So Labour might do badly in the forthcoming local elections, two years before the General Election? So what? Governing parties do that routinely. There is plenty of time yet for the Tories to slip up.
Even the Cameron-loving media pack will have a job selling the probable Tory showing at the next by-election as any sort of triumph, although they will certainly give it a go. But I have a hunch that a long-suffering Oxfordshire publican will finally tell the Bullingdon Club to stick their cash, he’ll see them in court. Then the dominoes really will start to fall.
So enough of this speculation about handing over to David “differentials within schools are about which teacher you are given” Miliband (I was there when he said it), or to Ed Balls, who can barely form words with his mouth. Miliband bought a baby on the Internet, and Balls and his wife fiddle their housing expenses. Neither has ever worked outside high politics.
But both went to Oxford, Balls from a public school (mysteriously unmentioned in his Who’s Who entry) and Miliband from one of those economically elite pseudo-comprehensives. And that is the key.
Fleet Street and the BBC, yes, we do now have the first ever Prime Minister to hold a degree but not an Oxbridge one. Deal with it.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
What is wrong with the statement that "differentials within schools are about which teacher you are given?"
ReplyDeleteYou really are an apparatchik!
ReplyDeleteI suggest that you do as Miliband did, and say this to a Fabian Society audience, largely made up, as such audiences are, of teachers. It did not go down well...
In the best Ed Balls tradition of expertise on state schools, Jon has never set foot in one in his life, and affects what he imagines to be the accent and tastes of the lower orders.
ReplyDeleteThese days, I suspect that he has reverted to his natural accent and speaks like George Osborne, only posher.
ReplyDeleteMiliband didn't really say that, did he? The man's an alien, not from this planet at all. I'd almost consider re-joining Labour in order to vote against him for Leader if he really did say this.
ReplyDeleteDavid, you appear to be unaccountably not posting my comments (this being, I think, the third I have submitted). How reasoned a response to a debate.
ReplyDeleteDo you think this is reasonable behaviour for a man who aspires to be a politician? Put it this way, do you think that if in a serious debate, David Miliband simply refused to answer a question put to him, and simply allowed others to post ad hominem attacks, you would think more or less of him?
You won't post this either, but I'm relaxed about that. Because I know that you will have read this, and you will know what I think of someone who conducts political discussions in this way. But think on my point, David.
ta ta
Well, you know what I think of people who post "where is my comment" comments.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, back on topic, please.
David is not an aspirant politician, he's an actual one.
ReplyDeleteHe is a worthy successor to the Reverend Herbert Dunnico, MP for the same seat that David is going to win, and the first Labour MP ever to vote (because of his anti-war principles) against a Labour Government.
Dunnico is actually one of the subjects of one of the works on that ever-expanding list, The Books That I Will Eventually Get Round To Writing.
ReplyDeleteThe interaction in his person of Baptist ministry, parliamentary Socialism, pacifism, and Freemasonry will be one chapter of one of those books.
Another chapter will be on Robert Bradford as Methodist minister, British-Israelite, and integrationist, Monday Clubbing MP. A third will be on the strange case of James G MacManaway, and the ambivalence of the Church of Ireland as formally disestablished yet culturally (and in a few legal ways) not in Northern Ireland. And I need a fourth.
But anyway, back on topic.
Who does this Jon think he is?
ReplyDeleteHe's a mass murderer, not jon. As a supporter of the war in Iraq, he has murdered a million people.
ReplyDeleteOk on topic - do you, Dvaid, or others, think Miliband was factually wrong to say what he said?
ReplyDeleteWell, they certianly did, and they are the experts. The real experts. Not Adonis-style "education experts" who have simply declared themselves to be so and been taken entirely at face value in the corridors of power. Perhaps we should all do that? You seem to have started already.
