[LMB] Re: Prep and Finishing School OT:

[ANDREW BARTON]

Tue, 01 Aug 2006 09:42:08 +0100
From: "James M. BRYANT, G4CLF:
  
> I do not want to be the cause of a proposal to
ban UK as well as US politics from the list so
will restrict myself to a minimalist reply to
Andrew Barton's sigh in defence of comprehensive
schools. <
   
  And it's one that I found interesting and useful - we agree much more than I'd have thought from James's original post.
  
> Children of all ages should be encouraged to progress as far as
possible and there should be strong mechanisms
to ensure that late developers or the victims of
mischance in selection should have many further
opportunities to benefit from the optimum system for them. <
   
  Which was in fact one of the driving concepts behind the introduction of comprehensive education, which is intended to make such mechanisms easier to implement.
  
> But there is, unfortunately, a political bias
that support for the less gifted is more important
than providing an environment where the most gifted
can make the most of their talents. <
   
  Can such a belief only be the result of bias?  Should not the majority also have an environment where they 'can make the most of their talents.'?
   
  But IMO the stronger argument is that all selection systems tried so far have one defect in common.  In practice, they select as much for the wealth and ability to manipulate the system of a child's parents as for any ability of the child.  So access to those privileged environments is inherited as much as earned.
   
  > And I doubt that the rise of comprehensive schools
and the increase in people receiving tertiary
education are the result of cause and effect since
similar increases in numbers in tertiary education
has taken place in countries with different systems. <
   
  But we have something approaching a controlled experiment in this country.  There is one county, Kent, which retains grammar schools.  The exam grades attained by its pupils as a whole are the worst in England.

> What I also believe most strongly is that constant
political interference with any system ensures that
the people actually running it can never optimise
what they have but must continually be learning to
implement new wild-a**ed directives from people with
little practical knowledge of how the system
actually works but a strong desire to do something
spectacular in zero time to win votes. <
   
  I certainly agree with that.  I used to work in the Home Office, which in the British system is the victim of more such initiatives than any other department.
   
  Andrew