Graduate tax ruled out – surcharges and levies ruled in.

This is really very tiresome semantic bullshit.

 

Sounds reasonable on the face of it, doesn’t it?

Addressing senior vice-chancellors, he ruled out imposing a “full-blown graduate tax” after admitting it could drive top students overseas.

Well, that’s a relief. Because punit.. oh wait..

But he said the Government was investigating the possibly of a “progressive” funding system in which students take out loans to cover higher fees – and wealthier graduates pay them back at a more expensive rate.

Analysts have suggested that graduates with the largest salaries could pay for an extra two years or face stiffer charges than those on low incomes.

What. The. Fuck?

Can someone please explain to Mr “two brains” Willets that graduates with the largest salaries ALREADY PAY THE MOST TAX…. at 40% or even 50%. They and their employers also play more National Insurance contributions.

Out of their take home pay, they will pay out more VAT, fuel tax, alcohol tax and, perish the thought that even smart people sometimes like to smoke, tobacco tax.

And, as for ‘ruling out a full-blown graduate tax’… if it looks like a graduate tax and it quacks like a graduate tax, it’s a fucking graduate tax.

The inevitable unintended consequences will depend on the small print, but consider this: In the current jobs climate, a chap could easily come to the conclusion that going back to university for the final year of a bachelors degree would open him up to punitive costs that he’d avoid by quitting, with little or no downside, when you consider how worthless most 1st degrees are these days.

He may initially find it harder to get his foot on the career ladder, but he’ll be 12-24 months ahead of the fools who stayed on and finished their course, possibly emerging with a Desmond or a Douglas.

Same shit, different puppets.

AJ

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Muddled thinking

Sometimes, it really is no wonder that state school pupils are at a disadvantage, if their teachers are this stupid.

The country’s top universities have been called on to come clean about an unofficial list or lists of "banned" A-level subjects that may have prevented tens of thousands of state school pupils getting on to degree courses.

This doesn’t come as a surprise to me – twas obviously the case when I chose my A-Levels over 20 years ago.

The obvious answer was, then as now, to avoid the obviously frivolous subjects. Media studies? Pffffft.

The lists are said to contain subjects such as law, art and design, business studies, drama and theatre studies – non-traditional A-level subjects predominantly offered by comprehensives, rather than private schools.

From this, we are to deduce that comprehensives are failing in their duty to provide pupils with the calibre of subjects and teaching that will enable them to compete with the privately schooled.

Or, perhaps…

Teachers accused universities of putting comprehensive pupils at a disadvantage by refusing to publish their lists. Some claimed the lists were a filter that enabled the most prestigious universities to accept more private school pupils than state-educated ones.

Wait, so rather than the schools that offer A-levels in basket-weaving. it’s the universities who are letting these kids down. Because the universities choose to award places on their most sought after courses to students with good grades in worthwhile subjects?

Tell me this isn’t a bunch of teachers who have elevated a political ideology above the importance of delivering a solid education.

I don’t have kids, but if I did, I’d sell my organs to pay for a private education, if this is the quality of thinking that prevails in the state sector.

Fucking idiots.

AJ

13 years to put this right. Did they? Could they have?

Ask Ed Balls what went wrong. I’m sure it’ll all be the fault of the Tories for their disastrous 13 years out of power.

Sir Mike Rake said the telecoms giant binned almost a quarter of all applications made for a new apprenticeship scheme because candidates appeared “completely illiterate”.

Many young people now fail to have the basic skills needed to get by in the workplace, he said.

The comments represent the latest in a series of attacks on the education system by Britain’s leading businessmen.

Sir Terry Leahy, outgoing chief executive of Tesco, has criticised the “woefully low” standards achieved by many schoolchildren and Sir Stuart Rose, head of Marks & Spencer, said many young people were “not fit for work”.

Sir Mike said 26,000 applications were made for 170 places on BT’s apprenticeship programme starting this autumn, but 6,000 were not worthy of consideration.

I actually feel really sorry for kids who’ve been through the state education system in the last 20 years. Its parlous inadequacy is the single biggest betrayal of British people in my living memory.

Oh and sure, Labour didn’t fix things, but neither did the Tories. The rot set in long before 1997, thanks to a vast tranche of swivel-eyed ideologues in the teaching profession, the objectives of whom were not to equip children for lifelong learning and inquisitiveness, but to effect social engineering on a scale unheard of outside communist countries.

