UNIONIZED GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS GIVE INFERIOR EDUCATION EVERYWHERE

Poor countries show the way

"Education is for children, not for profits," proclaims the National Union of Teachers. "It's privatisation!", chimes in Chris Keates, general secretary of the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT).

The teaching unions are upset about the Government's flagship programme for 200 new Academies, supposedly "independent" state schools, and the new "trust schools". To listen to the unions, you'd think nothing was in need of reform. Their complacency is staggering. To take one statistic at random, more than 80 per cent of children on free school meals fail to gain five decent GCSE grades. That's failure on a grand scale.

Anyway, the reforms are hardly radical. To allow a few businessmen to donate a couple of million quid [pounds sterling] to gain a modicum of influence over a school's ethos, that's not privatisation. Real privatisation, however, is taking place elsewhere in the world with salutary lessons for us. And contrary to the unions' moralising that privatisation must be bad for the poor, it's happening because some of the poorest people on this planet are fed up with the failures of state education. In slums and villages that I have visited in Africa and India, parents are appalled that teachers often don't turn up and, if they do, often don't teach. Their children tell them of sleeping teachers and parents see that exercise books are rarely marked.

But these parents don't sit by, waiting for their politicians to do something. Instead, they put their children into the burgeoning private schools. My recent research has shown that between 65 and 75 per cent of children in the poorest slums in Africa and India are now in private schools. These schools charge low fees, perhaps a couple of pounds per month. They are run by proprietors who are not heartless businessmen, but who provide free places to orphans and those with widowed mothers. When they tested large random samples of children, my teams found that these schools outperform the government alternative. And they do it with teachers paid a fraction of the unionised rates.

Unions here would be up in arms about this. Touchingly, the first concern of many delegates at the conferences is that private enterprise would cut teachers' pay or make them work longer hours. But if in the free market, schools can find dedicated champions of children's learning willing to work longer hours, or be flexible on their pay and conditions, then what is wrong with that, if it benefits children? In Africa and India the market has set its own pay and conditions. Even though teachers in private schools are paid less than their government counterparts, and work longer hours, they have higher standards because they know they are accountable to parents. Poor performance could lose them their jobs; in state schools, the unions make sure that nobody can be sacked.

Last week I was in a deprived fishing village in Ghana that boasts six flourishing private schools only yards from the state school. A fisherman with an understanding of economics that would put union officials to shame, who had moved his daughter from state to private school, told me that the private school proprietor needed to satisfy parents like him, otherwise he would go out of business. "That's why the teachers turn up and teach," he told me, "because they are closely supervised." His wife, busy smoking fish for sale in the market, concurred. "In the state school, our daughter learnt nothing. Now she's back on track."

These parents understand what apparently baffles those in the unions, so used to the dependency culture of the West - that what is handed out for free is likely to be low quality. One father, living in the Kenyan slum of Kibera, summarised it like this: "If you go to a market and are offered free fruit and vegetables, you know they'll be rotten. If you want fresh produce, you have to pay for it."

Real privatisation occurs only if the customers of education are empowered, if the educational providers are made accountable to them. We have found a very effective way of doing that over the millennia - it's called the price mechanism. Only when people pay for something can they be in real control. Poor parents in the developing world recognise this with crystal clarity.

Importantly, in these poor countries, and in China too, the markets are now consolidating, with entrepreneurs creating chains of schools. These chains are starting to offer parents a brand name that they know they can trust. That's real privatisation, too, when business men and women grasp the incentive of the profit motive to improve and innovate. When businesses are free to win customers from other competitors, to expand their markets, to find ways of making the system more effective, then we will see the shake-up the education system needs.

The unions are scaremongering. The present reforms are only toying with privatisation. To bring profit and fees into that system - now, that would be progress. What could it look like here? Gazing into my crystal ball, I see chains of learning centres carrying the distinctive bright orange logo of "easyLearn", competing with those sporting the red "V" of "VirginOpportunity". Competition between these players would make good schooling affordable to all, accelerate the pace of learning innovation, and end the system mired in complacency and under-performance. I guess the unions would be right to be worried then. But parents and children could rest easy, and grasp the new opportunities offered.

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BRITISH TEACHERS BLAME ADVERTISERS FOR COMMON BLACK BEHAVIOUR

Many British inner city schools are predominantly black these days -- but we don't mention THAT of course

A "culture of cool" is damaging children by placing them under relentless commercial pressure to buy trendy clothes and other goods, members of the National Union of Teachers (NUT) said yesterday. Discipline in schools was suffering as children became caught up in the desire to own the latest expensive training shoes rather than concentrate on their education. The annual conference of the NUT in Torquay called for parenting classes to teach families about "an all-pervasive culture of cool that is hugely undermining to positive pupil attitudes both in and out of school". Marketing campaigns aimed at children had left parents facing "challenges that as little as 30 years ago barely existed".

Nigel Baker, a teacher from Birmingham, told the conference: "Children's toys have never been so gender specific, clothing choices have never been so multiplied, children's food has never been so adulterated. They are victims of corporate strategists and rampant commercialisation. We must help parents to build resilience in themselves and their children. A resilience that says we don't need to buy Nike trainers for 90 pounds, because we can get the same quality for 25 pounds. A resilience that says we don't need to buy fatty, salty rubbish from McDonald's because we can cook better at home. "Teenagers are a billion-pound market, the relentless exploitation of which leaves parents in debt and satisfaction never met. Let's get real to the new mode of social control."

Max Hyde, a member of the national executive of the NUT, supported parenting classes but acknowledged concerns "that the Government will teach parents to say `yah', to hold a dinner party and to drive a Chelsea tractor". "We will make clear that any attempt by government to impose wishy-washy, objectionable classes will be opposed by the NUT," she said. "Parents are part of the solution, not the problem ."

However, Jan Neilsen, from Wandsworth, southwest London, told delegates: "When I hear the term `parenting classes', I want to reach for my gun. In the present climate, teenagers are demonised and so are reckless and feckless parents. It is a class question. This motion demonises youth culture. It is not the fact that they listen to rap music or wear hoodies or have their trousers below their Y-fronts that is the problem. What parents really need is a shorter working week, more wages, more holidays and better facilities."

The conference voted to campaign for "parenting skills programmes and parental support networks". Steve Sinnott, the general secretary of the NUT, said: "We want to create a culture among young people that what is right or cool is coming into school prepared to work and prepared to learn."

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Teachers spied on in classrooms: "Teachers are preparing to protest against surveillance cameras and microphones that are being installed in classrooms across the UK. Surveillance firm Classwatch has installed more than 50 CCTV systems with microphones across the UK, said the Times Educational Supplement on Friday. Draconian headteachers, who have had teachers watched through two-way mirrors as well, grade teachers according to their performance under observation. Occasional observation is necessary to ensure lessons meet quality targets set centrally by the Department for Education and Skills. But the TES reported on Friday that teachers were being 'observed to death,' that surveillance was being used as a punishment, that schools were installing CCTV cameras with microphones into classrooms, and that teachers were wilting under the all-seeing Great Eye of Sauron."

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

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