Ruth Kelly - 4 comments
Firstly, apologies for a post about tea earning undue publicity at the top of this blog over the past two days. I can't promise there's any more original thought in this post either, as the recent controversy about Ruth Kelly's son being sent to a school in the private sector covers more issues than I'm prepared/competent to sum up in one single post.
One argument I hope we can nail is that Labour politicians - irrespective of their being in Government - have a particular responsibility to use state-provided services even under exceptional circumstances - when it should now be entirely clear that the ending of private sector involvement is not a goal or an ambition in any area of society or the economy, and that they should direct their efforts to encouraging best practice, and to reducing the social and economic barriers that deny ordinary people the chance to make their own choice.
I'm not suggesting that eliminating that argument - one, perhaps, that only mischievous journalists cling onto - simplifies or elucidates the debate much, so I'll just link to four posts I would use as the basis for further thought if I had much more time.
Labels: choice, education, Ruth Kelly
![[Valid Atom]](http://www.bloggers4labour.org/images/valid-atom.png "Validate my Atom feed")
4 comments so far...
It seems to me that Labour is using political pressure to interfere in private schooling - it seems fairly clear that their charitable status will go in the near future. This will only further limit its availability. It will become the preserve of the very rich (MPs and the like) rather than just the middle classes. Whether this is a step forward or not depends on your point of view, I suppose.
When you say that government should be encouraging best practice, you are missing the fact that this is what government does already and it has been disastrous. Every school has swarms of HMIs crawling over it telling teachers how to do their job. And what they have been forcing them to do has, on the whole, been wrong (whole word reading, group learning etc etc). OK, they are now dropping it, but the lesson of the last 60 years has been that best practice is not something which can be distributed from a central group of "wise men". There is much more wisdom in crowds.
Yes, we should reduce the economic barriers to choice. The fact that people are taxed so heavily that they can't afford private schooling is a huge economic barrier. It's quite possible to have a system where every child goes to a private school, where every parent has choice, and where the dead hand of government is kept to dishing out the funding.
But your colleagues in the unions wouldn't like it would they?
Perhaps I was unclear about "best practice": I can see that that might have come across as "the most apparently effective educational techniques", and I certainly wouldn't want to suggest one size fits all, or discourage innovation, when it comes to policies within schools. That wasn't particularly what I had in mind, but actually I don't see the problem if it's just encouragement and help - you seem to be comparing this with compulsion.
Yes, we should reduce the economic barriers to choice.
You've spun that slightly, if you don't mind me saying. I'm talking about reducing barriers as a good thing in itself, which will make it possible/realistic for people to make school choices - not a Tory-style plan which leaves barriers in place but that specifically encourages education choice (e.g. vouchers and cuts).
The problem is that "encouragement and help" when rejected by the schools spills over into compulsion. If a school tells HMIs that the techniques they have suggested are not actually the best, then they fail their inspection. Where the power exists to compel, it will always be used.
I don't understand what you're saying on economic barriers. Why is it a good thing in itself? Surely its only a good thing in that it allows consumers to choose what suits them best? Why do vouchers leave barriers in place? You're surely not suggesting that a choice of several different state schools is a real choice are you? Like a choice of ten branches of Starbucks is a choice?
I know this is boring and people get fed up with me banging on about it but a Labour Minister can't enact policies which close special schools and deny specialist education to working class parents who don't have the ability to pay whilst using their earning power granted to them by the votes of those same working class parents to buy education for their own children!
I am fed up with the argument that as a parent she should be free to make the most appropriate choice - well of course as long as everyone else has the ability to make the same choice and the person telling them they have no choice is putting thier children through the same system!!!
Post a Comment
<< Home