Archive for Education

CEP: Mandelson considers increase in English tuition fees

July 27, 2009 Education, No Mandate No comments

Peter Mandelson, the unelected Minister for English Business and Enterprise, who also has responsibility for English Higher Education, is considering allowing an increase in English university tuition fees.

Tuition fees were introduced in England after Scottish Labour MPs were whipped to vote in favour because a majority of English MPs were opposed to them.  Without Labour’s MPs from Scottish constituencies, English MPs would have defeated the bill and university students in England wouldn’t be leaving education with tens of thousands of pounds of debt.  Labour’s MSPs subsequently voted against the introduction of tuition fees in the Scottish Parliament.

We’re constantly told by the British government that we don’t need an English Parliament because we have more MPs elected in England than the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish MPs put together.  The original introduction of tuition fees in England, with Scottish MPs overturning a majority vote of English MPs, destroys that argument.  That an unelected peer who has twice resigned from the British government in desgrace can have responsibility for a review into increasing the illegitimate fees makes a mockery of any claim the British establishment might have that democracy exists in England whatsoever.

With national debt running at 150% of GDP, tax income down by 8.2% and the social security burden up 9.7%, perhaps adopting the American revolutionary policy of “No Taxation without Representation” would force the Scottish Raj to listen to the voice of the English majority?

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CEP: £200m sticking plaster for English schools

July 13, 2009 Education, England No comments

Campaign for an English Parliament logo 

The British government is putting an extra £200m into the English education budget to fund extra places as shortages have reported.

The extra £200m will, of course, trigger a corresponding bonus for the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish budgets whether they need it or not thanks to the Barnett Bribe.  The population of Scotland, Wales and NI is increasing at a fraction of the rate it is in England so they aren’t suffering the same shortage of spaces as we are south of the border.

The British government says that the shortage of primary school places is down to rising birth rates and the recession meaning people can’t afford to send their kids to private schools.  Nothing to do with annual net immigration of about a quarter of million people.

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Clever mini-wonko’s

July 10, 2009 Education 3 comments

My boys came home from school today with their school reports.

#1 goes to secondary school in September so this is his final report from primary school.  The expectation for the average child in his year was 4a or 4b – he got five 5a’s.  A child geting a level 5 in year 9 at secondary school (that’s 3rd year to us old forgey’s) would be expected to get C’s in their GCSE’s and he’s got three years at the best sate school in the country before he gets to year 9!

#2 has two years left at primary school and the expectation for his year was 3b or 3c and he got four 3a’s which is the expectation for the end of the following year.

#3 is in year 2 and he got a 3c and two 2a’s.  The expectation for his year is 2b or 2c.  Considering he’s got dyspraxia and struggles with co-ordination, concentration and mood swings, exceeding expectations for all subjects is even more of an achievement.

Obviously very pround of my four little brainboxes (#4 hasn’t got her report from nursery yet but she’s miles ahead of all the other kids in nursery so we expect it to be good).

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Federated Academies are the future

October 9, 2008 Education 6 comments

My eldest is starting secondary school school next year and we’ve been doing the school open day circuit.

Sunday was the Thomas Telford School, one of the best independent schools in the country.  We won’t find out until March if he’s been selected to go there.  Last night was the Lord Silkin School, the closest one to home and tonight was the Abraham Darby Academy.  Monday it’ll be the Madeley Academy.

The Thomas Telford, as you would expect, had amazing facilities and the Sixth Formers that showed us round were really confident and genuinely seemed to love the place.  The Ab Dab was great too – it’s got good facilities too and it’s a Haberdasher school so they’re really into good, traditional values.

About three quarters of an hour into the principal’s “20 minute” speech tonight my mind started wandering a bit and it occured to me that the Academy approach to failing schools is actually one half of a good idea.  The only thing that’s missing from it is federation with a selective school.

The Abraham Darby is an academy which is partly funded by the local authority but mainly by the Haberdashers and is almost entirely free to run itself as it wishes.  It’s federated with the Adams Grammar School, a fee charging selective school which is also a Haberdasher school.  What it means is that the schools are run seperately but along the same lines, sharing management and facilities.  For the Adams Grammar and the Abraham Darby, it means that the Abraham Darby sends their internationally-renowned music teachers to the Adams Grammar to train their teaching staff in music whilst the Adams Grammar send their languages teachers to the Abraham Darby to improve their language teaching.

