What sort of education should our children receive? This question must be answered jointly by parents and governments and individual parents must be consulted in a free society (see Socialism and Liberalism).
A good starting point is to examine the sort of education that parents, even egalitarian parents such as Nick Clegg and Diane Abbott, choose when they have ample resources to exercise a choice. Having looked at private education it will then be possible to combine the lessons from private education with the needs of a nation.
Private Education
Private schools in the UK only educate 6.5% of children but spending money on a private education seems to pay dividends. In the UK Cabinet Office publication: Fair access to professional careers: a progress report, it points out that:
Top Civil Servants: "27% were educated at an independent school. Over one-third (37%) had attended a grammar school and 18% had been to a state comprehensive school.
Justices of Appeal: of the 38 Justices of Appeal, 26 attended private schools, eight attended grammar schools, just two attended state comprehensive schools and two were schooled overseas.
43% of barristers attended a fee-paying secondary school, with almost a third going on to study at Oxbridge.
Journalists: of the country’s top journalists, 54% were privately educated, with a third graduating from Oxbridge.
privately educated MPs comprised 30% of the total in 1997 but after the 2010 election now comprise 35%, with just 13 private schools providing 10% of all MPs.
62% of all members of the House of Lords were privately educated, with 43% of the total having attended just 12 private schools."
In other words the Elite, those who govern us, come from Private Schools. The education debate has two strands: how do we replace the elite with the most able people from normal society and what is best for children? However, remember, if we don't replace the elite we will never get what is best for children.
More generally:
One third of the British olympic team were educated at private schools.
One third of students educated in private schools got straight As at A level compared with one in ten pupils educated in the state sector.
"A new survey into the heritage of modern musical acts has found that 60 per cent of acts in the charts today - attended public school [ie:private school] - compared to just one per cent two decades ago." Daily Mail
This picture of dominance by an elite group of schools is also worse than it appears because a handful of comprehensive schools and grammar schools are actually providing the State Sector input to top jobs. In a study of elite jobs by The Sutton Trust:
"The study found that the comprehensives producing the most high-flyers - with six people each - are Haverstock School, attended by Labour leader Ed Miliband and his brother, former foreign secretary David Miliband, and Holland Park School, which was attended by former environment minister Hilary Benn. Both are in London."
The Milibands pose as ordinary, state educated boys....but their parents chose the best comprehensives in Britain for their kids.
Notice that even in sport the private sector gets,proportionately, five times as many of its pupils into the Olympics as the State sector. The private schools are not just better than the State Comprehensive schools, they are much, much better.
Notice that the grammar schools are doing very well even though there are hardly any left and currently only educate about 5% of children, ie: less than private schools.
As an example, 37% of top civil servants went to grammar school The success of the grammar schools shows that the state sector can indeed deliver the same quality of education as private schools. In fact the grammar schools beat the private schools hands down (see row for "selective" in the table below):
The grammar schools are better than the private schools! Also notice that the "Modern" (ie: secondary modern) schools are achieving almost the same results as comprehensives, despite having their best pupils removed to grammar schools, showing that comprehensives have dumbed down rather than elevated educational standards. Grammar schools achieve better results than private schools but all we hear is that the state sector cannot provide education of the same quality as private schools. Pundits even say that the state sector needs help from the private sector. Perhaps the state sector needs help from their own elite grammar schools.
So why don't we provide selective education for the lower classes in Britain? Well, if you send your kids to private school you will be very grateful that we don't, just imagine all those working class and lower middle class children taking away the jobs and opportunities from your offspring. You will be thinking: "Thank god the ordinary people of Britain voted against grammar schools and allowed we rich to prosper! Thank god we control parliament and the media so can stop such education of the plebs ever happening again.".
