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Oct 2015
2:44pm, 15 Oct 2015
652 posts
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Cheg
Define equality of opportunities.
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Oct 2015
2:52pm, 15 Oct 2015
424 posts
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Tonybv9
I feel aggrieved that I have never been selected for the Olympics. We're all equal, after all.
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Oct 2015
2:58pm, 15 Oct 2015
207 posts
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Shadowless Formless Legs
Fozzy - It sounds well meaning but unrealistic (as usual).
A few obvious problems would be a) timetabling b) accountability c) logistics
I don't work in a school but it seems to me that it would be more disruptive than beneficial.
On the other hand grammar schools have been shown to work in reality.
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Oct 2015
3:16pm, 15 Oct 2015
7,327 posts
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rf_fozzy
(a) Timetabling. Solvable - not on a national scale, but if we zoom in down to local groups, they can solve it according to their needs. Going Argh, we've 10million kids to timetable is the wrong argument.
(b). Accountability. Why do we care about this in terms of schools so much? It is neoliberal rubbish and the single worst thing (except the Iraq war perhaps) that New Labour ever did. It's mostly bollocks - this school is better than that school - it's schoolground politics. Literally.
Instead the government should be accountable for defining a "sensible" national curriculum. The Local authortities and LEAs are then accountable for allowing schools to deliver that curriculum (in terms of resources and so forth), and schools are accountable for delivering it.
And here is the most important part - *the schools can work together*. Novel idea I know in this day and age of ofsted where competition is more important than collaboration. Good ideas will be shared, not held in secret.
(c). Logistics. Such as? Show me an unsolvable problem in terms of this - with the LEA and schools being in charge and working together, I cannot see any insurmountable problems.
The biggest issue is perhaps transport, but that's easily solvable if central government stopped focussing so much on cars and put more money into *public* transport (and no that's not franchises or private companies running monopolies as we have now, that's proper, local authority owned and run public transport).
I can tell you don't work in a school SFL.
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Oct 2015
3:34pm, 15 Oct 2015
208 posts
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Shadowless Formless Legs
Ok Bob goes to School A for history. His lesson is from 9-10. His next lesson is geography which he is good at so this lesson is at School B from 10-11. Bob can't drive because he is a schoolboy. The nearest bus stop is only 2 minutes from the school though so that's ok. The next bus is due in 10 minutes, but unfortunately there's a bit of traffic so it's 3 minutes late. Bob get's on the bus and it doesn't take him directly to School B (it's a bus not a taxi) and people inconveniently keep getting on and off so the journey takes 15 minutes. There's only another 3 minute walk to the school so that's good and Bob arrives at his lesson (slightly stressed out that he is late) but there's still 27 minutes of his lesson left before he has to leave to go and do PE at School C which has a less regular bus service.
He doesn't like geography so much now - his grades have been getting gradually worse, partly because he misses 50% of the lesson every week and partly because people keep coming into the classroom at different times during the lesson.
He knows that he won't get to PE on time because it's only a 45 minute lesson but he tries anyway because he used to love playing football. Bob wishes that he could just go back to the Grammar school that he used to go to. Life was so much simpler when he didn't have to spend half of his day on public transport. Bob wonders who's ridiculous idea this new school system was in the first place but despite the problems and above anything else he is glad that everyone else is going through the same shit because that's fair and Bob knows that things being fair are more important than anything else.
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Oct 2015
3:39pm, 15 Oct 2015
2,984 posts
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Jono.
I like Grammar schools - it gives the comprehensive school kids someone to beat up.
quite interesting views, links to articles.
I can't understand why we are reintroducing them though, weren't academies supposed to lift the academic achievement?
and I suppose that the Grammar School will be built with public money? I wouldn't be very happy if my kid went to a nearby comprehensive and they found themselves sort of cash or facilities.
I suppose they will have a program where they can take kids in from disadvantaged areas - the thing is with that is all the extra kit they will need for school and all the trips the kids go on - out of the reach for most families.
my comprehensive school was fab - great sport facilities and a swimming pool - the posh kids went into the upper tiers and the thick kids didn't.
I was thick - but still managed to get a job when I left.
my daughter goes to a local comprehensive - she's done well in some subjects, not so well in others - 6th form has allowed her to study a subject she is interested in and which (if she gets the right grades) will let her go to Uni.
so i'd say Molly J's comprehensive is good - molly will be the first person in my family ever to go to university - she would like to study criminology.
Molly's school scores quite high in league tables - so if we're talking about improving academic achievements isn't the leadership of the school and the qualities of the teachers the important thing?
Will building Grammar schools achieve that ?
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Oct 2015
3:43pm, 15 Oct 2015
209 posts
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Shadowless Formless Legs
You might be confusing 'posh' with 'clever'
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Oct 2015
3:44pm, 15 Oct 2015
16,735 posts
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DeeGee
I work in a School, Fozzy.
Actually in a Multi Academy Trust.
It's ten minutes drive if the traffic's right to the other school that my trust administers, which is actually the closest other secondary school to us.
You see, I don't live in Leeds. We don't have a cluster of schools within five minutes' walk.
That school is the closest school to the other secondary in our trust, a small school in rural Lincolshire. It's 30 minutes' drive to that, and unless your utopian world is able to create maglevs between schools in Lincolnshire, your centres of excellence plan just won't work. Currently the most able are picked up by one bus and taken to Louth, where the Grammar Schools are, and the less able are picked up by bus and taken the other way to their secondary school. Very few are walking distance away, where they are delivered appropriate curricula designed to maximise their own potential.
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Oct 2015
3:47pm, 15 Oct 2015
16,736 posts
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DeeGee
Jono: "I suppose they will have a program where they can take kids in from disadvantaged areas - the thing is with that is all the extra kit they will need for school and all the trips the kids go on - out of the reach for most families."
State education, open to all based not on ability to pay, but on academic ability. It shouldn't cost any more, and the disadvantaged but able children will receive exactly the same help in terms of uniform and free school meals as they do now.
It is illegal for any student to be denied access to a school trip based on inability to pay, as well. That has to come out of the school's budget and any PTFA fundraising that happens.
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Oct 2015
3:48pm, 15 Oct 2015
7,328 posts
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rf_fozzy
SFL - if you'd read my original idea properly (and the same goes for DeeGee), I never suggested you do 1 lesson at one school, the next at another, the next at another. That would be stupid.
What I suggested as a sensible idea might be to do 4 days in your "normal" school and then have one day a week where groups of schools get together to deliver specialisms.
Now, I'm not saying we do this overnight, nor will it work everywhere as a one-size fits all approach - it was a suggestion as to how we allow each pupil to flourish without a "selective" system at the age of 11 and forcing kids into a pigeon-hole at that age.
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