The school we’re going to see on Monday is federated with the one we saw on Sunday.  They went from being threatened with closure to the best performing non-selective school in the borough since being turned into an Academy and federated with the Thomas Telford.

I don’t know if these are exceptions to the rule but it’s clearly working here.  If this success can be replicated throughout England then let’s start encouraging all schools to adopt the same approach!

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Sorry kids, election’s cancelled

July 13, 2008 Education, WTF? 8 comments

The primary school that my children go to has a School Council which gets the kids involved in how the school is run and even how some of the money is spent.

Last year the children who wanted to take part stood for election and were voted in by their peers.  However, next year (this is school years obviously, starting in September) they have decided that the current Chair will remain as Chair even if their peers vote for someone else.

Their “constitutencies” are individual classes so a whole class of children will be deprived of the right to vote for their representative on the School Council.

This is bad enough in it itself but what makes it worse is that for months, the Chair has been bullying one of my children quite badly.  She is, to put it bluntly, an obnoxious child with a very real attitude problem.  The mental abuse was so bad she had several sessions with teachers to talk to her about what she was doing and it took several attempts to get her to stop.  This is a role model for other children in the school.

I’ve sent the following email to the Deputy Head of the school:

Dear Mr xxxxxxx,

[My Child] has been talking to us about School Council, in particular the fact that it has been decided that [The Bully] will be chair of the School Council again next year even if her peers don’t vote for her.  [My Child] feels that it’s unfair and so do we.

For the last few months [The Bully] has been bullying [My Child] so badly that he couldn’t sleep and was sitting in his room crying.  She has had sessions with teachers to talk to her about mental abuse and bullying.  I believe she still has some sort of anti-bullying role in school which I find quite ironic.  That’s not a good role model for other children.

This year the School Council was elected by the children – an excellent practical demonstration of democracy at work.  Next year [The Bully] will be the chair again, even if her peers don’t want her to be.  What does that teach the children?  That the wishes of the majority can be disregarded by the privileged few?  A sad reflection of real life, I’ll grant you, but perhaps if our children were instilled with some sense of how democracy should work, in a couple of decades they might be the ones who make it work in real life?

If [The Bully] gets elected to the School Council then fair enough but if her behaviour towards her peers over the last year resulted in them not voting for her again then that will teach her that actions have consequences – a valuable lesson for a 10 year old child, especially one that has a predisposition towards bullying.

School Council was such a good idea but this has spoilt it.

Stuart

Obviously, I’ve removed the names because it’s kids involved.  Is this what our kids should be told?  Democracy is a privilege that can be taken away on a whim and the consequences of bullying is more privilege and responsibility?

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More British propaganda in English schools

March 11, 2008 Education, England, Propaganda No comments

Lord Goldsmith, the former British Attorney General, has told No Mandate Brown that children should have to go through a citizenship ceremony when they leave school and pledge alliegence to the Queen like they do in the US to their flag to promote Britishness.
The Scottish government have, of course, rejected this out of hand and no doubt the Welsh government will do the same which means that it’ll only be the English identity that is targeted.  More of the same then.

My children are English, they won’t be taking part in any faux-Britishness propaganda.

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Education is already enough of a lottery

March 3, 2008 Education, England, WTF? 3 comments

Getting your children into a decent school and getting them a decent education is already enough of a lottery without the latest batshit scheme from British government.

Today saw the introduction of new admissions rules for English schools that will see English children getting allocated places at English schools based on a lottery system.  You may live next door to a school but if your name doesn’t come out of the hat then tough, you’d best get yourself a bus pass because you’re going to have to travel to another school.

This is supposedly to make the admissions system fairer but it doesn’t – it just makes it virtually impossible for parents to ensure their children go to a local school.  And it only applies to England of course, the One Eyed Wonder of Wankistan’s constituents will continue to get the admissions system that we’ve had for decades.

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No longer acceptable to be proud to be English?

February 29, 2008 Anglophobia, Education, England 2 comments

According to that last bastion of objective reporting, the Sun, school children are being punished for wearing clothes with England flags on them or even for being dropped off at school in cars with England flags on them.

Normally I’d take anything the Sun says with a pinch sack of salt but in this case it seems to be genuine.

