Leftists trying to destroy Britain's remaining good schools

They have given up on improving bad schools because they know from experience that it cannot be done. So they want to destroy the good schools by busing in the problem children that any sane parent would want to avoid. Fortunately, the government is not so far going along with that -- as it realizes how unpopular that would be

Middle-class parents obsessed with Ofsted reports and league tables are colonising the best primary schools, forcing poorer children into failing schools and ruining their chances in life, researchers claim. The Cambridge Primary Review – the biggest study of primary schools for decades – recommends that catchment areas should be scrapped because only wealthy parents can afford to buy houses next to the best primaries. Instead, oversubscribed schools would use a lottery system.

The research, by Stephen Machin and Sandra McNally, from the University of London, found that admissions procedures exacerbated inequalities. Their report said: “Some aspects of primary education are geared in favour of helping higher income groups. Current admissions policies favour parents who not only know how to use published information about school standards such as Ofsted inspections and performance tables but can also afford to choose exactly where to live. “Prohibiting schools from discriminating on the basis of residence would do much to level the playing field in terms of educational opportunities. It would reduce the large inequalities that appear later in terms of wages and intergenerational mobility.”

The report said that a person’s success in the labour market was influenced by his or her primary education. It said: “Differences in educational progress start very early, widen as children age and lead to substantial differences in later attainment levels.” Dr McNally told The Times that schools should be banned from choosing pupils according to where they live. “They could still give preferential treatment to siblings of pupils already at the school, but then there should be a lottery system,” she said. “That was adopted in the whole of Brighton & Hove as a fairer system. Quite how far children could be bussed to other schools would need to be worked out, but the local authority could organise some help with that. It’s a really vital area and an obvious way of making things fairer.” She admitted that scrapping catchment areas would upset a lot of people, “particularly those who had bought houses near schools”.

The report also criticised the market-based approach to education, backed by successive governments, which encourages competition between schools. “Choice and competition may exacerbate educational inequalities,” it said. “The inability to exercise choice can lead to educational segregation, with children from disadvantaged families having to make do with the schools that more advantaged parents do not want to send their children to. “Schools are not like businesses: they do not close down when they no longer make a profit.”

John Dunford, of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “There’s strong evidence that collaboration between schools raises standards, whereas excessive competition and market-based policies create polarisation, which makes the task of some schools particularly difficult.”

Another report for the review studied the history of primary education. It found that 100 years ago schools “played down intellectual aims and put more stress on practical activities, particularly those required by an industrious and unselfish workforce”.

Jim Knight, the Schools Minister, said: “Of course, all children should attend a good school and have the opportunity to secure the best jobs in later life, regardless of their background. That is precisely why we have introduced the new statutory School Admissions Code. Catchment areas must reflect the broader local community and must not exclude particular areas to penalise low income families. A ban would undermine the right of schools and councils to decide their own admissions policies – and there is no way parents will support this.”

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More putting propaganda before real education in schools

'No Name-Calling' Campaign Coming to Nation's Schools

Thousands of American schools are expected to take part in the fifth annual "No Name-Calling Week," a homosexual advocacy group announced on Monday. The Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) said the campaign is aimed at children in grades 5-8, and the group offers additional lesson plans for earlier grades. "No Name-Calling Week, Jan. 21-25, is an annual week of educational activities aimed at ending name-calling of all kinds and providing schools with the tools and inspiration to launch an on-going dialogue about ways to eliminate bullying in their communities," GLSEN said in a news release.

"No Name-Calling Week offers schools an opportunity to engage students about the importance of treating one another with respect," said Dr. Eliza Byard, GLSEN's interim executive director. "Unfortunately, far too many students experience the negative impact of name-calling, bullying and harassment. Through proactive educational interventions like No Name-Calling Week, schools can make a difference in the safety of all of their students," Byard said.

GLSEN said No Name-Calling Week was inspired by the young adult novel "The Misfits," by James Howe. The book tells the story of four best friends "trying to survive the seventh grade in the face of all too frequent name-calling, bullying and harassment."

GLSEN said its No Name-Calling Week Coalition partners include Simon & Schuster Children's Publishers, the National Association of Secondary School Principals, the National Association of Elementary School Principals, Girl Scouts of the USA, the National School Boards Association and the National Education Association.

In the run-up to No Name-Calling Week, GLSEN sponsored a "Creative Expression Contest," asking students ages 5-15 to "illustrate what name-calling means to them through artistic expression such as poetry, artwork or music."

On its Web site, GLSEN says it "envisions a future in which every child learns to respect and accept all people, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity/expression."

