Comments on: Opinion: Selective selection

By: Daniel Bowen

Daniel Bowen — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 09:30:04 +0000

Tim, what are the arguments against it?

By: tim leunig

tim leunig — Sun, 17 Jun 2007 11:08:51 +0000

The idea has been around for years, and considered by any number of working groups (at least since Chris Huhne’s public services commission), and none have decided to run with it.

By: Geoffrey Payne

Geoffrey Payne — Sun, 17 Jun 2007 10:08:39 +0000

Tim, prima facie that sounds like a good idea. Has any liberal argued against it?

By: tim leunig

tim leunig — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 09:27:35 +0000

I am always surprised that as liberals we do not campaign to allow people to found new schools when they are dis-satisfied with local ones. This happens in Sweden, the Netherlands, and the US. As I understand it, you have to follow the national curriculum, be inspected by the equivalent of ofsted, and you are not allowed to charge top-up fees. But so long as you meet these criteria, you get the same funding as any state-owned school.

By: Geoffrey Payne

Geoffrey Payne — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 22:14:49 +0000

If we had a market in education, then the rich will be able to afford to send their children to the best schools, whilst the poor would be priced out altogether.
Lets leave the idea to the lunatic fringe of the Tory party.
We must put the state in it’s proper context. In the 20th century, the worst regimes in the world were totalitarian states; Communism and Naziism.
Today it is the failed states. Although nominally a democracy, Iraq is today a failed state and for most people is a worse place to live than when it was a totalitarian state under Saddam Hussein.
Liberals should argue for a decentralised state, not doing away with it altogether. We are not anarchists.

By: Tristan Mills

Tristan Mills — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 07:33:32 +0000

Why not open up the market for education?
What says the state should have a monopoly on provision for the majority who cannot afford to escape the state sector?

We need to ween ourselves off the idea of a state run education systems. A monopoly is not a good thing and there is so much scope for a market in education.

Lets give children from all financial backgrounds the hope that they can work towards going to a school which caters for their needs rather than giving that valuable opportunity to the few with rich parents and sending so many without the wealth to schools which fail them.

By: Daniel Bowen

Daniel Bowen — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 09:28:45 +0000

I’m not sure that any of the respective positions are necessarily good enough.

Jarvis Cocker sings scabrously about finding a school near the top of the league. For existing grammar schools, this search extends for many, many miles and across more than one county boundary; meanwhile, those born within a stone’s throw of the school have no chance whatsoever of attending the grammar school.

In some areas, this means an almost total restriction of school choices to – at best – the mediocre, for those who can’t or won’t pay their way.

There’s certainly scope in urban areas for sharing resources. The difficulty with multi-school setting is more complex on a logistical level, and would result in a more rigid curriculum and timetable. Do Liberals necessarily want that?

Of course, in rural areas, the concept is as much of a fallacy as that of the ‘specialist’ school.

By: Mark Valladares

Mark Valladares — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 08:25:15 +0000

Laurence,

On the other hand, it allows us to read and digest the article without allowing our knowledge of the identity of the individual cloud our dispassionate judgement of it.

By: Laurence Boyce

Laurence Boyce — Sun, 10 Jun 2007 23:12:33 +0000

What’s this pseudonym thing all about? This is the Blogging equivalent of wearing the veil.