A lefty think tank, Counterpoint Research, has produced a report called the Childhood Wellbeing report highlighting the racial discrimination against English children iin school – a place where they are supposed to feel safe and happy.  There is no indication that non-English children have been punished for displaying a national flag.

Ed Balls, the Liebour Childrens Secretary, said that “The general perception among parents was that it was no longer acceptable to be proud to be English”.

On what does he base this ridiculous assertion?  Where was the research carried out?  Was it in an area that was predominantly white English or an area that had a large immigrant population?  It certainly wasn’t anywhere around here – white, black and asian children alike wear England football shirts and the English flag can be seen hanging from windows and on stickers in car windows everywhere.  There’s a large number of Ghanaian immigrants living in flats nearby whose children wear England football shirts – some of them don’t even speak English!

The Department for Children, Schools & Education is sending me a copy of the report so I can see how Ed Balls comes to this conclusion.

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English children to get unique ID number

February 14, 2008 Education, England, Police State No comments

The British government plans to allocate every 14 year old child in England a unique ID number which could be tied to the national ID database and will be used to provide access to school records for potential employers and the state.

The Education & Skills Bill – which only applies to England, not the whole of the UK as the press are reporting – will introduce the “Learning Number” which will be the key to a national database of state CVs for every child in England.  The Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills – one of No Mandate Brown’s made up government departments – said “It is just a way of making life easier for learners and employers. It is something we think will help people looking for work”.  What a load of shit.  It is a way of introducing 14 year old children to the concept of being numbered and monitored for the rest of their lives and the state taking control of their identity.

The same spokesman also said the database will be “cast-iron in terms of integrity” whilst the Information Commissioner said “We have provided advice and assistance to help ensure that this system is watertight and secure – but no system is immune to human error and breaches can and do occur”.

Just like HMRC losing the details of 25 million recipients, just like the MOD officer losing a laptop containing secret data, just like all the other recent admissions of data loss by British government departments – the data will be vulnerable to inaccuracy, loss and fraud.  Your identity isn’t like a bank account – it can’t be changed if it falls into the wrong hands – your identity is unique and identity theft will cause you problems for the rest of your life in Liebour’s database state.

The state stealing the identity of our children has surely got to be a breach of their Human Rights.

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Te audire no possum …

January 27, 2008 Education 3 comments

… musa sapientum fixe est in aure.

The British government decided to make learning a second language voluntary in English schools some time ago now and I don’t think we’re going to see the full effect of that decision for some time.

When I went to secondary school it was mandatory to learn a second language.  At my school everyone had to learn French and halfway through school we had the choice of taking another language.  We had a German teacher and an Italian teacher – when my time came German was on offer.  I’m not fluent in either but I know enough to be able to get by and with a bit of exposure to the language I’d soon pick it up again.

Where languages are offered, there is a recent trend towards teaching Asian languages such as Chinese, Arabic, Punjabi, etc.  While there is an obvious use for these languages now, they’re not going to be much use when the global economy collapses and most of our business is done with only our close neighbours.  Learning Asian languages at the expense of European languages is short sighted.

Being able to speak a foreign language is a useful skill.  Learning a language should be mandatory but just teaching secondary school children a language for a couple of hours a week for 5 years isn’t enough.  Children start to lose their natural ability to learn languages around about the time they start secondary school – it’s too little too soon.  Children should start learning a second language such as French or German from primary school and as they get older they should be taught Latin or Anglo-Saxon because learning languages is far easier if you understand how the language works rather than simply remembering words and phrases.  A basic understanding of Anglo-Saxon will help you understand the root, not only of German, Dutch, Flemish and the Scandinavian languages, but of English as well.  A basic understanding of Latin will help you understand the root of French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian and the other regional languages spoken in southern Europe as well as English because English borrows heavily from Latin.

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And today’s winning numbers are …

January 25, 2008 Education, England, WTF? 3 comments

As if getting a decent education in England wasn’t enough of a lottery already, the Brit-Scot government in Westminster has decided that schools in England should be required to take a percentage of their intake from outside of their catchment area with those places allocated by a lottery system.

This means that in over-subscribed schools, a child living opposite the school gates could be forced to go to a school miles away because the quota for local children has been met and someone from outside the catchment area has got a place instead.  Genius!

So much for reducing our collective carbon footprint – more car and bus journeys to get to school.  What about road safety?  How many more accidents are there going to be involving kids getting hit by cars on their way to school?  And this will only apply to England of course because education is a devolved issue.

