Can faith schools add to community cohesion?
Right to divide? Can faith schools add to community cohesion? A new report from the Runnymede Trust will be launched at a 9am press conference on Thursday 4th December.
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The great public library scandal
A couple of months ago I was doing some research into various sources of book data, and one of the things I was interested in was seeing if it was possible to hook into local library data. For example, if I was building a site that contained lots of book info, it’s easy to point to a place to buy that book online, and there are increasing ways to find things if they’re in your local bookshop (e.g. localbookshops.co.uk and LT Local). But what about seeing if it’s in your local library?
If I want to check my local library, I can use their website, but it’s not a great service, and I have to find my local library on a host of different local government sites, which use different protocols. Surely there’s a central database of this stuff? So I called up the library, and was passed around a bit, and was finally told about OCLC, the organisation that holds all catalogue records for UK libraries.
I’d come across the OCLC before in the form of WorldCat – a huge database of library holdings that, yes, does allow you to search for titles in your local library. However, its terms are quite restrictive, there’s no open API, and I didn’t use it much, preferring more free and more open services.
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The roles of Sharon Shoesmith and George Meehan
On Saturday went I on Ken Livingstone’s LBC show.
Most of the time was spent on Baby P, not surprisingly. Just to break for a brief moment from Baby P – Ken said at the end that I could spend the last minute ranting about whatever I wanted. So I did. I made an appeal to Gordon Brown to re-open the sub-post offices in London that he has closed. Having decided to stop any further closures it seems to me that those of us who were unfortunate enough to have had the axe already fall should have the closures reversed.
Back to Baby P – Saturday was the day Sharon Shoesmith received some support in the form of a letter to the media from 61 head teachers in Haringey. Sharon is Director of Education here in Haringey. As Ken put it on air – she’s their boss.
But this isn’t about her competence or otherwise in education – it’s about her responsibility and accountability for the social services side of her brief – which includes having – under the Children’s Act of 2004 – the responsibility for child protection in Haringey. Under this legal framework her and the political leadership side of the equation have the ultimate responsibility.
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Is the ‘Community Empowerment’ plan any good?
Liberal Conspiracy is publishing a series of discussions about the government’s Community Empowerment White Paper. Hazel Blears said blogs are not constructive enough; this is the first such project where readers have volunteered to review different parts of the paper. Consultation on this paper is due to end soon.
I’ve been asked to kick off with an overview of the principles which inform the strategy. Other authors are covering the points related to particular chapters and local authorities.
The aim of the white paper is “to pass power into the hands of local communities so as to generate vibrant local democracy in every part of the country and give real control over local decisions and services to a wider pool of active citizens.”
Unlike some government white papers, there is no ‘one big idea’ in the white paper, for better and for worse. Instead there are lots of smaller ideas, which are grouped under the headings of being an active citizen, accessing information, influencing local decision-making, holding decision-makers to account, getting redress when things go wrong, standing for office and community ownership and management of local services.
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The class politics of free school meals
A political opponent of the Scottish Socialist Party once quipped: ‘Elect six Trotskyites to the Scottish parliament, and the most radical thing they can come up with is a demand for free school meals’.
That criticism was coming from the right, as it happens. But it’s exactly the sort of sneering remark one can readily imagine on the lips of that certain breed of public school-educated far leftist who has succeeded in memorising the Transitional Programme word for word. Free school meals? Call yourselves revolutionaries?
Actually, when the SSP first started campaigning on the question in 2001, I thought it was quite a politically savvy thing to do. The is just the sort of concrete policy that many working class people will instantly see as making a difference to their lives. continue reading… »
Lefties should accept the failure of the state
Here are four related items:
1. Universities minister John Denham wants universities to do more to recruit talented students from poorer backgrounds. Which only raises the question: why aren’t state schools doing more to bring out the talents of the poor?
2. The TUC wants an old-fashioned fiscal stimulus to forestall recession, even though any announced policy – in the Pre-Budget report – could well come after the recession has already started.
3. Centre Left says:
The left must also engage in a sustained defence of the state. Illustrating how an active and engaged state can provide for a fairer Britain, can intervene to remove inequality.
Which raises the question: if the state can provide for a fairer Britain, why hasn’t it already done so?
4. Bryan Gould wants politicians to have more control over interest rates, even though this was tried for 25 years – between the collapse of Bretton Woods and 1997 – with poor results.
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Are schools ‘institutionally racist’?
New research by Warwick University’s Professor Steve Strand has found that British children of Caribbean heritage are discriminated against when entered for SATS tests at Key Stage 3 (Year 9 and aged 14).
Government data shows that children from a number of ethnic minority groups, including Pakistani, Bangladeshi and black African Britons, were doing far worse in these tests than white Britons. But while social factors such as economic background, attitudes to and attendance at school and mothers’ educational attainment appeared to explain this in relation to the other groups, it did not seem to with regard to the Caribbeans.
