The ippr report on schools - the short version
The ippr has just produced a paper on school admissions, called "School Admissions: Fair choices for parents and pupils", and takes some 23 pages to say this, "We don't like parental choice in school selection, and pupils should be allocated to schools on the basis of decisions made by local authority education commissars".
Not very 'new' Labour, is it? I think 'fair' is well on its way to being the number one weasel word used by wonks and the like, and social engineering would seem to be back in style. Among other things, the ippr suggests, "Local Admissions Forums should be required to produce a regular report on levels of segregation by income and ability in their local schools". Fancy telling an education commissar what your income is?
Not very 'new' Labour, is it? I think 'fair' is well on its way to being the number one weasel word used by wonks and the like, and social engineering would seem to be back in style. Among other things, the ippr suggests, "Local Admissions Forums should be required to produce a regular report on levels of segregation by income and ability in their local schools". Fancy telling an education commissar what your income is?
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I am rather taken by a report on Choices being written by someone called Sarah Tough
New Conservative Party policy?
A rather less verbose precis would read:
"Nanny knows best".
Will no one rid me of this Government?
Not so much 'fair'; where is the choice then?
Far too many publicly paid people doing things they are unqualified to do.
These people are a scourge on any business I'm involved in, they make excuses why I shouldn't do something (develop property), and are backed by even more people in government, who rely on continuing salaries for being uncommercially obdurate.
Nick - yes, that made me snigger a little...
Justin - I'm going to take the Fifth.
Your Grace - Brevity is indeed the soul of wit.
Lilith - Se non ora, quando?
Scroblene - Exactly.
80 % of parents will not get an choice under any system C and segregation by wealth 'is' bad thing.
As Edwina Curry said , actually support from Grammar schools is the lower middleclasses wanting the working classes to help pay for a free Public school education from which they are excluded.
Free choice is not inherently good if it denies others free choices and equality of opportunity is essential in the moral arguement for small state government. The ideals of Comprehensive education were not wrong , the delivery was a disaster of course.
I am coming round to the voucher idea though which seems to me to be a more pertinent freedom
Paul - 'Free choice is not inherently good if it denies others free choices'
Would that apply to any finite resource, be it quality education, be it first editions of Wordsworth or the last roast potato? If I happen to secure any of those 'rationed' things by being the first to act, or prepared to pay the most, so to speak, how have I wronged anyone else who could have the same choice?
I'm pro vouchers by the way.
The last roast potato is not the point , its my roast potato that you have stuck your Libertarian fork in a half inched that is the true analogy. I suspect there is spectrum of anti-social ness and freedoms that become more or less problematical you pick one end and at the other I might say ..Murder . Planning authorities or monopoly legislation might be closer to real life when we all accept that a finite resource cannot be left to the first grabber in one case a finite access to opportunity .
When the scarce resource is opportunities in life then I think it is more than reasonable to ask about the “Fairness”. Without fairness in some sense then the state cannot defend property rights with moral confidence and disaster will ensue as it did everywhere except here.
Property rights like my right to my roast potato .
There are different approaches . If my Smokey chimney pollutes fair Albion should I be banned from having it ,obliged to pay for the true cost , open to endless legal assault or simply left to be torn limb from limb buy the enrages villagers .Life is not simple C Liberty is a slippery subject.
What I like about the way I gather the voucher system works in pratice is that it only takes up a small percentage of the system but the good effect spreads to all of it. More the sort of adjustment that might actually work than the ideologically driven imposition that will not
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