School admissions: more parents facing ‘fraud’ investigations
In a report, Ian Craig, the Chief Schools Adjudicator, said many parents were employing “quite bizarre” tactics to cheat the system.
Some councils already carry out their own doorstep inspections of parents to ensure information on application forms is accurate.
But they claim that attempts to crackdown on cheating is being undermined by the lack of proper sanctions, other than taking away the place.
Dr Craig was asked by Ed Balls, the Schools Secretary, to draw up a list of suggested new powers to clampdown on the problem.
So, let me get this straight.
- In the brave new world of new labour, some schools are failing pupils.
- Parents want their children to go to schools which will not fail them, so they game the system.
- We are going to ‘give new powers’ to the bureaucrats to hunt these parents out, then disrupt their childrens’ lives by taking them out of schools that are not failing and sending them to schools that are failing – along with those children already condemned ro the failing schools.
Am I being obtuse, here, or is the solution not staring these dogma and bureacracy-driven apparatchiks in the face?
Fix the freakin’ schools!
Problem solved.
Boadicea's Chariot 
I’ve re-posted this here in the hope of some sensible discussion. Brendano is bound to turn up on the other post with some bizarre accusation of hypocrisy, colonialism, racism, imperialism, doctoring evidence, condoning violence, or something equally ridiculous.
Quite!
I like the solution to one failing school in Rhode Island (I think). The schools superintendent fired the staff from top to bottom all 80 of them, Obama agreed with her in public, quite amusing considering the whole place was ‘fnic’
I cannot understand that the govt refuse to see that people want their children to be educated within their own cultural and religious norm not hideous pastiches of multicultural bung ups.
Of course Brendan doesn’t see it, his children would have been educated in an Irish bog in a culturally homogeneous, solidly white, celtic, Catholic establishment as they always have been. No perv sex eduction videos for 7 year old and days off for Eid!
Funny how the liberals always live in places where they are not personally inconvenienced by all the trash, just wish to foist it on others less fortunate in society!
Personally I always insisted on a school with a rigid Judeo Christian ethic for which you have always had to pay quite handsomely. Working on the principle that if one wished to abandon Christianity as an adult at least the little bugger was going to know what he was rejecting!
Wasn’t too sure I had my money’s worth when he asked me who was Offa’s ‘dyke’ at age 9!!!
Christina, I had a perfectly good education through the state system and it is an outrage that al of our children cannot get the same.
And not just Al, all the others, too.
They destroyed the system deliberately to break the power of the middle classes and those of wits and aspiration to success.
Class warfare at its worst.
Agree Bravo. I had similar education (with exception of no grammar at grammar but we’ll skate hastily over that). Waste no more money on chasing parents but just provide the quality teachers and head teachers who are vital to the kids’ future!!
Education is so important and the parents “in the know” will move heaven and earth to get their kids into the “right” schools because they realise the importance. Meanwhile kids from deprived homes who could sorely do with lots of quality teaching and discipline, are consigned to the failing schools because their parents are not in a position to care much.
It is quite unbelievable, Bravo. Some education authorities are actually having a sort of lottery selection to allocate places. They draw names out of a hat.
This leads to children travelling backwards and forwards quite unnecessarily. The system is supposed to allow parental choice but it seems to do no such thing.
Parents have always tried to cheat the system. A good school in an area adds to the value of property.
As to Christina’s point about liberals: it is rather more to do with income, I would have thought. People don’t normally opt to live in deprived areas if they have a choice.
OK, haven’t quite got the hang if this block quote thingy, yet. 😦
Araminta. The point is, why should people have to ‘cheat the system’ to get a decent education for their children. All pay taxes. (In theory, anyway.)
And interestingly except for parts of London, there are virtually no liberals among the working poor in inner cities. Their politics are far more polarised, both left and right.
Wealthy middle class people have absolutely no idea what it is like to live in inner cities in so called multicultural environments. The Primary school near the boy’s flat is 80% plus asian and black, white faces are a rarity, strangely enough the housing is far more balanced ethnically. The doctors surgery is white and a few blacks only, so one can only assume that white people with children have either fled or are paying or competing for Church Schools and that people prefer doctors of their own group.
Were liberals to practice what they preach they ought to be the first to move to deprived areas to offer the help they advocate so freely.
And see where it gets them.
Grass roots movements appear to be the only ones that flourish. There is a black committed Evangelical Church in the area that has done more for blacks than any other well meaning govt/do gooder organisation, my hairdresser there belonged to it, we spoke often on the subject of her people’s development and she was no liberal! Needless to say I was her only white customer and eyed at first with great suspicion, but they were the best hairdressers in the neighbourhood and I couldn’t leave the boy long enough to go downtown. One of my more entertaining forays into multiculturalism.
