| Topic: | Re:Elephant in the Room - Toby Young's School idea | |
| Posted by: | Andy Jones | |
| Date/Time: | 24/08/09 11:49:00 |
| The raising of this important subject by Toby Young is very laudable and he does seem to have done more than scratch the surface of the issue in order to generate a trite opinion piece. His plans chime with the increasing realisation that state controlled education in this country has become increasingly faddish and focused on cosseting failure rather than achieving and lauding success. A polarised education system is probably inevitable in a part of London that has such extremes of wealth and deprivation so geographically close together. The elephant in the room here is not necessarily Toby Young's idea but the fact that very few people participating in this thread have done or would consider sending their children to Acton High. Although I am generally in favour of league tables I think they are largely responsible for the abandonment of this school by the middle classes of this area. If you talk to people associated with the school up until recently you used to get a positive impression. It was a school that hadn't entirely forgotten that it used to be a grammar school and in its last OFSTED assessment had been rated outstanding. Low pass rates at exams are an indication that many of the children educated at the school are recent arrivals in this country and have English as a second language. Unfortunately, since the Headship has been given to someone who has been the driving force behind political correct initiatives in education rather than an experienced educator, morale amongst the teaching staff at the school seems to have taken a dive. That the left have taken to attacking the part of the state system that appears to be performing best is indicative of the betrayal of the working classes in this country. Certainly in this area faith schools largely cater to families who can't afford private education and many of them are predominantly made up of first and second generation immigrants to this country. They are patently not academically selective as I know personally of several cases of very bright children not given admission and not so bright (by their own parents' admission) who have got in. Yet we constantly hear negative comments about them from the left including the rather extraordinary spectacle of a Latymer educated MP having a go at one of the most popular and successful state schools in his constituency for being exclusive. The left rarely now talk about the inequities of private education partly because so many of them appear to be products of that system but we they hardly stop about 'divisive, selective' faith schools. The thinking appears to be the Prescott philosophy on state education - 'the trouble with good schools is that everyone wants to get into them' - has pervaded New Labour and their aim is to achieve equality of opportunity by trying to ensure that nobody in the state system gets opportunities that are not available to others. This means that excellence is treated with suspicion. New Labour now mainly represents the army of bureaucrats who staff Local Education Authorities for whom schools that are outside their control are an anathema. The main reason that schools in LEA control tend to do much worse than those that aren't is that many of them end up with the worst behaved pupils that have been expelled from other schools. The closure of many referall units has meant that it is difficult to get rid of them and the knowledge that the school has little sanction against them makes proper discipline impossible. They then become so disruptive that the academic performance of the rest of the school suffers. If your school is out of LEA control then you can get rid of these pupils as the headmaster of Phoenix School recently did, with an immediate positive impact for the rest of the school, but if you are in LEA control you are stuck with them and if you are undersubscribed as a result you will have more problem pupils heading your way leading to an inevitable cycle of decline. Classroom discipline would improve immediately if parents knew that poor behaviour would quickly result in expulsion. Toby Young's initiative shouldn't be necessary but sadly it is. The really effective response to the problems in local education would be to take Acton High away from the dead hand of the LEA. |