Perhaps the hapless Nick Clegg deserves a mention. Clegg, Deputy Prime Minister, the leader of the Lib-Dems and an ardent opponent of private education is sending his children to private school.... He wants to get his children through education then pull up the ladder - genius! The media seems to have missed the point that the Deputy Prime Minister's Office is responsible for policies on social mobility. As Clegg says:
"In a fair society, what counts is not the school you went to or the jobs your parents did, but your ability and your ambition." (Deputy Prime Minister's Office).
The Lib-Dems and Labour would "cure" the problem of poor Comprehensive education and superb elite education by discriminating against private and grammar schools - the dumb dumb down.
The interesting feature of private schools is that not only do they provide their pupils with better exam results, they also tend to give them a better all-round education. As an example, classics are largely taught in private schools, according to the Circe organisation of classics teachers "Today, most of the schools in the state sector of education have dropped Latin from the curriculum.".
State Education
Many people believe that British education has made tremendous strides over the past 40 years to provide a more egalitarian society. This belief demonstrates how propaganda and a second rate education can fool people. British society has not been more divided by wealth and the rich have not been so favoured for more than a century.
Just look at how advantageous it is to be a rich child with a private education in modern Britain. All that has happened in the past 40 years is that if you are poor your neighbour's children will no longer be able to become part of the elite and rub your nose in the difference. The modern British are like feudal peasants, happy that the Lord's children are elevated because they are bred to high status but resentful if one of their own should achieve the same. This must change and it is easy to change, all that is needed is an education system that elevates the able poor.
Grammar schools are selective and most private schools also require their students to pass an entrance exam (Common Entrance). The selection tests are not foolproof but any private school teacher will tell you that they select out many of the children who would find private or grammar school education intolerable. There are educational idealists who might say that all children can achieve equally but these idealists are either mentally challenged themselves or Machiavellian postmarxists: half of all children have less than average ability and even if you have average ability you are never going to grasp tensor mathematics or the entire theory of the human immune system. Grammar schools and many private schools are about excellence and see their children as destined for the most intellectually demanding roles in society. They are producing an elite.
Does a nation need an elite? Scientific research, industrial design and even government needs people who are widely educated and deeply educated in their speciality and who can hold their own with the best in the world. Nations need an elite. You may wonder why comprehensive schools cannot provide this elite.
Suppose 10% of children are capable of being groomed for an academic elite. A school with 1400 pupils might have 200 pupils in each year, 10% of 200 is 20 pupils. Can a school of this size afford to provide top class teachers for 20 pupils in 12 subjects with 3 pupils in each class? No. This is the main reason that comprehensive schools are performing little better than secondary modern schools: the best students are too thin on the ground. The other reason is that the ethos of comprehensive schools will never be right for the academic 10% because it will be geared to serve the other 90%.
If we are to educate an elite we can either expand the school to 14000 pupils or take 30 pupils from the catchment for each school and educate them separately in year groups of 200. This means having selective education, selecting the 30 pupils by examination (examining their intellectual abilities). The exams will be crude which is why 30 pupils must be selected to provide 20 top class graduates.
There must also be discrimination against "prepping" of children for grammar school entry - this can be done by employing more sophisticated psychometric tests for selection and positively discriminating in favour of children from poor/working class backgrounds.
Once established the new selective schools will be able to devise an examination for 16 year olds that will truly test their pupils and take them beyond just regurgitating what they have been taught.
Does this sound terrible? Well, if the state does not have selection the private sector will continue to select and their output will get all the elite jobs. We should follow Harriet Harman's example. We can either continue as at present and allow the most able of the rich and upper middle classes to dominate the country or introduce state selective education to give the poor a chance. Or damage the country irreparably by discriminating against the privately educated without any replacement system (the postmarxist solution).
What will become of most children if there is selective education?
Meritocracy is brutal if it leaves those who are not selected with the label 'failure'. This can be overcome by teachers. Teachers can tell children the truth that being academically able is not the measure of a person. Unfortunately teachers are academics and like to train their children to believe that teachers represent the high point of human evolution. If teachers can put aside their natural inclinations then they will find it is obvious that a steady middle manager who brings up two children who are stable and happy is, at a personal level, a better person than the professor or Cabinet Secretary who spends their entire life indulging their own interests.
