Ban the sick filth in our lunchboxes

July 12th, 2013 § 2 comments § permalink

So, the new idea for schools is to ban packed lunches.

What happened to the mantra of ‘choice’? Choice in hospitals, choice in schools, in amenities?

This idea can get to fuck, to be honest. A school is somewhere that I have to send my children. I do not get a choice in that. Fair enough that restaurants and cafes say that you can’t eat your own food on their premises, you have a choice to either stay there or bugger off and eat somewhere else. You don’t have that choice when you have to be somewhere by law.

There’s plenty of other things that can be done, like banning chocolate and crisps and the like from packed lunches. Many schools already do, but to force parents to have school dinners is ridiculous.

Most schools do not even have a kitchen nowadays and so will have to buy the lunches in. Yes, Jamie Oliver may have shown that good, cheap meals can be provided but how many schools will actually be able to provide that and if they do, how long will it be before standards start to slip due to either budgets being cut or suppliers cutting corners?

Another, meaner part of me thinks I don’t give a fuck what other parents give their kids. I provide mine with a good packed lunch, fuck the rest. Sure, make provision for the less well off kids with free school lunches, and some of the stories I’ve heard, some kids really do need the help, desparetely.

The rest though, it’s their kids the parents are failing. Fuck ’em. let them fail their kids.

Funnily enough, it may be a government commissioned report that advises banning packed lunches, but who are the authors? Restuarantuers. I wonder if the same result would’ve been arrived at if it had been written by someone not in the private sector food trade, someone independent?

Captive audience

July 12th, 2012 § 0 comments § permalink

TL:DR

Bishop of Oxford urges Church of England to abuse it’s position as a state funded education provider.

via J&M

Travellers and Human Rights from Amanda Platell

October 22nd, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink

Amanda Platell on the ‘real’ victims of Dale Farm

One of the ruses employed by travellers to remain on the site was to claim that their children had a human right to an education at the local school.

But the truth is that the influx of traveller children put such a strain on Crays Hill Primary that all the other local children were withdrawn by their parents. The headteacher and the board of governors also resigned.

Today, the 110-strong school register is made up almost entirely of travellers, with the exception of three pupils.

oh noes! Not the dreaded ‘Human Rights’!

Platell finishes with this…

The tragedy is that while the gipsy children have been given their precious ‘human right’ to an education, the children of Basildon tax- payers have scandalously been denied their right to one.

How have these brave Basildonians been denied their right to an education? The kids haven’t been told to fuck off to another school to make way for traveller children. The parents may have removed their kids from a school but if they haven’t made sure they get in to another then they are the ones denying their kids an education, not the travellers.

As for the standard of education at Crays Hill Primary, with so many poorly performing pupils, there must be some sort of help it could’ve got. I don’t know how these things work, as with many things, but there must be something.

Amanda Platell. Going for the easy targets of Human Rights and the people who need them most.

Classy.

Changing Education Paradigms

September 12th, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink

Something to think about. I liked the illustrations too.

Free Schools – A resounding success already

September 10th, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink

When you try something, you generally give it a bit of time before heralding it as a success, but nooooo. Free schools, those schools that can be opened by anyone from Old Mother Riley and her cow to Mr Montgomery Burns with public money diverted from other existing schools, have been open a week and Cameron wants them to proliferate

replicated many, many times up and down the country

Let’s not get over excited here. I know a week is a long time in politics, but in school life, fuck all happens in a week. Lets just wait a little longer and see what really happens, eh?

Ooooh, look at this

But Vlachos, an associate professor of economics at Stockholm University, is standing his ground. His argument is based on his finding that students who entered gymnasium [sixth form] from free secondary schools on average went on to get lower grades over the next three years than those who had entered with the same grade from municipal secondary schools.

Vlachos suspects that, because schools rather than external examining boards mark students, free schools are more generous than municipal schools in the grades they give. “There’s been tremendous grade inflation in Swedish schools,” he said.

Sweden’s path-breaking educational reforms of the 1990s have come under question since last December when the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development published the 2009 Programme for International Student Assessment.

