Posted on 03/11/2009 4:56:32 PM PDT by bruinbirdman
The most disruptive children are being plied with "indulgence and sentimentality" instead of firm discipline, it was claimed.
Steve Patriarca blamed Gordon Brown's decision to create a new "Orwellian" Government department with duel responsibility for schools and social services.
It meant education for the most able often came second best to the needs of problem pupils, he said.
The comments will come as a huge embarrassment to the Government.
Mr Patriarca led fee-paying William Hulme's Grammar School in Manchester when it was tempted out of the private sector by Labour in 2007.
In a high-profile move, it axed parental fees and academic selection to become one of the Government's flagship city academies - semi-independent state schools sponsored and run by the private sector. A total of five independent schools have now converted.
Mr Patriarca, who retired last summer, said the school agreed to the move because academies offered the chance of "effective denationalisation" of state schools by taking education out of the hands of "overpaid, ill informed, over comfortable" civil servants.
But talking openly about the move for the first time, he said the school struggled "to retain educational values" in the face of pressure from the Government.
"The Department for Children, Schools and Families lives up to its Orwellian title," he said.
"There are direct tensions between its responsibilities for social work, children and families and its commitment – if that is the word – to education. It seems to me to be a cumbersome hybrid which fulfils none of its roles very well.
"It is politicised in a way which seems to find achievement embarrassing. It is preoccupied with the less able and the social misfit – which would be fine if it actually achieved anything in dealing with such children. It doesn't because it panders to
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Apparently, that government department’s authority doesn’t extend to spelling “dual” correctly...
You have to admit that being responsible for duels would be kinda cool.
It's good training for their future. May as well get used to it when they're young.
2 words:
Home.
School.
And as adults, they will pay excessive taxes to support the social misfits.
Then they had to deal with the government half. Eh, eh.
Scratch one private school.
yitbos
Until they go to a country that doesn’t and we lose their brainpower.
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