Selective education will make no difference to most children. Comprehensive schools are already functioning at the same level as secondary modern schools. It should be possible for academically gifted children to move to the selective school at 13 years old if they were missed at age 11.
A GCSE style of exam is appropriate for average children. It tests whether the children have learnt what they have been taught, not whether they are intellectually able. It also tests the teachers and schools. GCSEs should be appropriately scored so that they can be used for university entrance, as at present.
Older children should be able to specialise in trades etc. if they desire and schools should provide facilities and employment links for this specialisation.
Most importantly the children of a community should be educated to nurture this community and the community educated to nurture its children. An education system that transports most children out of their community is inherently damaging to the fabric of any society.
Abolishing coursework
Coursework is an appalling device for discriminating against male children and against the poor. Adolescent boys hate coursework and poor children or the children of poorly educated parents often get no help to do their coursework. I know of numerous children of rich and able parents who had their children's coursework overseen by tutors or even done by parents. Coursework is a device for favouring the children of the rich, comfortable and well educated, it is no way to assess a child's ability.
Revisiting Warnock
Anyone who has ever read an Ofsted Report will know that the main problem facing state school teachers today is to offer lessons that provide stimulation for every category of student in the class. In the context of academic achievement Warnock was wrong, badly wrong.
Removing postmarxism from the education system
The social sciences have been subverted by Marxists and Postmarxists, especially in Britain. You may think I am exaggerating but studies have shown this to be the case, social scientists have actively and illegally excluded people who hold differing beliefs from their profession for the past 50 years and even a cursory acquaintance with social "scientists" will demonstrate the point. Postmarxism is a nihilistic creed that has nothing to offer children. Teachers should be examined on basic ideas such as their definition of "truth" and the social good before appointment. A teacher who believes that truth is relative or everyone has their own truth must not be appointed, they are not just ignorant but will mislead children. A teacher who believes that the social good is simply a matter of a suite of "progressive" legislation and not the fostering of community and interactive social wellbeing is also unsuitable.
POLITICAL THOUGHTS click here to see the whole POLITICAL THOUGHTS magazine POLITICAL THOUGHTS!
See
When will governments react to discrimination in the social sciences?
Postmodernism-poststructuralism-postmarxism
Record A Level Passes Again
Is Labour any more than the Public Sector party?
Communism and the education system
A good starting point is to examine the sort of education that parents, even egalitarian parents such as Nick Clegg and Diane Abbott, choose when they have ample resources to exercise a choice. Having looked at private education it will then be possible to combine the lessons from private education with the needs of a nation.
Private Education
Private schools in the UK only educate 6.5% of children but spending money on a private education seems to pay dividends. In the UK Cabinet Office publication: Fair access to professional careers: a progress report, it points out that:
Top Civil Servants: "27% were educated at an independent school. Over one-third (37%) had attended a grammar school and 18% had been to a state comprehensive school.
Justices of Appeal: of the 38 Justices of Appeal, 26 attended private schools, eight attended grammar schools, just two attended state comprehensive schools and two were schooled overseas.
Journalists: of the country’s top journalists, 54% were privately educated, with a third graduating from Oxbridge.
privately educated MPs comprised 30% of the total in 1997 but after the 2010 election now comprise 35%, with just 13 private schools providing 10% of all MPs.
62% of all members of the House of Lords were privately educated, with 43% of the total having attended just 12 private schools."
In other words the Elite, those who govern us, come from Private Schools. The education debate has two strands: how do we replace the elite with the most able people from normal society and what is best for children? However, remember, if we don't replace the elite we will never get what is best for children.
More generally:
One third of the British olympic team were educated at private schools.
One third of students educated in private schools got straight As at A level compared with one in ten pupils educated in the state sector.
