PJC Journal – Original » 2008 » May

May

24

PR and targets govern Education factories

IanPJ Libertarian Party, Main Page Add you comment

Thought it was worth reproducing in full (below) a story ('Exam system is fatally flawed')
from the Bristol Evening Post, 24 May 2008. Head teacher Peter Fraser
makes makes some great points that I agree strongly with, having previously
opposed what I call 'education factories'.

There is far too much
emphasis on testing and targets and not enough emphasis of the
development of thinking, creativity and character in the education
system, largely due to the stranglehold of central government who have
imposed a system that has been narrow and inflexible.

I want an educational system that allows
people to develop as individuals, with a completely free choice of where and how
children are educated, unshackled from Government
control.

A Bristol head teacher has pointed out a “fatal flaw” with exams that dominate the lives of young people.

Peter
Fraser, of Colston's School in Stapleton, said continuing to train
children to “jump through the hoops” to meet exam targets risked
creating a generation who could not think for themselves.

“Children in England remain the most tested in the world,” he said at the school's annual prize-giving day.

“They are out of lessons for at least 46 weeks of their secondary schooling to sit exams.

“The
annual cost of exams is in excess of £200 million, a 50 per cent rise
since Labour came to power in 1997, and educational progress is defined
and directed by a target-driven culture.

“In simple terms,
better test results equate to a better education, and central
Government looks to exam outcomes rather than pupil experience as their
measure.

“If pupils do better in tests, then they must be better educated and standards must therefore be higher.

“But
there is, I believe, a fatal flaw. Every test becomes another hoop, and
we can dutifully train young people to jump through without questioning
whether the process has any lasting or meaningful educational benefit.

“Eventually
we will prevent pupils from thinking critically, evaluating, analysing
or even questioning what is presented to them.

“They will, of course, be very good at jumping through hoops.”

He
said pupils faced ongoing and increasing tests of their honesty,
reliability, sincerity, generosity, tolerance, humility, resilience,
determination and compassion.

He said: “Should they fail these, they fail as a person regardless of their paper qualifications.”

He wants young people to:

do
new things, not simply repeat what others have done;
be
creative and imaginative;
be
critical of, not simply accepting, everything they are offered;
seek
to be the best they can be;
take
pride in what they are as people;
be
defined by their personal qualities, values and conviction;
go
into the world and make a difference.

He said: “I am concerned that they should experience an education, rather than be processed by testing.”

As I said above, I want an educational system that allows
people to develop as individuals, with a completely free choice of where and how
children are educated, unshackled from Government
control.

Only the Libertarian Party education policy gives parents the choice of how and where their children will be educated.

There IS another way!

Your Life, Your Country, Your Choice.

PR and targets govern Education factories

IanPJ Libertarian Party, Main Page Add you comment

Thought it was worth reproducing in full (below) a story ('Exam system is fatally flawed')
from the Bristol Evening Post, 24 May 2008. Head teacher Peter Fraser
makes makes some great points that I agree strongly with, having previously
opposed what I call 'education factories'.

There is far too much
emphasis on testing and targets and not enough emphasis of the
development of thinking, creativity and character in the education
system, largely due to the stranglehold of central government who have
imposed a system that has been narrow and inflexible.

I want an educational system that allows
people to develop as individuals, with a completely free choice of where and how
children are educated, unshackled from Government
control.

A Bristol head teacher has pointed out a “fatal flaw” with exams that dominate the lives of young people.

Peter
Fraser, of Colston's School in Stapleton, said continuing to train
children to “jump through the hoops” to meet exam targets risked
creating a generation who could not think for themselves.

“Children in England remain the most tested in the world,” he said at the school's annual prize-giving day.

“They are out of lessons for at least 46 weeks of their secondary schooling to sit exams.

“The
annual cost of exams is in excess of £200 million, a 50 per cent rise
since Labour came to power in 1997, and educational progress is defined
and directed by a target-driven culture.

“In simple terms,
better test results equate to a better education, and central
Government looks to exam outcomes rather than pupil experience as their
measure.

“If pupils do better in tests, then they must be better educated and standards must therefore be higher.

“But
there is, I believe, a fatal flaw. Every test becomes another hoop, and
we can dutifully train young people to jump through without questioning
whether the process has any lasting or meaningful educational benefit.

“Eventually
we will prevent pupils from thinking critically, evaluating, analysing
or even questioning what is presented to them.

“They will, of course, be very good at jumping through hoops.”

He
said pupils faced ongoing and increasing tests of their honesty,
reliability, sincerity, generosity, tolerance, humility, resilience,
determination and compassion.

He said: “Should they fail these, they fail as a person regardless of their paper qualifications.”

