Brown's Britain....it's mostly Balls!

Here's a little vignette to warm the cockles of your heart - or not, as the case may be!

This concerns my wife's younger sister's daughter, my niece I suppose, although I do not know much about her as she is a very morose teenager with little or no communications skills. She hardly ever (actually, never) interacts with me on the few occasions I have met her. Apparently, she is a strongly committed vegetarian who wants to work with animals. Fair enough. However, she has had an undistinguished academic experience at school and consequently only has a few GCSEs at A to C level - in fact, mostly at 'C' or below. But she was sufficiently motivated to stay on at school in the sixth-form. Good for her you might say.

But, by last Christmas she became de-motivated and dropped out of school. Now, I am not sure what happened to cause this, other than it appears the workload she and her fellow students were given was so minimal that they spent more time on "home study" than in actual lessons. (Amazing! When I was in the sixth-form we were expected to spend all day in school attending classes or studying in the library.)

So, how does she spend her time these days? Well, she has signed on at the local Job Centre Plus so she can claim job seekers allowance. (Whether she passes on any of these payments to her parents who are still funding her I do not know.) She says she is going to apply for a further education course in September which will help her gain the basic qualifications she needs if she wants to work with animals in the future.

Her aunt (Mrs Ted - who is of the old school, like me) suggested to her the other day that she might consider looking around for a job instead of sitting around on her (thin) arse all day and sponging off her parents. (Pulls no punches, does Mrs T!)

We heard today that she was called in for her fortnightly interview with Job Centre Plus and they had found her the ideal job. Two hours office cleaning on Sundays paying £5.00 per hour which would be deducted from her JSA!

So there we have it. This is Brown's Britain. A 17 year-old girl, not particularly academically inclined or interested, encouraged to stay on in an education system that is unable to deliver what she is capable of achieving; a Government-run job placement service that doesn't have any real jobs to offer; and a generation of under-educated and under-achieving young people who are not equipped with the skills and aptitudes that they will need to create a brighter future for themselves.

And then we have Ed Balls saying it's nonsense to say GCSEs are not sufficiently rigorous. Not only is he and Brown deluded but they will stand accused "in the court of public opinion" of perpetuating the underclass generation.

Shame on them!

Nissan sheds 1200 jobs but you can still get a GCSE with fries

This report by Jim Pickard on the FT.com/Westminster blog contains a quote from that very self-confident John Denham, Secretary of State for Skills only last December: "We know that companies that invest in training are two and a half times more likely to survive a recession than those who don’t. I would urge any company, large or small, which is considering short working to follow the example of Nissan... to talk to their local FE College or LSC to see what training they can offer their staff during downtime. Companies like Nissan...tell me that they can already see improvements in their business as a result of the training.”

Not wishing to minimise the devastating effects that the announcement by Nissan will have on individuals and families in Sunderland and those supplier companies that will be put in jeopardy, I have to say that the Labour Government seems to be more concerned with protecting their electoral prospects by plying the line that the Conservatives did nothing in the early ’90s recession to get people back into jobs.

I was made redundant in that recession and was overwhelmed with the support I was given to get back into work. I had training opportunities coming out of me ears as well as advice about how to 'market' myself and build up a network of contacts. Needless to say I was back in work within a few months with a better salary and a career ladder.

But it must be remembered that a feature of that recession was that there were still major structural changes going on in the old ’smoke stack’ and heavy engineering industries. Now, the world is a very different place and yet it is still necessary for McDonalds to offer so-called “apprenticeships” (at a £1,000 subsidy per employee by the Government) simply to get them through GCSE English and Maths! Why should it be necessary to spend taxpayers' money on giving these young people the education they should have received while at school? Why? Because this Labour Government has created a web of deceit and concealed the truly devastating destruction of our educational system whilst they have been in power.

If there was any justice in the world, Gordon Brown (and Tony Blair) would be swinging on a gibbet in front of the Houses of Parliament whilst the baying mob chant “Education, Education, Education”!

Some day soon that other Labour disaster, Ed Balls, should also be left hanging by a particular part of his anatomy. A bit extreme? So what!

Life's A Lottery - But It Depends On Who You Know!

Just a small anecdote to add to the discussion about the school places lottery.

