School Winners
First task of the day is to walk Patrick to school. It's not a bad walk. Labour traffic calming was introduced before Lib Dems wrested control of Whalley Range away.
The school itself is great. Top OFSTED. Chastised only for some perceived slackness on collective worship - no problem. The best the particular inspector had ever seen and mentioned in dispatches - great. Children skipping in at the start of the day and out at the end with great grins on their faces - best of all.
Greatest problem really is that after establishing this happy and successful community our children will scatter to a dozen or more high schools. Community High Schools (specialist or otherwise), faith schools within and outside the state system, single sex comps, selective state schools in neighbouring Trafford, not to mention a handful of Premier Cru independents.
As a paid up member of the universal comprehensives Labour left I'm not a bit happy about this. As rapporteur for the "Every School A Good School" group at the Secondary 'Big Conversation'® I told Blair and Clarke this myself. Advising them that there was nothing to be scared of with the news that that's the way they do it in top-of-the-OECD-tables-for-everything Finland.
Sitting directly to my right I was 'assisted' by Ivan Lewis MP in producing a slightly more new-Labourly form of words than I might have done left to myself. An aspiration to make every Community High School so good that no parent would opt out, pay for school, or make their children travel miles.
Ivan was also present at a Socialist Education Association event in Manchester Town Hall and though he was a bit grumpy at being called for New Labour's toleration of existing selection and even introduction of more he was comradely enough afterwards.
Lord Hattersley was the star turn that day with a fund of anecdotes, a fount of principles, and an infectious optimism that having done an unelectable left phase and swung too far to get Maggie out the pendulum would now be on the way back to something more palatable for the left.
Sir Gerald Kaufman's apologia for faith schools was less compelling by far. No harm done, he seemed to say, they want faith schools, they'll do them anyway, best to have them in the state system. From my perspective though there is harm done as every child's education is impoverished by secondary segregation.
Manchester Labour are now attempting the same kind of mitigation of Academy Schools - by proposing to draw them into area clusters with other state schools, including even area governance, and thereby stopping selection or at least the excesses of it and keeping together a community of schools rather than a rat race.
Only time will tell whether this Manchester Model will work. But the alternative of not accepting a nine figure sum in capital improvement money is not much of an option.
Back to Patrick's school. The richness of the community is fantastic. Probably 90% from four or five Asian communities, with the balance drawn from African, Caribbean and various European legacies.
Strange then that not 200 metres away one of the Lib Dem candidates of 2004 - now a Councillor - should tell parents and leading Peace and Justice activists that they wouldn't mind if a couple of BNP councillors were elected. Horrifying.
I didn't stand up and speak at a rally last May, play cat and mouse with BNP fascists for an hour or so to find a secret location, and sit down in the road in front of those nazis Le Pen and Griffin for the Lib Dems to let them in through the back door of so-called free speech.
Wavering between weak and very weak on crime and disorder they're even weaker when it comes to tackling the far right. If you want to treat fascists and racists to free speech including in our council chambers, in westminster and in strasbourg, not to mention the ultra nasty Combat 18 website identifying ordinary members of the poublic who oppose them - then vote Lib Dem.
The school itself is great. Top OFSTED. Chastised only for some perceived slackness on collective worship - no problem. The best the particular inspector had ever seen and mentioned in dispatches - great. Children skipping in at the start of the day and out at the end with great grins on their faces - best of all.
Greatest problem really is that after establishing this happy and successful community our children will scatter to a dozen or more high schools. Community High Schools (specialist or otherwise), faith schools within and outside the state system, single sex comps, selective state schools in neighbouring Trafford, not to mention a handful of Premier Cru independents.
As a paid up member of the universal comprehensives Labour left I'm not a bit happy about this. As rapporteur for the "Every School A Good School" group at the Secondary 'Big Conversation'® I told Blair and Clarke this myself. Advising them that there was nothing to be scared of with the news that that's the way they do it in top-of-the-OECD-tables-for-everything Finland.
Sitting directly to my right I was 'assisted' by Ivan Lewis MP in producing a slightly more new-Labourly form of words than I might have done left to myself. An aspiration to make every Community High School so good that no parent would opt out, pay for school, or make their children travel miles.
Ivan was also present at a Socialist Education Association event in Manchester Town Hall and though he was a bit grumpy at being called for New Labour's toleration of existing selection and even introduction of more he was comradely enough afterwards.
Lord Hattersley was the star turn that day with a fund of anecdotes, a fount of principles, and an infectious optimism that having done an unelectable left phase and swung too far to get Maggie out the pendulum would now be on the way back to something more palatable for the left.
Sir Gerald Kaufman's apologia for faith schools was less compelling by far. No harm done, he seemed to say, they want faith schools, they'll do them anyway, best to have them in the state system. From my perspective though there is harm done as every child's education is impoverished by secondary segregation.
Manchester Labour are now attempting the same kind of mitigation of Academy Schools - by proposing to draw them into area clusters with other state schools, including even area governance, and thereby stopping selection or at least the excesses of it and keeping together a community of schools rather than a rat race.
Only time will tell whether this Manchester Model will work. But the alternative of not accepting a nine figure sum in capital improvement money is not much of an option.
Back to Patrick's school. The richness of the community is fantastic. Probably 90% from four or five Asian communities, with the balance drawn from African, Caribbean and various European legacies.
Strange then that not 200 metres away one of the Lib Dem candidates of 2004 - now a Councillor - should tell parents and leading Peace and Justice activists that they wouldn't mind if a couple of BNP councillors were elected. Horrifying.
I didn't stand up and speak at a rally last May, play cat and mouse with BNP fascists for an hour or so to find a secret location, and sit down in the road in front of those nazis Le Pen and Griffin for the Lib Dems to let them in through the back door of so-called free speech.
Wavering between weak and very weak on crime and disorder they're even weaker when it comes to tackling the far right. If you want to treat fascists and racists to free speech including in our council chambers, in westminster and in strasbourg, not to mention the ultra nasty Combat 18 website identifying ordinary members of the poublic who oppose them - then vote Lib Dem.
posted by Chris Paul at 10:06 AM
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