He wants young people to:

do
new things, not simply repeat what others have done;
be
creative and imaginative;
be
critical of, not simply accepting, everything they are offered;
seek
to be the best they can be;
take
pride in what they are as people;
be
defined by their personal qualities, values and conviction;
go
into the world and make a difference.

He said: “I am concerned that they should experience an education, rather than be processed by testing.”

As I said above, I want an educational system that allows
people to develop as individuals, with a completely free choice of where and how
children are educated, unshackled from Government
control.

Only the Libertarian Party education policy gives parents the choice of how and where their children will be educated.

There IS another way!

Your Life, Your Country, Your Choice.

PR and targets govern Education factories

IanPJ Libertarian Party, Main Page Add you comment

Thought it was worth reproducing in full (below) a story ('Exam system is fatally flawed')
from the Bristol Evening Post, 24 May 2008. Head teacher Peter Fraser
makes makes some great points that I agree strongly with, having previously
opposed what I call 'education factories'.

There is far too much
emphasis on testing and targets and not enough emphasis of the
development of thinking, creativity and character in the education
system, largely due to the stranglehold of central government who have
imposed a system that has been narrow and inflexible.

I want an educational system that allows
people to develop as individuals, with a completely free choice of where and how
children are educated, unshackled from Government
control.

A Bristol head teacher has pointed out a “fatal flaw” with exams that dominate the lives of young people.

Peter
Fraser, of Colston's School in Stapleton, said continuing to train
children to “jump through the hoops” to meet exam targets risked
creating a generation who could not think for themselves.

“Children in England remain the most tested in the world,” he said at the school's annual prize-giving day.

“They are out of lessons for at least 46 weeks of their secondary schooling to sit exams.

“The
annual cost of exams is in excess of £200 million, a 50 per cent rise
since Labour came to power in 1997, and educational progress is defined
and directed by a target-driven culture.

“In simple terms,
better test results equate to a better education, and central
Government looks to exam outcomes rather than pupil experience as their
measure.

“If pupils do better in tests, then they must be better educated and standards must therefore be higher.

“But
there is, I believe, a fatal flaw. Every test becomes another hoop, and
we can dutifully train young people to jump through without questioning
whether the process has any lasting or meaningful educational benefit.

“Eventually
we will prevent pupils from thinking critically, evaluating, analysing
or even questioning what is presented to them.

“They will, of course, be very good at jumping through hoops.”

He
said pupils faced ongoing and increasing tests of their honesty,
reliability, sincerity, generosity, tolerance, humility, resilience,
determination and compassion.

He said: “Should they fail these, they fail as a person regardless of their paper qualifications.”

He wants young people to:

do
new things, not simply repeat what others have done;
be
creative and imaginative;
be
critical of, not simply accepting, everything they are offered;
seek
to be the best they can be;
take
pride in what they are as people;
be
defined by their personal qualities, values and conviction;
go
into the world and make a difference.

He said: “I am concerned that they should experience an education, rather than be processed by testing.”

As I said above, I want an educational system that allows
people to develop as individuals, with a completely free choice of where and how
children are educated, unshackled from Government
control.

Only the Libertarian Party education policy gives parents the choice of how and where their children will be educated.

There IS another way!

Your Life, Your Country, Your Choice.

PR and modern UK policing

IanPJ Main Page 1 comment

Modern policing has just become an illusionary PR stunt based upon the political creation of over 3000 new criminal offences in the past 10 years. Police are continually under Home Office pressure to reduce the amount of 'crime' in their areas and to create stats to prove it.

By making non events as the dropping of an apple core in a public place a 'criminal' offence, the police can now score easy points by reporting that apple core dropping has been massively reduced in their area, whilst the real crime of burglary mugging and theft goes on unabated.. That is the modern way of showing crime reduction, and is clearly a political phenomenon.

In order to make us believe that 'crime' is constantly being reduced and our Police Officers are being overworked, the politically 'on message' Police forces in the UK, under direct instruction from the Home Office and the ACPO have embarked upon a policy of PR instead of policing.

This article from Heather Brooke (who recently had the success of getting MP's to divulge their expenses) shows just how much of your tax, your money, is being spent by Police forces around the country on trickery, make believe policing and their policy of smoke and mirrors.

A three-month project by James Ball
and I using the Freedom of Information Act to examine police spending
on public relations, press offices and marketing concluded with two
pieces in today’s Times:

Long arm of police spin-doctors costs almost £40m a year

Tough on crime – or on the image of crime?

We found that police forces across the UK are spending £39m each
year on press and PR – enough to fund an extra 1,400 full time officers
and more than enough to cover the annual police pay rise withheld by
the Government. The force at the top of the league (Police Service
Northern Ireland) spends eight times more per person on PR than the
lowest (Derbyshire). Meanwhile, forces spend nearly ten times more on
PR (what police want us to know) than on FOI (what we want to know).