Bit off topic bravo, but all part of the same ball of wax!
too many dictats by people that don’t have hands on experience.
Don’t do as I do, do as I tell you.
What I cannot understand is why people do not have revolts and storm the town halls, a la the poll tax riots.
Works a charm.
CO number 11. I agree entirely.
They obviously shouldn’t have to Bravo: but that is what has been happening for many years now. I think the abolition of Grammar Schools was when the rot set in. The system is failing so many children and you can see this knock in effect through to university level.
How true Araminta, the boy at 30 was always bitching to me on the subject. When he was in remission he used, as part of his doctorate to duties have to supervise mineralogical and metallurgical laboratory practicals for undergraduates.
Even at only ten years their senior he couldn’t believe the drop in standards, he always swore they would never have got on any course in ‘his day’, used to tickle me pink, sounding like he was disgusted of Cheltenham and 75 +.
He would become so irate, he would go and teach it on the blackboard and half of them couldn’t even understand the maths or had even heard of the minerals, let alone what they were looking at. He said it boded very ill for the future if these cretins were specifying steel for high rises they would not be able to identify it, no wonder things collapse with such alarming frequency!
Frightening.
Haven’t any of you noticed how little young doctors seem to know about anything?
I wouldn’t touch any under the age of 40 these days.
Nice to chat, must go, greenhouse calls!
cheers.
I’m not entirely convinced about any doctors, Tina but I am sure they do their best, but I so have an aversion to being told what is best for me by anyone.
Have a good potter!
On a slightly different tack. We used to have an excellent education system at sea through the certificates (2nd Mate, !st Mate, Master and for a few Extra Master). You could be 100% certain that anybody with just a 2nd Mates was numerate and literate to a good standard. It was run by the Board of Trade and nothing to do with the Dept of Education (or whatever they called themselves then. All the exams were set and marked by ex seamen and you had to get 70% in everything or you took the whole lot again. They didn’t care how many O or A levels you had, if you’d been to school or Nautical College (although many of us had) or fact anything about you apart from the fact that you’d passed the medical and had the requisite sea time. It was basic, harsh, fair and democratic. 2nd Mates’s maths was somewhere between the old O and A level with an emphasis on spherical trig. There were 6 Papers General Ship Knowlege 3hrs, Chartwork and Pilotage 2hrs, Practical Navigation 3hrs, Mathematics 2hrs, Principles of Navigation 2hrs, English 1½ hrs, plenty of written answers required with marks off for poor spelling and grammar. Also what we called Orals (Academics would call a viva voce)which could go on for a very long time if the examiner had doubts about you. To add insult to injury they could send you back for more sea time if you failed badly enough. This was just 2nd Mates, by the time you got to Masters they really put your balls in the wringer and there were lots of failures. I believe that of all the apprentices that went to sea only about 6% ever got as far as Master FG. Personally I thought it was a wonderful system, it didn’t matter how much the lecturers and teachers loathed you and whether you did your homework or not, or whether you were sober in class or not or even if you’d been to college the only thing that counted was the exam on the day consequently most of us in our various ways studied very hard.
Anyway in the late seventies the jobsworths took over and wrecked the system, probably around about the time they started getting rid of Grammar Schools.
Quality Blog Bravo,
Let’s set up a few quangos, a steering committee or two, 10 shifts of watchers in every borough, a central administration bureau with regional depots, national hotlines (24hr of course), three ministers in parlianment and two MEPs to represent this in Brussels. We’ll commission two universities to dedicate full resources to research, and set up a think tank. Then we can find out why little Johnny doesn’t want to go to a school where they can’t speak english.
Honestly, they should be shot the piggin’ lot of ’em.
I shall now log in to the dark side and see how this blog fared there. 🙂
Bravo – I think Mrs Osborne 🙂 at #10 and #11 has it right. Education “professionals” such as administrators, planners, bean-counters, pen-pushers, outreach coordinators and diversity gauleiters are all part of “the system” and are therefore not be challenged under any circumstances in the upbringing of children by lesser equals such as parents.
Veering obly very slightly off ideological topic, and with apologies to any teachers looking in, why do they always, without fail, call themselves the teaching “profession” (rather like it is always an “historic” third election victory), especially at the National Union of Teachers’ conference and when being interviewed by the BBC or The Guardian?
OZ
Profession is a word so overused that it’s become meaningless.
Jazz, as I wrote, my kid bro, the Master Mariner, went that route.