"A new survey into the heritage of modern musical acts has found that 60 per cent of acts in the charts today - attended public school [ie:private school] - compared to just one per cent two decades ago." Daily Mail
This picture of dominance by an elite group of schools is also worse than it appears because a handful of comprehensive schools and grammar schools are actually providing the State Sector input to top jobs. In a study of elite jobs by The Sutton Trust:
"The study found that the comprehensives producing the most high-flyers - with six people each - are Haverstock School, attended by Labour leader Ed Miliband and his brother, former foreign secretary David Miliband, and Holland Park School, which was attended by former environment minister Hilary Benn. Both are in London."
The Milibands pose as ordinary, state educated boys....but their parents chose the best comprehensives in Britain for their kids.
Notice that even in sport the private sector gets,proportionately, five times as many of its pupils into the Olympics as the State sector. The private schools are not just better than the State Comprehensive schools, they are much, much better.
Notice that the grammar schools are doing very well even though there are hardly any left and currently only educate about 5% of children, ie: less than private schools.
As an example, 37% of top civil servants went to grammar school The success of the grammar schools shows that the state sector can indeed deliver the same quality of education as private schools. In fact the grammar schools beat the private schools hands down (see row for "selective" in the table below):
 |
| Parliamentary briefing: Grammar School Statistics |
So why don't we provide selective education for the lower classes in Britain? Well, if you send your kids to private school you will be very grateful that we don't, just imagine all those working class and lower middle class children taking away the jobs and opportunities from your offspring. You will be thinking: "Thank god the ordinary people of Britain voted against grammar schools and allowed we rich to prosper! Thank god we control parliament and the media so can stop such education of the plebs ever happening again.".
Perhaps the hapless Nick Clegg deserves a mention. Clegg, Deputy Prime Minister, the leader of the Lib-Dems and an ardent opponent of private education is sending his children to private school.... He wants to get his children through education then pull up the ladder - genius! The media seems to have missed the point that the Deputy Prime Minister's Office is responsible for policies on social mobility. As Clegg says:
"In a fair society, what counts is not the school you went to or the jobs your parents did, but your ability and your ambition." (Deputy Prime Minister's Office).
The Lib-Dems and Labour would "cure" the problem of poor Comprehensive education and superb elite education by discriminating against private and grammar schools - the dumb dumb down.
The interesting feature of private schools is that not only do they provide their pupils with better exam results, they also tend to give them a better all-round education. As an example, classics are largely taught in private schools, according to the Circe organisation of classics teachers "Today, most of the schools in the state sector of education have dropped Latin from the curriculum.".
State Education
Many people believe that British education has made tremendous strides over the past 40 years to provide a more egalitarian society. This belief demonstrates how propaganda and a second rate education can fool people. British society has not been more divided by wealth and the rich have not been so favoured for more than a century.
 |
| See The poverty site |
Grammar schools are selective and most private schools also require their students to pass an entrance exam (Common Entrance). The selection tests are not foolproof but any private school teacher will tell you that they select out many of the children who would find private or grammar school education intolerable. There are educational idealists who might say that all children can achieve equally but these idealists are either mentally challenged themselves or Machiavellian postmarxists: half of all children have less than average ability and even if you have average ability you are never going to grasp tensor mathematics or the entire theory of the human immune system. Grammar schools and many private schools are about excellence and see their children as destined for the most intellectually demanding roles in society. They are producing an elite.
Does a nation need an elite? Scientific research, industrial design and even government needs people who are widely educated and deeply educated in their speciality and who can hold their own with the best in the world. Nations need an elite. You may wonder why comprehensive schools cannot provide this elite.
Suppose 10% of children are capable of being groomed for an academic elite. A school with 1400 pupils might have 200 pupils in each year, 10% of 200 is 20 pupils. Can a school of this size afford to provide top class teachers for 20 pupils in 12 subjects with 3 pupils in each class? No. This is the main reason that comprehensive schools are performing little better than secondary modern schools: the best students are too thin on the ground. The other reason is that the ethos of comprehensive schools will never be right for the academic 10% because it will be geared to serve the other 90%.
