I feel like a stranger where I live

[KaiserWilly]

You can thank the BBC/Guardian/Islington Marxists for this.

[d000hg]

I wish that to be true. Unfortunately it isn't.

Same for D000hgs comments, though they are true in respect to deprived areas. Kids at infant schools are not assessed on entry and targets are not gained from that. That would be sensible but it doesnt happen.

Kids go straight into class at infant and then the teacher has to stream them from there - the teacher has almost ZERO input in how they will be measured and what their targets will be.

My wife's a reception teacher and that's exactly what happens... first term of new intake they are supposed to get baseline data. When she interviewed for her post recent job I saw the official data about how her last class had improved over the year, sliced according to things like gender, socio-economic background, free school lunches, English as a main language, yada yada so I can be pretty sure the data exists. Teachers hate it as they have to spend ages gathering the data, and also have to be careful because if you screw up the data at the start of the year (or the previous year's teacher over-grades) you end up looking bad.

The part about the teacher not setting the targets is quite accurate though, and these generally do not take factors into account. However the school she's at now is a typical poor ex-mining village, where kids will not meet the national targets, BUT has been examined as Outstanding several times and is regarded as a 'show school' where others come to observe. So at some level there is some sense, though I think that's where the head-teacher maybe comes in to the equation?

[Scoobos]

Well d00hg, all I can say is perhaps the LEA's have different approaches. Or perhaps confused between measuring childrens progress for ofstead or for differentiation. I'm not a teacher I should add.

The schools down here that my lass has been at - these things don't happen at all. It's all about wall displays and spending budget on a welcome mats when you dont have excersise books - but then who's going to complain when the classes are 95% non english transient children seeking asylum?

Just get em marked down as special measures, academised and bobs yer uncle.

[Coalman]

Keeping this off topic and on education.

My wife is also a primary school teacher (supply at the moment so not full time) and finance governor at our boys school.

Agree with all that is being said with regards OFSTED and government policy and direction.

The main thing that results from this is that teachers feel that the government (of either shade) and the media especially do not trust teachers to assess kids correctly and report on progress. This aspect is very demoralising for teachers.

Could you work with an external body able to come in and assess your work, decide what the target is (regardless of the actual task in front of you), grade your performance according to this arbitrary target and effectively withdraw funding from your organisation if you do not match this mythical goal?

With regards to academies, this is OK in areas where schools are a certain size, but with small rural schools (our school has 30 kids in all!) these can't be turned into academies. This means they may have to close. The facilities at the big schools in the local area are not good enough to take an influx of kids from all the closed rural schools. It is stupid short sightedness.

The myth about no cuts in education budget need to be busted as well. All the school support services provided by the LEA are being cut severely, so the schools have to fund more of these services out of their direct budget.

Rant over.

[bobspud]

Oo look London's full of people that don't come from there...
I'm glad it's spreading to the west side as the east end has been a ghetto all my life...

Think of it as just payback for all the middle class lot that bought holiday homes and turned the southwest into a place where large swaths of it are no goes for the locals most of the year...

When I first moved into my village I referred to myself as the only Indian in the village because you could see the horror on the locals faces when they realised "I weren't from round 'ere" in fact the only lot that would speak to me were the guys in the local Indian takeaway. I guess we were all in it together

[NickFitz]

NatWest have in the last couple of years put posters in Polish on the bus shelters up the road from me. Made a nice change, I thought

[No2politics]

I feel like a stranger where I live

Agreed, the author even says that in the article , "saying hello to shopkeepers, even though it's not the done thing in metropolitian" ...

Such a shame, I do see it as a north south divide thing though.

What u mean guv norf laandan and saarf laandan?

[ZARDOZ]

Let's get this right what the article is saying... The inner cities are becoming increasingly inhabited by the poor immigrants and the middle classes are moving out.
But hang on..These are the same middle classes who in the 1990s and 00s moved into the inner cities which were in the 1970s and 1980s largely inhabited by poor immigrants. Seems to me the odd ones out here are the middle class hypocrites.

[mudskipper]

When I first moved into my village I referred to myself as the only Indian in the village because you could see the horror on the locals faces when they realised "I weren't from round 'ere" in fact the only lot that would speak to me were the guys in the local Indian takeaway. I guess we were all in it together

Laughed at this - the in laws live in a remote village in Somerset. When a black guy visited the village shop it was newsworthy enough that we were told about it 3 weeks later

[Troll]

You can thank the BBC/Guardian/Islington Marxists for this.

especially this twat

"Tony Blair given award for helping Poles come to the UK"