Labour education policy.... the mess gets even worse....

Bright pupils let down by State Schools

Position;

Reseach commissioned by the Government shows that the brightest pupils at primary school go on to under-achieve in the comprehensive system. According to the research the most politically explosive finding was the direct relationship between the number of bright children in a school and individual achievement.

The abolition of grammar schools, the Labour Governments withdrawal of the assisted places scheme and the general disapproval of "streaming" within the education establishment has left bright primary school pupils to substantially under-achieve in secondary education.

OK, so get this;

• How is it that in 2005 the Government can be surprised at this finding when any bloody idiot knows this.
• How is it that it is "politically explosive"?
• Can it be that only the myopic education establishment, one of the first and last bastions of the left-wing "equality agenda", can possibly be challenged by this finding?
• Can it be that the education establishment, allowed only to flourish as a result of being in the government controlled, producer monopoly has allowed GENERATIONS of school kids to be let down.
• Can it be that this system, rotten to the core, has particularly let down the bright sons and daughters of poor families who would, in previous generations (like my father as it happens) have climbed out of poverty as a result of a search for academic excellence fostered by the meritocratic grammar schools? How likely is it that I would still be in a council estate in South Wales if my father had been born 20 years later?
• Did I do well also because I was in a comprehensive school that "streamed" its pupils. Was my school unique in largely abandoning "streaming" not long after I left (late 1970's).
• Can it be that this is a reason why the UK's social mobility ranking has collapsed over the past 25 years according to a recent survey? It is now far more likely that wealth of parents bring success as compared with our parents generation.
• Can it be that the governments response to this will be to continue to bully the Universities into accepting poorer results thereby creating a perverse incentive to have kids in bad schools in the latest part of their secondary schoolingl life?

While I can buy my daughter out of this disgraceful system, most people cannot. At the same time our schools are generating teenage girls whose under-age pregnancy figures are the worst in Europe. Is this the government who targeted a 50% reduction by 2010 and who saw yet another increase this year?

• Can this be the education system whose legions of "special advisors" send by the education establishment to combat this matter (another example of where our tax funded increases in education actually goes) has found that those areas with the greatest amount spent on special advisors had the greatest INCREASE in teenage pregnancy?
• Is this the year that three sisters aged 12, 14 and 16 all had babies?
• Did our "special advisor" who is paid for by our taxes say in response; "The age is not what is relevant, it's the quality of the parenting and the support given to enable them to be effective parents."

Are we Alice? Are we in Wonderland?

Can I have my taxes back please.