Every Child Does Not Matter

Prior to the credit crunch the estate agents reckoned 3 out of 4 house sales fell through following agreement on best and final offer. Reasons range from change in personal circumstances, lack of access to funding and deciding not to move at the last moment. One of the more interesting reasons is to get your kid into the local school. The scam works like this:

• Put in an offer on a house in the post code area for the school of your choice;
• Apply to the school;
• Get the place;
• Pull out of the deal.

Scam is probably a strong word because who could blame the perpetrator for trying to get their kid a decent education. In this particular story the plaintiff lived on an estate with known problems and would never be able to afford a house in the catchment area for the school she had set her sights on. Who could blame her? The ratio to class sizes between in the public and private sector is 28:14. Assuming that the 28 is well behaved and not suffering from any psychological or physical condition requiring significant teacher attention is unrealistic. Further degrading the teacher's capacity to educate instead of control behaviour. School facilities across the local area differ in the area of ICT, sports facilities, scientific equipment and art supplies. The closely you go to the inner city the worst the facilities become. Dame Suzi Leather's answer is to encourage the private sector to share their facilities with the public sector (working class hero...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzi_Leather). The Learning Skills Council wastes 300 million on a college building scheme and spends 60 million because the administration of the Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA) policy is complex. Are these the best recommendations costly quangos can think of? Why don't we take all this money spent on the Charity Commission (http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/d/hc438_charity_18.pdf), failed construction schemes and costly adminstration schemes thne give 30% to social enterprises who enable social mobility and 70% to fund extra teachers. The tax payer spends a fortune on the public sector education system. Is their not enough public money but spent doing the wrong thing? I had a dream where for 1 whole term the DFES just let the primary schools do their own thing without any targets. Parents, children and teachers agreed the targets. Wonderful things happened.

What happens in the USA tends to happen over here. Shame of a Nation http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pB-niRGNms&feature=related