25 October, 2005

The Blair machine rolls on

Today Tony Blair rolled out his plans for schools and I sat there on my sofa and thought my god what the hell is happening? We already have deprived areas in Britain and now it seems we will have the schools to go with them. We have enough problems with the schools we have not being good enough to teach young kids. Are we now saying that if your smart then you might just have a chance of a good education if you can get in to one of our academies but sorry if you live in a deprived area then you ought to move to one that's got a better standard of education. The funny thing is I would have expected this to come from a Conservative not a Labour prime minister. This still smacks of a class divide if you go to a school that has opted out of local authority control. This to me is the beginning of selective education and to come on top of that is the proposal that failing schools be given a year to change things. How about funding those school in the deprived areas. Hasn't anyone told Mr Blair we don't have enough schools at this minute to teach the pupils we do have. We already have teachers that teach classes of thirty to forty children. To change the system without changing the things we already have in place to me seems to be creating problems we don't need and to give schools a choice of choosing local authority or not, still sends that message if your poor? You're staying poorly educated as well. What choice does someone have when they put their faith in a school education system that is fair, only to see it become unfair? If I was a politician I would be objecting to it. I have just been to a local school and I know how hard it is for the over worked teachers but how hard is it going to be for those children that find it hard to learn? When they cannot get the education they need. Is this what was meant by state education?

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