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.

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.

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.

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