ReplyDeleteWell sadly they are wrong. And actually teachers do believe this. You could take my word for it, or you could read
ReplyDelete-McKinsey, "How the world class school systems come out on top"
http://tinyurl.com/5f2pls
- OECD, "Teachers matter: attracting, developing and retaining effective teachers"
http://tinyurl.com/632pyr
- US National Council on Teacher Quality
http://tinyurl.com/632pyr
- Dylan Wiliam, Professor of education at Institute of Education, "Searching for the dark matter of teacher quality"
http://tinyurl.com/3rb23z
But what's that? These aren't 'experts'? We need to hear from teachers? Well how about
- Evidence provided to School Teacher Review Body 2006 (by all teacher trade unions except the NUT)
http://tinyurl.com/4epqn4
- Speeches by Steve Munby and Christine Gilbert, both former headteachers, to the headteachers conferecne 2007
http://tinyurl.com/6cpj3v
Decades of education research have proved without doubt that a high quality teacher matters more than anything else within a school as to a child's performance. Fact. And accepted by the teaching unions (who then argue that pay should rise to attract more gifted professionals into teaching)
"Decades of education research have proved without doubt that a high quality teacher matters more than anything else within a school as to a child's performance."
ReplyDeleteWell, nobody needed to conduct any research there. But it's not the same thing at all.
Jon is the greatest ever expert on the state education system, even though he has absolutely zero experience of it.
ReplyDeleteIf you cut open that belly of his, would all the Iraqi, Afghan, Palestinian and Lebanese babies spring out and return to life?
No, that's Oliver Kamm. Or maybe Douglas Murray. Babies are only little, you know.
ReplyDeleteAnd there are no such people as Palestinians, don't you know. They don't exist. So it is not that all Palestinains must die; it is that all Arabs must die. It says so in the Euston Manifesto, and in the Statement of Principles of the Henry Jackson Society. Or, at least, it might as well.
But do try and play nicely.
And Jon sometimes claims (as much to my surprise as to anyone else's) to have attended at a state school (he's certainly not MAJOR public - I can tell that much). If he really did, then it was definitely "one of those economically elite psuedo-comprehensives".
So he's only protecting his own. It's almost quite sweet. But it isn't.
I've just arrived on this thread, and I'm confused: I've always assumed that good teachers provide children with a better education than bad teachers, and I'm surprised you disagree. What am I missing? What's the argument here?
ReplyDelete(By the way, I went to a state school with some good teachers and some bad teachers. I enjoyed the lessons with the good teachers more than I enjoyed the lessons with the bad teachers, and my results in the subjects where I was taught by good teachers were better than my results in the subjects where I was taught by bad teachers.)
Also, he said "differentials within schools are about which teacher you are given" seems reasonable enough to me - he's talking about differentials within schools, not between them. What do you think differentials within schools are about, David?
ReplyDeleteBut Miliband's and Jon's position is ludicrously simplistic, and is just about blaming teachers. What if you are given the bottom set? Somebody has to be.
ReplyDeleteBut Miliband and Jon don't really have a concept of the bottom set, at least not as most people would understand the term. People like that simply weren't let into their old schools in the first place.
That's certainly the case with Miliband. If it isn't with Jon, then I don't know what his excuse is. Does he?
Most of my subjects didn't have setting anyway.
ReplyDeleteSurely, though, you must agree that the quality of teachers has a massive impact on the quality of education, and on educational outcomes? Isn't this just common sense?
Of course it is. It's the suggestion that there's nothing else to it which is absurd.
ReplyDeleteHe doesn't say it's only about that, does it? I'm sure there are other factors (obviously), but I'd probably agree with him that it's the main factor. I think your outrage is somewhat manufactured.
ReplyDeleteWhen exactly was this speech? Is it online?
ReplyDeleteDo you think you are/were a good teacher?
ReplyDeleteI was there, little peter.
ReplyDeleteAs for teaching, I was only ever on supply. I enjoyed a lot of it, but I was glad when something else came up just as supply worked dried up after the exams. The people who run things are the Milibands and Jons of the world, with absolutely no idea what conditions are like in most schools.
Have you ever noticed, and do you not recall, how different pupils in the same class and with the same teachers very oftne do or did totally differently depending on their family backgrounds? Why does nobody ever mention this?