Brit schools parallel Brit health care in incompetence. Hillary's wet
dream.
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Thank Marx for our children's low marks
By Simon Heffer
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 17/11/2007
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What sort of country has to provide 7.5 million training places to
improve the skills of its workforce? One with Mickey Mouse schools, of
course. I tried to detect some shame on the part of the Government
yesterday when it announced this scheme. Half the places are to
improve the most basic skills of all, numeracy and literacy. What a
mess.
For decades, lies have been told about our education system and its
products. First, we were told that comprehensive schools would raise
standards for those dependent on state provision. That was complete
nonsense. Even Labour now tacitly admits this, which is why it has
failed to abolish grammar schools and maintains a drive for city
academies, which are supposed to be better.
Then we are told each year, when youths register nearly 100 per cent
pass rates for A-levels and GCSEs, that this is a sign of the growing
genius of our young people and a tribute to the ever more brilliant
teaching and curriculum. That, too, is rubbish. I am sure some who
pass these exams well are indeed very bright, and good luck to them.
But, as examiners now admit, a student can pass GCSE maths without
being very numerate, and GCSE English while being not even
semi-literate. Hence the need to try to educate people again once they
imagine they have left school. Isn't it time the lies stopped, and the
Government owned up to the severe failings of the education system?
This is where the Marxist drivel taught in teacher training colleges
for the past 40 years or so has got us. The odd stand has been made
against this poison - notably by Chris Woodhead when he was chief
inspector of schools - but little impact has been made. In fact, just
as the Government is having to create all these training places
because its school system has failed, it continues to seek to do ever
more damage.
A considerable minority of parents choose to avoid the horrors of the
state system by paying for their children to be educated privately.
These people attract the unrelenting hatred of Labour politicians -
except, of course, of the few hypocrites who educate their own
offspring in the private sector. The caricature is that such people
are arrogant, wealthy toffs who use their money to buy privilege. As
anyone with a child in a private school - and I have two - knows, that
idea is absurd.
I know parents who forgo holidays, drive old bangers and remortgage
their house several times so as to afford the fees. They do this not
for reasons of snobbery, but because they regard the alternative as
tantamount to child abuse. They take strain off the state system,
ensure the country has some properly educated young people to help
secure its future, and are rewarded with no tax relief for making up
for the state's shortcomings.
Yet, as my colleague Charles Moore wrote last Saturday, the latest act
of bullying by this Government is to threaten to remove charitable
status from these schools. Were this to happen, tax advantages would
be lost, fees would have to rise considerably, and private schooling
would simply become too expensive for most families who can currently
just afford it. What is disgraceful is that these schools offer
countless scholarships to the children of poorer families, so their
charity work is real rather than theoretical.
Labour cannot see educational excellence without wishing to destroy
it. I rejoice that Buckinghamshire is promising to open a new grammar
school, and hope other local authorities will follow suit - and that
the Tory party will shut up on the subject. At a time when the failure
of our schools is so manifest, central government cannot be trusted to
put the problem right. Only by others taking the lead and doing so
will the Government be shamed into retreat - and the day might yet
dawn when people leave school able to read, write and count.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2007/11/17/do1703.xml
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