Education: competing theories on how to make it worse

Ever a reliable source of glimpses into leftie angst, this week the Grauniad provides us with these competing accounts, within two days of each other:  

Scottish schools have tumbled from top of the class.  Pupils became unwitting guinea pigs of faddish, unproven theories – and paid a high price ... England’s performance on the other hand, with some caveats, held up relatively well, even with the impact of the pandemic, and it has moved up the international tables ... there is little doubt that, educationally, England is performing significantly better than Scotland.

Peers call for urgent overhaul of secondary education in England:  there is too much learning by rote and many key Tory changes should be reversed 

The former article goes on to make it explicitly clear that for the Scots "faddish, unproven theories", we should read "progressive claptrap": read it if you're interested in more of the details.  In terms of those baleful "Tory changes" in England, here's what the Graun says, contrasting them most favourably with Scotland: 

The comparison with England is instructive ... To take the example of maths, there has been significant investment in effective models of teaching from the highest-performing systems in the world. The data shows that it is paying off, in line with the international evidence that high-quality, evidence-based curriculums are a very good and cost-effective way of improving education outcomes.

It's pretty clear that for anyone broadly on the right with the slightest regard for social equity (whether for altruistic or self-serving reasons), providing good education for the masses to facilitate any latent potential for meritorious advance is one, if not the main, central plank of policy.   It ought to be so for lefties, too.

Sadly, education, and what constitutes "good" in this context, are highly contested, not least because for lefties (and Jesuits) it is an ideological battleground and they have more interest in politically-motivated indoctrination than in what might be termed "objective learning".  (That's when they don't have outright malice and social sabotage in mind.)  In leftist countries like China (and, in former days, Soviet Russia), they are simultaneously keen on both ideology and solid learning.  Because they are in charge, they have practical concerns and an economy to build.  

In the west, the left carelessly takes the economy for granted and cares not a fig for genuine learning: they (the left elite) already know all that needs knowing, and the lower orders don't need to be equipped with anything beyond some slogans of the elite's devising.  They've obviously succeeded triumphantly in Scotland - once rightly proud of its education system - and wish to set about English schools in turn.  A plague on them: recall what Christ said about the fate of those messing with the wellbeing of the young.

ND

When will it end?

The UK media remain keen to depress us all with gory details of how 100,000 people have died of Covid. To me the number is flawed, the real number should be excess deaths and not this easily disputable number. but it makes it easier for the loony 'Boris the Butcher' headcases to argue for lockdown forever etc. 

On that note, the excellent progress in vaccination should mean that light is at the end of the tunnel, just when we are at the worst point of the pandemic yet. 

It looks like all (ish) over 80's will have been vaccinated with an initial does by the end of January or early February. This will continue to bring case number down (which have fallen even faster than they rose, not that pundits seem to want to comment on that) even further. 

The tricky decision will then be when to release lockdown. there are many knowns, the state of the economy, the lack of education, the lack of cancer and other treatments - these are not minor considerations. 

The known unknowns are also hard - how effective is a one dose approach? will the younger population still suffer and end up with many deaths and hospitalisations if restrictions are reduced a lot? How long do the vaccine's give protection for? Will a new variant arise that nix's the whole strategy?

it is quite a balance, the Government do not want another lockdown after this. As such they will push it for as long as they think they can manage given the parlous economic circumstances, to buy the most time for the vaccine programme to work. 

With that view, I think the idea schools will be back at end of February to be unlikely, but not impossible given the rapid vaccination rate and relative fall in numbers cases currently. With vaccine success, the end of March is a more likely time for Tier 3/4 in most of the Country.

If the lockdownders win, then end of April will be the worst case. Spring sees the virus struggle to transmit so easily anyway for a few months and cases will remain low whilst they carry on with a wider vaccination programme.

The worst case news is a variant develops that is vaccine resistant currently, such that it causes a 6-8 week delay in the current plan and end up with restrictions for a lot longer. I can't see Wimbledon or any sports having fans until the autumn and I am very glad I don't own a nightclub right now. 

The conversation should be privatising all education, not nationalising it



So, as is common these days, the very nutty communists who inhabit the Labour party (have you seen a book called Fully Automated Luxury Communism by Aaron Bastani? Drivel does not begin to describe how awful it is), have latched a new proposal into the labour party conference which decides their manifesto:


1 - Outlaw private education
2 - Confiscate the endowments and money from these schools to 'share' amongst State Schools
3 - End Charitable status to make doubly sure no Private schools start again.


Scary does not really do the above Justice. There are many, many reasons why the above it a terrible idea. The one that sticks out to me though is that, like our Top Universities, people from all over the world pay an absolute fortune to have their kids educated here - in fact I would bet it is one of the main reasons there are so many billionaires in the UK, they can educate their kids here.


So, in the real world, we should be thinking how do we extend the education opportunities provided by private schools to all? What is the secret.


Well the obvious piece is money. In Universities, the Government introduced fees to try and help Universities improve their offering, act like a supplier rather than an union and stop kidding people with silly Kite Flying degrees. Lo and Behold broadly this has been a success!


Thus the real change that would help state schools would be a voucher system for parents, who could spend the money on the schooling they wanted - local comp, technical colleges, religious schools, private schools. The good would prosper and the bad would reform or die. Just like in Higher Education, market forces would drive up standards overall.


You could even reduce massively the burdensome national curriculum as parents could choose they types of schooling suited to their children which is not always based on A-C grades a GCSE.


This would be a much more successful route than killing the successful bit of secondary education in order to level down the playing field.

Is a degree worth it in 2018?

It has long been a bugbear of mine that the UK Government, oddly led by Blair at the time, took some sharp steps towards privatising the University sector, but then took fright and left it as a bodge job.


Blair rightly brought in student fees. Students would now pay for their courses, albeit with cheap government loans and this would shine a light onto the excesses of the state sector. And lo, so it came to pass that degrees in Madonna Studies and Kite Flying from ex-polytechnics quickly fell out of favour now that some responsibility was imposed.


Equally though, remained the challenge of differing value for courses. Your author hear studied for a degree in history which required occasionally focus for an hour or two a couple of times a week; friends studying medicine or pharmacy worked very hard indeed - in expensive labs with expensive equipment. The move to fees mean all these courses still cost the same, despite the input costs from the university's being very different indeed. Overall, arts degrees subsidise STEM subjects massively.


Now, Theresa May has recognised this and has moved out of the jobs a couple of ministers (Greening and Jo Johnson) who were firmly captured by the sector and repeated the line of how ending this subsidy would be the end of university courses.


To me something way more fundamental has happened in the last 20 years. The internet has revolutionised learning like nothing before. Apps can teach you a language for free, any information can be gleaned from google for free. Research projects now are either laughably easy or arduous in the extreme if, in the latter case, you actually have to find out something new.


Moreover, the big shortage in the economy is in tech jobs, learning tech and programming is just not a university level of study - it is far more akin to A-levels in terms of depth and length. You can't just learn on programming language anyway.


So now is absolutely the right time to review what is being taught at Universities, how much it costs and what subsidies (as ever!) should be directed where. One point is key, people should not be burdened with costs for useless degrees to which they were guided as kids by their betters.