Government education cuts

[Guest sibon]

I could hire 500 winos at £1 million a day and set them teaching in our schools and if anyone objected I could say "How can anyone think that it's possible to overspend on education?!?!"

 

The many and varied problems with the current UK education system require more than merely firing up the printing presses. Any fool can throw money at a problem, in fact, one did (step forward James Gordon Brown).

 

But, posh academies and ridiculously expensive "Free Schools" are not the way forward either. Take a step backwards, Michael Gove.

 

It is time for a proper debate about what we want education to achieve for our young people and how much we are willing to pay for it.

 

I doubt that the Con-Dems are up for that. In much the same way that they are not up for renewing our appalling school buildings.

[MrMondo]

I could hire 500 winos at £1 million a day and set them teaching in our schools and if anyone objected I could say "How can anyone think that it's possible to overspend on education?!?!"

 

The many and varied problems with the current UK education system require more than merely firing up the printing presses. Any fool can throw money at a problem, in fact, one did (step forward James Gordon Brown).

 

Just spend the money properly in the first place! The more money spent on education the better. Funding for schools should never be cut! Just sopnt wisely!!

[alchresearch]

Just one question really.

 

How can ANY government claim to be over spending on education?!?!

 

Its because the spending isn't being done properly or wisely. The last government was letting any old frustrated architect do a "grand design" school without thinking of the implications. Yes, it looks nice - a vision of beauty in glass - but costs a fortune to cool in summer, a fortune to heat in winter, and a fortune to keep clean. I don't have it to hand, but I have an article about a school who's heating costs shot up from £100K a year to a MILLION. That extra money has to come from somewhere - you won't mind an increase in your poll tax will you?

 

Their IT infrastructure didn't work from day one and had to be ripped out and re-installed.

 

"Open space learning" doesn't work in a school. You get one clever little swine acting up in a normal classroom, and just one class is disrupted. But in an "open space" everyone is disturbed.

 

Open plan areas with first floor walkways? Yeah they look great and are OK in places like Meadowhall. But in a school you get oiks spitting over the side and throwing things at pupils own below.

 

As for the equipment, schools are tied into companies who don't offer value for money. Take RM for instance, their quote for 30 Netbooks was 50% dearer than if I went to PC World and bought them retail off the shelf - and they weren't even the latest models.

 

I've been working with the Tories for some time to get this BSF farce stopped, and I'm glad it has. There is no clear evidence that these new builds enhance teaching and learning in any way. If anything, from my experience they hinder it.

 

Schools will be rebuilt, its just that private firms won't have a free reign over things like they did before. But this doesn't make the news or outrage the public. Its not interesting to the irresponsible media. Parents are just misinformed.

[HotPhil]

Its because the spending isn't being done properly or wisely. The last government was letting any old frustrated architect do a "grand design" school without thinking of the implications. Yes, it looks nice - a vision of beauty in glass - but costs a fortune to cool in summer, a fortune to heat in winter, and a fortune to keep clean. I don't have it to hand, but I have an article about a school who's heating costs shot up from £100K a year to a MILLION. That extra money has to come from somewhere - you won't mind an increase in your poll tax will you?

A lot of the visible waste came from the absurd practices involved in those putting the work out to tender. And some of the new buildings will have been horrifically thermally inefficient - but probably more likely through initial material choices being rejected by the bodies funding the build than through poor architectural decisions.

[Fogey]

Because most governments in this country have probably consist of people that think education is paid for by mummy and daddy at a posh boarding school so there fore why should they have to pay for it again out of their taxes?

[alchresearch]

A lot of the visible waste came from the absurd practices involved in those putting the work out to tender.

 

I was involved with well over half a dozen consultations with one guy. He kept going over the same stuff again and again, I'd love to know how much the local borough council paid him and his team for their "blue sky" thinking. I could literally see the pound signs in his eyes when he talked about how they were going to spend.

 

If BSF wasn't scrapped I could honestly see them buying every single pupil an iPad like they planned, and £30,000 to blanket wireless the site. It just wasn't necessary and we argued this until we were blue in the face.

 

Some schools further down the line in the BSF farce actually kitted every pupil out with a Samsung netbook. But the loss, damage and theft problems associated with managing 1000 netbooks meant they had to take on an extra technician just to deal with it.