Becoming Crochety

I think I'm becoming more like my father - railing against the idiocies of modern life. Take some of the recent political (and other) noises on education, for instance.

First there was Simon Hughes wanting universities to engage in a massive social engineering programme. That there is inequality in education opportunity is without doubt. However, the way to overcome it is not, I repeat not, to pile on another layer of bias by discriminating against those who have been down a particular "priviledged" education route. No, Simon, the answer is to deliver proper high class state education in the first place. I have been through this debate. I agonised long and hard before spending my hard earned post-tax pennies on sending my boys to a private school. It was against all my political leanings but in the end they received a better education. And further-more I believe society will have benefitted. Not only did I pay my share of taxes to finance the state education system while also paying school fees from post-tax income (a very painful experience as far as the pocket is concerned) but society is benefitting from two better-educated young men, both holding down responsible jobs providing much needed services.

So much for that! Then, yesterday we had all that fuss over measuring secondary schools via the so called Baccalaureate target. What's all the fuss about? One of the services I provide is the estimation of the economic worth of a company or project. Do I go and tell the owners of the same how I'm going to assess its worth? Of course not. I'll use paramaters that I or my clients think are important. So, if HMG thinks it is important to know how many pupils achieve 5 "academic" GCSEs then fine - we can ignore that statistic if we like but at least let us know.

As I said - more like my old man by the day!