Private versus public has been the usual debate.
Right to choose a school versus available spaces at popular schools.
Academy schools, grammar schools, religeous educational establishments. Opting in and opting out, not to mention home schooling. O'levels, CSE's, GCSE's, A levels and AS.
A veritable quarry, a mine of material to argue over at home, in the school, in government and in the work place.
Whats best for my children may not be best for yours, indeed whats productive for one of my children is likely to be disastrous for their sibling.
I guess we try to establish an educational system that performs and produces the best results for the majority of children.
What do we do for the minority?
Those children who do not fit in, do not behave, cannot perform the tasks given, or attain targets set.
What do we do for them?
I've listened to both Gordan Brown and David Cameron recently talking about education. Both have said that disruptive behaviour in school cannot be tolerated and indeed the 'new tories' have already given greater powers to head teachers to remove children from school, to exclude them.
Lets look at that word 'exclude' It's synonyms include bar, eject, chuck out, expel, leave out, shut out, throw out, omit.
Isn't it rubbish, unwanted things we throw out, eject, expel, chuck out?
Isn't it things or people who don't come up to our values that we bar, leave out, omit?
What sort of message are we sending to these children? Is it I wonder, the one we mean to send?
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I think the thing that really annoys is that the process of exclusion examines only the child's behaviour.
Yet these are "children" after all, and our failure to engage them, motivate them, excite them with intrest in education are never issues.
Their lives are constructed around their failure, when it's often educations inability to let them succeed that lies at the root of the problem.
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