The NHS

[oxford_fan]

johnny, aside from the fact that you use the word a couple of times, none of that is about academies.

I agree that more needs to be done in secondary schools to cater for those not going to university. I think too many people go to University, and would be better going down the vocational route.

[Arriba]

It looks to me that the tories want to pass the buck of stuggling schools over. Schools in deprived areas will always struggle to meet targets due to the pupils there though.

[jonny72]

johnny, aside from the fact that you use the word a couple of times, none of that is about academies.

I agree that more needs to be done in secondary schools to cater for those not going to university. I think too many people go to University, and would be better going down the vocational route.

You asked me why I thought our educational system was fucked so I gave one example, though I could talk all day about it.

As regards academies I don't see a problem with business being involved nor private money. I think they're unnecessary though and just complicate and fragment the system. I'd prefer we went back to basics and focussed on getting secondary schools and colleges working properly, rather than continually coming up with new schemes that just paper over the cracks. The same applies to the NHS.

[Arriba]

Businesses will be about profit. Schooling should remain government run and aided accordingly,not cast aside as certain ones don't meet the targets set out for all schools. The sats are a joke along with league tables and should be scrapped.

[warksred]

A "light hearted" serious  view of targets in the UK public sector.

 

[jonny72]

Businesses will be about profit. Schooling should remain government run and aided accordingly,not cast aside as certain ones don't meet the targets set out for all schools. The sats are a joke along with league tables and should be scrapped.

The problem with all the targets and league tables is that they're used solely as a measure of performance and of success and failure. Rather than using them to identify where improvements can be made and learning from those that perform well.

A good example I read some time ago was a GP surgery that needed to give appointments within 48 hours. When they couldn't meet this they didn't look in to why and try to solve it (maybe getting more doctors, more efficient scheduling, reducing the demand for appointments, directing some patients to nurses and so on), they just stopped answering the phone so the patients couldn't contact them and the 48 hours didn't start ticking. They met the targets but it didn't help the patients.

Same thing with education. A school that gets straight A's from the brightest students is praised more than a school that raises the grades of the less bright students a few levels.

[cheltred69]

One of the worst things about school league tables was the concentration of resources on the kids on the cusp of making the minimum grades.  Lots of funding available to get primary school kids to Level 4 SATs or secondary kids to Grade C GCSE.
Any kids that were not going to get A stars but would comfortably manage a B/C were often as good as ignored as they wouldn't make any difference to any league tables for the school.