The GLSEN Web site offers a guide for students who want to start "gay-straight alliances" or similar clubs at their schools. And the group also organizes an annual "Day of Silence" in schools, when some students and faculty members remain mute to "protest the oppression of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth."

In previous years, conservative groups have criticized any attempt to publicize or advocate the homosexual lifestyle in the nation's schools.

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Hopelessly bureaucratized government schools failing to educate India's poor

With the dew just rising from the fields, dozens of children streamed into the two-room school in this small, poor village, tucking used rice sacks under their arms to use as makeshift chairs. So many children streamed in that the newly appointed head teacher, Rashid Hassan, pored through attendance books for the first two hours of class and complained bitterly. He had no idea who belonged in which grade. There was no way he could teach. Another teacher arrived 90 minutes late. A third did not show up. The most senior teacher, the only one with a teaching degree, was believed to be on official government duty preparing voter registration cards. No one could quite recall when he had last taught.

"When they get older, they'll curse their teachers," said Arnab Ghosh, 26, a social worker trying to help the government improve its schools, as he stared at clusters of children sitting on the grass outside. "They'll say, 'We came every day and we learned nothing.' "

Sixty years after independence, with 40 percent of its population under 18, India is now confronting the perils of its failure to educate its citizens, notably the poor. More Indian children are in school than ever before, but the quality of public schools like this one has sunk to spectacularly low levels, as government schools have become reserves of children at the very bottom of India's social ladder. The children in this school come from the poorest of families - those who could not afford to send away their young to private schools elsewhere, as do most Indian families with any means.

India has long had a legacy of weak schooling for its young, even as it has promoted high-quality government-financed universities. But if in the past a largely poor and agrarian nation could afford to leave millions of its people illiterate, that is no longer the case. Not only has the roaring economy run into a shortage of skilled labor, but also the nation's many new roads, phones and television sets have fueled new ambitions for economic advancement among its people - and new expectations for schools to help them achieve it.

That they remain ill equipped to do so is clearly illustrated by an annual survey, conducted by Pratham, the organization for which Ghosh works. The latest survey, conducted across 16,000 villages in 2007 and released Wednesday, found that while many more children were sitting in class, vast numbers of them could not read, write or perform basic arithmetic, to say nothing of those who were not in school at all. Among children in fifth grade, 4 out of 10 could not read text at the second grade level, and 7 out of 10 could not subtract. The results reflected a slight improvement in reading from 2006 and a slight decline in arithmetic; together they underscored one of the most worrying gaps in India's prospects for continued growth.

Education experts debate the reasons for failure. Some point out that children of illiterate parents are less likely to get help at home; the Pratham survey shows that the child of a literate woman performs better at school. Others blame longstanding neglect, insufficient public financing and accountability, and a lack of motivation among some teachers to pay special attention to poor children from lower castes. "Education is a long-term investment," said Montek Singh Ahluwalia, the deputy chairman of the Planning Commission and the government's top policy czar. "We have neglected it, in my view quite criminally, for an enormously long period of time."

Arguments aside, India is today engaged in an epic experiment to uplift its schools. Along the way lie many hurdles, and Ghosh, on his visits to villages like this one, encounters them all. The aides who were hired to draw more village children into school complain that they have not received money to buy educational materials. Or the school has stopped serving lunch even though sacks of rice are piled in the classroom. Or parents agree to enroll their son in school, but know that they will soon send the child away to work. Or worst of all, from Ghosh's perspective, all these stick-thin, bright-eyed children trickle into school every morning and take back so little. "They're coming with some hope of getting something," Ghosh muttered. "It's our fault we can't give them anything."

Even here, the kind of place from which millions of uneducated men and women have traditionally migrated to cities for work, an appetite for education has begun to set in. An educated person would not only be more likely to fetch a good job, parents here reasoned, but also less likely to be cheated in a bad one. "I want my children to do something, to advance themselves," is how Muhammad Alam Ansari put it. "To do that they must study."

Education in the new India has become a crucial marker of inequality. Among the poorest 20 percent of the population, half are illiterate, and barely 2 percent graduate from high school, according to government data. By contrast, among the richest 20 percent of the population, nearly half are high school graduates and only 2 percent are illiterate.

