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Teachers - "British values" and all that

It’s a very expensive grammar school! https://www.bradfordgrammar.com/

Doing away with state grammar schools was such a mistake.
They have grammar schools where my brother lives in Kent, a town which has recently seen a big influx of Londoners moving in to start families. As far as I can tell, the Londoner's kids go to the grammar school, and the Kent natives go to the dogshit comp. I don't think it's a great model of education tbh.
 
Grammars may not be private but they are elitist and discriminatory. If 40% of people polled went private or grammar, they belong to a privileged sector of society.

Anyway I use the opportunity of shit curriculum to tell my students the colonialist, racist ideas behind why we're asked to teach it and then throw in some Tory bashing for good measure.
 
I don’t recall getting much choice about which school to go to as an 11 year old! My folks made the decision I think.

It certainly gave me some advantages though I got shit exam results compared to the rest of my peers so it didn’t help much in that regard. But I wouldn’t have got to play rugby otherwise so I feel genuinely privileged for that opportunity certainly as it’s given me a deep love of the game.

But I guess I’d have been just as happy at a rugby playing comprehensive :)
 
Rugby here (Yorkshire, League, though Union was played after 16 too, but still not posh) was unavoidable and not just a grammar school thing
 
London borough of Bexley is separate to Kent (in terms of education authority areas) and has the 11+. I went to a grammar school there with a great reputation, but while I was there the actual quality of education wasn’t very good if, like me, you were anything other than a passive, receptive “empty vessel” waiting to have knowledge poured into you. I get quite cross at how neglectful our teachers were of those of us who weren’t ready for university lecture-style education at age 11.
 
You've misread "not comprehensive" as "private" there Eids
As a tangent, was wading through some PISA and OECD data the other day and as far they're concerned Academies/Free Schools are Private Schools. They make a distinction between State Schools, Private Schools largely funded by the State and Private Schools largely funded privately.

Makes sense.
 
As a tangent, was wading through some PISA and OECD data the other day and as far they're concerned Academies/Free Schools are Private Schools. They make a distinction between State Schools, Private Schools largely funded by the State and Private Schools largely funded privately.

Makes sense.

I wonder what will happen once we have a new government to education. Will we see the reversal of the privatisation of education? All comprehensives? Private schools still existing? A triparttite system of grammar schools for some and hellholes for others? Will be interesting.
 
I wonder what will happen once we have a new government to education. Will we see the reversal of the privatisation of education? All comprehensives? Private schools still existing? A triparttite system of grammar schools for some and hellholes for others? Will be interesting.
Last time Labour were in Government they really, really accelerated the privatisation of education.
 
They have grammar schools where my brother lives in Kent, a town which has recently seen a big influx of Londoners moving in to start families. As far as I can tell, the Londoner's kids go to the grammar school, and the Kent natives go to the dogshit comp. I don't think it's a great model of education tbh.
Knowing Kent well, I can well imagine this does happen with the DFL children/locals.
Only quibble with this is the use of the term "comp"; I'm aware we all know this, but worth repeating to those that insist on running a 'selective' education system that in such an arrangement no school can be regarded as anywhere near comprehensive.
 
Oh is that what a ‘secondary modern’ was.
There were three grades of school back then, secondary moderns for the Great Unwashed (including my brother and sisters), grammars for those peons that showed some signs of academic ability by the age of 11 (moi) and fee paying schools for those kids whose parents could afford it (academic ability optional). The secondary moderns churned out fodder for the factories and farms, grammars were for people who would go to Uni and learn how to do clever stuff and private schools (much as they do now) would prepare their pupils for life at the top of the tree. It didn't always work that way, I didn't go to Uni but one of my sisters did (Uni's were free back then and you got a grant to boot)
 
andysays you think you’ve been clever doing that but you haven’t, because my initial statement isn’t sweeping. It’s a very specific example of an aspect of letting the State determine what our children are taught. I was going to write not much danger given our centrist, liberal state then I remembered colonialism and I’m not so sure.

Other less dangerous but still negative points are rigid national curriculum, lack of flexibility and individuality for what and how teachers teach in an attempt to standardise at all costs, administrative burden (I can still see the ridiculous forms and ‘evidence’ my childminder had to gather to ‘prove’ stuff to ofsted :facepalm:), and using ridiculous grading/flight path predictive grades that mean fuck all to individual kids and are all about the school.

The main benefit of it is of course that all kids get some kind of education. And I guess that the extremes are tempered (both of ideology and shitness). I’d like to explore a system where there was a greater variety of different schools and educational experience though. My eldest for example would of really enjoyed and benefitted from a much more vocational education, my youngest is more academic and has been let down by predictions made at year 6. They’ve both been to a school in a deprived bit of Leeds that has significant social problems and acts as a food bank.
 
Teachers are able to ask questions and encourage the search for answers.
The questions to ask can be gleaned from the pupils themselves.
If we force people into schooling, then it seem fair that most of the agenda is set by them.
Insisting on exploring ‘British values’ as opposed to, say, human or personal or local community values is rather dictatorial.
 
As a tangent, was wading through some PISA and OECD data the other day and as far they're concerned Academies/Free Schools are Private Schools. They make a distinction between State Schools, Private Schools largely funded by the State and Private Schools largely funded privately.

Makes sense.
Always worth remembering that one of the first moves made by the Blue/Yellow tory coalition back in 2010 was Gove/Cummings' rapid academisation that involved the creation of registered companies with 3 senior management becoming directors of their school company.
 
andysays you think you’ve been clever doing that but you haven’t, because my initial statement isn’t sweeping. It’s a very specific example of an aspect of letting the State determine what our children are taught. I was going to write not much danger given our centrist, liberal state then I remembered colonialism and I’m not so sure.

Other less dangerous but still negative points are rigid national curriculum, lack of flexibility and individuality for what and how teachers teach in an attempt to standardise at all costs, administrative burden (I can still see the ridiculous forms and ‘evidence’ my childminder had to gather to ‘prove’ stuff to ofsted :facepalm:), and using ridiculous grading/flight path predictive grades that mean fuck all to individual kids and are all about the school.

The main benefit of it is of course that all kids get some kind of education. And I guess that the extremes are tempered (both of ideology and shitness). I’d like to explore a system where there was a greater variety of different schools and educational experience though. My eldest for example would of really enjoyed and benefitted from a much more vocational education, my youngest is more academic and has been let down by predictions made at year 6. They’ve both been to a school in a deprived bit of Leeds that has significant social problems and acts as a food bank.
The fact that there are problems with state education, including the specific one which started this thread, is not a justification for anyone to assert that state education is, overall, a bad idea, which was the assertion that you made in the post I quoted.
 
Of course not. Kids should instead be able to wear what they want without adults making it a sex thing.

So should we have school uniforms? And am I right in saying that in Germany they don't have them or have I got my wires crossed?
 
Of course not. Kids should instead be able to wear what they want without adults making it a sex thing.
What about the kids making it a 'sex thing' and they will because teenagers are god awful creatures that will push boundaries just for the hell of it.
 
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