In the words of Pink Floyd, leave them kids alone.

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Do you want rice with that?

January 18, 2008 Education, WTF? 3 comments

No Mandate Brown has decided to spend god knows how many millions of pounds of our taxes on a teach-yourself-English website with a call centre full of “master trainers” answering calls via VOIP.

Brilliant.  Except the website is being targetted at China and the call centre will be in India.

A fifth of school children in England fail to achieve a minimum acceptable level of English in their exams but none of the money will find its way to them.  And what was the rationale behind siting the call centre in India?  The Goblin King says that even more of our tax money is going to be spent on improving the standard of English in India so that it’s good enough to teach the Chinese.

Gordo said he wants to make English the “world’s common language of choice”.  Bearing in mind that English is already the world’s common language of choice, it shouldn’t be too difficult to achieve that objective.  Bet you a fiver they still bugger it up.

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Leave our schools alone Gordo

October 31, 2007 Education, England, No Mandate No comments

The One Eyed Wonder of Wankistan has proclaimed that all failing schools in England will get a visit from a specialist management team to help turn them round.  If that doesn’t work then a change of “management” will be instigated and if that doesn’t work then the school will be shut down.

It was pointed out this morning on GMTV or some morning Trash TV programme that roughly 50% of schools are underperforming.  Unfortunately, it wasn’t pointed out that he has no mandate on the English education system.

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Free school meals for primary children

October 22, 2007 Education, Scotland 4 comments

Primary school children in Scotland are to get free school meals in a pilot scheme costing the English taxpayer £5m.

Parents of English children will still have to pay for their children to have school meals.

School meals in England current cost as little as 37p to produce with the British government pledging to increase this to 50p.  In Scotland in excess of 70p on average is spent on a school meal.

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Al Gore’s global warming scam

October 13, 2007 Climate Change, Education, Propaganda One comment

I’ve just fired off the following email to Telford & Wrekin Council (my local authority) regarding Al Gore’s climate change propaganda film being shown in schools after reading this list of judgements by a High Court judge:

Hi,

I see that Al Gore’s film on Climate Change is set to enter the curriculum in English schools despite a High Court Judge ruling that the film is politically motivated and inaccurate.It is an offence to use politically motivated and inaccurate material (better known as “propaganda”) to teach children in English schools.The offence is under section 406 of the Education Act 1996 which makes political indoctrination illegal.

The following bullet points detail some of the judge’s findings:

  • The film claims that melting snows on Mount Kilimanjaro evidence global warming.
    The Government’s expert was forced to concede that this is not correct.
  • The film suggests that evidence from ice cores proves that rising CO2 causes temperature increases over 650,000 years.
    The Court found that the film was misleading: over that period the rises in CO2 lagged behind the temperature rises by 800-2000 years.
  • The film uses emotive images of Hurricane Katrina and suggests that this has been caused by global warming.
    The Government’s expert had to accept that it was “not possible” to attribute one-off events to global warming.
  • The film shows the drying up of Lake Chad and claims that this was caused by global warming.
    The Government’s expert had to accept that this was not the case.
  • The film claims that a study showed that polar bears had drowned due to disappearing arctic ice.
    It turned out that Mr Gore had misread the study: in fact four polar bears drowned and this was because of a particularly violent storm    .
  • The film threatens that global warming could stop the Gulf Stream throwing Europe into an ice age:
    The Claimant’s evidence was that this was a scientific impossibility.
  • The film blames global warming for species losses including coral reef bleaching.
    The Government could not find any evidence to support this claim.
  • The film suggests that the Greenland ice covering could melt causing sea levels to rise dangerously.
    The evidence is that Greenland will not melt for millennia.
  • The film suggests that the Antarctic ice covering is melting,
    The evidence was that it is in fact increasing.
  • The film suggests that sea levels could rise by 7m causing the displacement of millions of people.
    In fact the evidence is that sea levels are expected to rise by about 40cm over the next hundred years and that there is no such threat of massive migration.
  • The film claims that rising sea levels has caused the evacuation of certain Pacific islands to New Zealand.
    The Government are unable to substantiate this and the Court observed that this appears to be a false claim.

