Keep politicians out of education.

Jess i agree that some schools need particular help and support to make sure children/students gain the outcomes they need. However overtime governments have put in sweeping policies that the majority of schools do not need to take on because the are doing well!

Hello Beryl
Don't I remember you from the NCT 30 years ago?
Are you lurking on GN under a pseudonym I wonder?
Your post is touching and I agree to a great extent that there is too much political interference. The level of interference in Education has always been too detailed - on a par with interfering with the clinical judgements of doctors.
Politicians know little about education but that does not stop them delving in and saying what should or should not be taught and how.
However the picture you paint of ideal learning is far from the reality experienced by many children and is very focussed on the very young child.
I think politicians do need to call schools to account for their outputs - why is it, for instance, that a primary school can be paid a lot of money to teach a child for 6 or 7 years and fail to get them even started as a reader? It is a scandal!
I have seen the effect of tight target setting and close attention on a low performing secondary at first hand. It is not ideal but there are certainly now a lot more teenagers leaving our school with the kind of qualifications they need to get them into a job. For the first time in 40 years, one of them went to Cambridge last year. The teachers are working harder and giving more interesting and stimulating lessons.

Through work I met young civil servants from DfE. They were personable young men, mostly educated out of the state system and who certainly had not been in mainstream state schools for more than a week! One, who I remember well, was i/c of London Schools. However he had not been briefed about key government policies (e.g.the phonics tests for 6 yr olds) and could not answer questions or understand the various professional opinions because he had no background in education except his own school experience! It really is no way to provide quality education!

I believe the school leaving age is actually being raised to 18 - not sure when. Maybe it already has been?

Strikes me that teachers need all the energy they have to do the actual job of education (thanks to whoever reminded us that it means 'leading out' - absolutely agree) and with political interference every 5 minutes, they are increasingly required to spend (ie waste) lots of that energy on filling in forms, anguishing about targets and worrying about accusations of abuse. How on earth they manage to teach at all is a bit of a mystery to me. Get politics & politicians out of education, the sooner the better. (And the health and social services while we're at it).

Some years ago some politician suggested raising the school leaving age to 18 (doubtless in order to improve the employment statistics). I wanted to ask him (it was a he I think, but I can't remember who) if he had ever met a 15 year old who didn't want to be in school? I've known some, and I can only imagine what they would have done to the education of the 17 & 18 year olds who actually wanted to be in education, had they been forced to share a classroom with those who didn't. And I often want to ask these people, have they ever visited a real school since they left their own! One suspects not.

My experience is that all young children can learn all the basic skills in primary school through a well structured play based , practical and investigative curriculum. Some children gain these skills sooner than others for all sorts of reasons but the majority can get there! Children learn best when feeling confident and happy! A good teacher is able to get the best out of all the children in a class. In my 35 years in London state schools there are far, far more good teachers than not They would be able to to the job even better without frequent instruction from the lads at the DfE who do not know one end of a child from the other!!

Totally agree. Politicians know nothing about educating children and let's be honest they don't send their children to the state schools they constantly tinker with and underfund. Those who have children at state schools make sure they're not your run of the mill inner city affair. They send their children to places like the London Oratory which somehow manage to choose which children they will take.

They demand that we test and assess our children into submission. Starting this month the first formal test (although they say it's not but to me a test that officially grades children and therefore a school is formal) takes place in Year 1 when a child can be as young as 5 years old. Children will be shown groups of letters. Some will be real words like 'clown' others will be nonsense words like 'clowd'. The child has to build the 'word' using phonics knowledge. Basically say what you see.

Phonics is a step to reading ....it's not the be all and end all. This tests phonic knowledge not the ability to read which would make more sense.

Teachers have always tested and assessed but each government makes it sound as if we sit around all day doing nothing not knowing or caring what each child has learned. So instead of testing at the appropriate time for the child/class we now have to conform to official dates.

Education should be what it says on the tin – a leading out – not a cramming in. Politicians are the worst people for tinkering with education as they appear to see its sole purpose as getting a job. Do you remember when the really fat, often unshaven guy (Charles someone, was it Clark) who was Minister for Education in Tony Blair's government said that he couldn't see the point of a degree in history? How many times does some politician think he is the best person to decide what works of literature should be compulsory at what age or what historical topics should be on the curriculum. Who decided on a one-size-fits-all way of teaching children to read? Why do universities come under the umbrella of the Minister for Business? Grr, indeed.

Leave education to the educators! Keep politicians out!

I live in Queensland Australia and when I came here 33 years ago, we had a dreadful far-right State government, held in power by a shameless gerrymander, and with a religious Premier. He started messing with the school curriculum: asking for creationism to be taught, banning sex education: you know the sort of thing. The only way I could avoid this rubbish was to enroll my little lad in the local catholic school. Catholic education here is pretty good: they did cover sex education and evolution for instance, and no religious brainwashing went on.

That state government and police ended up being investigated, some MPs and even the police commissioner ended up doing serious prison time, electoral reform took place, and the premier only escaped prison because of a dodgy jury, where the jury foreman was a supporter of him.

So - my own experience says keep the pollies out!!

Hear hear Beryl Kingston!!!!
Simply don't set me off on this subject - you will never stop me!!!