Tuesday 25 October 2005

Not even the pretence of independence

Following on my previous post comes this piece of news:
Many parents in Scotland feel disengaged from politics and deprived of responsibility, a study has found. The group Parenting in Scotland (Pas) said its findings showed parents wanted to become more involved in the decisions affecting their children.
But this report talks about "influencing politicians", "accessible information", "telephone advice lines". How very exciting. There's no whisper of anything along the lines of school "independence" - however limited - that's now being discussed in England.

But:

Parents also want to be more involved in their child's education and to have greater influence over what goes on in school.
We are told that:
"It is worrying that so many parents feel they are not well informed about changes that affect them and do not know how to go about making their views known.

"There is an unhealthy gap between the people making decisions about family life and families themselves.

Well, duh! That "unhealthy gap" is called politics. If parents want to control their children's education it can't be done by tinkering with an intellectually bankrupt and politically motivated state system. Privatise the whole thing - with vouchers if we feel that the taxpayer should still be (wrongly) forced to pay for education.

1 comment:

David Farrer said...

Comments made on previous template:

D Maclean
I agree with your comments about the (various) political motivators inherent in the state system, but surprised that you separate 'education' and 'the taxpayer'. The entity that is 'education' becomes the taxpayer; they're one and the same thing.

29 October 2005, 23:56:13 GMT+01:00
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Shuggy
if we feel that the taxpayer should still be (wrongly) forced to pay for education. 
 
Oh, come off it. Have you forgotten the 'no free lunches' dictum? If education was privatised, the 'taxpayer' - i.e. the citizen - would pay through the nose for it directly. And the people who can't afford education - what are they supposed to do? This is, in any event, groundhog day; I asked you, or one of your ideological soulmates, for an example of a country that has mass, compulsory education provided by the private sector. I'm still waiting.....

27 October 2005, 14:25:21 GMT+01:00
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Neil Craig
I broadly agree with you. 
 
If anything can make the people of Scotland want to go back to Westminster it is the degree of centraliising nannyism, extreme even by Westminster standards, that is involved in eduction, the NHS & banning smoking.

26 October 2005, 20:13:29 GMT+01:00