Fun Online Polls: Improving standards in education & Brexit delays

The results to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

What should we do to improve standards in secondary education and increase social mobility? (choose all that apply)

Have more selective state grammar schools - 50 votes
Have streaming and setting in state schools - 41 votes
Offer 'education vouchers' so that more can afford private education - 39 votes
Ban or restrict private education - 6 votes
Other, please specify - 4 votes

I would say that is conclusive enough, job done.

Interesting comment:

LJH: "Reactionary expectation that teachers keep orderly classrooms; that literacy and numeracy are more important than selfesteem; that there is a core cannon of facts* a person must learn before voyages of self discovery; sacking and forfeiture of pension rights for teachers in public employment who fail to conform to the above; close all education faculties at the polys- learn on the job."

* Agreed, like being taught the difference between "canon" and "cannon".
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As usual, The Daily Mash says what people really think…

"EVERYONE has agreed to quietly sweep the referendum result under the carpet, it has been confirmed. Britain has confirmed plans to keep its head down and start talking about football or the Olympics whenever anyone mentions Article 50.

A government spokesman said: “The ‘Leave’ thing has become like a workmate’s barbecue where many people agree enthusiastically to attend, then bail on the day after realising they’d rather go to Homebase. Let’s just ignore it and move on – Boris is cool with that, he never gave a shit really and Farage was only doing it to get himself a TV agent and crack the jungle reality show circuit.”

A few days later, The Times repeated this without the satire…

Theresa May has been expected to enact article 50 in January, setting in train the formal two years of negotiations before Brexit. Despite great political pressure to stick to that timetable, she may be forced to delay because her new Brexit and international trade departments will not be ready, City sources said.

So that's this week's Fun Online Poll:

"When do you think the UK government will trigger Article 50, if ever?"

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

Fun Online Polls: Midges & Grammar schools

The results to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

Have you noticed/suffered more midges/midge bites than usual this summer?

Yes - 13%
No - 87%

Thanks to all who voted and left comments, if we adjust for those who've noticed fewer, there's probably no change overall, so either it is a very localised phenomenon or it's just me. Which has put my mind at rest.
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Apparently our new PM has floated the idea of selective state secondary schools i.e. "grammar schools". Rejoice! says the Torygraph. Boo! says The Guardian. Inevitably.

So that's this week's Fun Online Poll.

"What should we do to improve standards in secondary education and increase social mobility? (choose all that apply)"

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

As to the last option, it sounds a bit socialist-authoritarian but is not without merit. If there were no private schools, then the most demanding/pushy parents would devote their efforts to keeping state school teachers on their toes; it would level the playing field and hence improve social mobility (downwards as well as upwards); and it would save parents a fortune in private school fees (so I have a vested interest in this and is the alternative to education vouchers), which are largely rental payments/an arms race anyway.

Further, in Germany (for example), private education is virtually unheard of (it is for backward children with rich parents), they have selection (into quasi-grammar and secondary modern) and their educational standards are very good.

Fun Online Polls: Grammar Schools

The results to last week's poll are as follows:

Do you support the idea of selective state grammar schools?

Yes 87%
No 13%

Thank you to everybody who took part (a good turnout with 111 votes) and I think that the results speak for themselves.
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Nothing springs to mind for this week's Fun Online Poll, I'm afraid.

Fun Online Polls: Madonna's fall & Grammar schools.

The results to last week's Fun Onlin Poll were as follows:

Madonna: did she fall or was it a pre-planned stunt?

It was an unhappy accident - 9%
It was a pre-planned stunt - 12%
Who's Madonna? What fall? - 19%
Don't care - 57%
Other, please specify - 3%

Best 'other' suggestion was by JQ: "It was a happy accident".
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Moving swiftly on from gran'ma to grammar...

From the BBC:

According to opinion polls, support for grammar schools remains constant.

A recent YouGov survey, published in The Times, indicated that 54% of people said they would support a new grammar in response to "demonstrated local demand". If elected, UKIP has promised a grammar school in every town.

Interesting.

I don't think I've done a Fun Online Poll on this yet, what do the readers of this blog think?

Vote here or use the widget in the side bar.

That's completely irrelevant and not even necessarily true...

From the BBC:

Grammar schools are "stuffed full" of middle-class children and do not improve social mobility, the chief inspector of schools in England says.

Sir Michael Wilshaw told the Observer the selective system was not the way to make up ground on other nations. He spoke after plans to expand grammar school provision in Kent were rejected.

The main point of the education system is to educate people. If that leads to "social mobility", that is a bonus and not a feature, but we'll come to that later.

And let's use the analogy of doctors:

1. Doctors are primarily "middle class" (they are surely the definition of middle class, are they not? And they are a self-selecting bunch. Most female doctors are married to other doctors.)

2. The taxpayer (via the government and the NHS) pays for the bulk of medical education and then pays them their salaries afterwards.

3. Although everybody pays to educate middle class doctors (glossing over the fact that high earners pay far more tax than low earners, so high earners pay far more towards doctors' education), this does not, using his logic, lead to more "social mobility".

4. Therefore, justice would be served if we shut down or privatised all our state-run medical schools and also shut down the NHS.

5. Whatever the economic or political merits of this, would that:

a) Improve the standard of doctors in this country and improve the standard of medical care for the common man? Possible but unlikely.

b) Would it improve social mobility?

- The people at the bottom would be worse off because no "free" NHS any more.

- Who would end up going to those now privatised medical schools? Only people with very rich parents, so the band of doctors would become even more self-selecting and self-reinforcing, and then nepotism and cronyism in the healthcare system will get even worse (I'm not saying it doesn't exist already).

- What are the chances of anybody outside the top couple of percent becoming a doctor? Virtually zero. So that would reduce social mobility. It would be the same with state grammar schools: everybody outside the richest seven per cent would be pretty screwed.

Interestingly, David Davis starts off by talking good sense:

Tory MP and former grammar school pupil David Davis told BBC News many working-class children "got on through having access to grammar schools".

He said: "The reason grammar schools are dominated by the middle classes now is because we've shrunk the size of the sector."

And then ruins it all:

He added that "working-class kids" could not get in "because they've been elbowed out by ambitious middle class parents".

Hang about here.

It's every parent's right to do what they think is best for their kids, which does involve a lot of extra-tuition, attending church, making 'donations' to the school's PTA, sending them to a private primary school etc, and so on to get their kids into the best school (be that private or state) they can.

Does that give kids of pushy parents an advantage: yes. Is this an unfair advantage? I don't see how it is, that's like complaining that Eddie Van Halen has an unfair advantage over other guitarists because he's practised so much.

Are they deliberately "elbowing out… working-class kids"? Are they heck, these people couldn't care less whom they elbow out, by definition, every kid that gets in has elbowed somebody else out. They'd sell their grandmothers to get their child into a state grammar school.

Having made the good point that non-middle class kids would get a better shot if there were more grammar schools, Davis misses the obvious follow-up point: what if all kids had to sit the entrance exam, like the good old-fashioned 11-plus.

Those kids who aren't interested are free to flunk the exam if they wish, but that is surely a fairer and better system than one in which only a few parents (the pushiest ones) even bother entering their kids for the entrance exam.

Here endeth.