Tuesday 1 January 2008

"Poorest children falling behind"

Yup. Not only have Nulab's education policies been a total disaster, they have had the worst effect on exactly those children on whose side Nulab claim to be.

And, as Snafu points out, this is despite the fact that Nulab-controlled councils have had spending increased by twice as much as in Tory areas.

So, once and for all, hosing money at education does not work, so how about trying something that probably will, namely education vouchers? As suggested on page 7 of this; the figure of £5,000 is understated - once you add in Teachers' Pensions and capital spending it's more like £7,000 per State school pupil.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Your figure does include, does it, the costs of the armies of education drones in central and local government?

Mark Wadsworth said...

The figures are from the link to DfES in my stat's and stuff section, I assume that this includes all the quango's and inspectorates and LEA's and so on - the figures are all over the place so there's a bit of scrolling and interpolation involved. If anybody knows a more accurate figure ...?

Scott Freeman said...

Do they actually mean "falling behind"? Or do they mean "rich children are getting better quicker"?

Snafu said...

Funny how private schools don't need cohorts of educationalists to provide good quality schooling!

Mark Wadsworth said...

SC, from the article "the results of the least well-off pupils have slipped back - down from 29% to 25% reaching this GCSE benchmark"

OK, this is the Tories' spin, but once you factor in dumbing down as well, poor kids' standards are getting worse in absolute terms, not just relative terms.

S, hence my enthusiasm for vouchers.

Scott Freeman said...

Thanks for checking ;)

I share your enthusiasm for vouchers. Even if poor kids weren't getting worse off, we know state education doesn't do what it's supposed to (at least not what they say it's supposed to, it does do indoctrination and mediocrisation - yep, I made that word up - pretty well).