General Great British Politics Thread!

richardm said:
What's the difference? :confused:
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The grammar school excludes pupils of poor ability. Having two state schools simply uses the law of averages to provide at least one class of 30 in each yeargroup of a few hundred across two schools to allow the more capable students to group together, without excluding anyone from the school and allowing the students of poorer ability to move up a class if they show merit, as well as providing them with a goal of moving up into that class.
 
stokes234 said:
Lower, as as result of various medical and social advances. But typically higher than in more equal countries.
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Slightly unfair here since I edited the original post to include a PDF indicating that in fact crime rates are considerably higher now. Can't find anything about mental health, but I'd argue that while treatment is probably much better the overall rate probably hasn't changed much.
 
stokes234 said:
The grammar school excludes pupils of poor ability. Having two state schools simply uses the law of averages to provide at least one class of 30 in each yeargroup of a few hundred across two schools to allow the more capable students to group together, without excluding anyone from the school and allowing the students of poorer ability to move up a class if they show merit, as well as providing them with a goal of moving up into that class.
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Unless you're going to be actively whisking the good kids out of one school and whisking the bad ones into the other I think you're highly optimistic in hoping that they'll just naturally stratify that way, instead of ending up with two schools in the same boat.
 
stokes234 said:
Yeah, and I would like these dealt with too, over time. Through methods such as higher inheritance taxes that ensure you have to actually earn yourself a better life rather than having it handed to you. However, actually banning healthy food would be a hell of a stretch in any society, morally or practically, whereas in my eyes banning private schools for the benefit of all is both achievable and acceptable.



I'd say it's immoral to inflict social problems on society such as higher crime and worse mental health just so that an elite few can thrive. YMMV.
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So your answer to problems is to make sure that everyone suffers? You are living up to Churchill's dictum:

"The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries"


Personally, I think that excessive* hobbling of the rich smacks of class vengeance rather than social justice.


* 'excessive' is ovbviously going to be judged differently by different folks, though we might start by saying that it is where pain is inflicted on the rich without it contributing to raising the actual (as opposed to relative) welfare of the the majority.
 
stokes234 said:
Yeah, and I would like these dealt with too, over time.
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Good luck with that.

I'd say it's immoral to inflict social problems on society such as higher crime and worse mental health just so that an elite few can thrive. YMMV.
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You keep switching it round like that, so that harming the rich is the same thing as helping the poor. But then, I suppose you have to really.
 
richardm said:
Unless you're going to be actively whisking the good kids out of one school and whisking the bad ones into the other I think you're highly optimistic in hoping that they'll just naturally stratify that way, instead of ending up with two schools in the same boat.
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I'm going by the law of averages. Schools have typically 150-200 pupils per year. Class size is around 30. My argument is that if you're able to build two state schools in each catchment area, the chances of neither school being able to field a class of 30 selected pupils that are interested in learning is extremely low. And if it is that low, then the grammar schools you're proposing to build in place of that extra state school is going to have a very small number of pupils applying.
 
richardm said:
Slightly unfair here since I edited the original post to include a PDF indicating that in fact crime rates are considerably higher now. Can't find anything about mental health, but I'd argue that while treatment is probably much better the overall rate probably hasn't changed much.
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The PDF also notes that levels of crime reporting are higher now as well. It doesn't provide information on actual crime levels because it doesn't tell us what percentage of crime was reported in each year. Still, comparing to other countries with the same level of technology and roughly the same level of social advancement is going to be a better measure, imo.
 
The Don said:
When the Grammar and Secondary Modern school were merged kids who would have previously gone to the Secondary Modern got a chance to do 'O' levels, 'A' levels and some went on to university. Classes were streamed by ability and I think there was a tendency to spend more time with the better pupils. The ones who lost out were probably the very best and the kids who would have just scraped into Grammar school. They had fewer resources than in Grammar school days.
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These days however the heaviest focus is likely to be on the D/C boarderline students.

Well thats how it worked around 2000. Since then its become a bit more complicated than that. League tables have forces schools to be very pragmatic. Until the goverment dropped the IB equiv on them schools roughly worked like this:

A-C students- Run them through GCSEs. Will tend to get fairly good teachers since thats who the teachers want to teach.

Students with a reasonable chance of getting at least a D - Game the living daylights out of the GCSE equiverlent system (the lower levels of NVQ GNVQ BTECs etc) so they get a nominal 5 A-Cs

Below that put them on a vocation course and exercise crowd control techniques.

Where it is getting really nasty is that some schools have discovered that it terms of league table position they are bitter off shoving C grade students onto GCSE equiverlent schemes which since colleges know full well those qualifcations are worth less makes it harder for them to do A Levels.


