Date: 02 Jun 10 - 06:04 PM

Here we go.

So the process of diverting resources from the schools that need it most to the schools that are already doing fine begins here.

There isn't even any attempt to disguise it.

Gove is an idiot.


Damage.

Subject: RE: BS: How to kill off hope.
From: GUEST,999
Date: 02 Jun 10 - 06:44 PM

I`m in Canada, Sapper. My condolences.

Subject: RE: BS: How to kill off hope.
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 03 Jun 10 - 01:56 PM

One way is to keep telling people things are hopeless and that there is no way out of poverty and no one will ever hire anyone who is Danish but if they did the jobs are all being outsourced anyway and illegal immigrants are taking all the jobs anyway and students can not learn with 30 kids in a classroom although they learned with 60 kids in a classroom in the olden days and probably are right now in Camaroon etc. and that they can't be expected to behave properly because of all the strikes against them so they deserve to go around intimidating people and it is their right to wear immodest clothing and spikes and tatoos and bring their dogs to work and have children out of wedlock etc. etc.

Fortunately, there are some who fail to listen to this and some who listen but forge ahead anyway and stay in a bad school and don't get pregnant and patch together jobs and somehow survive..a few will prosper..many more would have joined the middle class had they had some minimal advising and hopeful conversations with someone. You can't fix everyone all the time but you can fix many people ..or their circumstances..quite a bit of the time with resources at hand. mg

Subject: RE: BS: How to kill off hope.
From: oggie
Date: 03 Jun 10 - 02:21 PM

In Hull they replaced two failing schools with a brand new £15 million school, it too is failing, back in Special Measures again and now rumoured to be closed and moved again less than ten years after opening. Before any more money is spent on any scheme there needs to be a long hard look at what actually works and plans developed to roll thatout. Just throwing money at new schools hasn't worked, neither has a totally prescriptive National Curriculum nor many of the initiatives of the last thirty or more years.

It may be that there isn't an answer, the truth may be that in areas where no value or pupose is seen in education then education will always be fighting to keep it's head above water no matter how much is spent.

Steve