On April 11, 2019 I read a very telling article ‘We always have to fundraise for school essentials‘.  This article was in the Metro newspaper and highlighted how so many schools in the United Kingdom, must beg parents for money to make ends meet…

Spsonored Read

Sponsored Read

The article described how they did a sponsored read, which meant that by teaming up with Usborne Books it was able to add to the school library; or on another day how they had a cake sale to raise money towards a wish list.  Each year there seems to be new areas of concern, new fundraising challenges, and yet according to our politicians, we have never had it so good!

Sylvia Pankhurst

In 1918 Sylvia Pankhurst, wrote a paper

Education of the Masses

And whilst some of the contents of the article seem a little dated now, the underlying premise of ensuring the right number of teachers, to the right number of students combined with the right premises and facilities still rings true…

‘“The funds of the National and British schools are utterly insufficient to enable the Committees of management to instruct a sufficient number of teachers.’

In Yvonne Roberts article published in the Guardian [27/10/2018], she quoted the latest  Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) publication which said that the poorest pupils in this country were more unhappy and discouraged than in any other developed country bar Turkey.

… Fewer than one in six feel resilient, satisfied with their lives and integrated at school…

There have been so many “initiatives” within the education department(s) that it has become a laughingstock; if it wasn’t so important to our children’s future, and that of the country I also would be laughing!

The Edge Foundation states… We are living through a unique period in which three fundamental factors are affecting our economy and society at the same time – skills shortages, Brexit and the Fourth Industrial Revolution. This chapter looks at each in turn before examining what they mean for the skills and behaviours we need young people to develop…

… The government’s suite of education policies aim to tackle the challenges of Twenty-First Century education by turning the clock back to the Nineteenth Century – a narrow knowledge-focused academic curriculum taught in a traditional manner to prepare young people for exams based on rote learning. This is at odds with giving young people the broad skills they need for future life and work before the age of 16, while post-16 apprenticeship numbers have fallen fast and T-levels are narrowly defined and lagging in delivery….

Our politicians need to get real…

Our politicians need to get real; they need to understand that they are creating [if not already created] and underclass who feel disenfranchised, disconnected from society, and in consequence feel little warmth to those who have, whilst they have not!

Until we address the imbalance between those who have and those who have not, until we address the imbalance shown within a political system which favours those with money [and therefore power] and those who have no money {and, therefore, no power], we as a society will continue to devolve, spiralling ever more down into the abyss.