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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » The Grammar School policy is un-Conservative and will appea
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » The Grammar School policy is un-Conservative and will appeal to the wrong people
Theresa May is a grammar school girl.* That personal experience, combined with the success of her career, might well be at the root of her enthusiasm for the system which she so lauded yesterday; many who believe they benefitted personally from a system become advocates for its wider adoption. If so, her enthusiasm is misplaced.
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I think I need to go back to the bunker for reprogramming....
About one aspect of a Green Paper, that's yet to be published.
And people say Theresa May doesn't do politics......
Nothing else to talk about, is there?
I had thought Corbyn was clumsy, inept and a PR disaster, now Owen Smith turns himself into a bigger object of ridicule.
Grammar Schools will be better than the other schools in the area.
Other schools will be worse.
Most people will go to other schools.
Most people will go to worse schools.
The fact is that, although the Conservatives are brilliant at sound bites, they are absolutely hopeless at thinking things through.
First we had the EU Referendum, led by Tories on both sides, with no plans to deal with the outcome. Now we have highly selective grammar schools for absolutely everybody. Mrs May just hasn`t a clue.
Interesting thread Mr Herdson, as they say, the devil is in the detail - which is yet to appear.
OT. Another remarkable performance from Team GB on day two of the Paralympics. 3 golds in nine minutes according to the BBC, bringing the medal tally up to 27 and 12 golds.
OOT. Liam Fox, well done, 5 years later and still making other MPs look like titans.
They are, in short, a bit rubbish. What is tragic, is that we don't have an opposition primed and ready to take over. Corbyn is flattering the govt.
A piece in the Telegraph today argues that, because of the political opposition even within the Tory Party, and because the new policy has no legitimacy having not appeared in the last manifesto, either it isn't going to happen, or it actually points towards a new election sooner rather than later.
Gotcha.
Did you know, Liam Fox is Latin for 'end of a bell'
I am shocked to hear reports that Liam Fox is a moron.
PBers might be interested to hear that the Newstatesman is reporting a rumour that Seamus Milne as Corbyn's press officer will stand down this autumn and be replaced by Paul Mason.
Introducing grammar schools divides the party - two former education secretaries and the former PM against - and risks Mays 1 Nation appeal - she only cares for you if you were born academically bright.
We know May doesn't play political games - so this cant be about forcing an early GE, distracting us from Brexit, or smoking out the remaining Cameroons. So that leaves us to conclude what about May?
We suffer from some awful management - particularly in innovation, and R&D - the "British disease".
In comprehensives you can stream differently for different subjects and move people between streams if necessary. In a grammar system you make a clumsy, once-and-for-all decision based on a single test at an arbitrary age.
That said, I spend a fair bit of time correcting my own work and beta-reading for others. This essentially involves pointing at every other line and saying "This is shit", but rephrasing it in a more positive way ("This is an area for improvement" etc).
Even leaving aside that, a trade minister criticising British trade is only going to get one sort of coverage.
And aside from the arguments good and bad for grammars, it would surely be yet another tinkering with the education system which I understand is much of the problem in the first place.
I know how a perfect excuse to do a thread slagging him off.
(1) The return of Secondary Moderns
(2) The return of the 11+
(3) The fact they will benefit the Middle Class only.
Theresa May has explicitly ruled out the first. There will be no return to Secondary Moderns. There will continue to be a diverse provision of free school, faith school, academies and non-selective schools.
On the second, the plans include for children to join not at 11, but at 14 and 16 as well, and take on students from non-selective schools for certain subjects.
And, on the third, there will be a requirement for grammars to admit a large proportion from those on free school meals, or from poor backgrounds, or directly sponsor a non-selective school in a poor area.
Speaking of news, I was surprised the North Korean nuclear test was so far down the running order on the (BBC) News at Ten.
In my experience, it's a rather unpleasant and dogmatic branch of the Conservative Party that filters every single issue through a 'what would Maggie have done?' lens, rather than thinking of itself, and imitate the worst aspects of her behaviour - seemingly, in homage - as well.
I gather quite a few independent schools now have the kids do GCSEs and 'A' levels a year or two early so they can do more and also have time for Oxbridge.
"I've never in my life heard an explanation of how grammar schools achieve anything that can't achieved much more efficiently by streaming within comprehensives."
You're missing the point. This is all about emotion not logic. Streaming by ability (and not ability to pay) is a no-no for both main parties.
To summarise and generalise ... Grammars must be sacrificed so that Tories can continue to pay to ensure their kids aren't disadvantaged. Grammar schools would undercut this and provide the poor with a level playing field.
Labour want to dumb down so that their kids that aren't going to fee-paying schools aren't left behind either.
It's an instinctive defensive mechanism, so no reassurance about remaining comprehensives having access or being of good quality will work.
We'll dealing with virtual children (the adults) and real children.
theonion.com/article/waiver-wire-ep-5-35
But obviously still far less flexibility than with streaming in a comprehensive system.
As for pupils travelling to a different school for certain subjects, once you're driven to that kind of thing, isn't it a signal that something is badly wrong with the system? Well, if it really were a large proportion, that would produce a bizarre situation in which large numbers of more able pupils were being rejected by grammar schools just because they were middle-class. But perhaps the proportion wouldn't really be that large.
In any case, there's obviously an admission there that academic selection intrinsically tends to disadvantage pupils from poor backgrounds.
Why do it?
Secondly Trafford does well because of the parents who move there, not just because of the quality of the schools.
At the new "grammar hospitals", doctors will be able select the cases they know they can treat. Results are going to go through the roof.
The more difficult, chronic and terminal cases will be able to go to "faith hospitals".
In this regard, seats are like chocolate. A PM always wants more.
It's a mistake to look at parties' voters as having a single view.
I'm really asking about the differences between the two systems in principle. There's nothing in the principle of a comprehensive system to say when streaming should start.
But I accept that in a more flexible system the flexibility may be exercised in a way people don't approve of. I suppose in a selective system you are guaranteed a form of streaming - albeit crude and inflexible - from the moment of selection.
I do not think all UKIP voters have the same view on the single market. Some even wanted to stay in the EU (I think about 1%, but still).
One faction of the old Liberal Party did badly in 2015, but the other two factions, the Liberal Unionists and National Liberals (known as Wets in the 1980s) who had captured the Conservative Party under a self declared ('I am a Liberal conservative') Liberal prime minister David Cameron, continued Liberal policies like supporting Europeani integration and opposing grammar schools.
Now they are gone and it is becoming clear that PM May, who few knew her real political philosophy - she was clever enough to make liberal noises of talismatic liberal issues like Gay Marriage and give tepid support to the party line on the EU so retain a great office of state through the Liberal government years - is a very traditional and conservative Conservative whos pitch is to the lower middle classes at the upper echelons expense and is building a power base of essex men type voters who defected from Labour under thatcher and recent labour defectors to UKIP.
The right have won the civil war that started when thatcher was deposed.
Ultimately this is because the Liberal wing of the party who took control in 1990 could never win more tban a wafer thin majority and were denied the large majority needed to purge the right.
Now as May parks her tanks on Labour and UKIPs lawn, it is the right who will soon have the large majority.
And if not why not ?
I guess they mean the ethos, the subjects taught, the quality of teachers etc etc.