Sadly this is true. I do believe that Cameron was hardly one of the brightest buttons on the uniform at his school ... but money talks ... and of course if you have the 'old school tie' to go with the money ... even better.

 

Kath

It's a terrible shame that these inequalities exist, but we aren't going to change much by electing the Conservatives :lol:

 

Wasted votes which would lead to a hung parliament, like now

 

Clearly too young to remember Thatcher... If all the people who claimed they wanted a "change" in British politics from the last 30 years of Nu Labor and Tory bullsh"t, they WOULD have voted Lib Dem and we'd actually have a majority Lib Dem Govt actually reforming the politics of this country instead of the pathetic compromised "coalition" that we have now which doesn't really satisfy anyone....

 

So, cheers for voting for the Tory w'ankers, stand up job Shelli, CONDEM-ing us to at least five more years of the same old sh"t..... -_-

 

As Roger Daltrey once said - "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss"

It's a terrible shame that these inequalities exist, but we aren't going to change much by electing the Conservatives :lol:

 

Hear Hear... The CON-servatives are the party of the rich and priveleged and always will be, this tw@t is merely just saying what most of his fellow Tory scum actually are thinking anyway....

 

There are certainly problems within society, but that sort of commentary from "Himmler" is hardly gonna help matters... And the facts are, ultimately it's his party and their whole "no such thing as society" nonsense in the 80s which started the rot in this country in the first place...... Not that Nu Labor really did much to reverse the trend, but they were frankly just following the same sort of "free marketeer" policies that the Tories did....

It's a shame you can buy a place at a good uni by going to a twatty high school.

 

But you can't really blame the people who can afford these schools - most people would probably take advantage of it if they could, it's just the system itself that's flawed.

 

Perhaps getting rid of league tables would help? I would say abolishing indpendent schools, but I doubt that'd make much of a difference - money and school performance go hand in hand, even in the state system. If two children come into school at the same level at age five, but one is middle class and the other is working class - then, on average, by the age of 7 the middle class child will be a whole level ahead in both maths and english.

 

 

It's a tricky situation and a very difficult cycle to break.

But you can't really blame the people who can afford these schools - most people would probably take advantage of it if they could, it's just the system itself that's flawed.

 

Perhaps getting rid of league tables would help? I would say abolishing indpendent schools, but I doubt that'd make much of a difference - money and school performance go hand in hand, even in the state system. If two children come into school at the same level at age five, but one is middle class and the other is working class - then, on average, by the age of 7 the middle class child will be a whole level ahead in both maths and english.

 

It's a tricky situation and a very difficult cycle to break.

 

There's some merit in that, but who's ultimately to blame...? Scrapping league tables is a good idea, because the illusion of "parental choice" is a nonsense anyway, for over 90% of parents there WILL BE NO CHOICE in where their kids go to school... The English and Welsh education systems would have done well to model themselves on the Scottish education system in a lot of ways, Scotland doesn't seem to have a fraction of the problems as schools in England do... I( certainly never went to a "posh" school, I'm a Comprehensive Kid through and through, and I went to my local school which was 10 mins walk down the road, only thing is, the Tories didn't manage to destroy OUR education system in the same manner as they did the English state education system in the 80s, because ours was separate from the rest of the country, we had our own exams, our own Education Dept, etc...

Hear Hear... The CON-servatives are the party of the rich and priveleged and always will be, this tw@t is merely just saying what most of his fellow Tory scum actually are thinking anyway....

 

But in a way ... we need more Tory buffoons to come out and say what they really think ... like this fella! What's more ... we need his views to be put on the front pages of all newspapers instead of X-Factor fixing and cat-flinging. But of course that won't happen. The Tory press will want to keep their masters' true thoughts out of the eye of Joe Public. Mind you, from what I'm reading lately ... people's fixation with X-F and cat recycling just proves that the majority of Joe Public is a moron anyway.

