The report also says that 300,000 16 year old English students leave school every year without a good enough understanding of maths to function in everyday life.

Firstly, the motivation for commissioning this report: the British government intends to force English children to stay at school until they are 18 by 2013.  The report gives the “evidence” required to justify the requirement to send your children to school for another two years.  There will be more reports like this as 2013 gets closer to show that the British government are doing the “right thing”.

Secondly, the reason why English kids are getting such poor results: inadequate funding and a lack of grammar schools.  The British government spends significantly less on education in England than the Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish.  I’ve not heard any mention of problems with numeracy in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland so presumably the extra funding they get from English taxes has resulted in a better education.

I’ll concentrate more on the lack of a functioning grammar school system as I’ve done the funding thing to death on this blog over the years.  It’s an indisputable fact that some people are thinkers and some people are doers.  Some people’s brains are wired for academic education and some are wired for vocational education.  The two tier education system that we used to have with grammar schools catered for this difference by filtering out the children that were capable of an academic education and sending them to grammar schools and sending those that weren’t capable of a purely (or primarily) academic education to comprehensive schools where they could get a well-rounded education.

There is no shame in the grammar school system – you get the type of education you need, rather than everyone getting the same type of education regardless of suitability.  It’s not surprising that half of all English children are leaving school without a C in their maths GCSE’s, some kids are just never going to get algebra, geometry, statistics, etc.  They need a vocation education with education by practical example rather than pure theory.  When the national grammar school system was in place, it gave opportunities to many academically gifted children from deprived backgrounds who would otherwise have seen their talent wasted.

Now back to the motivation for commissioning this report: building the back story for the increase in the school leaving age in England in two years time.  When this first came up I questioned how it would work and who would pay for it …

Add to that the question of what will happen to families moving between England and Scotland or England and Wales.  Will a Scottish or Welsh 16 year old who has already left school at home moving to England be required to re-enter school?  Will 16 year old English kids be able to move to Scotland or Wales and leave the education system entirely without qualifications and without completing their basic education?  Will English kids be able to go straight from secondary school in England to university in Scotland or Wales, bypassing sixth form/college or will they have to study for another two years (at whose expense?)  before they can go to university?  Will Scottish and Welsh kids be able to go to university in England two years earlier than their English counterparts?

I have tried to put these questions to the British Department of English Education but the contact page on their website is broken. I’ll let you know if I get an answer!

That’s the Scotsman’s theory on why Scottish universities are seeing a drop in the number of English students looking to study in Scottish universities.

It’s not the recession or uncertainty over fees that’s the problem, it’s the racial discrimination and high costs.  I appreciate that this will come as a shock to a lot of Scots and the BBC but English people haven’t been going to Scottish universities because they’re better, they’ve been going because the degrees are easier (4 years instead of 3) and because they’re cheaper.  Or they have been until the Scottish government decided to introduce racial discrimination into the Scottish education system by charging English students up to £9,000 per year for a degree in Scotland while every other “EU citizen” gets free university education largely thanks to EU laws.

If you have the choice of paying £9,000 a year for 3 years for a degree in England (thanks to tuition fees imposed on England by MPs elected in Scotland) or £9,000 a year for 4 years for the same degree with an extra year of expenses and you have to live in a hostile country where half the population hates you because of where you were born, which would you choose?

With a bit of luck Scottish universities will start running out of money soon now they’ve bitten the hand that feeds them because according to the Scottish Education Secretary an influx of Scottish students studying in English universities would bankrupt the country as the Scottish government pays the tuition fees of Scots in English universities as well.

Good luck to the English students challenging this racial discrimination in the courts.

The Hutton Report recommends raising the retirement age, paying less out and requiring more in contributions and it is this suggestion that public sector workers should feel some of the pain as the rest of the population that has driven the unions into a frenzy.

