Tag Archive for Education

Have the British Department for English Education got any answers yet?

July 9, 2013 Education One comment

The British Department for English Education still doesn’t seem to have a clue how compulsory post-16 education in England is going to work with Scottish and Welsh kids moving here or with English kids moving to Scotland and Wales so I’m having another go at getting some answers …

Hi,

I’m wondering if you’ve made any decisions or solved any of the problems created by introducing mandatory post-16 education in England only that I have asked you about several times but you haven’t had answers for?

The last reference number for my enquiry was 2013/0011665.

I first asked you how this was going to work in 2007:

“Kids currently spend a minimum of 11 years at school, most spend 12. In 6 years time we’re going to see kids spending 14 years of their lives in compulsary education. Will boarding schools be required to provide married quarters for childhood sweathearts who decide to get married at 16 or will the minimum age for getting married be increased to make sure you don’t end up with married couples spending double Science arguing about who’s cooking the dinner when they get home from school and why they have to have the mother-in-law round for Sunday dinner that weekend? What about couples who decide to start a family at 16? It’s perfectly legal – will schools start providing crêche facilities? Who will pay for them? Will 16 year old girls be entitled to maternity leave from school? What about the benefits that will be paid out to these people who have a family at 16 but can’t work because they have to go to school until they’re 18? Ok, so most 16 year old parents would rather laze around on benefits rather than get a job but not all of them do. Upping the age you can get married to 18 won’t work either. You need your parents consent to get married at 16 or 17 in England now but there’s nothing to stop you going to Scotland and getting married at 16 without your parents permission because the law is different there.”

I followed this up in February 2013, naively expecting that you might have figured out how you were going to make it all work in the intervening 6 years:

“Some time ago I wrote to you asking how the change to school leaving ages in England was going work.

In particular I’m interested to know what a Welsh or Scottish person who leaves school at 16 and moves to England is going to do about the fact that they’ve finished their secondary education but would be required to complete a further year or two of secondary education in England because they’re only 16. A Welsh or Scottish person of 16 or 17 years of age will effectively be barred from taking a job in England when the change comes into force.

There is also the reverse situation where a 16 year old moves from England to Wales or Scotland and there is nowhere to complete their secondary education.

The response I got from you didn’t offer any explanation as to how these situations would be handled but merely expressed a hope that Wales and Scotland would follow the British government’s lead and raise the age for mandatory secondary education to match that in England. Clearly this isn’t going to happen otherwise it would have been announced by now so please can you explain how these scenarios will be handled in future?”

Your most recent response (March) basically said you didn’t know how it was going to work and you were clinging to the hope that Scotland and Wales would follow suit and fix your problem for you. They haven’t and they probably aren’t going to so how is the British Department for English Education going to solve the problems caused by enforcing mandatory post-16 education in England?

Stuart

Gove heckled by headteachers

May 19, 2013 Education 3 comments

Michael Gove has been heckled by delegates at the National Association of Head Teachers conference who are mainly opposed to the drive to turn schools into academies, SATS and difficult OFSTED inspections.

It’s right that schools should face tough OFSTED inspections.  We send our kids to school for a decent education – they don’t get a second chance.  The quality of their education determines their prospects in adult life, of course we should demand high standards.  I don’t want my childrens’ teachers burdened with unnecessary targets but I want them to be under constant pressure to achieve because the better they are, the better my childrens’ education will be.

I do agree that SATS are a bad idea though, as are exams as a whole.  Continual assessments are a much better way of assessing ability than performance under stressful exam conditions at a certain point in time.  The worst thing about SATS, though, is that they’re essentially useless – SATS are taken after secondary schools have made decided which kids they’re going to offer places to which negates their only real use which is to stream children into grammar schools.

Academies are a different matter entirely – they are absolutely the right way to go.  Headteachers are better at running schools than local council officers.  It takes years to the right qualifications and experience to be a headteacher, a council officer doesn’t.  It’s no co-incidence that the top performing schools in the country are outside of local authority control.  Headteachers who don’t have the ambition or competence to run a school without administrators at the local council telling them what to do should stand aside for someone who does.

Nobody knows how raising compulsary education age in England will work

March 11, 2013 Education One comment

I wrote to the British Department for English Education last month about the planned change to school leaving ages in England.  In particular I asked what would happen to someone who has already left school in Scotland or Wales moving to England or to someone moving from England to Scotland or Wales at age 16.  Their response basically amounts to “we don’t know, we’re hoping something comes up”.

Dear Mr Parr

Thank you for your email of 16 February, about Raising the Participation Age (RPA).

Education policy and law is a devolved matter, and the Department for Education is unaware of any plans the Scottish and Welsh Governments may have for raising the age of compulsory education in those nations.

With regard to the matter you raise, young people who are resident in England will be required to participate but we must be clear that no young people will be barred from taking a job. The requirements of RPA are that a young person engages with education – whether that be full-time (at a school or college), an Apprenticeship, or if taking a full-time job combines that with part-time study or training. The great majority of 16-17 year-olds who do work, do so part-time alongside full-time education and that will completely be unaffected by the RPA legislation.