The IB equiv thing may reduce this gaming but will mean that schools are going to have the rebuild their foreign language departments so a least for the next few years we are going to be burning up school time teaching kids french very badly.

The big winners were the kids who would have been condemned at the age of 11 to a lack of educational opportunity.
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No the big winners are the less bright middle class kids.
 
stokes234 said:
Yes, that is what i'm alleging. But i'm not doing it baselessly.
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I wasn't addressing whether equality is good, but rather how you achieve it. So far you've said nothing whatsoever to justify what amounts to a deliberate attack on a segment of the population because they happen to have a lot of money.
 
Seismosaurus said:
I wasn't addressing whether equality is good, but rather how you achieve it. So far you've said nothing whatsoever to justify what amounts to a deliberate attack on a segment of the population because they happen to have a lot of money.
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It's not an attack on a section of the population because they happen to have money. It's a removal of the ability to use money to give your children a leg-up, in one particular way, with the intention of using this to give the remaining 90% of children a boost, and with the added intention of achieving other bonuses for the whole of society in the process.

I am suggesting that in order for children of rich parents to succeed in life, they should have to work just as hard in school as other children. In the process, assuming success in raising taxes and improving equality, other children and the whole of society will reap the benefits. What is it about this that you find so offensive?
 
stokes234 said:
It's not an attack on a section of the population because they happen to have money. It's a removal of the ability to use money to give your children a leg-up, in one particular way, with the intention of using this to give the remaining 90% of children a boost
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No, it isn't. Your stated intention was NOT to make everything else as good as the best, it was to drag the best down.

I am suggesting that in order for children of rich parents to succeed in life, they should have to work just as hard in school as other children.
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Actually the children of the rich usually have to work rather harder.

What is it about this that you find so offensive?
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The way you keep saying you want to do something but then it's okay because you don't really want to do that, you just want to do something else instead. You've restated variants of the same thing several times now as if that will make it okay. It doesn't.

You are of course welcome to want what you want. There's no chance whatsoever of it actually happening, as I assume you know, so I'll rest easy on that basis.

And incidentally... the real problem with state schools isn't the money. It's the fact that lazy kids of lazy parents want to screw around and have fun in classrooms, and nobody can really do a lot to stop them.
 
Lothian said:
Note: There is not really a University of London - it is a colelction of colleges. I don't know if the degrees say 'Kings' or 'University of London'
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The certificates say 'University of London' as that is the awarding body, but (AFAIK) they also state which college you studied at.

example
 
stokes234 said:
Hey don't throw that at me. I'm arguing that if there is money available to improve education standards, it would be better and more fairly spent distributed by the government to all children regardless of the wealth of their parents, than used to give large boosts to children who just happen to have been fortunate enough to have been born into a rich family. And I also think it highly likely that the resulting lower inequality in society would bring other benefits.

I'm not opposed to giving higher standards of education to pupils who work harder or show more promise, at least at a-level and university levels, but i'm opposed to being able to buy superior education.
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Yeah, no problem. I agree with you actually. I was just suddenly reminded of what she had said and thought I'd share. Just thinking out loud and all that. Did I leave the gas on?
 
Going back to my post on the last page I think looking at this as something that can be sorted out by changing the school system is erroneous. It is not the schools that are at fault but the rest of the kids' environment; that is what (on the whole - of course there are exceptions) determines how well someone will do at school. Bright kids from an environment where there is not the support for education - socially and familial - are still going to fail in the education system no matter how we tweak it.
 
Woop! GB politics thread. I liked the reasoning that "we used to run the world" :p

What do folk think about CCTV and so on? We're apparently the 4th worst country for it, with 1 camera for every 14 people.
 
phelix said:
Woop! GB politics thread. I liked the reasoning that "we used to run the world" :p

What do folk think about CCTV and so on? We're apparently the 4th worst country for it, with 1 camera for every 14 people.
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There seems to be something in the British nature to want to be under observation the whole time. IMO it's the same thing that drives the desire to have a policeman on every corner (and another couple walking down every street).

I'm familiar with the arguments, I can't say that I'll be doing much I don't want capturing on CCTV but I'm disappointed how willingly or blindly we've ended up in this situation.

Then again I'm equally unhappy about the fact that our city centres are alcohol-fuelled war zones every Thursday, Friday and Saturday night.
 
The Don said:
Then again I'm equally unhappy about the fact that our city centres are alcohol-fuelled war zones every Thursday, Friday and Saturday night.
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Speak for yourself! It's been years since I saw a fight on the streets of Cardiff, and I go out far more often than is physically or financially healthy.

Also, thursdays? Eww.
 
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