| Topic: | Re:Re:Re:Where is Toby? | |
| Posted by: | Charlie Ben-Nathan | |
| Date/Time: | 27/06/10 22:20:00 |
| Some thoughts occur to me as I read through this thread. Firstly, Chris asks the very sensible question about where the money will come from. On the DfE website it says, "We will reallocate from the Harnessing Technology Fund to restart the Standards and Diversity Fund which was establiashed in 2008 to promote new schools." Colin very helpfully posted the Rebecca Allen report from the Institute of Education. I read her conclusions as the following: If there is any effect it is positive and may be significant. Those reports which show lower improvements or negative effects are based on less good data. There is little evidence of long term benefit. Certain sectors of society have benefitted whilst others haven't. Regarding the third point I would say that this is the sort of result you would expect where teachers teach to the test and you get a boost in the examination year and then fewer transferable skills. This is something that we are designing our curriculum to avoid at the WLFS. The fourth point is significant but Rebecca Allen's report states that the improvement in standards is due to better performing private schools but also better performance in the state municiple schools that improve in response to the private schools. So this means that in both sets of schools students from more highly educated backgrounds are improving, but others are not. This is a puzzle, but it is not the case that free schools are just educating students from more highly educated backgrounds. Jim and Colin indulge in some middle class bashing, totally discounting the idea that members of the middle class might act for charitable reasons or for the good of the local community. Is nobody else bothered by this? Jim mentions catchment areas and I would respond by saying that we want a significant proportion of our admissions to come from a lottery system if possible. We feel this is the fairest possible system as it is a system that can't be 'played' by those with financial resources. It will then be our job to market our school so people will know what they are being offered and so attract applicants from all areas and social backgrounds. Colin goes on to say that free schools are monopolised by the middle class and they squeeze out children from other strata of society. Well we hope that our admissions policy will avoid this and it should be noted that the Swedish experience is not transferable here as they have a first come first served admissions policy, which may favour some groups. Jen asks Colin how he knows who has been asked to be involved with setting up this school. Colin and others will recall from the last thread on this topic that we exchanged views on that I asked anybody who was interested from anywhere or any background to get in touch with me or Toby. A completely open invitation. Nobody is being excluded from being involved. Colin asks that as local(why?) taxpayers we should consider whether the WLFS will be worth it. This is a sensible question (minus the local bit). We have shown using council data that there will be a shortfall of provision for secondary places in Ealing in the future, this is in addition to the extra places already planned by Ealing in its BsF plans. So more places do need to be provided. We will provide the places needed at a fraction of the cost that has been the norm to spend on the number of places that we propose. I would have thought that saving many millions of pounds would be a useful thing to do in this age of austerity. Finally, one of the things we will impress on students is that an ad hominem attack is a flaw in an argument, it doesn't address the issue and it normally means that the arguer is short of an actual argument. |