Re: Gove and his claims about teenagers' ignorance : Sat May 18, 2013 8:58 am  

cod'ead wrote: And in other education news: Academy group accused of funding extravagant jollies at taxpayer expense Read that report and you quickly summarise that Sir Bruce got off the gravy train at the last stop before Sacksville, "Our review of the director general's cost centre indicates that £361,000 has been spent on consultancy fees from 2008-9 with £237,000 of this not having an order," note the authors. The report also raises concerns that trustees on the E-ACT board were paid for consultancy work, stressing that "payment to trustees is unusual in the charitable sector, where the basic position is that trustees should not benefit personally from their position so that they can exercise independent scrutiny over the charity's operations." None of which would matter in the slightest if they were a private company generating their own income and profit and answerable only to their own investors - but its public money intended for education of children that they are being criticised on spending recklessly - "not having an order" in the quote above means that Sir Bruce has personally authorised payments to individuals without any paper trail, no substantiation, and no auditing - makes the bloke sound like some sort of buffoon who believes himself to be above scrutiny.

cod'ead wrote: And in other education news: Academy group accused of funding extravagant jollies at taxpayer expense Read that report and you quickly summarise that Sir Bruce got off the gravy train at the last stop before Sacksville, "Our review of the director general's cost centre indicates that £361,000 has been spent on consultancy fees from 2008-9 with £237,000 of this not having an order," note the authors. The report also raises concerns that trustees on the E-ACT board were paid for consultancy work, stressing that "payment to trustees is unusual in the charitable sector, where the basic position is that trustees should not benefit personally from their position so that they can exercise independent scrutiny over the charity's operations." None of which would matter in the slightest if they were a private company generating their own income and profit and answerable only to their own investors - but its public money intended for education of children that they are being criticised on spending recklessly - "not having an order" in the quote above means that Sir Bruce has personally authorised payments to individuals without any paper trail, no substantiation, and no auditing - makes the bloke sound like some sort of buffoon who believes himself to be above scrutiny.

Re: Gove and his claims about teenagers' ignorance : Sat May 18, 2013 9:07 am  

...and more misuse of public funds by private educational trusts amid a culture of not actually realising that you can't pay for your private party's using public money ... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-22577069 Meanwhile Gove seems to think its the way forward ... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-22558756 Quite surprised to read that over half of all secondary schools are now Academies, when did that happen (when we weren't looking).

...and more misuse of public funds by private educational trusts amid a culture of not actually realising that you can't pay for your private party's using public money ... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-22577069 Meanwhile Gove seems to think its the way forward ... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-22558756 Quite surprised to read that over half of all secondary schools are now Academies, when did that happen (when we weren't looking).

Re: Gove and his claims about teenagers' ignorance : Sat May 18, 2013 7:19 pm  

Now school's are Academies thay tend to see themselves as businesses competing for customers (pupils). In Wigan, where there are more places than kids, some became academies to avoid closure by the council (my brother was made redundant when they closed the school at which he taught) and this has lead them to wasting money that should be spent on the kids on advertising to attract pupils. You see it on advertising boards around the town, on buses and even the electronic advertising hoardings at the DW stadium.

I spoke to my local Labour councillor about this waste of money and was told that as the Academies aren't run by the councils there is nothing they can do, even though they too see it as a waste of money, and that the spending would have had to have been authorised by the Board of Governors at the schools involved. In my opinion the Governors and / or head should be shown the door for wasting money that should be spent on the kids.

Re: Gove and his claims about teenagers' ignorance : Sun May 19, 2013 11:47 am  

dr_feelgood wrote:

Now school's are Academies thay tend to see themselves as businesses competing for customers (pupils). In Wigan, where there are more places than kids, some became academies to avoid closure by the council (my brother was made redundant when they closed the school at which he taught) and this has lead them to wasting money that should be spent on the kids on advertising to attract pupils. You see it on advertising boards around the town, on buses and even the electronic advertising hoardings at the DW stadium.

I spoke to my local Labour councillor about this waste of money and was told that as the Academies aren't run by the councils there is nothing they can do, even though they too see it as a waste of money, and that the spending would have had to have been authorised by the Board of Governors at the schools involved. In my opinion the Governors and / or head should be shown the door for wasting money that should be spent on the kids.

Hull is going the same way, the inspectors go in and judge a school to be 'failing' and push it towards academy status against the wishes of staff, pupils and parents. The Tory government want privatised education, they will tolerate very poor standards in academies, but LA schools need to be 'excellent' to stave off Gove's hatchet men.

Re: Gove and his claims about teenagers' ignorance : Sun May 19, 2013 12:15 pm  

Fascinating yesterday, though, to see that headteachers are very angry. These are not 'the usual suspects'.

And Channel 4 news last night was reporting that rumours coming out of the DofE say that Gove himself is personally rewriting the national curriculum.

Re: Gove and his claims about teenagers' ignorance : Sun May 19, 2013 7:20 pm  

Mintball wrote:

Fascinating yesterday, though, to see that headteachers are very angry. These are not 'the usual suspects'.

And Channel 4 news last night was reporting that rumours coming out of the DofE say that Gove himself is personally rewriting the national curriculum.

Teachers will be angry - if it was up to them there would be no league tables no judgements on their ability?

You have to seriously question why have the exams been dumbed down so far - could be that they have to be to match the quality of teaching most of our kids receive - its a disgrace.

Re: Gove and his claims about teenagers' ignorance : Sun May 19, 2013 8:22 pm  

Sal Paradise wrote:

Teachers will be angry - if it was up to them there would be no league tables no judgements on their ability?

You have to seriously question why have the exams been dumbed down so far - could be that they have to be to match the quality of teaching most of our kids receive - its a disgrace.

The disgrace is the number of individuals and companies that organise their taxes "efficiently", then have the cheek to criticise the standard of education of our children. A standard that they make damn sure they don't contribute towards.

As I said earlier in this thread: If Gove wants the nation's state-educated schoolchildren to reach the same standards as those educated in the private sector, the answer's simple: the state should provide the same monetary resources and create the same pupil:teacher ratio and general environment.

But that ain't going to happen is it?

A very simple maxim I've always held: Don't expect Rolls Royce service if you're only prepared to pay Lada prices

Re: Gove and his claims about teenagers' ignorance : Mon May 20, 2013 4:03 pm  

Sal Paradise wrote:

Teachers will be angry - if it was up to them there would be no league tables no judgements on their ability?

You have to seriously question why have the exams been dumbed down so far - could be that they have to be to match the quality of teaching most of our kids receive - its a disgrace.

You have to question why so many people are so convinced that such things are facts. Where do they get these 'facts' from? Newspapers or politicians with agendas, perchance? Very few - if any - of whom will have frontline teaching experience.

Sal, would you accept that anyone who doesn't work in your line of work knows all about it from the outside?

Of course there will be youngsters who are 'limited' educationally (for want of a better word). There has never been a time when it wasn't the case and never will be (unless we genetically engineer it otherwise). And there are factors that will mitigate against a child getting the best out of their education, just as other factors will work the other way.

I have an element of distrust of the system. But that's less to do with teachers and their performances at work, and more to do with 30 years of political meddling.

[Kosh]

Re: Gove and his claims about teenagers' ignorance : Mon May 20, 2013 4:34 pm  

Mintball wrote:

Ignoring the fact that you said "a bit of ..."

It's a major work of fantasy fiction and a jolly good romp. The creation of the languages was an extraordinary feat. Which doesn't stop it being, IMO, overrated.

It shares with the likes of John Betjeman a rather reactionary attitude toward industrial and urban Britain. The Shire is England's countryside; Mordor is the industrial England – in essence, then, the midlands and north.

He cribbed from other sources – not in itself a problem, but hilariously, JRR himself claimed that the only resemblance to Wagner's Ring cycle was that both included a ring and rings are round, although various literary scholars have pointed out that this is a tad disingenuous – not least in the fact that both were influenced by a range of source materials, including Volsunga and the Nibelungenlied, but also in that Wagner had imbued his ring with certain powers, which was not something that was in the original myths and legends.

But my point would be, in essence, that LOTR fails as 'great literature' because it is little more than what it is (and it's arguably over long and indulgent). That's not a snobbish comment on genre fiction, though: I'd rate Terry Pratchett far, far more highly than JRR – simply because the bulk of the Discworld novels go beyond straightforward fantasy tales and have something to actually tell us about the human condition. You don't have to read them like that, but the satire is most certainly there. They're also deceptively simply written, and yet can have you laughing on one page and crying on the next.

I find it's possible to over-analyse things.

LOTR was a project and an experiment of sorts. It's not great literature but then it was never intended to be. It's epic, and detailed (too detailed in places IMO), and hugely influential. Parts of it are excellent, parts of it dull. As for the cribbing accusation, I don't know enough about Wagner to say anything about that but Tolkien was quite open about deliberately blending many source materials in his creation of Middle Earth. A read through the Silmarillion shows the detail to which he went in crafting the background to his opus and also clearly shows the mythic sources from which he drew.

It's also true that underlying and weaving through the tale is a kind of wistful requiem for what Tolkien considered to be better, simpler times. He practically bludgeons you with a sense of yearning for a past that is inevitably slipping away, and with the supposed virtues of that more rural time and place over the industrialised present/future.

It is what it is. Still a cracking good story overall.

Re: Gove and his claims about teenagers' ignorance : Mon May 20, 2013 4:40 pm  

Mintball wrote:

Of course there will be youngsters who are 'limited' educationally (for want of a better word). There has never been a time when it wasn't the case and never will be (unless we genetically engineer it otherwise). And there are factors that will mitigate against a child getting the best out of their education, just as other factors will work the other way.

I can certainly remember a time when we binned-off a sizeable chunk of children at the age of 11. If you didn't pass your Eleven Plus, you were shovelled of into a Secondary Modern school, destined to not sit CGEs or even CSEs, many such establishments didn't even have any provision after 4th year (year 9 or 10 now) and you simply left school at 15 years of age, with a testimonial and maybe a couple of School Leaver Certificates.

If idiot Gove has his way, we'll be back to pre-comprehensive selection.

At the very least, the comprehensive system offered equal opportunities and a chance to those who, for whatever reason, may develop later than the majority