Still, when I left school, men of 50 were being thrown on the scrapheap as flexibly, hungry youngsters emerged to work in a way more fitting to the times.

If the education system continues to turn out such stunted individuals, I foresee no such worries for when I’m 50 myself.

AJ

Homework

A complete and utter departure from the day’s depressing decision deficit.

I can’t remember ever being assigned homework until I went to secondary school. I’d like to see you argue the the outcomes of my education were inferior to those leaving primary or secondary school today.

So, I’ve listened with horror as friends with kids have described the onerous burden of homework placed upon 5, 6 and 7 year olds at some schools. Inevitably, these activities require parental support and consume vast quantities of time, as well as creating mess, tension and tears.

I’d just roll my eyes, blame Labour and think ‘another reason to be glad I don’t have kids’. Under Labour, children have become the state’s conduit to unprecedented intrusion in home and family life.

So it’s nice to read some common sense on this:

All essays and worksheets should be completed at school amid claims they put too much pressure on families’ limited time.

Eleanor Updale, author of the award-winning Montmorency series of books, said a typical 30-minute classroom task often took three times as long after being “subcontracted” to parents.

Amazingly, one of the teachers’ unions concurs:

Last year, the Association for Teachers and Lecturers called for all homework for primary school children to be axed amid claims young pupils find the burden too “upsetting”.

Although, the ATL may have their own agenda:

Dr Updale, whose Montmorency series of historical novels is currently being adapted for TV and won a Blue Peter award, said that schools themselves were often "victims of homework”.

“It needs setting, marking, policing and feedback, which eat time from the school day,” she said. “Cutting homework would reduce the burden teachers have to take home with them, diminishing the negative effect of their jobs on their own families.”

All in all, the more we (society, the state) move away from ideology and towards pragmatism, the better things will be.

Would that the current turmoil precipitate such an epiphany.

Hope is not dead after all.

AJ

Conversations with a lefty

Him:

Me:

Him:

Me:

Him:

Me:

Him:

Errr…

This is why it is futile arguing with lefties. Still, this one appears young.

If he’s not cured by the time he’s 30, me may wish hell upon him.

In the meantime, just point and laugh.

AJ

Could it be true?

You bet it’s true.

In a strong attack on Labour’s reform of the school curriculum, Simon Lebus, the head of Cambridge University’s international exams group, has condemned the teaching in England’s schools of "a shifting menu of flavour-of-the-month social concerns".

In science, lessons about photosynthesis and the conservation of mass have been replaced with content to promote healthy eating and regular exercise, he said.

He also pointed out that lessons in gender equality and preventing violence in relationships will be compulsory from 2011.

Meanwhile, inspectorate OffMong are stitching up private schools that are ignoring communist bullshit tractor stats demands.

The number of independent schools judged to have breeched minimum standards set by the Government has trebled, new figures have revealed.

A total of 74 schools were issued last year with notices by the Department for Children, Schools and Families, requiring them to make urgent changes. This compares to just 23 in 2007 and 34 in 2008.

Among the schools are well-respected institutions which have been running for centuries, including Shrewsbury School, one of England’s leading boys school, Christ’s Hospital School, in West Sussex, founded in the sixteenth century by Edward VI, and King’s College choir school, in Cambridge, established in 1453.

Many of the schools have fallen foul of new rules covering child safety and welfare. Others have failed to comply with the Government’s new "nappy curriculum" for very young children.

Headmasters criticised the "hugely burdensome" nature of some of the requirements that the sector was now facing.

The Independent Schools Council condemned the "thicket of regulation" as over-complex and sometimes contradictory.

…

A snap inspection was carried out in September at the £27,000-a- year Shrewsbury School, whose famous old boys include Charles Darwin and which was judged in a 2007 inspection to have "outstanding" features and results.

Inspectors looked in detail at policy documents. They found the school did not comply in four administrative areas and issued the school with a notice.

I’m not well up on the Tories’ edumacation policy, but one would, at least, hope they’ll put a stop to this bullshit.

AJ

ORLY exams

What was it Blair said? Ah yes. “Education, inflation, degradation.”

AJ