This dogmatic and wholly unedifying way to treat fellow human beings is at the heart of the peculiarly sickening manner in which ‘efficiencies’ are made in education. Doing it the education way has a particular nastiness of its own, of course, so here is our guide:

1. Managers asked to reduce costs by ministers.

2. Remember from business management training that wage costs are the largest single drain on funds.

3. Look for obvious targets to get rid of e.g. older teachers with pension entitlements.

4. Bring in OfSted inspectors to do the initial dirty work and legitimise the whole enterprise.

5. Rate school, college etc’ as ‘underperforming’ (based on the current fashion in classrooms but without any rigorous scientifically foundation).

5. The predictable ‘bad’ inspection results then lead to ’special measures’ and inspectors brought in again to observe teachers once more.

6. Surprise, surprise! Older, more expensive teachers are told they are out of a job unless their grades improve.

7. Teachers with decades of experience and local knowledge decide either to a) tell management and inspector to “f*&K off” and then quit b) take sick leave due to stress or c) play ball but sour the staff room atmosphere permanently.

8. Other good teachers decide that the school is not a good place to work and jump ship.

9. School is left with disgruntled, older and/or younger, inexperienced staff.

10. Union action follows under the pretext of protecting teacher jobs but really to drum up support, raise subscriptions and fight the Left’s corner once more.

11. Meanwhile, pupils and students lose experience, qualified and content staff and suffer lost classroom time due to strikes.

11. Management happy because they have reduced costs. Hooray!

Fewer state pupils at Oxford – The Independent

Fewer state school pupils gain Oxford places even though more apply – The Times

Or, alternatively,…

Majority of ’state’ pupils at Oxford (still under-represented) will have gone to selective schools in middle-class areas and not to inner-city comprehensives – EducationState


Without mandatory quotas, Oxbridge colleges will do nothing – EducationState

“Teaching professionals are the group most likely to clock up unpaid overtime, according to new figures released today. UCU said it was unsurprised that teaching professionals topped the list, but warned the situation was likely to get worse for staff in both universities and colleges with swingeing cuts and widespread job losses on the cards.
The figures, released by the TUC, revealed that over half (53.9%) of teaching professionals do unpaid overtime and, on average put in an extra 11.2 hours a week. One in five people (20.3%) across all professions does unpaid overtime and they put in an extra 7.2 hours a week.

‘Unless plans for swingeing funding cuts and job culls are reversed then it will be the staff remaining who are expected to pick up their colleagues’ work. Cuts have consequences. We will see teachers on the dole, students in larger classes and those who support teachers like academic-related staff under even greater pressure as the whole system strains under funding cuts.’”

And why would we? They create unnecessary amounts of stress and bureaucracy. They waste time, money and other resources. And they are used an instrument of fear and control by Government.

It has dawned on us, moreover, that they bear many similarities to some rather unpleasant characters who extort money in so-called protections rackets.

The following has been taken from the Wikipedia entry for protection rackets:

“A protection racket is an extortion (INSPECTION) scheme whereby a powerful entity (OfSTED/BRITISH COUNCIL/QCA/NEW LABOUR) or individual coerces other less powerful entities (SCHOOLS/COLLEGES/UNIVERSITIES) or individuals to pay protection (INSPECTION) money which allegedly serves to purchase protection (INSPECTION) services against various external threats, usually violence or property damage (CLOSURE/SPECIAL MEASURES).

The protection (INSPECTION) money is typically collected by a “bag man” (INSPECTOR). Although the organization might be particularly coercive in obtaining protection (INSPECTION) money, it is usually careful to shelter its “mark” (CERTIFICATE/LOGO) from attacks by competitor organizations that similarly attempt to solicit or threaten the targeted individuals or businesses. Disputes between organizations concerning territory consequently arise from two competing organizations (OfSTED/BRITISH COUNCIL/QCA/NEW LABOUR) attempting to extort from (INSPECT) the same “clients”.”

We are not saying education inspection is equal to a protection racket but the parallels are too striking too ignore.