This showed that Swedish students had dropped to 19th place out of 57 countries for literacy, to 24th in maths, and to 28th in science. This compared with 9th, 17th and 16th in studies done in 2000, 2003 and 2006 respectively.

And Swedes, used to coming near the top of just about every human development index, were appalled.

Jan Björklund, the minister of education, moved to tighten central control over schools and is soon to launch a parliamentary inquiry into competition and free schools.

“Loopholes in the legislation have meant that free schools can elect not to have a library, student counselling and school nurses,” he complained. “And as they get just as much money as the municipal schools, the owners have been able to withdraw the surplus.”

Not exactly a good omen, is it?

Gettin’ down and dirty with Nadine Dorries

May 5th, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink

Some links with regard to Dorries Ten Minute Rule bill wanting manditory abstinence sex education for girls only.

The Ministry of Truth corrects Dorries on who is taught what at what age…

Dorries is playing the tired old tabloid trick of making false claims about the subject matter taught to seven year olds based on the contents of the full PSHE and SRE (sex and relationships education) curriculum, which runs of early years education (3-4 years) right through to the end of secondary education (year 11, 15-16 years), presenting children and young people with age appropriate information at each key stage and year of the curriculum.

Richard Bartholomew points out another one of Dorries’ faults: Statistics…

Dorries’ speech referenced an interview on the sexual revolution which Joan Bakewell gave last year in the Radio Times, but Bakewill did not come up with these statistics and I find it doubtful that she would have cited them.

The statistics are actually a boilerplate talking-point which has been doing the rounds on Christian websites for years, sometimes attributed to a “Florida State University study”. One example of their use is the 1993 book by Bill Hybels and Rob Wilkins, entitled Tender Love: God’s Gift of Sexual Intimacy.

Tim over at Bloggerheads realises that Nadines’ choice for her all-time favourite song is a curious one given her campaign on “let young girls know that to say no to sex when they are under pressure is a cool thing to do”…

If Nadine Dorries actually means it when she claims she wants to teach teens that it’s “cool” to say ‘no’ to sex (i.e. if this isn’t just a further attempt to halve the abortion rate for entirely biblical reasons), she may want to choose a new favourite song…. because Raspberry Beret is a song about a teenage romance that culminates in what is unmistakably a first-time sexual experience.

and finally The Heresiarch has a thoughtful post, that concludes that maybe Dorries is aiming her campaign at the wrong gender…

Being 18 years old and a virgin is considerably more embarrassing to a boy than to a girl, though, who would more likely be able to thrill her partner with the revelation that she had been “saving herself” for him. But would Dorries tell a boy that it was “empowering” or “cool” to say no to sex? Would anyone?

Educating gays

January 28th, 2011 § 1 comment § permalink

Johann Hari

Informing children about these facts can’t make them gay. Nothing can. You can no more teach a child homosexuality than you can teach them left-handedness. Oddly, the homophobes seem to understand this about their own sexuality, but not about other people’s. I once asked Michael Howard, the architect of Section 28, if he would be gay now if he had been taught to be as a child. He moved very anxiously in his seat and mumbled something incoherent.

If you can teach people to be homosexual, as these critics reckons is happening, then you can also teach people to be heterosexual. And if that is the case why is our heterosexually biased education system producing gay people? Hmm?

Walking out on the schools

July 28th, 2010 § 0 comments § permalink

My shiny new MP on the axing of Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme…

Miss Blackwood said she sympathised with the disappointment of the schools which had been promised funding.

But she added: “It was a flawed programme and an enormous amount of money was wasted on bureaucratic processes, rather than the schools they’re supposed to help.

An enormous amount of money may have been wasted on the admin of it, but does that justify the stopping the funding? Have bloody big shake up of bureaucracy, which rightly should be blamed on Labour, and make some savings that way.

“At a time when we have to deal with the horrendous financial legacy of Labour’s Government, we couldn’t justify continuing the programme.”

Couldn’t be arsed thinking how to keep improving schools whilst not spending a shed load on admin, more like.

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