If we are to educate an elite we can either expand the school to 14000 pupils or take 30 pupils from the catchment for each school and educate them separately in year groups of 200. This means having selective education, selecting the 30 pupils by examination (examining their intellectual abilities). The exams will be crude which is why 30 pupils must be selected to provide 20 top class graduates.
There must also be discrimination against "prepping" of children for grammar school entry - this can be done by employing more sophisticated psychometric tests for selection and positively discriminating in favour of children from poor/working class backgrounds.
Once established the new selective schools will be able to devise an examination for 16 year olds that will truly test their pupils and take them beyond just regurgitating what they have been taught.
Does this sound terrible? Well, if the state does not have selection the private sector will continue to select and their output will get all the elite jobs. We should follow Harriet Harman's example. We can either continue as at present and allow the most able of the rich and upper middle classes to dominate the country or introduce state selective education to give the poor a chance. Or damage the country irreparably by discriminating against the privately educated without any replacement system (the postmarxist solution).
What will become of most children if there is selective education?
Meritocracy is brutal if it leaves those who are not selected with the label 'failure'. This can be overcome by teachers. Teachers can tell children the truth that being academically able is not the measure of a person. Unfortunately teachers are academics and like to train their children to believe that teachers represent the high point of human evolution. If teachers can put aside their natural inclinations then they will find it is obvious that a steady middle manager who brings up two children who are stable and happy is, at a personal level, a better person than the professor or Cabinet Secretary who spends their entire life indulging their own interests.
Selective education will make no difference to most children. Comprehensive schools are already functioning at the same level as secondary modern schools. It should be possible for academically gifted children to move to the selective school at 13 years old if they were missed at age 11.
A GCSE style of exam is appropriate for average children. It tests whether the children have learnt what they have been taught, not whether they are intellectually able. It also tests the teachers and schools. GCSEs should be appropriately scored so that they can be used for university entrance, as at present.
Older children should be able to specialise in trades etc. if they desire and schools should provide facilities and employment links for this specialisation.
Most importantly the children of a community should be educated to nurture this community and the community educated to nurture its children. An education system that transports most children out of their community is inherently damaging to the fabric of any society.
Abolishing coursework
Coursework is an appalling device for discriminating against male children and against the poor. Adolescent boys hate coursework and poor children or the children of poorly educated parents often get no help to do their coursework. I know of numerous children of rich and able parents who had their children's coursework overseen by tutors or even done by parents. Coursework is a device for favouring the children of the rich, comfortable and well educated, it is no way to assess a child's ability.
Revisiting Warnock
Anyone who has ever read an Ofsted Report will know that the main problem facing state school teachers today is to offer lessons that provide stimulation for every category of student in the class. In the context of academic achievement Warnock was wrong, badly wrong.
Removing postmarxism from the education system
The social sciences have been subverted by Marxists and Postmarxists, especially in Britain. You may think I am exaggerating but studies have shown this to be the case, social scientists have actively and illegally excluded people who hold differing beliefs from their profession for the past 50 years and even a cursory acquaintance with social "scientists" will demonstrate the point. Postmarxism is a nihilistic creed that has nothing to offer children. Teachers should be examined on basic ideas such as their definition of "truth" and the social good before appointment. A teacher who believes that truth is relative or everyone has their own truth must not be appointed, they are not just ignorant but will mislead children. A teacher who believes that the social good is simply a matter of a suite of "progressive" legislation and not the fostering of community and interactive social wellbeing is also unsuitable.
POLITICAL THOUGHTS click here to see the whole POLITICAL THOUGHTS magazine POLITICAL THOUGHTS!
See
When will governments react to discrimination in the social sciences?
Postmodernism-poststructuralism-postmarxism
Record A Level Passes Again
Is Labour any more than the Public Sector party?
Communism and the education system
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