Over the last decade, teachers’ pay has increased above inflation, they get three times as many paid holidays as most other professions and have generous public sector pensions for relatively small contributions.  Meanwhile, in the private sector over the past few years we’ve seen unemployment go through the roof, pay frozen or even cut and pensions pillaged by the British Treasury to pay for, amongst other things, public sector pensions.

It’s not just teachers that are being incredibly selfish over public sector cutbacks though, it’s the public sector as a whole.  Lots of public sector unions are proposing strikes to try and protect their privileged taxpayer-funded terms and conditions.  Only this week a UNISON rep was on the radio saying that Shropshire Council workers were going on strike over cutbacks t0 their perks saying “we’re not asking for anything that nobody else has got”.  This was moments after explaining that two of the things they were striking over were guaranteed payrises and being paid a mileage allowance to drive to and from work.  How many people in the private sector get guaranteed payrises just for turning up and not getting sacked or paid by the mile to drive to work in a morning?

Because of the strikes next week, one of my kids won’t be allowed to go to school because his teacher is going on strike (the only one in the school).  That I don’t mind but another one is supposed to be doing his two link days at secondary school next week as he starts secondary school in September.  His link days have been cancelled, not even postponed.  He will go to secondary school in September not knowing his teachers, who is in his class, where his classroom will be or any of the other things they learn on these two days.  And all because some teachers don’t like the idea of having to pay for their own damn pensions.

He said that under devolution it is right that there should be differences in the two nations and he’s absolutely right – the whole point of devolution is that we have different needs and priorities but the problem is that we don’t have devolution, Scotland does. The master of hypocrisy said:

Interesting choice of words from Cleggover – he believes in the Scottish nation and Scottish solutions to Scottish issues but he believes in the break-up of the English nation and British solutions for English issues.

I’ve sent the following email to his office:

Click here to contact Cleggy.

#1 son goes to an excellent independent school (top performing state secondary in England) and #2 son wants to go there as well but the school is badly over-subscribed – they turn down over 1,000 applicants every year – so the odds are stacked against him getting there.

For his LEA preferences, we haven’t chosen the nearest school to home because it’s rubbish which presents us with a bit of a problem – if he doesn’t get into the same school as #1, how is he going to get there?

I drop #1 son off at school in the morning on my way to work as it’s in vaguely the same direction as the office but the other two schools on #2′s list are in the opposite direction.  What we need is for one of them to be able to go to school by bus but there’s a problem: none of the schools is more than 3 miles from home and a weekly bus pass for a child is £10 – taking off school holidays, that’s about £400 a year!

The 3 mile rule is what the British government says is the maximum distance a child of secondary school age in England can be expected to walk to school.  There are exceptions for children with medical conditions of course and #2 has a heart problem so he fits the criteria for getting a free bus pass … but only if he goes to the local, rubbish school.

You can get a free school bus pass for your children if you meet the usual criteria and it’s this that has annoyed me.  If you’re unemployed your children can have a free school bus pass.  If you’re an asylum seeker your children can have a free school bus pass.  If your household income is below a certain level your children can have a free bus pass.

It may surprise my regular readers to know that it’s not the freebies for the workshy or asylum seekers that irritates me, it’s the latter.  I work, I earn an above average wage but I have 4 children.  Someone on minimum wage with 1 child getting income support, housing benefit, etc., will have as much, if not more, disposable income than me but the household income criteria is an arbitrary threshold, it doesn’t go up if you have more children to pay for.

Ok, so it’s my choice to have 4 children (although I did inherit 2 stepsons) but if the system offers help for parents – which my taxes pay for – then it should do so fairly.  And if the system purports to offer parents the right to choose which school they want (or need) their children to go to, it shouldn’t penalise them for exercising that right.

Perverse.

And does No Mandate Brown mention the country he’s talking about once in his 30 minute election address speech? Of course not!  But he does talk about:

• Teaching in Britain
• National pride in our education system
• Our country
• Some that have concluded that Britain should follow the Swedish system
• Our national challenge

In every place where you would expect the word “England” he said “this country” or “the country” or, bizarrely, “our country”.  What a wanker.

