SCHOOL STANDARDS IN THE NEWS AGAIN

MEET THE FOCKERS PARENTS

It was interesting to read the reported speech by Sir Michael Wilshaw, England's Chief Inspector of Schools, who, in an effort to close the achievement gap between rich and poor, claimed that many of the poor children being left behind in schools, are now to be found in the suburbs, market towns and seaside resorts, rather than big cities.

Now we all know that despite Tameside council entering each and every one of their taxpayers into long term £180million Building Schools for the Future (BSF) PFI deals, which have seen some of the boroughs schools redeveloped and in many cases, totally rebuilt, the OFSTED inspectors have reported that despite all the investment, it has still not given the pupils in those schools any better results than previous. In fact, according to the latest OFSTED report, Tameside were considered 5^th from bottom out of 150 authorities in England for inadequate or below standard secondary schools.

Regardless of all the fancy initiatives. All the high flying teaching practices, the group work, differentiation, diversification, filling out endless unnecessary forms, peer group assessment, role play sessions and any other fads that the new Senior Management Teams (SMT’s) dream up, all those elaborate resources and all the new state-of-the-art buildings in the world mean little as far as education is concerned unless the pupils parents are also on-board. 

"Don't ask me, I didn't do school!"

We must now face the fact that most right thinking parents have known for years; if children are under attaining, look first at the parents! You can have the best schools, teachers and resources, but if the parents aren't committed to their child's education, there isn't much more those teachers can do.

I don’t believe poor education is all about poverty. Let’s face it, if a child is brought up in ignorance then there is a 99% chance they will stay ignorant. If parents want their children to have aspirations, they need to show them a better life and this achieved by making sure that those parents give their children a good work ethic and take responsibility for their offspring.

My parents like millions of others who started a family just after the war, were poor but they knew the value of a good education. They didn't harp on, telling me how society is unfair and how nobody from a poor background has a chance. They listened to me talking about school, they spoke to my teachers about my ambitions and they encouraged me. In fact, I didn't even know I was "disadvantaged" until much later when New Labour started splitting up sections of our society with their politics of envy.

Despite the fact that we should never lose sight of the fact that not every child as the ability to achieve good results, I think there are deeper social issues involved that teaching standards in themselves can't address.  By and large, poorly educated parents produce poorly educated children.

What do you think?