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April 12, 2005
Choice
So what is this 'choice' thing that Howard (CON Folkestone & Hythe) witters on about?
Well, an example. It surprises many outside UK just how little input parents get on where their children are educated. Everyone has read about the British (so called) Public Schools, and many have heard how even members of ZNL send their children to specific schools because they will get an education more to their parents liking that way. (Think blaster Blair and Diane Abbott). People just assume this is the privileged tip of a system of privately and publicly funded schools, and that depending on your means you can mix and match as you please.
Not so.
In UK you send your children to a school within whose catchment area you reside. Period. No choice. If you come from a sink estate in Liverpool your children will go to the school serving that estate and will mix with others like them. If you come from and asian area of Bradford your children will go to school with other asians.
You don't believe me? Well look at the news today. Margaret Gillespie, a deputy head teacher with 27 years of unblemished service applied to have her child go to Lady Margaret school. Hers was a common choice. Last year 660 applications were received for 90 available places. What distinguished Margaret Gillespie's application was that she lied about her address. If she had got away with it she would have had a good chance of getting her child to the school she wished; in fact it was her only way of making a choice. If there was any realistic way of parents choosing the school their children attend do you really suppose that a deputy head, with 27 years unblemished experiency would have chosen to lie? But, according to the Telegraph, she did. One hopes this is not a CON trick slipped in by Howard...
The problem is that choice promotes competition. If you had to buy a Rover then they wouldn't have been driven out of business by Toyota. And competition produces losers. And losers are a bad thing. The fact that Abbott, Blair, Boateng, and in the good old days Gaitskell, Douglas Jay and Anthony Greenwood choose, or have chosen, to bypass the system says it all. And let's not forget that the likes of Blair, Charles Clarke, (the former education secretary no less!) Ruth Kelly, (the current education secretary no less!) and even Blunkett (from the people's republic of South Yorkshire no less) have benefited themselves from choosing a school.
If you want to become nerdishly expert on the last election (e.g. Largest labour majority by percentage Joe Benton Bootle 69.0% Smallest majority Patsy Calton (Lib) Cheadle 33), then get this pamphlet. Kindly put together by HMG at your expense. Some spotty nerd could have got a PhD from Bootle tech by doing this, but HMG denied him the choice.
Here's a picture of the great Joe Benton and the equally great Patsy Carlton so you'll know them should you run into them on the street. (If for some strange reason you want a 16Megabyte high resolution image of young Patsy the liberal democrats have kindly given you a link here.)
POLITICALBETTING “BALANCE OF MONEY” prediction: Labour majority 60
Posted by Flo Ting Voe Tah at April 12, 2005 11:28 AM