Rather than tell the idiot mother to crawl back under whatever rock she’d dragged herself out from underneath, Highland Council has cancelled the trip.

The British government’s DirectGov website has these guidelines on obligations for service providers under the Disability Discrimination Act:

Is there any reasonable adjustment that can be made to enable a disabled child whose mother says would be unable to take part in any of the physical activities to take part in an adventure holiday?  No, quite obviously not and Highland Council need a slap for caving in to this idiot.

Peter Mandelson, the unelected British English Business Secretary, has announced over half a billion pounds in budget cuts for English universities and told them to protect quality and access to higher education at the same time.

The Scottish Chancellor announced £600m of cuts for English universities in his pre-budget report a few weeks ago and it is not clear whether this £533m cut to the English universities budget announced by the British Trade Secretary is an additional cut or part of the £600m cuts announced by the Scottish Chancellor.

The introduction of top-up and tuition fees in England, which were rejected by MPs elected in England but passed with the votes of MPs elected in Scotland, priced university education out of reach for most people in England.  The shambolic English student loan system introduced to try and entice more poor people into university has crippled tens of thousands of young English people with tens of thousands of pounds of debts.  A half billion pound cut in the budget will devastate the English university system, a £1.1bn cut would cripple it.

Arthog is an outdoor adventure centre in Snowdonia owned by Telford & Wrekin Council (our local authority) that’s used mainly by schools in Shropshire.

This trip costs £200 for 5 days – not the cheapest school trip but #1 went last year and had a great time.  But what is unbelievable is that the letter says that any kids who are entitled to free school meals are also entitled to a free trip to Arthog, as are those whose parents are on income support.  And how do they subsidise the kids whose parents aren’t paying?  By charging more for the kids whose parents do pay.  This is what they do with every school trip – the last few have come in at £8 and some of them started off lower and then went up when they’d worked out how many parents were prepared to pay.

Of course, with unemployment the way it is, there’s an increase in the number of genuine cases where people have lost their jobs and are on income support but there are a core of parents that don’t work – the ones that are often carrying carrier bags full of beer when they drop them off and pick their kids up – and refuse to pay for trips because the letter says the payment is voluntary (even though it says the trip may be cancelled if not enough pay) and brag about the fact.

The other day one of the kids brought home a letter saying the British government were going to pay for a computer and 12 months of broadband for anyone who is eligible for free school meals.

It’s a great wheeze this free school meals thing, it’s just a shame people who work for a living aren’t entitled to anything.

The Manifesto Club has finally noticed that something is seriously amiss when primary and nursery school kids are being accused of racism and called for changes to the law that requires English schools to fill out racist incident forms every time a child says something that could be construed as racist.

Most of the children accused of racism on these forms are between 9 and 11 years of age.

They are also calling for grants and bursaries to be restricted to students from poor families who are more likely to vote Liebour rather than being made available based on ability so clever people judged by a panel of failed communists to be from a “middle class” family can be denied a university education to make way for semi-literate chavs from sink hole housing estates.

The British Department for English Business, Innovation and Skills is conducting a review of student funding for university education in England and is planning to increase the amount English universities are allowed to charge for courses.

Technorati Tags: University, IPPR, Left Wing Extremists, Liebour, Tuition Fees

Peter Mandelson, the unelected Minister for English Business and Enterprise, who also has responsibility for English Higher Education, is considering allowing an increase in English university tuition fees.

Tuition fees were introduced in England after Scottish Labour MPs were whipped to vote in favour because a majority of English MPs were opposed to them.  Without Labour’s MPs from Scottish constituencies, English MPs would have defeated the bill and university students in England wouldn’t be leaving education with tens of thousands of pounds of debt.  Labour’s MSPs subsequently voted against the introduction of tuition fees in the Scottish Parliament.