Also while resources are pumped into PR, we found a distinct lack of
interest in responding to our FOI requests. Only 19 of 53 forces
responded to our requests on time. All the rest broke the law. They had
a variety of explanations though some offered none at all. Police
Service Northern Ireland had the most novel excuse – their FOI officer
was on an advanced driver training course. It had no affect in speeding
up their tardy reply which came more than a month late. If any of us
were to break the law I doubt such excuses would carry much weight.
Even those committing non-crimes such as parking get no leeway.

When we called the press offices for comment, however, it was
remarkable how quickly forces found the time to re-examine their
figures to decrease the amounts, often claiming the initial figures
they’d given us were incorrect.

There is lot more detail than we could get in the newspaper so check
out the summary or the full database for the full story on how your
police force responded.

Summary of press and PR spend in the 52 police forces questioned

Full Database (Excel).
Here you’ll find a sheet with the main findings, a summary sheet and
finally the full detail of all our requests to 52 police forces.

Police PR Press Release

Link to Secret Squirrel page

Ms Brooke said:
The police are paid to enforce crime not manage the public’s perception
of crime. If police are serious about keeping residents informed they
should put more money into freedom of information which deals with
answering questions people actually want to know.
Also all crime incidents should be published, broken down by either
street level or first section of postcode. Then we would all know
precisely how safe or endangered we are. This information is already
available to certain privileged people. That’s not right. Everyone
should have access.

There is no doubt that Policing is now a political event, rather than a Civic task undertaken by Civil Servants.

If you want the cynical view of the front line police that have to enforce this garbage, then I can suggest no better reading than Inpector Gadget, or PC Bloggs. (do read their other contributions, you too will realise that these Police Officers really do want to do proper policing, real policing instead of this politically correct non-job stuff).

It is also worth noting that the cost of all this smoke and mirrors PR is more than the cost of giving police their full pay rise (£30m). Such a waste of your tax money.

The sooner we get around to changing the way in which policing in the UK is done, by electing local police chiefs, who will police their areas the way the local people want to be policed, returning to the historic nine principles of policing and to break the political links, the better.

Only the Libertarian Party have promised to change policing in this way.

ID Cards – Government give away to corporist interests

IanPJ Main Page Add you comment

NO2ID has published the following press release.

The have described the Government's plans to farm this out to commercial ventures “the set-up for a carve-up”

The
Identity and Passport Service (IPS) today announced that all five of
the suppliers still left in the procurement race are to form a
“Strategic Supplier Group” to deliver the UK's National Identity Scheme
[1]. Three shortlisted suppliers – Accenture, BAE Systems and Steria –
had already pulled out, citing political and commercial reasons [2].

Privacy
and civil liberties campaigners NO2ID [2] called the move “the set-up
for a carve-up” and demanded the immediate publication of all documents
the government has kept secret, using the excuse that it needed to do
so to get “best value” from the market.

Phil Booth, NO2ID's National Coordinator, said:
“Far
from the competitive process promised to Parliament, this is the set-up
for a carve-up. The IPS is clearly just making it up as it goes along.

“Not
enough bidders for a proper competitive process? – why bother? No clear
specification, and independent experts saying the fundamentals aren't
in place? – who cares? Can't even quantify the benefits? – spend
billions anyway!

“Now that the jobs have been parcelled out, to
a cosy consortium, perhaps all the financial and technical reviews of
the ID scheme could be published so that the taxpayer can see just what
sort of pig in a poke he has bought.”

So there you can see in plain language what this Government is going to do with your identities. Sell it to the highest bidders. Have corporate bodies running your life as government refuses to take responsibility for its own errors, but all backed up by legislation to force you into a corporist world..

Say NO to ID Cards, Say NO to the Database State.

Only the Libertarian Party will guarantee scrapping ID Cards AND the NIR, and dismantle this database state.

Notes for editors:
1) “ID cards: all five remaining suppliers through to next round”, VNU Net, 23/5/08 -
http://www.vnunet.com/computing/news/2217420/id-cards-five-remaining

2)
Government insiders suggest the real reason why Accenture pulled out
was because IPS “still haven’t decided what it is they really want”.
See Ideal Government, 22/1/08 -
http://www.idealgovernment.com/index.php/blog/never_too_late_to_get_to_the_r ight_starting_point/

3) NO2ID is the UK-wide non-partisan campaign against ID cards and the database state, and is affiliated to by the NUJ. See
http://www.no2id.net/dbstate.php
for a list of 'database state' initiatives that NO2ID is actively opposing.

For further information, or for immediate or future interview, please contact
Phil Booth (National Co-ordinator, national.coordinator@no2id.net)on 07974 230 839
Guy Herbert (General Secretary, general.secretary@no2id.net) on 07956 544 308, or
Michael Parker (Press Officer, press.officer@no2id.net) on 07773 376 166.