My son studied Network Engineering at Uni. His verdict? Could have done it all, ‘on the job,’ with guided study towards certification by examination – ring a bell, looking at Jazz’s comment?
The government is fixated on making sure that everone has a paper qualification of some kind – never mind whether or not the qualification is worth anything, or not…NVQ in CO2 management anyone? Paper qualifications mean ticks in boxes and bureaucrats love ticks in boxes on papers that can be shuffled around between diferent desks to show how hard they work and how vital their job is.
I see we are now to be taxed on food to ensure we can afford to keep these people employed…
I remember John Harvey Jones did a program where he went round various schools. One of them was Clifton College a fairly up market public school. The pupils were advised to steer clear of industry (nasty, dirty, insecure) and aim for nice clean secure jobs in the professions (old meaning of the word) Academia or the Public service. JHJ was appalled but the school was quite unapologetic.
By stark comparison JHJ went to a couple of good state schools where many of the children were pathetically eager to get their hands dirty and the staff encouraged them. Don’t suppose that’s true anymore. The rot is well established.
When I was a teenager nothing was further from my mind than security and a safe job. What I wanted (needed ?) was interest and a bit of excitement. I think that was a healthy attitude.
That’s a simplistic solution, and I don’t think that it will solve anything. There are plenty of good teachers and heads out there – but they are trying to work in a system which is forever changing and expanding, with their hands tied regarding discipline, and with constant political interference for non-educational aims.
The father of a friend was once asked how he’d managed to teach for twenty years. His answer was that he hadn’t – he’d taught one year twenty times. Teachers would be lucky to teach one year twice running.
Discipline? Well that’s a dirty word these days. Try teaching 30 children of mixed ability all of whom know their ‘rights’, in the sure and certain knowledge that if you upset one little precious you’ll have Mum and Dad breathing down your neck…
Then there’s ‘modern’ methods. I’ve seen the directive that requires Primary Schools to make some 50% of all classroom activities ‘child’ based. Forget the maths if little Johnny comes in with a stuffed parrot – teach the class about parrots. I’m in agreement with my ex-headmistress who believed that it was cruel to expect children to discover the ‘knowledge of the ages’ when they could be taught it.
Then of course the worst of all – the political interference for social engineering.
Take politics out of the classroom, give teachers some clout, and get back to teaching.
Boadices, I would agree with your comment if you added, ‘make sure the teachers are equipped to do the job,’ to your last sentence. As you say, there are plenty of good teachers and heads out there, the others are one more reason why schools are failing.
I didn’t mean to imply that there were no bad teachers. There are – no doubt about it.
But one has to replace them, and how does one convince people with the skills and knowledge to enter the profession when they can earn a decent living without all the hassle and aggravation involved in the present system?
Get the system right and the rest will follow.
Boadicea, I think it might be a long haul to get the system right and wait for the rest to follow unfortunately. Quite a large number of children have already had their future ruined and, as Frank Field said, are fit only for unemployment. Too many teachers have succumbed to the jargon. I was always horrified at the low expectations many teachers had of their pupils, as shown in meetings to discuss new exam formats and such. The question “what sort of grades do your pupils achieve and what grades do you want to raise them to?” round the table was always embarrassing. My school expected As and Bs and got them – gasps all round. When the new AS level was first mooted, there were teachers who almost swooned at the suggestion that knowledge of a Past Tense and the Future Tense would be required. When it was pointed out that such knowledge was necessary to get a decent GCSE grade, without which they could not tackle AS, there was more “shock and horror”. It was like the Guinness ad – “I’ve never tried it because I don’t like it”. Some teachers had never tried teahing something because they “knew” the pupils wouldn’t cope.
So, what would you suggest, Boadicea?
It’s going to be a long haul, the problem has been years in the making and there is no ‘quick fix’. It also has to be an all-party solution, where all political considerations are replaced by educational needs.
Dare I say that part of the problem has been not only been teacher’s low expectations of pupils, but also the Government’s low expectations of teachers? I was appalled to find, here, that a friend’s daughter did not have the grades to get into a ‘creative writing’ course at Uni, but could get into the Teaching Course which has the lowest requirements of any course. I don’t suppose it’s much better in the UK.
I also think one of the biggest problems is that far too many parents don’t value education and don’t really care whether their children are educated or not. Indeed, I think that there is a large pool of people who really don’t know what a good education is. I’ve often wondered whether charging a small fee would make a difference, education might be taken a bit more seriously if it weren’t free… but perhaps that’s too radical!
Where would I start? No idea! But there are good schools, which do provide a good education and they should be used as ‘models’ for the rest.