We’re constantly told by the British government that we don’t need an English Parliament because we have more MPs elected in England than the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish MPs put together.  The original introduction of tuition fees in England, with Scottish MPs overturning a majority vote of English MPs, destroys that argument.  That an unelected peer who has twice resigned from the British government in desgrace can have responsibility for a review into increasing the illegitimate fees makes a mockery of any claim the British establishment might have that democracy exists in England whatsoever.

With national debt running at 150% of GDP, tax income down by 8.2% and the social security burden up 9.7%, perhaps adopting the American revolutionary policy of “No Taxation without Representation” would force the Scottish Raj to listen to the voice of the English majority?

Technorati Tags: Peter Mandelson, Tuition Fees

The British government is putting an extra £200m into the English education budget to fund extra places as shortages have reported.

The extra £200m will, of course, trigger a corresponding bonus for the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish budgets whether they need it or not thanks to the Barnett Bribe.  The population of Scotland, Wales and NI is increasing at a fraction of the rate it is in England so they aren’t suffering the same shortage of spaces as we are south of the border.

The British government says that the shortage of primary school places is down to rising birth rates and the recession meaning people can’t afford to send their kids to private schools.  Nothing to do with annual net immigration of about a quarter of million people.

Technorati Tags: Immigration, Education, Barnett Formula

#1 goes to secondary school in September so this is his final report from primary school.  The expectation for the average child in his year was 4a or 4b – he got five 5a’s.  A child geting a level 5 in year 9 at secondary school (that’s 3rd year to us old forgey’s) would be expected to get C’s in their GCSE’s and he’s got three years at the best sate school in the country before he gets to year 9!

#2 has two years left at primary school and the expectation for his year was 3b or 3c and he got four 3a’s which is the expectation for the end of the following year.

#3 is in year 2 and he got a 3c and two 2a’s.  The expectation for his year is 2b or 2c.  Considering he’s got dyspraxia and struggles with co-ordination, concentration and mood swings, exceeding expectations for all subjects is even more of an achievement.

Obviously very pround of my four little brainboxes (#4 hasn’t got her report from nursery yet but she’s miles ahead of all the other kids in nursery so we expect it to be good).

Technorati Tags: Proud Parents, SATS

Sunday was the Thomas Telford School, one of the best independent schools in the country.  We won’t find out until March if he’s been selected to go there.  Last night was the Lord Silkin School, the closest one to home and tonight was the Abraham Darby Academy.  Monday it’ll be the Madeley Academy.

The Thomas Telford, as you would expect, had amazing facilities and the Sixth Formers that showed us round were really confident and genuinely seemed to love the place.  The Ab Dab was great too – it’s got good facilities too and it’s a Haberdasher school so they’re really into good, traditional values.

About three quarters of an hour into the principal’s “20 minute” speech tonight my mind started wandering a bit and it occured to me that the Academy approach to failing schools is actually one half of a good idea.  The only thing that’s missing from it is federation with a selective school.

The Abraham Darby is an academy which is partly funded by the local authority but mainly by the Haberdashers and is almost entirely free to run itself as it wishes.  It’s federated with the Adams Grammar School, a fee charging selective school which is also a Haberdasher school.  What it means is that the schools are run seperately but along the same lines, sharing management and facilities.  For the Adams Grammar and the Abraham Darby, it means that the Abraham Darby sends their internationally-renowned music teachers to the Adams Grammar to train their teaching staff in music whilst the Adams Grammar send their languages teachers to the Abraham Darby to improve their language teaching.

The school we’re going to see on Monday is federated with the one we saw on Sunday.  They went from being threatened with closure to the best performing non-selective school in the borough since being turned into an Academy and federated with the Thomas Telford.

I don’t know if these are exceptions to the rule but it’s clearly working here.  If this success can be replicated throughout England then let’s start encouraging all schools to adopt the same approach!

