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Did Labour Pull Up The Ladder On The Poor When They.....

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ToraToraTora | 11:13 Fri 03rd Apr 2015 | News
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abolished grammar schools? I thought NF made very valid point last night when he discribed how Labour took away the chances for poor kids out of some silly idiology.
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“More people from poor families went to University and got a Degree since State Granmar Schools were Of course they did, Gromit. And it has nothing to do with secondary education. It stems from when polytechnics and technical colleges (which previously existed principally as supplementary education to those already in work) converted...
12:38 Fri 03rd Apr 2015
I never really understood the opposition to Grammar Schools.
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socialist don't like the fact that some people are cleverer than others, they don't like selection, they see it as marking the unselected as "failures".
Margaret Thatcher closed more Grammar schools than Labour.

// ...when Thatcher was Education Secretary the number of children attending comprehensive schools went up from 32 per cent to 62 per cent and she only turned down about 10 per cent of requests from grammar schools to become comprehensive. //

How a child finishes its education is more important than what happens at 11 years old. More people from poor families went to University and got a Degree since State Granmar Schools were abolished.
Yes they did, and Labour has not only pulled the ladder away from the academic. With Ed’s promise of an apprenticeship for anyone who “gets the grades” they are pulling the ladder away from the less academic too. That’ll be a lot of potential skill wasted. They haven't thought it through – but no surprise there.
Gromit, //More people from poor families went to University and got a Degree since State Granmar Schools were abolished. //

A degree in what? With so many dumbed down courses available degrees are ten a penny now.
Have to agree with Naomi there, it's absolutely meaningless today to compare numbers who ends up with a University degree now with the numbers back in the 70s/80s. Certainly not if you you are using it as a statistic to measure educational standards.
Pointless the other day.
Q. what country do these artists come from?
a) Picasso
b) Jackson Pollock
c) Rene Magritte
d) Paul Gauguin
e) Piet Mondrian
f) Paul Klee

Contestant who informed us he had A level-History of Art
'I've only heard of one of them, Picasso-Spain.'
As Richard Osman said, 'I'm not being funny, but how can someone who hasn't heard of 5 of those artists pass an A-level HoA?'
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I have a CSE in art and I've heard of them!
In fact, all quizzes on TV. If a contestant says they're a University student you can guarantee they'll sound like congenital idiots once the questions start.
Except on University Challenge, hopefully...

^talk of the devil. (only joking, jim ;-))
Yes that's a class a way apart Jim
I think it's because we notice the stupidity more of someone who is nominally expected to be knowledgeable, rather than University students are somehow thicker than the rest of us.

Obviously a History of art student not knowing much about artists is very surprising, but perhaps his A-level focused on Greek Art or something. On the other hand I'd expect an A-level to give a general introduction to the subject rather than specialise. Maybe his memory just went?
Actually, in some of the early rounds of UC, mmmmm, best say nothing.
Regardless jim, I'd be surprised if I could find a labourer on site who hadn't heard of, say, 6 of them.
I've not heard of Mondrian, and I didn't know Klee was Swiss (although he was clearly Germanic). But then I don't care about art anyway.
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we have Klee prints at work
If a University Degree and A Levels cannot be compared to your own qualifications, how should we grade educational achievement in 2015?
“More people from poor families went to University and got a Degree since State Granmar Schools were abolished.”

Of course they did, Gromit. And it has nothing to do with secondary education. It stems from when polytechnics and technical colleges (which previously existed principally as supplementary education to those already in work) converted to “universities” and started offering “degree” courses instead on training for ONCs, HNCs and the like. Tony Blair’s ludicrous target to get 50% of young people into “university” exacerbated that trend and so we see today young people accumulating huge debts (which many of them will never repay) to gain a so-called degree in “Catering Management”, “Hospitality Administration” or “Films”.

Prior to that the only people that went to university were those needing a degree to follow a specific career path and the numbers going to uni roughly reflected the number of jobs that required a degree. Now we have young people leaving “university” with a worthless degree, £30k in debt and many of whom finish up frying hamburgers for a living (because, strangely enough, still only about 10% of jobs in the UK actually need to jobholder to be educated to traditional "proper" degree level and this is likely to diminish at the nation's economy becomes increasingly deskilled).

State grammar schools gave those of a higher academic ability the opportunity to make the most of their talents regardless of their background. Many of their pupils did not go on to university because they were already sufficiently well educated to make their way in the world. I went to a superb grammar school where pupils from all walks of life enjoyed a great education but very few of us went on to university. I can still recall reading their names in the school magazine and it was quite a short list. All their abolition has done is to confine such education to the very small number of decent State schools (which, unsurprisingly, are heavily oversubscribed) or privately funded establishments.

The most critical misunderstanding that many socialists suffer from is that you do not make the poor richer by making the rich poorer. And so it is with education – you cannot make those less academically gifted more so by jeopardising the education of the brighter. And that’s what comprehensive education has done.
We are where we are, gromit, re the worth of todays qualifications. But it was foolish of you to hold up the number of uni students today as a sign of comprehensive school's success. And you know it, just admit it, go on, admit it.

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