Education is the greatest thing we do. It is the greatest leveller. It is the largest component of our children and our children’s children getting on to have a better life that the one we had.
You can be as fit as a fiddle and lose you health. You can have millions in the bank and lose that in an instant. Yet whatever shit life throws at you, you can never lose your education is one of the old saws we all want to believe and do believe.
So when I read that Knowsley one of the 5 council areas in Merseyside now has no schools offering A level education due to education being taken out of all local authority control and passed to unaccountable businesses called Academies and is done so out directly out of Tory ideology and blind nonsensical fucking mind numbingly stupid ideology and that alone, it really is time to put the Tory Education Secretary to the firing squad in front of her entire family… or is it only acceptable for ranting wing buffoons such as Clarkson to say such things?
There are rumblings right across the media that teachers may strike and may join the junior doctors in that. If there is ever a reason for teachers to strike then surely denying children the right to education is the one issue that will engender the most public support.
The fact this is in Knowsley and close to home is not the issue. I would be in full blown rant mode if this was in Windsor or anywhere else in the UK when we have deliberate government policy of the abandonment of children’s educational life chances because of the market, which is what this is all about.
Profiteers out to make a quick buck have decided in running those excuses for educational establishments known as “Academies” that a whole generation of children living in Knowsley do not merit any chance of educational attainment.
That is a disgrace, an outrage of unbelievable proportion and quite simply fucking stinks.
Why would any child in Knowsley even bother to do well at GCSE level when he or she would have to move out of area to seek better educational attainment.
Why would anyone bother to teach children in Knowsley given those children must be so demoralised and so written off in educational terms the day they enter the nursery let alone primary or secondary school.
Why would any employer operate in Knowsley knowing that the local young workforce are uneducated and so demoralised?
This is what this Education Secretary has done with the forced academisation of all schools – and if you think this will stop at Knowsley then you need to wake the fuck up as it is bound to happen in all local authority areas with below average past educational attainment.
Your children and your children’s children will be similarly written off as education provision is decided by profit and not by right. You don’t think so? Well go look and see that most facile of Labour inventions in league tables and see where your areas schooling compares to Knowsley in terms of rank.
Back In January saw the national media including as below the Telegraph focus on school achievements resulting in the usual simplistic graphics:
You can clearly see Knowsley coming bottom, yet youcan also see the government response “We will tackle those pockets of persistent under-performance so every child fulfils their potential”
This as Knowsley bears out translates into what is the point of providing post 16 education when it is easier to write off all children in that area and there are easier profits to be made in other areas for the businessmen and women running Academies! That is the Conservatives education policy in action.
It is time to rename the misnamed Department for Education as the Department Of Profitable Education or DOPE
SPeye Joe (Welfarewrites) 
Exactly the same problem in Erewash/Ilkeston.
http://schoolsweek.co.uk/another-sixth-form-bites-the-dust/
And in the report, its also lists another school dumping the sixth form, A level, provision.
Its a total farce, and I can see A level provision around the country being dumped except for a few schools or large providers in areas where the right kind of people live… so that only the right people, at the right schools, can have a chance at Uni, not the oiks!
Obviously this will do wonders with the provision, and numbers, of “apprenticeships” where a qualification in working in a supermarket, shop, kitchen (porter, not chef – obviously), etc; will be the only option left for the poor kids who are now forced to be in a job, training, or education…
Obviously it has nothing to do with said supermarkets being able to pay significantly less for an apprentice than minimum wage and thereby learning that all they have to look forward to in life is a string of low paid jobs and a micky mouse “qualification” in shelf stacking or a masters in floor sweeping. Then when they are older, they can pay through the nose to try and get a real qualification and maybe a real degree and 60,000+ worth of educational loans, proffered by the new privatised loans company owned by a tory minsters bezzy mate, relative, or both by marriage!
Its all going spiffingly to plan!
I should add, we do still have FE provision via the derby college having an Ilkeston campus – which I have just found out about. My main issue, and hence anger, was the way the closure happened… no warning, no consultation, little information, and after children had already started the two year courses; the decision made from on high by the chair of the MAT – so much for local accountability.
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