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Retired people could work for pensions..
Comments
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seven-day-weekend wrote: »Agree absolutely. The Comprehensive system encourages mediocrity.
Yes: it's also a lot less efficient to teach.0 -
GeorgeHowell wrote: »It would no doubt be a less "elite" cabinet if Labour's extremely damaging comprehensive education policy had not seen the light of day. Heath, Wilson, Thatcher, and Major were all grammar school pupils and no doubt so were many of their cabinets. Now the conduit for those from humble backgrounds to the top has been severely curtailed and Fettes-ites, Etonians etc have such an advantage again that they dominate. Social mobility in reverse.
Just remind us which Education Secretary opened the most comprehsensive schools in the last century?
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Also the new Education Secretary in 1970 was elected on a policy (Tory manifesto) that:
This hardly seems like a plan to reverse the Wilson Government's policy!In secondary education, a number of different patterns have developed over the years, including many types of comprehensive school. We will maintain the existing rights of local education authorities to decide what is best for their area.
They will take into account the general acceptance that in most cases the age of eleven is too early to make final decisions which might affect a child's whole future. Many of the most imaginative new schemes abolishing the eleven-plus have been introduced by Conservative councils.
The route to the top always was severely curtained by private education and the eleven plus system that supported it. The entrance to university was always limited by social status. Even when you passed the exams the additional interviews or entrance exams favoured those who "knew the system", those coached in what was expected and those thought to be "one of us". I would say that there is more opportunity to reach the top now than then, but it still favours those from the "right" background. Why do you think some of the "better schools" want to interview applicants and the parents?Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are incapable of forming such opinions.0 -
seven-day-weekend wrote: »Agree absolutely. The Comprehensive system encourages mediocrity.
Might encourage mediocrity but at least in doesn't label the majority of children failures at 11 and consign them to a second rate education.
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Might encourage mediocrity but at least in doesn't label the majority of children failures at 11 and consign them to a second rate education.
Did I suggest going back to that system?(AKA HRH_MUngo)
Member #10 of £2 savers club
Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is the Book of British Birds, and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology: Terry Eagleton0 -
seven-day-weekend wrote: »Did I suggest going back to that system?
No but that is what happened in the past if comprehensives operated the way they were sold i.e. streaming on a subject basis they would have been a lot better than they are.
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grizzly1911 wrote: »Surely with so many people going to university, if individuals are gifted, they have even more chance to show their potential. It isn't just comprehensives that has "damaged" things.
Perhaps it is a "safe" bet for the mollycoddled rather than doing a more useful career in the real world.
Comprehensives don't allow the gifted to be pushed to their maximum potential. Instead we are all supposed to believe we are all born equal in terms of academic ability. Amen comrade.
The face is, we need to push our gifted children, not hold them back for Tyrone and Chardonnays sake.0 -
Might encourage mediocrity but at least in doesn't label the majority of children failures at 11 and consign them to a second rate education.
But by statistics, that's what life demonstrates to be true. Why should the school demographic illustrate anything differently in terms of ability?0 -
Comprehensives don't allow the gifted to be pushed to their maximum potential. Instead we are all supposed to believe we are all born equal in terms of academic ability. Amen comrade.
The face is, we need to push our gifted children, not hold them back for Tyrone and Chardonnays sake.
Comprehensives still had streaming and "grammar sets" in the times of the youngest boomers, who would be filling positions in parliament now.
It really depends on the comps that pupils went/go to. In my original home town therewas a gulf between the best and worst (still is).
I know a number of peers, who went to the grammar school, who weren't particularly bright when they reached O and A levels.
I accept if you can afford to send bright pupils to good public schools they are likely to achieve more. Lots of half baked kids go to lesser public schools too.
Catchment areas make a big difference too. My school, one of the first purpose built comprehensives, used to draw from an affluent village, which then became a suburb of the local large town. After I left, because of village demographics, they started to draw pupils from a wedge cut from the centre of town pulling in poorer disadvantaged neighbourhoods and the school slid down the rankings.
Good kids will still make it, unless the school is pants. They are just in fewer numbers, spread across schools, compared to cherry picked, concentrated pupils, in one school. With the internet the ability to develop and acquire knowledge isn't restricted to dog eared text books and the teachers alone. It isn't just the schools responsibility."If you act like an illiterate man, your learning will never stop... Being uneducated, you have no fear of the future.".....
"big business is parasitic, like a mosquito, whereas I prefer the lighter touch, like that of a butterfly. "A butterfly can suck honey from the flower without damaging it," "Arunachalam Muruganantham0 -
But by statistics, that's what life demonstrates to be true. Why should the school demographic illustrate anything differently in terms of ability?
All decided by a test at 11. Compreshensive were supposed to be streamed if they wern't then was not a fault of the system but the way it was run.0 -
All decided by a test at 11. Compreshensive were supposed to be streamed if they wern't then was not a fault of the system but the way it was run.
By 11 I could identify who was successful and who wasn't. I was pretty much spot on with my assessment.
The ones who did alright were the ones smart enough not to doss around, fight and instead concentrate on the teacher.
About 80% were dossiers. The remaining 20% do well to this day.0
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