Technorati Tags: Schools

Last year the children who wanted to take part stood for election and were voted in by their peers.  However, next year (this is school years obviously, starting in September) they have decided that the current Chair will remain as Chair even if their peers vote for someone else.

Their “constitutencies” are individual classes so a whole class of children will be deprived of the right to vote for their representative on the School Council.

This is bad enough in it itself but what makes it worse is that for months, the Chair has been bullying one of my children quite badly.  She is, to put it bluntly, an obnoxious child with a very real attitude problem.  The mental abuse was so bad she had several sessions with teachers to talk to her about what she was doing and it took several attempts to get her to stop.  This is a role model for other children in the school.

I’ve sent the following email to the Deputy Head of the school:

Obviously, I’ve removed the names because it’s kids involved.  Is this what our kids should be told?  Democracy is a privilege that can be taken away on a whim and the consequences of bullying is more privilege and responsibility?

Technorati Tags: Education, Bullying, WTF

My children are English, they won’t be taking part in any faux-Britishness propaganda.

Technorati Tags: Britishness, England

Today saw the introduction of new admissions rules for English schools that will see English children getting allocated places at English schools based on a lottery system.  You may live next door to a school but if your name doesn’t come out of the hat then tough, you’d best get yourself a bus pass because you’re going to have to travel to another school.

This is supposedly to make the admissions system fairer but it doesn’t – it just makes it virtually impossible for parents to ensure their children go to a local school.  And it only applies to England of course, the One Eyed Wonder of Wankistan’s constituents will continue to get the admissions system that we’ve had for decades.

Technorati Tags: Education, Lottery

Normally I’d take anything the Sun says with a pinch sack of salt but in this case it seems to be genuine.

A lefty think tank, Counterpoint Research, has produced a report called the Childhood Wellbeing report highlighting the racial discrimination against English children iin school – a place where they are supposed to feel safe and happy.  There is no indication that non-English children have been punished for displaying a national flag.

Ed Balls, the Liebour Childrens Secretary, said that “The general perception among parents was that it was no longer acceptable to be proud to be English”.

On what does he base this ridiculous assertion?  Where was the research carried out?  Was it in an area that was predominantly white English or an area that had a large immigrant population?  It certainly wasn’t anywhere around here – white, black and asian children alike wear England football shirts and the English flag can be seen hanging from windows and on stickers in car windows everywhere.  There’s a large number of Ghanaian immigrants living in flats nearby whose children wear England football shirts – some of them don’t even speak English!

The Department for Children, Schools & Education is sending me a copy of the report so I can see how Ed Balls comes to this conclusion.

Technorati Tags: Ed Balls, Anglophobia, Education, Racism

The Education & Skills Bill – which only applies to England, not the whole of the UK as the press are reporting – will introduce the “Learning Number” which will be the key to a national database of state CVs for every child in England.  The Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills – one of No Mandate Brown’s made up government departments – said “It is just a way of making life easier for learners and employers. It is something we think will help people looking for work”.  What a load of shit.  It is a way of introducing 14 year old children to the concept of being numbered and monitored for the rest of their lives and the state taking control of their identity.

The same spokesman also said the database will be “cast-iron in terms of integrity” whilst the Information Commissioner said “We have provided advice and assistance to help ensure that this system is watertight and secure – but no system is immune to human error and breaches can and do occur”.

Just like HMRC losing the details of 25 million recipients, just like the MOD officer losing a laptop containing secret data, just like all the other recent admissions of data loss by British government departments – the data will be vulnerable to inaccuracy, loss and fraud.  Your identity isn’t like a bank account – it can’t be changed if it falls into the wrong hands – your identity is unique and identity theft will cause you problems for the rest of your life in Liebour’s database state.

The state stealing the identity of our children has surely got to be a breach of their Human Rights.

Technorati Tags: Police State, Education, England