 

Kath

 

But in a way ... we need more Tory buffoons to come out and say what they really think ... like this fella! What's more ... we need his views to be put on the front pages of all newspapers instead of X-Factor fixing and cat-flinging. But of course that won't happen. The Tory press will want to keep their masters' true thoughts out of the eye of Joe Public. Mind you, from what I'm reading lately ... people's fixation with X-F and cat recycling just proves that the majority of Joe Public is a moron anyway.

 

Kath

 

I'd agree with you on that one Norma... I was watching a very good critique of the Iraq War coverage by Danny Shecter, it's called "Weapons of Mass Deception", highly recommended, he was basically saying, and proving, that the media is controlled by a small amount of vested interests who have no interest in the truth getting out, only in what money they can make.... Of course, he's talking about Iraq war coverage (and absolutely slates Fox News in particular), but his point can easily be extended into more general terms about how the mainstream media focusses on certain news stories and misses out or ignores others....

 

 

But you can't really blame the people who can afford these schools - most people would probably take advantage of it if they could, it's just the system itself that's flawed.

 

Perhaps getting rid of league tables would help? I would say abolishing indpendent schools, but I doubt that'd make much of a difference - money and school performance go hand in hand, even in the state system. If two children come into school at the same level at age five, but one is middle class and the other is working class - then, on average, by the age of 7 the middle class child will be a whole level ahead in both maths and english.

It's a tricky situation and a very difficult cycle to break.

Not my point,

 

I'm saying that just because they could afford a private school doesn't mean they should get a leg up for uni places. There is no way the likes of Edinburgh and St Andrews seed all high schools equally. You go to an english privates school you are top of St Andrews list [Well, behind the Asians they can fleece for tuition of course] then comes Scottish private schools and the better english schools, then comes every one else with the exception of kids who went to Madras College, Wade Academy or Bell Baxter High School. They don't like locals at St Andrews and actively discriminate against them only taking a few on per year.

 

I know of one person in my year who got into St Andrews. She came to our school late [from England iirc] and was living with foster parents. She filled a quota. :(

 

 

There's some merit in that, but who's ultimately to blame...? Scrapping league tables is a good idea, because the illusion of "parental choice" is a nonsense anyway, for over 90% of parents there WILL BE NO CHOICE in where their kids go to school... The English and Welsh education systems would have done well to model themselves on the Scottish education system in a lot of ways, Scotland doesn't seem to have a fraction of the problems as schools in England do... I( certainly never went to a "posh" school, I'm a Comprehensive Kid through and through, and I went to my local school which was 10 mins walk down the road, only thing is, the Tories didn't manage to destroy OUR education system in the same manner as they did the English state education system in the 80s, because ours was separate from the rest of the country, we had our own exams, our own Education Dept, etc...

I agree, we also have a single exam board which helps matters greatly. There are no f*** ups with people sitting under certain exam boards getting results later than others, there's no accusations of the next county having easier exams.

 

I had to walk 30mins to school, but it was a mile away on the other side of town :lol: and has a huge catchment area.

 

You don't hear stories up here of people moving to get a good school or emphasis on league tables, but there's no doubt that good schools have an effect on house prices. See a family home for sale in my town and in the crap about where it's situated the words 'good local schools' will appear :lol:

 

You don't hear stories up here of people moving to get a good school or emphasis on league tables, but there's no doubt that good schools have an effect on house prices. See a family home for sale in my town and in the crap about where it's situated the words 'good local schools' will appear :lol:

 

Hmmm, yeah, and no doubt you'd get estate agents using that as an excuse to bump up the property prices in a catchment area, because of how well a local school might be situated in the League Tables....

 

Hmmm, yeah, and no doubt you'd get estate agents using that as an excuse to bump up the property prices in a catchment area, because of how well a local school might be situated in the League Tables....

It's a bit hard when the catchment area is about 35-40% of the counties total area :lol: