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Bridget Phillipson: To do list. – politicalbetting.com
Bridget Phillipson: To do list. – politicalbetting.com
OFSTED. At the moment, OFSTED is undergoing a review led by Christine Gilbert into its performance and practices. Why Gilbert, I have no idea. It seems unlikely that any changes will happen before the review concludes. Labour have pledged to bring in report cards instead of overall judgements, but how that works in practice, if it ever does, remains unclear. The unloved curriculum framework, which may be politely described as a fucking train crash, seems set to stay for now for the same reason.
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Biden stumbled over “ballot” and it’s came out as halfway between “ballot” and “battle”. It didn’t interrupt the flow of his speech and was understandable given context
Radio 4 reported it as a “major gaffe” that will renew “doubt” about his candidacy
The man has a stutter FFS. What other disability would it be ok to mock?
Look at STAR, for example. It’s a fantastic organisation that is having a massive impact on the lives of hundreds on underprivileged children
Funding issues then mean that they all too often spend several years on supply teaching with all the financial and social uncertainty that that brings. Try getting a mortgage on a supply contract. Many are lost to the profession in this period. The unhappy place we are at is that there is a shortage of teachers, a shortage of permanent posts, a casualisation of the profession and a much less desirable career causing a repeat of the cycle.
Teaching doesn't pay that well but I have no doubt from both family members and the children of friends that it can be a seriously fulfilling and satisfying career. But it needs to be a career with more secure foundations, that is easier to get established in and which doesn't encourage people to find alternatives before they are even out of their twenties. Simply promising more teachers without giving consideration as to why there is a shortage right now is vacuous.
And it helps to focus on primary - secondary is way harder
Justin Webb was once their N America editor, which illustrates the problem.
I suspect it's a similar story across the board.
...The character of the weapon isn't really germane because there are plenty of other less scary rifles that will kill somebody if you shoot them in the head at 120m...
If, as Democrats have long campaigned for, automatic weapons like the AR15 were banned, the shooter would likely have gotten off maybe a couple of shots, rather than half a dozen.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/royal-family/2024/07/14/king-charles-australia-samoa-state-visit-camilla/
https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2023/08/20/wheres-willy/
Quite a downbeat header !
I think we need to recall that Phillipson's remit is England-only, not that makes too much difference in numbers etc as England is 80%+.
My first question was what is "RAAC", apart from the thing said by the rooks in my nearest tree? But then I recalled Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete (RAAC).
The latest numbers I can see for RAAC are quoted from Feb 2024, at ~0.5% of schools with "at least one building needs refurbishment / rebuild", at ~0.5% with less serious work required. TBH that's less than I was expecting. Are there later numbers?
https://educationhub.blog.gov.uk/2024/02/08/new-guidance-on-raac-in-education-settings/
I expect the standard Starmer approach to be 1) Some quick hits with results visible in 2-4 years and 2) Longer term planned things.
How it will play out is like the rest - only time will tell.
One more question - am I correct that the existing School Rebuilding Programme remains in place?
https://schoolsweek.co.uk/leaders-divided-over-labour-plan-for-ofsted-trust-inspections/
which is such an obviously sensible thing to do, given that we're probably stuck with the MAT model.
If there's no capacity how are they planning to cope ?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridget_Phillipson
I am as critical as anybody that Biden isn't fit to stand, but the above incident isn't a good example of Biden declining mental state. That isn't in anyway the same as his debate performance.
I spent many a family party listening to my teacher Uncle complain vigorously about the Education Secretary of the day and eventually I asked him just what they could do to win his favour. He couldn’t think of anything beyond a wage increase.
Point is that academisation hasn't really improved anything overall, and has in some cases made things worse.
And has been a huge distraction from doing anything useful.
https://www.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk/w/former-st-marys-school-site-shaftesbury
Mr Thump will "bring the country together". Watch carefully.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cljy6yz1j6gt?post=asset:a4382c32-36ff-4433-89b5-4eee741d99ab#post
Full auto weapons are regulated, already, to an almost sensible level.
What they have argued for, is a ban on “assault weapons”. Which is a bit futile, since the same barrel and action can be packaged in a nice, safe looking wood.
Regulating firearms by what they look like is silly. It’s what they do that is the issue.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/jul/11/keir-starmer-on-collision-course-with-unions-over-public-sector-pay
I hope you have misunderestimated the prospects for improvement. Despite everything, today's children seem to have a much better education and a much better time at school than either I or Mrs P. did in our respective state schools back in the 60s/70s.
A possible candidate (who just makes it into the temporal cut), is the great Kim Dae-Jung of S Korea.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Dae-jung
A shame that all his successors have been useless or corrupt - or both.
Now, cockup vs conspiracy and all that. But when you have heroes of red blooded Americans saying this to millions, such as the guy with the world record longest sniper kill, we might assume a societal reaction of some sort.
Which in this case was allowing the guy onto the roof. That is the crux of the failure, the rest is details.
https://www.legis.state.pa.us/CFDOCS/Legis/PN/Public/btCheck.cfm?txtType=PDF&sessYr=2023&sessInd=0&billBody=S&billTyp=B&billNbr=0200&pn=0723
The biggest problems with academic chains is the travel distances required you want things locally because being a 30 minute drive away is a lot better than being 2 hours or more away.
This is the point at which Twitter moves from being the best way to understand a breaking news story, to generating way more heat than light as everyone weighs in with their own opinion.
Meanwhile, attendees for the RNC are arriving in Milwaukee, and to say that security has been stepped up looks like a vast understatement. https://x.com/jackposobiec/status/1812707257617952902
Which is why we have rules in the UK around imitation firearms.
What you say you will do when in Opposition is not the same as what you can do in Government.
Not sure I would label it as a "mess", more an "opportunity"
And the economics of schools are curious- most of the costs are, if not fixed, very lumpy. (You don't pay a teacher more because they have 27 in the class, not 26.) But income is pretty much proportional to enrollment.
The "guy with the world record longest sniper kill" is not American, red blooded or otherwise. In fact no US sniper is in the top 5 of the longest verified sniper kills. The first American comes in at number 8. The number 1 spot is held by a Ukrainian
I assume the guy you are talking about is the one quoted in the Daily Mail (not exactly a recommendation in itself) .
Except he is not American, he is Canadian and he does not hold the record for the longets sniper kill. He was simply part of the team that assisted the sniper who made the shot. Nor is that shot now the world record, having been superceded by the Ukrainian sniper last year.
So as I say, the only 'verifiable' fact in your posting turns out to be wrong.
Confronting the actual problem is politically too expensive in the US. Hence stuff like legislation against bayonet lugs…
The basic point stands - gun control that is meaningful needs to restrict firearms by their capabilities, not pistol grips or rails or bayonets.
Which is the kind of firearms control we have in the U.K.
When they hit on that line, and one of them said, but hold on it's not 30 years but 28 years , what were they to do?
"Twenty eight years of hurt"* lyrically messy.
Should they wait another two years just to make the line accurate? - stupid idea.
Or do they use a bit of songwriting license pen a great line in a song which is still being sung and discussed around the world 28 years later?
*England played in Euro 1968 and didn't win so in 1996t it was 28 years not 26 as some here claim.
One is that popular schools tend to have larger class sizes- they fill up to their published capacity, whereas less popular schools don't. So you could only reduce class sizes by letting fewer parents send their offspring to St Ofsted's... Good luck selling that.
The other, more prosaic one, is buildings, number of classrooms in particular.
There’s a reasonable chance, with this rhetoric, that someone will take ANOTHER pot shot at the Donald
"Three lions on a shirt
Jules Rimet still gleaming
Thirty years of hurt
never stopped me dreaming".
It should work nicely for the 2026 World Cup when it will be 60 years fo hurt.
The way the Dems have gone from saying “Trump is worse than Hitler” to “everyone must dial down the rhetoric” is painfully comic. And transparently hypocritical
Of course, it would have been better if they’d not gone hysterical a year ago. Then they wouldn’t be in this pickle. Likewise, it would have been better if they’d acknowledged Biden’s senility a year ago. But no
https://x.com/xGPhilosophy/status/1812592531772723482
@xGPhilosophy
England created less xG at Euro 2024 (6.43) than Croatia (7.10).
Croatia went out at the Group Stage.
The only thing worse than the corruption was the general waste and incompetence. To give a typical example, we had facilities to make up custom pipe brackets. It wasn't unusual for site managers to forget to order them (bearing in mind that virtually all they had to on most sites was order in and install simple pipework to drawing), and we'd charge 5x the price to do them as a rush job (often it meant people driving round the country with one set of brackets in the boot of their car, paying a minimum order price for 250kg of galvanising for a 10kg item etc.). On several occasions I did all this, rocked up at site with the "urgent" brackets, to spot the original set they had lost lying in the grass at the site of the site managers office.
I could go on and on - e.g. turning up on a site to find a manager instructing a lad to cut up a pallet of brand new harras fencing to go in a skip because it was easier than booking it back into stores, but you get - but you get the picture. The whole attitude was "It's all someone else's money, so who cares".
I'm glad I'm well out of it (although I'm now involved in the railway industry, where we can easily make a £50 bracket cost £500, although that's more to do with "following the process" effects).
As it stands, the SC will strike down any such legislation anyway.
Though I'm not entirely surprised Leon doesn't see the difference.
The flag is also apparently a no-no. That indicates wind speed/direction to a sniper - they use them at firing ranges
https://tecmagex.com/en/mtm-wind-reader-shooting-range-flag.html
Could still easily be a cock-up, of course. But if so it is monumental