Let us hear it for Essex. The county has not always had the best of public images, but put aside the clichés about drunk ladies in white stilettos. Essex has asserted itself as a
place where truth survives – where the government spin machine has not wholly subdued the desire to say what is sensible and honest. It emerged this week that Essex County Council is to pay a little over £10,000 to six families in which the children are being home educated. The parents in question had refused to send their four boys and two girls to failing secondary Bishops Park College in Clacton-on-Sea and had, instead, hired home tutors. Why had the parents declined to send their children to the local school? Because its results were awful. Any parent who really cared that his or her child should be educated well would quite reasonably try all possible means to avoid the sentence of going to a school where a mere eight per cent of the 16-year-olds achieved five or more good GCSEs. The national average of 48 per cent is bad enough. Rumblings from the National Union of Teachers, gathered for their annual conference season, worry parents still further. They have complaints about the dumbing down of the curriculum, the horrors of literacy hour in primary schools and the scarcity of places in sixth forms and colleges, and we agree with them all. Their proposed boycott of Sats tests for 11-year-olds and call for an end to the pernicious league tables also gets our vote.
For further details :www.telegraph.co.uk/education/5136420/Home-schooling---a-vision-of-the-future.html
place where truth survives – where the government spin machine has not wholly subdued the desire to say what is sensible and honest. It emerged this week that Essex County Council is to pay a little over £10,000 to six families in which the children are being home educated. The parents in question had refused to send their four boys and two girls to failing secondary Bishops Park College in Clacton-on-Sea and had, instead, hired home tutors. Why had the parents declined to send their children to the local school? Because its results were awful. Any parent who really cared that his or her child should be educated well would quite reasonably try all possible means to avoid the sentence of going to a school where a mere eight per cent of the 16-year-olds achieved five or more good GCSEs. The national average of 48 per cent is bad enough. Rumblings from the National Union of Teachers, gathered for their annual conference season, worry parents still further. They have complaints about the dumbing down of the curriculum, the horrors of literacy hour in primary schools and the scarcity of places in sixth forms and colleges, and we agree with them all. Their proposed boycott of Sats tests for 11-year-olds and call for an end to the pernicious league tables also gets our vote.For further details :www.telegraph.co.uk/education/5136420/Home-schooling---a-vision-of-the-future.html
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