In the particular scenarios you outline:

– If a young person at age 16 (or 17 from 2015) move to England from Scotland or Wales, they will be under a duty to participate. We believe that it will be beneficial for all young people to continue in education until they are at least 18, and as mentioned this will in no way bar them from getting a job. Under the Welsh school system, the secondary phase ends at 16, with a further 16-18 phase, in the same way as it does in England. In Scotland, young people may finish their further education when they are 17, and in that instance we are considering making an allowance in the law for them to be discharged from their duty to participate if they attain certain qualifications (e.g. three or more Scottish Highers). However, in any event we do not consider it a harmful outcome for a young person to engage with further education.

– If a young person from England moves to Scotland or Wales, this will be a matter for the respective governments of those countries. However, it is our understanding that it will be very likely that a young person in that situation will be able to continue in education in those countries – and have that funded by those governments.

Once again, thank you for writing and I hope this information is helpful.

So someone moving to England from Scotland or Wales in, say, June at age 17 will be required to go to school or find an apprenticeship for a month whilst someone moving from England to Scotland or Wales having not finished their secondary education is likely, possibly, hopefully to be able to finish their education in Scotland and Wales.

The truth is, this change has been poorly thought out and there are still unanswered questions about how it’s going to work despite the changes taking effect this year.  There is no agreement with the Scottish or Welsh governments for English people to finish their secondary education if they move, just a hope that they will plug the gap and they still haven’t decided what, if any, exemptions will be put in place for Scottish or Welsh people moving to England.

 

How are school leaving age changes in England going to work?

February 16, 2013 Education 2 comments

I’ve just fired off this email to the British Department for English Education.  It follows on from a previous missive I sent to them on the subject back in 2007.

Some time ago I wrote to you asking how the change to school leaving ages in England was going work.

In particular I’m interested to know what a Welsh or Scottish person who leaves school at 16 and moves to England is going to do about the fact that they’ve finished their secondary education but would be required to complete a further year or two of secondary education in England because they’re only 16. A Welsh or Scottish person of 16 or 17 years of age will effectively be barred from taking a job in England when the change comes into force.

There is also the reverse situation where a 16 year old moves from England to Wales or Scotland and there is nowhere to complete their secondary education.

The response I got from you didn’t offer any explanation as to how these situations would be handled but merely expressed a hope that Wales and Scotland would follow the British government’s lead and raise the age for mandatory secondary education to match that in England. Clearly this isn’t going to happen otherwise it would have been announced by now so please can you explain how these scenarios will be handled in future?

Report says English kids should study maths to 18

August 8, 2011 Education, England, Propaganda 2 comments

A report by Carol Voderman for the British government says that almost half of  English children are leaving school at 16 without managing a C or better in their maths GCSE’s and they should all study maths until they are 18.

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 …

Will boarding schools be required to provide married quarters for childhood sweathearts who decide to get married at 16 or will the minimum age for getting married be increased to make sure you don’t end up with married couples spending double Science arguing about who’s cooking the dinner when they get home from school and why they have to have the mother-in-law round for Sunday dinner that weekend?  What about couples who decide to start a family at 16?  It’s perfectly legal – will schools start providing crêche facilities?  Who will pay for them?  Will 16 year old girls be entitled to maternity leave from school?  What about the benefits that will be paid out to these people who have a family at 16 but can’t work because they have to go to school until they’re 18?  Ok, so most 16 year old parents would rather laze around on benefits rather than get a job but not all of them do.  Upping the age you can get married to 18 won’t work either.  You need your parents consent to get married at 16 or 17 in England now but there’s nothing to stop you going to Scotland and getting married at 16 without your parents permission because the law is different there.

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!

Say England, Gordon

February 24, 2010 Education 7 comments

The MP for Kirkcaldy & Cowdenbeath in Scotland standing in front of a British flag talking telling us his latest plan to balls up the English education system.

Brown Excellence In Education

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.

Parent forces school to cancel trip

January 3, 2010 Education, Scotland, WTF? 2 comments

A primary school in Inverness has cancelled an adventure holiday for its pupils after the mother of a disabled pupil threatened to sue the school for discrimination because her daughter was incapable of taking part.

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:

Under the DDA, it is against the law for service providers to treat disabled people less favourably than other people for a reason related to their disability. Service providers have to make ‘reasonable adjustments’ to the way they deliver their services so that disabled people can use them.

[…]

What is considered a ‘reasonable adjustment’ for a large organisation like a bank may be different to a reasonable adjustment for a small local shop. It is about what is practical in the service provider’s individual situation and what resources the business may have. They will not be required to make changes which are impractical or beyond their means.

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.

CEP: British Business Secretary to destroy English universities

December 23, 2009 Education No comments

CEP Header

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.

Manifesto Clubs calls on schools to stop demonising children

November 5, 2009 Education, England, Police State, Political Correctness, WTF? One comment

Three years ago one of my kids was punished for “racism” at school after he called one of his black friends a monkey when we was pulling monkey faces and making monkey noises.

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.