Just as important, at a time when only one in 10 college-age Indians actually go to college, higher education has become the most effective way to scale the golden ladder of the new economy. A recent study by two economists based in Delhi found that between 1993-94 and 2004-05, college graduates enjoyed pay raises of 11 percent every year, and illiterates saw their pay rise by roughly 8.5 percent, though from a miserably low base; here in Bihar State, for instance, a day laborer makes barely more than a dollar a day. "The link between getting your children prepared and being part of this big, changing India is certainly there in everyone's minds," said Rukmini Banerji, the research director of Pratham. "The question is: what's the best way to get there, how much to do, what to do? As a country, I think we are trying to figure this out." She added, "If we wait another 5 or 10 years, you are going to lose millions of children."

India has lately begun investing in education. Public spending on schools has steadily increased over the last few years, and the government now proposes to triple its financing commitment over the next five years. At present, education spending is about 4 percent of the gross domestic product. Every village with more than 1,000 residents has a primary school. There is money for free lunch every day.

Even a state like Bihar, which had an estimated population of 83 million in 2001 and where schools are in particularly bad shape, the scale of the effort is staggering. In the last year or so, 100,000 new teachers have been hired. Unemployed villagers are paid to recruit children who have never been to school. A village education committee has been created, in theory to keep the school and its principal accountable to the community. And buckets of money have been thrown at education, to buy swings and benches, to paint classrooms, even to put up fences around the campus to keep children from running away.

And yet, as Lahtora shows, good intentions can become terribly complicated on the ground. At the moment, the village was not lacking for money for its school. The state had committed $15,000 to construct a new school building, $900 for a new kitchen and another $400 for new school benches. But only some of the money had arrived, so no construction had started, and the school committee chairman said he was not sure how much local officials might demand in bribes. The chairman's friend from a neighboring village said $750 had been demanded of his village committee in exchange for building permits.

The chairman here also happens to be the head teacher's uncle, making the idea of accountability additionally complicated. One parent told Ghosh that their complaints fell on deaf ears: The teachers were connected to powerful people in the community. It is a common refrain in a country where teaching jobs are a powerful instrument of political patronage. The school's drinking-water tap had stopped working long ago, like 30 percent of schools nationwide, according to the Pratham survey. Despite the extra money, the toilet was broken, as was the case in nearly half of all schools nationwide. Thankfully, there was a heap of rice in one corner of the classroom, provisions for the savory rice porridge that acts as one of the main draws of government schools. Except that Hassan, the head teacher, said the rice was not officially reflected in his books, and therefore he had not served lunch for the last week. What about the money that comes from the state to buy eggs and other provisions for lunch, Ghosh asked? That too remained unspent, Hassan explained, because there was no rice to serve them with - at least not in his record books.

(Analysts of government antipoverty programs say rice can be a tempting side income for unscrupulous school officials; food meant for the poor in general, though not at this particular village school, is sometimes found diverted and sold on the private market, though one of the brighter findings of the Pratham survey was that free meals were served in over 90 percent of schools.)

Ghosh went from befuddled to exasperated. "You have rice. You have money. You prefer that kids don't eat?" he asked. Hassan shook his head. He said he could only cook what rice was in his records, or cook this rice if a senior government officer instructed him to do so. Ghosh went on to point out that one of the aides had shown up more than an hour late, and then with a crying baby in her arms. Two teachers were altogether absent. Even Hassan, Ghosh added, had pulled up a half-hour late. "You're the head of this school," Ghosh told him. "Only you can improve this school." Hassan fired back: "What are you talking about? For the last 25 years this school wasn't running at all."

Ghosh could not dispute that. There were times when the school doors did not open. One father, an agricultural laborer, said he had tried a few times to enroll his children but gave up after the former principal demanded money. Many parents in this largely Muslim village chose Islamic schools because they were seen to offer better discipline. Others saw no need to send their children to school at all.

Ghosh, too, went to government schools, in a small town in neighboring West Bengal state, which is only slightly better off than here. But if he dared skip class, he recalled, he would be thrashed by his father, a public school principal. The children of this village, he knew, would not be so lucky. "When I first started coming here," Ghosh recalled, parents "would ask me, 'What are you going to give me? Your porridge isn't enough. Because if I send my child to herd a buffalo, at least he'll make three rupees.' " Three rupees is less than 10 cents.

One morning Ghosh reached the mud-and-thatch compound of Mohammed Zakir, a migrant laborer who goes to work in Delhi each year. Zakir's son, Farooq, about 10 years old, was going to school for the first time this week. And as Zakir saw it, that was fine until Farooq turned 14, the legal age for employment, when he too would have to go work in Delhi. Keeping children in school through their teenage years, the father said flatly, was not a luxury the family could afford. Walking out of the Zakir family compound, Ghosh looked utterly worn out. "If I don't get this child in school," he said, "then his child in turn won't go to school."

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