Considerable credit must go to Pat Glass and to the rest of the Education Select Committee. Let them now look into the menagerie that is the Ministerial team in that Department. Gove himself. Dirty Betty Truss. David Laws, a far worse offender than Chris Huhne with his points for speeding. That sleepy-headed shirker and sciver, Matthew Hancock, who, when he grows up, wants to be George Osborne. Lord Nash, who has plainly and simply purchased both Ministerial office and a seat in our very legislature, a flagrant breach of the criminal law.
We may look with rather less hope to Stephen Twigg, a Blairite dinosaur who has ruled out the restoration of the Educational Maintenance Allowance, and whose job might therefore usefully be given to Rory Weal instead. But a new educational charity should elect to Associateship those pupils in
all schools who, on leaving the Sixth Form at 18, had attained since
beginning Year 10 examination results at or above the average in the
remaining state grammar schools, both in terms of the marks themselves,
and in terms of the range of subjects studied. It should also elect to
Fellowship those teachers whose pupils attained such results over 10
consecutive years.
Associateship would be automatic, so that hostile schools or whoever else would not be able to deny it to anyone. The most prestigious universities would be contacted in order to make the Associateship an admission requirement. And this charity would be called after a Labour politician who fought to defend the grammar schools as the ladder of working-class advancement. There are plenty to choose from: Ellen Wilkinson, George Tomlinson, Sidney Webb, R H Tawney, Eric Hammond, to name but a few.
That would be a start, anyway.
Associateship would be automatic, so that hostile schools or whoever else would not be able to deny it to anyone. The most prestigious universities would be contacted in order to make the Associateship an admission requirement. And this charity would be called after a Labour politician who fought to defend the grammar schools as the ladder of working-class advancement. There are plenty to choose from: Ellen Wilkinson, George Tomlinson, Sidney Webb, R H Tawney, Eric Hammond, to name but a few.
That would be a start, anyway.
"should be called after a Labour politician who fought to defend the grammar schools"
ReplyDeleteWhy don't you call it Anthony Crosland?
Otherwise, you'll have to go too far back. The 60's is far enough.
So your against scrapping GCSE's-the dumbed-down certificates of the mass consumer era, invented by neoliberal (Keith Joseph) who wanted to turn exams into a commodity so that anyone could get a certificate, whether or not they were any good.
And you support the Educational Maintenance Allowance?
Bribing people to stay on after 16 years of non-education at our useless schools, to hide the youth unemployment figures?
What fantastic insight you have.
It's always good to hear the true voice of UKIP, and of the Loony Right generally. A nasty class war party, really. All class war is on the Right these days. Has been for well over a decade, in fact.
ReplyDeleteYou have never heard of Eric Hammond, have you? I doubt that you have ever heard of most people of any real note or interest.
Call it after Gramsci, to annoy the Marxism Today veterans who became New Labour. Says it all that Blair-Milburn-Byers fan boy Michael Gove claims to be a Gramscian.
ReplyDeleteThat Ukip teenager who I see is at it again today on here, if you don't like neoliberals, why are you in Ukip? It is sure as hell not an economically patriotic Tory party that supports the classically Tory role of the State against the market.
But you have obviously been reading too much David Lindsay to stay long in Ukip. Criticising Keith Joseph? You'll be criticising the Great She-Elephant herself next. Naughty boy.
Ukip wants to restore student grants but you don't seem to know that. Says it all about how sincere the commitment really is. Mr L. is right: nasty late adolescent class (and race) warrior straight out of South American rightism. Don't know why you don't support the Coalition, a government after your own heart.
Nothing nasty or class-warrior about it.
ReplyDeletePeter Hitchens (whom I thought you liked) wrote an excellent piece on the Educational Maintenance Allowance entitled...""School till 17:? So daft even the copycat Tories won't go near it"".
Read it-you might learn something.
Lindsay, can you get your fan-boy to calm down, he's clearly upset somebody questioned his idol.
ReplyDeleteFor goodness sake, relax.
Anon thinks everyone in UKIP is a neoliberal-and that nationalisation was a "classic Tory" policy.
I didn't realise Clement Atlee was a Tory.
Don't speak to me like that, boy.
ReplyDeleteAnd there you have it, the UKIP line, also the line of the Loony Right in and around this Government, within which the Supreme Loony Righty is the now totally discredited and utterly preposterous Michael Gove: the only people who might need financial assistance in order to stay on in education are the sort of people who ought not to be there.
Anonymous 21:50 is right, so to speak: you are a latter-day Pinochet Boy, the type that wants the rich and white east of Bolivia to secede with American backing, the type that keeps trying to stage coups in Venezuela.
Long after we ceased to have a basically foreign, feral Left fuelled by student substances and teenage testosterone in this country (and we never did have all that much of one), we now have a basically foreign, feral Left fuelled by student substances and teenage testosterone, and we have only too much of one, including at the very heart of government.
I'm glad UKIP oppose the dreadful Educational Maintenance Allowance.
ReplyDeleteAs P. Hitchens rightly said it's a "weekly bribe" to keep sullen kids in school who would otherwise leave, thus extending the dreadful principle of comprehensive education upwards into A-Level classes.
All it does, is hide the unemployment figures, and ruin the class for those who actually want to be there.
Comprehensive school till 16 in our country is bad enough.
This just makes school till 18 just as bad.
Anonymous 21:55, you need to read more Peter Hitchens.
ReplyDeletePoint proved.
ReplyDeleteYou really do believe that the only people whose families might need this money in order to enable them to stay on at school are "sullen" and what have you.
Why must they be? Why, because their families might need this money in order to enable them to stay on at school. Of course.
Very Blairite. Just ask Stephen Twigg, who agrees with you.
Don't get too bitter over there, old chap, just because you were exposed for talking an amusing amount of nonsense in public.
ReplyDelete""the only people who might need financial assistance in order to stay on in education are the sort of people who ought not to be there.""
Ah, I see, your too thick to get the point-you obviously haven't read Hitchens as closely as you say!
Comprehensive education fails because it jumbles in the hard-working and the talented, with the shirkers and the talentless.
Bribing kids to stay on, when they wouldn't otherwise, turns A-level classes into the same thing.
The sort of people who need weekly bribes to stay on at school, are the sort of people who don't want to be there.
No, you stupid, spoilt little boy, they are the sort of people who could not otherwise afford to be there.
ReplyDeleteI don't why you care, it's not as if they'd be at the same school as you.