The film is essentially a work of fiction.It is little more than politically motivated propaganda used to justify punitive taxation to plug funding gaps in the treasuries of most developed nations.The High Court has judged that the film is politically motivated and biased and as such I feel that it is inappropriate and unlawful to show this film in a school.As such, I would be obliged if you could confirm that this piece of propaganda will not be shown in any schools in the borough.If any of my children are exposed to this political indoctrination I will seek prosecution.

Regards,

Stuart Parr

I suggest that every other concerned parent does the same to prevent the gobal warming scam being taught to our children as fact when it is, in reality, a politically motivated, biased set of vague and unscientific assumptions.

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University Graduates figure drops

September 18, 2007 Education No comments

The UK has dropped from 3rd to 10th place in an OECD report on university graduates – we produce only 400,000 graduates a year now.

What a surprise.  Could it be anything to do with the extortionate, discriminatory and racist fees charged for the 85% of the population that lives in England?  Of course not, it’s because students expect to get a degree so they don’t try hard enough.  It must be true, the BBC says so.

Telford & Wrekin taking down EU flag

September 8, 2007 Education, Federal Europe 8 comments

Telford & Wrekin Council are taking down the EU rag from their offices and replacing it with the Cross of St George.

The current Leader of the Council, Andrew Eade, campaigned successfully for the British flag to be put on the council offices a few years ago when the Liebour traitors who were in power previously took it down.  However, my own continued attempts to get the English flag flying in place of the blue rag have been unsuccessful until now because, despite claiming the decision as all their own idea, it was me that spoke personally to one of the cabinet members and asked for this to be done a matter of days after they won the election.

I don’t mind not getting any of the credit anyway, it’s a victory for both pro-English and anti-EU movements.

Free university tuition in Scotland

September 6, 2007 Education, Scotland 24 comments

The SNP has announced a bill to abolish the graduate endowment in Scotland making university education totally free of charge for any Scots studying in Scotland.

Under EU rules, any EU citizen studying in Scotland will automatically be entitled to the same free university education, as will the children of asylum seekers who have lived there for more than 3 years.

English students, meanwhile, will have to pay for their university education in Scotland and pay for their fellow students’ free education if they get a job and earn enough to pay taxes.

Leave our kids alone

July 13, 2007 Education, General 5 comments

No Mandate Brown and his band of merry fuckwits are intent on destroying the English education system.

New changes to the curriculum – in England only – include:

Taking Hitler, Churchill and Ghandi out of the curriculum (but leaving in William Wilberforce, the anti-slavery protester, because we must all atone for the rest of our existence as a race for the actions of our ancestors).
Replacing European languages with Urdu, Mandarin and Arabic. ???? ????. Durka durka.
Instead of learning about countries, geography will teach about the effects of buying cheap goods from the Third World and global warming.

Also announced today by the Goblin King is a £100m funding package for teaching sport in England which will make Britain a great sporting nation. Thanks to the Barnett Formula, Scotland will get about £15m as well to do with as it pleases.

Catchment areas are also being abolished in favour of a lottery system. Over-subscribed schools will now get their pupils by a lottery instead of the usual methods – family links, academic ability, personal circumstances, etc.

But only in England.

Edit:
Comments closed due to excessive spam.

Breaking the English education system

July 8, 2007 Education, Propaganda 3 comments

According to yesterday’s Daily Mail, the geography curriculum in England is being changed to “make it more relevant”, the usual reason given for changing something that doesn’t need changing.

Kids will now be taught “themed” issues like global warming, third world trade and the 2012 Olympics. They will be taught about the impact of buying trainers and clothes made in third world countries- an entirely subjective subject. Commited capitalists will say that it’s just market forces at work, anti-capitalists will say that we have a social responsibility to the third world. Children will, of course, be taught the “social responsibility” side of the argument because it’s British government policy. The 2012 Olympics is widely seen as a disaster in the making – the costs have quadroupled and the entire project is running behind time. Kids will, of course, be taught about the “positive” aspects such as the taxpayer-funded regeneration of the East End of London. I won’t even start on the global warming scam.

Basically, the objective of this and other changes to the education system in England is simply to ensure that future generations grow up with New Liebour’s corrupt champagne socialist values. Britishness lessons will attempt to keep the British identity alive for another generation in England even though it doesn’t really exist any more in the real world. The propaganda issued by Federal Europe to be taught as the truth in English schools is a work of fiction but will go some way to brainwashing a generation into being eurofederalists when the rest of the country are eurosceptic.

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