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The DUP and the IRA
As much as I despise Sinn Fein for their pretensions to the mantle of progressives in Northern Ireland, they are barely a patch on the hypocrisy of the DUP. When historians return to the period of devolved government at some point in the future, I hope many of them will notice the flagrant obstructionism of the DUP to (it must be conceded) an essentially pointless endeavour – a functioning devolved government.
At every possible turn, the DUP complained that the structures of devolved government could not go forward until one objective after another was met. Disarmament of the IRA, ‘complete’ disarmament of the IRA, disbandment of the IRA, disbandment of all IRA ’structures.’ Now, finally things have been whittled down to the disbandment of the IRA Army Council as a body, despite its lapse into disuse.
Cambridge: still not getting it
So it appears that my alma mater is cooking up creative ways of appealing to the kids. As part of their eternal quest to encourage more state schoolers to apply to Cambridge, the powers that be have decided they need to revamp its somewhat staid, musty image and have contacted the makers of Eastenders, Top Gear and Dr Who to suggest ways in which the university can be featured.
The possibilities for further promotion are endless: they could ask the papparazi to snap Lily Cole enjoying a night in Kings’ Bar, ask a few dons to take up residence in the Big Brother house, or start a viral internet campaign featuring Borat (especially since his last visit went down so well). They could do all of this, and they might even be successful in driving up state school applications, but the onus is still on Cambridge to offer them places.
I’ve said before that this thing runs in a vicious cycle; when the number of state school students admitted is low and getting even lower, there’s not much encouragement for bright kids who have the grades but don’t think Cambridge is for ‘people like us’, thus depressing the number of applications further and giving admissions chiefs an even more shallow pool of talent to pick from.
The unfortunate truth is that short of shutting down private schools altogether (a proposal which would probably cause mass middle class migration, if anyone took it seriously), there aren’t any easy or quick solutions to getting more state school & underprivileged students into Oxbridge, particularly, as Heather McRobie notes, when the interview system already gives private school kids an advantage over their less privileged peers. But by ramping up their attempts to attract new applicants without being seen to have addressed why so few of them are being accepted in the first place, Cambridge’s access department does seem to be putting the cart before the horse somewhat.
We should face up to faith schools
There are several phases in most campaigns for equality and social justice. First denial that there is any real problem, then attempts to ameliorate it, then an admission that something substantial needs to change, and finally (hopefully) some substantive action.
That is the reason for the launch today of Accord, a new coalition making the case make the case that every state school in Britain should be open to all, irrespective of differences in belief and background; that schools should be places where those whose paths might not otherwise cross learn how to listen to one another, learn together, value one another and build a common future together.
Accord is in some respects an unlikely coalition. In addition to a teaching union, a religious think-tank and a humanist organisation, its backers include secularists and Hindus, Christians and Jews, people of various faith backgrounds and none.
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What is the Tory health plan exactly?
How wonderful it is to see the Conservatives acknowledging that obesity might be a problem in our modern society.
Having recently checked my Body Mass Index, suitably adjusted for a non-smoker, I find that I am something like 0.4 of a point overweight, so I was particularly interested to see what Andrew Lansley might propose to help get our nation of lard-arses on the move again.
Once more it turns out that the Conservative Party is all about big talk but limp wristed action; so with pornography, now also with the health of the nation. The grand plan is to ask the food industry if they would be good chaps and reduce the size of the portions they dish out, presumably meaning in ready-meals, frozen meals and desserts. I imagine that the food industry will have no problem with that as they’ll keep the sticker price the same, padding their profit margins.
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Osborne’s failed attempt to woo lefties
There are two ways to look at George Osborne and the Tories’ latest kite-flying exercise, this time on social justice, equality and fairness.
You can accept it takes a great degree of courage that it’s the Tories recognising their past mistakes and moving onto the New Labour agenda; or you can just be staggered by the chutzpah from a group of politicians that don’t seem to have any limits to how far they will go to prove that they really, honestly, truly care about subjects which they previously had very little time for.
On the basis of Osborne’s article, it’s difficult not to come to the second conclusion.
It’s with a piece with most of the recent articles by the Conservatives that have appeared in the Guardian – big on rhetoric, minuscule on actual policy. The one thing that Osborne’s has going for it is that unlike Oliver Letwin, who managed to write over 600 words without naming one specific policy, he actually suggests what the Tories would actually do were they to win power. The problem is that we’ve heard it all before multiple times, and indeed, some of it is what Yvette Cooper covered in her piece on Monday.
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We need a different system of schooling
A few weeks ago, an article in the FT criticised the current proposals for the so-called choice agenda in public services.
Interestingly it doesn’t seem to be a criticism from the left (i.e. that there should be no market in public services) but from a more libertarian perspective – that the choice isn’t a real one.
Those on the traditional free-market right would have “choice” in public services no matter what happens to equity. The argument goes something along the lines that choice would drive up standards everywhere benefiting all. Those of the traditional social democratic/socialist persuasion think equity is too great a thing to be sacrificed in the name of choice.
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Have the Tories misunderstood ‘equality’?
