My thanks to Shane Greer for alerting me to what, on the face of it, seems like very good news, from Northern Ireland:
The education minister has said she is very disappointed by grammar schools planning to set up a company to run independent entrance exams.
I was not disappointed at all, when I read that. If there is one thing that really, really needs to be got out of the clutches of the state, it is school examinations. Schools and parents and children need to be able to choose the best exams to take, and employers need to be able to choose which exam results they will take seriously. That way, exam results will change to suit the needs of the times, but will continue to be a meaningful test of educational excellence.
More than 30 schools have said the tests in English and maths, will be held over either two or three days.
The Association for Quality Education said the exams would be held in venues across Northern Ireland.
So far so good. But this is where the report becomes less pleasing:
However, Caitríona Ruane accused the schools of being elitist …
Ah yes, elitist. What kind of a vicious school wants to teach only those pupils whom it wants to teach, and to teach them really well? Monstrous.
… and said they could face legal action from parents.
Parents, that is, demanding better exams results. At present, the government pays for all such litigation. An independent exam system will have to pay the costs of resisting all such legal challenges for itself.
Now comes the really scary bit, the bit that got me putting this here, rather than only, say, here:
“They have a choice, people always have a choice,” the minister said.
“What I would say to them is think very carefully before you go down the route of bringing boards of governors into situations were they may find themselves spending their time in court.”
This is the language of the Mafia.
What is happening here is that the state has made something, in this case exam results, so complicated and legally challengeable that only the state can easily afford all the litigation involved in supplying such a service. Then, they impose “progressive” and “radical” change, i.e. they wreck the state system. At which point, some people and some institutions try to make an independent go of replacing the formerly adequate (albeit ruinously expensive for the mere taxpayer) state service with one that they have devised themselves. And, legally, they can go it alone. They can do this. But the laws they have then to obey are so complicated that it will cost them an arm and a leg.
Back door abolition of whatever it is the politicians want abolished, in other words. Nationalise part of something. Throw money and laws at all of it, thereby herding everyone into the arms of the state system, on purely cost grounds. Then shut down whatever bits of the state system they always had in mind to destroy, and defy the “private” sector to respond, in an impossible legal environment that only the state can afford to function in.
Only very wealthy institutions can afford in their turn to defy such arrangements. Politicians duly denounce them as: very wealthy. If the private sector decides to charge quite a lot for the now very expensive service that they provide, they are accused of charging a lot. And the politicians use those excuses to pass yet more laws, if they prove to be necessary, turning difficulty into impossibility. There’s a lot of it about.
The overall result in this case, Shane Greer fears, will be the destruction of the really quite good top end of the Northern Ireland education system.
What do you expect if you let mobsters into government? Caitriona Ruane is to education what Tony Soprano is to waste management.
Surely Tony Soprano was quite good at waste management?
Actually, you are right. Sometimes organised crime can be trusted to get the job done, unlike politcial gangster muppets like this nasty bitch. Mind you, the thing about the mob and waste management is they don’t like competiton, and they have all the equipment to dispose of anyone unwise enough to try, so I think Tony Soprano and this poisonous hag share similar views on that point.
Brilliant Description of the Process! Bravo! Hope you don’t mind if I paraphrase from time to time!
We used to have a host of different education boards. We took the Joint Matriculation Board, others took AEB, Oxford, etc.
It’s nice to pretend that this led to a market-driven situation where we all weighed up the pros and cons and took those with the best reputation.
However, this wasn’t the case. What it led to was starkly different standards across each, as well as wildly inconsistent processes for things like appeals. And when universities or employers wanted to know our results, we didn’t say “Maths B (JMB)”, as no-one gave a monkey’s. It also pretty regularly led to confusion about curricula and rules.
I am therefore completely unnconvinced by your argument. These things need to be standardised.
John K:
I grew up in a city that had historically been dominated by organized crime. The rackets basically ran the city. And the reason this was tolerated?
The Machine will fill potholes in the streets. The Machine will (by extra-legal means, sometimes) keep crime out of the ‘good’ parts of town. And as long as the Machine delivers, people will vote them back in.
Reformers generally don’t know a damn thing about keeping promises like ‘fixing this pothole’ or ‘stopping gang fights in Swope Park.’ In some cases, they fall so far in love with their own essential goodness that they start making promises they know they can’t keep, just because that’s a means to them getting into position to do all kinds of good things. Or so they keep telling themselves.
And US voters, if they bother at all to pay attention to local elections, will vote for ‘filling potholes.’ Either they don’t care about honest and transparent local government at all, or they believe what they hear from ‘reform’ politicians who promise everything to everybody.
Interestingly, right now, the front-runner to be the next President of the US manages to combine all of the worst of both worlds.
Maybe I haven’t been keeping up, but isn’t NuLab about to abolish all the grammar schools in Northern Ireland anyway?
Quite so Brian.
J.S. Mill’s idea that private schools should be tolerated as long as examinations were under the control of government, showed a basic misunderstanding of the nature of government.
A private association depends on its REPUTATION (with employers and others) and so competition between examination organizations UNDER CONDITIONS WHERE THEY HAD OWNERSHIP OF THE NAME OF THE QUALIFICATION THEY OFFERED would tend to promote rigorous standards.
However, where government insists that “an “A” level is an “A” level” (or whatever) the different examination boards tend to “dumb down” so that more and more pupils pass (and pass with top grades) – so that the schools will pick them, and government will have something to boast of to the voters.
Some private schools have already switched to the I.B. – and now that “O” levels are long gone as an examination they may be brought back by a private organization that really wished to examine the knowledge level and reasoning ability. If “A” levels are finally abolished they may also be brought back (in a restored form).
As for Ulster:
The grammar schools should declare their independence and charge fees – that will be hard for poor parents, but I see no other way of saving education in Ulster.
Before anyone points out errors in my typing above – I was “educated” in a government school.
Hi Friends,
I Find Absolutely FREE PlayBoy & Penthouse:
http://www.mbn-cash.com/click.php?affid=1021
If I find something else I’ll inform you.
Best Regards,
John
http://www.sangambayard-c-m.com