Our 11-year old was automatically disbarred from going to the nearest comprehensive (less than a mile away) because our house is, literally, on the wrong side of the road. The main alternative (two and half miles away) has a very poor reputation and so we made the decision to make our main preference a school that is a 40 minute bus ride away. It has a strong record in terms of academic achievement and the wide range of sporting and extra-curricular activities that it offers. (Much like the grammar school I attended in the 1960s!).

Fortunately, our child has been offered a place for September 2008. I suppose it was not surprising really, as the school is in a rural area and it has compensated for falling rolls over the last few years by widening its catchment area.

And the point of this "anecdote"? Well, we happen to know a (physics) teacher at this school who has given us an insider tip. Apparently, there is a clear distinction between the overall performance of pupils that opt for French and those that are placed in the German set. The teachers believe that the parents of pupils most interested in their children's education persuade them to take French. The children of those parents who don't bother to express a preference are placed in the German set because all the French places have been filled.

QED: Children whose parents are interested in their education are likely to do better than those who aren't. Don't know if it's true but "Vive la France"!

Winston Churchill is history?

The educational establishment in this country have really got their heads up their arses. Now they are saying that we should not teach children about Winston Churchill's role in our history.

This would normally be the occasion when I'd say "will the last one to leave the country please turn out the lights?" But there will be plenty of sad people left here still plugging away with their so-called "modernising" tendencies. We've had 30 years of this destruction of British values and perspectives of our history and look where we are now.

Maybe now is the time to stay and fight this nonsense?

The Underclass of the Brown Years

However long Gordon Brown lasts as Prime Minister he will not be able to deny that he was one of the architects of the dumbing down of large parts of the population - and I'm not talking about Big Brother-type television programmes.

No, since the 1970s Labour dominated councils (and their associated Local Education Authorities) have created an educational system that has failed hundreds of thousands of people and condemned them to life in an underclass of under-achievement. His answer to that has been to create an incredibly complicated system of tax credits and welfare benefits - the so-called New Deal - which has only perpetuated their dependence on the State. He's now waffling about his passion for education but consider these facts: in 2006, 20,000 pupils who sat their GCSEs did not take Maths; 26,000 did not take English; and 46,000 did not take a science. Moreover nearly 60,000 students obtained no GCSEs at all. Multiply these figures by ten and you get a feel for the number of young people who have not had a good start to their adult lives. What will the New Deal do for them?

His record is not defensible and he can't shift the blame to Blair. He will have to answer for this disaster that he's helped create.

Psst! Fancy a bung for your school?

OK, the title of this post is a bit obscure. It's not on the scale of the BAe case - no Saudi princes are involved (or were harmed in the writing of it) nor does it involve Lord Levy or Bernie Ecclestone - or, indeed, Inspector Knacker of the Yard. No, this tale does not contain any accusations of illegal acts by Government ministers. But it does concern the use that all that extra tax that Gordon Brown has sucked out of pockets over the last ten years has been put to in the cause of "Education, Educashun, Educajun-R-Us" or whatever the slogan was.

At Madge and Badger's dinner party on Saturday evening I sat next to an interesting lady who happened to be a school governor. When the talk turned naturally to how well her child was doing at the local primary because of the strong team of staff led by a very inspirational headteacher she mentioned her involvement in a discussion with the Head and a representative of the LEA about the uptake by pupils of after school activities. This was running at 71% which was considered to be very good. However, the LEA person said that the Government wanted to see 100% participation to demonstrate how well their policies were doing. My governor friend, who seemed to know her subject very well, pointed out that not all children want to stay at school after home time and were not interested in the sporting or cultural experiences available to them. And why should they?

But the LEA person said that £8,000 was available from this year's budget for the school if they could boost attendance for, say, a "shaded area" or something similar. (So, a bribe was on the table to meet a Government target?)

Madge was able to trump this. At her newly built secondary school, where she teaches, the LEA had recently offered £84,000 for landscaping the grounds without any prompting from the school.

The more worldly of us around the table immediately said that the LEA must have more money in their budget that they can spend so they were casting around for ways of getting rid of it before the year end. After all they have jobs to protect, mortgages to pay and reputations as w*****s to keep.

I had another brandy.