We are told that, “The truancy statistics for the first two terms of the last school year show 1.03% of school sessions were missed without permission, up from 0.97%” and “show the rate of unauthorised absences as running higher than any annual figure since 1994, when figures were first published.”

Predictably, a photo of behooded boys on bikes hanging out is included but then later on in the article mention is made of the ‘real’ reason behind the increase.

This is attributed to a “tougher line”. But this “tougher line” is not working then, is it? The point of this “line” is to reduce truancy rates. However, as anyone can see, truancy rates are going UP – not down.

The Tories blame poor behavior and low achievement but it is unclear how the too are causally related. Are they the cause or effect?

We, unsurprisingly, argue not for criminalisation of truants but for alternatives to school including work-based placements for those who want them and parent-pupil lessons. Why put young people through school when they’d be happier learning a trade or receiving specialist support elsewhere? The very young who miss school should also be eligible for specialist support. After literacy and numeracy is achieved then why keep pupils where they do won’t to be?

Time for a rethink.

Or these:

Mike Baker, the BBC News Education spokesman, calls it “snobbery” to criticise these companies for trying to raise the esteem associated with non-academic, skills-based awards. Snobbery seemed a little inappropriate, however, so we’ve come up with some labels of our own:

* slavery
* sanctimony
* surreal

To think that there are those in the media and Government who wouldn’t even dream of allowing their children to work in a fast-food restaurant, who couldn’t care less that Ronald McDonald and other corporate bullies attempt to stamp out any criticism in the same way they do competition – McLibel anyone!? – and who are somehow under the impression that a world where everyone had a job no matter how dull and repetitive would make everything alright.

The final word must go to Helen Steel and David Morris, the defendants in the McLibel case:

“Having largely beaten McDonald’s… we have now exposed the notoriously oppressive and unfair UK laws. As a result of the… ruling today, the government may be forced to amend or scrap some of the existing UK laws. We hope that this will result in greater public scrutiny and criticism of powerful organisations whose practices have a detrimental effect on society and the environment. The McLibel campaign has already proved that determined and widespread grass roots protests and defiance can undermine those who try to silence their critics, and also render oppressive laws unworkable. The continually growing opposition to McDonald’s and all it stands for is a vindication of all the efforts of those around the world who have been exposing and challenging the corporation’s business practices.”

1. Weather fronts from March 6th to 27th
2. Fish eaten on Sundays before tea
3. Green vegetables that are boiled not steamed
4. Eyeliner
5. Cheese biscuits
6. Supermarket trolleys
7. Pieces of paper with notes written on them
8. Pens
9. Planets
10. Men called George

Any other suggestions, please let us know.

Some will be disturbed by their child reading Homer’s Odyssey. Yet isn’t it the content and concepts that the child will be perturbed by and not the actual tracing of the letters and words? There will be some that argue you can’t run before you can walk but as an adult we read what we want. A child isn’t allowed to as they are pushed into reading graded readers. Such books can be dangerous if they are allowed to become and end in themselves and not a quick stepping stone to ‘real’ books. The same applies to maths and any other form of learning. Graded or level-based materials can delay the progress of the student if they are expected to complete a stage before progressing even if they are already able to achieve success at the levels above. Levels and grades assume that we start with learning deficits which need to be filled and only when satiated can we move on to the next stage in our education. What we need instead are groups of students based on shared knowledge or experience regardless of other factors such as age or gender. Education has unfortunately for some become an end in itself and only when we remember that it is a means to another end will we do away with filling the heads of learners with unnecessary nonsense and push them to break free of their educational shackles as early as possible

Take Literacy. Why can’t the powers that be understand that in today’s economy higher-level paper-based skills are not as crucial in the world of work as keyboard-based ones? Clearly, a well-structured essay on the importance of feminism to Jane Austen is not going to have as immediate an effect on a individual’s job prospects as learning how to organise an e-mail. Indeed, it could be argued that aside from note-taking and written exams, there is no call for paper-based writing skills in academia and even less so in the world of work. Many more learners would benefit from keyboard skills, both in terms of producing assignments and more significantly, in terms of finding work. Why then do we persist with a focus on writing in the old sense of the term?