Choice in education (5)

Latest figures confirm the earlier estimates that some 100,000 children failed to get admission to their first choice secondary schools for September - about 1/5 of the total.

Not only does that make a mockery of ministers' promise of choice, it also removes one potentially effective automatic control mechanism.

Choice gives the opportunity to avoid bad schools. Good schools are encouraged by parental support, bad schools are left to wither away. When you stop that process, the bad schools are given an undeserved lifeline.

It must seem sometimes that it is a tremendous waste of resources to let an established school die away. BUT that is precisely the process that nature has used most effectively to ensure continuing development and renewal.

Providing Equal Opportunities in Education

Some children start with a range of disadvantages for which they are not themselves responsible.

One of the generally accepted aims of education has been to enable any student to achieve his maximum potential. The obvious justification for this is one of simple justice. In addition any society has a long term interest in ensuring that no minority group feels frustrated and cut off by the rest of the population.

Present concerns focus on the extremes. At the bottom of society are those with minimum communication skills. The illiterate cannot participate effectively in modern society. At the top end are potentially highly intelligent individuals who cannot access the best institutions or jobs because they have not been given the necessary tools or guidance.

The main task is to remove the barriers to performance. Basic communication skills are essential and need to be learned as early as possible and then continually honed. Reading, Writing and Arithmetic are no longer enough. Those three exclude the most widely used communication medium of all - speech - and the most recently developed - IT.

Too often we ignore the need for active improvement in the use of English. Even those born into an English-speaking family need to learn how to communicate in formal and group environments. A teenager who cannot explain a complex idea verbally will not be offered the best jobs and will be unable to participate in a democratic society. Street slang and dense dialects may be fine with friends but are a barrier to communication with wider society.

Discipline in schools is essential to prevent a minority hindering the learning of their classmates. That in turn requires better provision of support units for the disruptive child so that their problems can be assessed and rectified until they are ready to reintegrate with the standard class.

Our education system assumes that each year children progress to a new level of learning. However, there is no point in sending a child to a secondary school without the basic literacy skills to cope with the curriculum. That will be bad for the child and is likely to lead to disruption for the class. Instead, such a child should either repeat a year in primary school or, better, be given individual support to catch up.

The main risk for the gifted child is that he loses motivation. The problems may come from a variety of causes: peer pressure, standard curriculum, inadequate teaching etc. Again, these problems need identifying and solving as young as possible. So long as the motivation is there, such a child can cope with most of the other barriers to learning.

Primary Curricculum and Assessment

In summary, formal assessment in England, compared to our review countries, is pervasive, highly consequential, and taken by officialdom to portray objectively the actual quality of primary education in schools. Wales and Northern Ireland have significantly tempered their emphasis on testing in recent reforms such that they are now (along with Scotland) as different from England as are other European countries. What distinguishes assessment policy in England then is the degree to which it is used as a tool a) to control what is taught, b) to police how well it is taught, and c) to encourage parents to use assessment information to select schools for their children.

Such is a conclusion from the Academic primary review.

With that degree of control, the government must accept direct and virtually total responsibility for results. They cannot blame teachers or parents for any failing because they have not allowed them room to decide and apply their own solutions.

Values, aims and purposes of the National Curriculum

The National Curriculum increases public understanding of, and confidence in, the work of schools and in the learning and achievements resulting from compulsory education. It provides a common basis for discussion of educational issues among lay and professional groups, including pupils, parents, teachers, governors and employers.

This quote comes at the end of page setting out the values, aims and purposes. It would be just what we need as a starting point for planning - if it had not been devised by bureaucrats and politicians. I bet it was never approved by the Plain English Campaign.

The aims have been so widely drawn that they avoid controversy by including every conceivable value and subject. Unfortunately the result is that there is no specific advice on the choices that must be faced, the order of priorities and an objective scale of measurement.

Spending on Education

The latestTresury estimates show £77.7 billion being spent on UK education in 2007-8. This is 5.5% of GDP.

The spend in England only is £63.9 billion

So where does all that money go?

Statistics on the present education system

I have been finding it difficult to source relevant data on the present structure of education. Fortunately I have just found the latest stats from the Dept for Children, Schools and Families.

That shows some 25000 schools in England with 8.1 million pupils. For a summary table, click here.

I am now searching for basic data on the financing and budgetary side. If you know where it is best obtained please le me know. I want to research suitable sources so as to ensure that any policy ideas for the future are based on the realities of today.