To those of us whose political views were formed in the 1970s and 80s, Michael Gove’s speech yesterday looked disconcerting.
He said:
Our social policy is…explicitly redistributive…we’re concerned about growing inequality…
When we talk of a broken society today one of the fractures we are concerned about is the growing breach between richer and poorer.
What world are we in, where a Tory can claim to care about equality? Is Gove sincere here – in which case he is flatly repudiating Thatcherism, or is this just another exercise in “decontaminating the brand” of Toryism?
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Dads have been left out in the cold
It’s all sorts of dads we should be thinking about – not just black ones!
I refer to both Barack Obama and David Cameron’s recently zooming in on the world of fatherless black children.
Now yes – there is a disproportionately high number of black families being brought up essentially by the mother – but it’s also an issue in white communities.
I’ve been a single mother myself since my children were 7 and 12. And two things that used to annoy the whatsit out of me when they were at school were firstly that each year parents got a class list (with contact details of all the class parents) and despite informing the school many, many times that we were separated – it was always (only) my address and number on the list – the school itself was acting as if to exclude separated fathers.
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New Labour’s path to power is shattered
The Glasgow East byelection result is another nail in the coffin of New Labour. Across the country, the electorate are crying out for change, they want a government that can help improve their lives.
But a politics that is rooted in the 1990s has simply run out of answers. In response, the government once again claim they are listening, but things still seem unlikely to change; despite political wipe-out now staring Labour in the face.
If Labour politicians refuse to protect people from the economic forces that are harming their lives it’s no wonder people are turning to other political parties.
This awful defeat vindicates what Compass has been saying for three years – that the coalition that brought Labour to power in 1997 has been shattered. Between 1997 and 2005, the party lost 4 million voters – and this time we saw a further pulling-away of the working-class vote that New Labour has always ill-advisedly taken for granted.
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I don’t need a lecture from David Cameron
I need David Cameron lecturing me on moral responsibility in much the same way as I need a layer of icing applied to my lasagne.
Cameron had the gall to give this speech on the eve of the Glasgow East by-election campaign, in a deprived city licked to a splinter by the economic policies pursued by his party in the 1980s.
He said:
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What’s the minimum you can survive on?
What’s the minimum amount of money that someone living in Britain needs?
The new report from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, “A Minimum Income Standard for Britain“, makes an interesting attempt to answer this question. They asked people from a range of different backgrounds, with advice from experts, to put together a list of ‘essentials’ of what they thought people would need in order to be able to participate in society.
They found that, after tax and excluding rent and childcare, a single adult would need a minimum of £158/week, a pensioner couple would need £201/week, a couple with 2 children would need £370/week and a lone parent with one child would need £210/week.
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Reactions to Doctor Who Broke My Brain
I have spent about five hours so far collating reactions to last night’s Who and am still not done yet, so if this is a bit disjointed, blame Russell T Davies. When I’ve finally done I’ll be making Liberal use of this and picturing Rusty in the role of Boss.
Tips to the usual address: all submissions will be considered, although there’s no guarantee of inclusion.
Andrew Hickey has a great post about why the Lib Dems’ current strategy is completely arse-about-face, which neatly encapsulates my own feelings on the matter and chimes with Mike Smithson’s recent post too.
Stuff White People Like dissects Godwin’s Law: “all human beings can be neatly filed into one of two categories: People I Agree With, and People Who are Just Like Adolf Hitler.”
Shakesville reports on a fiscal fly in John McCain’s soup.
On my blog there are tips for those who wish to pile the pressure on Heinz like Lynne F. continue reading… »
Swedish Lessons
A couple of weeks ago, I was contacted by Nick Cowen of the right-wing think-tank Civitas with an interesting and rather flattering proposition – would I review Nick’s new pamphlet, ‘Swedish Lessons’, which looks at what we in England could usefully learn from Sweden’s educational reforms of the last 10-15 years, particularly it’s use of a ‘voucher’ system to increase parental choice and diversity of provision in education.
Never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I quickly agreed and, on Friday, a package dropped through my door containing Nick’s pamphlet together with two previous Civitas publications on education policy, all of which made from very interesting reading over the weekend.
I’ll come to the other two pamphlets at a later date, but for today I want to concentrate on Nick’s exploration of the Swedish education system. I had, originally, planned to write a review over the weekend and post-date it for publication here immediately following the expiry of the press embargo on its release, but on reflection decided to hold off for a few hours to see exactly how Civitas would pitch it to the media and what angle, if any, the media would take.
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» How bad is the feline obesity crisis?
» Why don’t MPs pay back tuition fees instead of increasing ours?
» Obama is right to slam BP – and why capitalists should too
» Why does Phillip Blond see civic cohesion as a security issue?
» So what if the Labour candidates went to Oxbridge?
» Last night’s Labour hustings: will it get interesting or turn to torture?
» It’s now down to Ken to win London for Labour
» The Labour people need
» Blog Nation: what would you like to see discussed?
» The Labour leadership’s token contender.. and it’s not Diane Abbott
» In defence of these fraternal nominations
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