Is the Grade-Centric, Cash Pumping Education System Causing A Rift Within Comprehensive Schools?

The Heads of some comprehensive schools fear the exam hall nearly as much the students

Do the most intelligent always go to the good schools? Do the less intelligent deserve to? Was the old grammar/secondary modern configuration a cruel division of intelligence, which was judged at a far too early age, or a modernist way of sorting future employment structures?

As grades become more and more important to the movers and shakers of the education industry, the classic tale of a “rift” between state and private provision seem to have been extended to reflect a brand new gaping hole from within the comprehensive sector itself.

The terminology for the standards of schools comes and goes. Current terms from Ofsted, range from, ‘Outstanding’ to the slightly less impressive, ‘Adequate’. I am astonished when a government paid organisation appears to feel it acceptable to sum up entire schools with just one adjective, and then in most cases, have the teachers paste this word at the gates of their school, in order to show the world what a brilliant, long and complicated word it is!

This quite frankly wishy-washy way of labelling schools is leading to confusion in parent’s mind over which schools are suitable for their child, some schools are being put in the dog house, and others are appearing to excel.

Currently, schools are largely judged on academic achievement, when schools fail inspections, the facilities, curriculum and staff are all taken into account before the ability of students are even considered.

This leads nicely on to my main argument, are the barriers of achievement between state and private school as concrete as they seem?
The idea that private schools never fail, surprisingly, is an incorrect one. Those who are slightly less well informed may also be led to believe that the majority of state schools fail; this is certainly not the case. Very recently a number of failing, financially restrained private schools were given the dreaded, ‘Academy’ label by the government. Many state schools, infact, perform better than most private ones, but many more, of course, do a lot worse.

Only 46% of pupils received at least 5 GCSEs last year. For there to be a majority of pupils failing to reach the minimum standard, something clearly is going wrong where many state and most private schools go right

But what is going wrong? The education system is supposedly of maximum importance to Government (does anyone remember, “Education, Education, Education?”). Politicians are seen almost every week visiting a school or brand spanking new academy, which is shown to fail and be shut down two weeks later.

The existence of the Academies may not be the problem, but the way they are treated by the government certainly is. The government seems to think that throwing money at a problem will fix it. They need to realise that there is no correlation between the costs and achievements of schools. The errors and successes are to be found the work ethic of the students; many state schools can attach themselves to private schools in that respect and those that can’t populate the second group of, ‘failing’ schools.

The natural transition of schools across the whole board into two, quite evenly sized groups reminds me quite a lot of the secondary modern and grammar school configuration of the past. The immoral and discriminatory partition of education is back, but this time, there are no labels, apart from, ‘Outstanding’ of course!