Thursday, November 09, 2006

British fruitcake in charge of education

Children as young as 12 should help to appoint teachers and take a much bigger role in running their schools, the Schools Minister has declared. In a ringing endorsement of pupil power, Lord Adonis said that headteachers should consider following the example of Finland, where children were full members of governing bodies. The former Downing Street adviser said that he wanted to see a cultural change to allow children to interview candidates for teaching posts.

Pupils have been allowed to be associate members of governing bodies in England's schools since 2003. But to date only a handful of schools have taken up the opportunity.

Lord Adonis told the Commons Education Select Committee that he was impressed by how schools were run in Finland. "One of the things I was very struck by is the degree of pupil participation in the schools," he said. "School governing bodies now routinely in Finland have pupils as full members. That is something we don't have here." In England, governors have to be 18 in order to be full members but pupils can take part as associate members, he said. "These sorts of ideas are ones we should be prepared to look at to see whether there's anything we can learn," he said.

Lord Adonis was giving evidence to the committee's inquiry into citizenship education in schools. He said that he had visited a school in England where children were consulted on appointments. He said that some head teachers believed that it was vital that the school council of pupils should express views on appointments, while others were against the plan. He added: "Every school could help children get to grips with the techniques of interviewing and selecting job applicants. Every school has senior staff who are trained in interview techniques," he said. "The issue isn't whether the skills are available within the school, it is whether the school leadership regards this as a sufficiently high priority for them to do it. "My own view is that they should make the effort. That is the kind of cultural change we need to spread over an increasing number of schools."

Citizenship became a compulsory part of the national curriculum four years ago. The subject is designed to give pupils a knowledge and understanding of current affairs, encourage them to question their social and moral responsibility, and render them politically literate. But inspectors claim that it is taught inadequately in a quarter of schools.

Lord Adonis said that schools should develop school councils, promote volunteering and help pupils to promote their debating skills in order to make more of a contribution to their community.

Source





Determined education ignoramuses in Australia

The bureaucrats and their Leftist masters are pushing the hoary old superstition that promotion of gifted children harms them socially. It has been known to be false since the work of Terman in the 1920s

A legal battle between Education Queensland and a gifted schoolgirl will soon resume - this time in Queensland's Court of Appeal. Lawyers representing the state of Queensland have filed notice they intend to appeal against a Supreme Court ruling last month that quashed an earlier favourable finding in the Anti-Discrimination Tribunal. The case centres on a decision by education authorities in 2003 not to allow Gracia MalaxEtxebarria, then 9 and who had already skipped two grades at school, to advance to high school the following year.

Education Queensland refused the request because they had concerns for her social development, but offered to tailor a program for her. That decision was later separately backed by then education minister Anna Bligh, one of her advisers and a senior departmental figure. The Anti-Discrimination Tribunal - which considered the case in mid-2005 - ruled in April that there was no discrimination by the department.

But in a judgment handed down on October 4, Supreme Court justice John Helman granted Gracia's appeal against the Anti-Discrimination Tribunal's 2005 decision and ordered the tribunal re-hear part of the case. Justice Helman found that while the tribunal could be justified in finding the initial departmental decision had not been discriminatory against Gracia, the question of whether the department had gone on to discriminate against her in their later review of the case had not been adequately considered.

In their notice of appeal, lawyers for the state have asked that Justice Helman's orders be set aside and the original Anti-Discrimination Tribunal finding be affirmed. The pending Court of Appeal matter has meant a scheduled directions hearing of the case this week in the Anti-Discrimination Tribunal has had to be postponed.

Source

***************************

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"


Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

***************************

No comments: