I understand your argument and to a degree agree with it. Like

Comment on Why I’ll Never Vote Conservative at a General Election by David.

I understand your argument and to a degree agree with it. Like I’ve said many times, though I’ll be voting Labour, it’s only because there’s not a better alternative! In some respects it’s asking do I want my house burnt down or flooded? Hmm, well ideally neither, but if I HAD to choose I’d go with flooding since it tends to cause less damage. It really does suck that people like myself have to choose a party this way, but that’s politics!

You can’t possibly agree with everything the Conservatives plan to do (if they ever tell us that is :-))?

With regards education, I’d rather have a government that tries to help every child rather than a government that only helps the select few who have parents who can afford and are willing to pay for private education.

That does not mean I support Labours educational plans, (education standards are falling just as they fell during the Tory years), but I prefer them to what the Conservatives did when they were last in power which was underfund education.

I’d rather see the equivalent of a private education made available to children that are prepared to work for it. There are children from deprived backgrounds in poor quality schools that are working hard and will achieve some success. They should be rewarded for their hard work under difficult circumstances with the best education available. The children who don’t work hard, can stay where they are, life isn’t meant to be easy, if you want something in life you have to work hard for it, but when you do work hard you should be rewarded and currently there is little reward in working hard in a low quality state school.

It’s not that I don’t want to see every child do well. Fact is the parents of many children don’t give a flying rats ass about their kids future beyond getting them in the first job available at 16 so they can pay rent. Unfortunately with so many parents with that attitude (that was my mothers attitude BTW), you aren’t going to get many children seeing education as important.

Couple of real parental quotes for you:

Child studying for exams, parent says “what you studying that for, if you don’t know it by now you’ll never know it”.

16 year old discussing staying on to study A-Levels, parents first response “well I’m not paying for it”.

BTW these are real quotes from different families, second quote was from my mother (she votes Conservative BTW)! I didn’t realise education was important until I was 16, had totally messed up my school based education and had to study as a young adult (restarted at 17) to make up for my mistakes.

It’s no wonder we have so many young people who don’t consider education important and as long as we have so many parents in society who don’t care about their children’s education I don’t see how the government can help every child. You know at 16 I didn’t even know I could go to University, thought you had to have rich parents who could afford it (actually wasn’t that far from the truth under the Tories!).

I’d like to see a three tier state school system.

Schools for children who aren’t working hard, disruptive etc… You can’t force children to learn, so take them out of the mainstream where they damage other children’s education. If they change, give them a second chance.

Schools for children who want to work and fall in the mainstream: the majority would go to this type of school.

And schools for gifted students where the brightest and best are encouraged and pushed to achieve their maximum potential. I suppose along the grammar school model, but taking the top 10% of pupils, not 25%.

I don’t have a problem with private schools, if a family can afford a private education, lucky kids and that’s more resources for children who aren’t lucky enough to have well off parents and rely on state schools.

Note: I think the majority of state schools are rubbish, so much so we home educated all three of our kids, eldest (18) is at University, middle one (16 this month) rejected education at 14 and has been going to a low quality state school for a year (the state school is so bad they think he’s a genius!!!) and the youngest still educated at home and doing very well.

And what’s wrong with social engineering, isn’t that the whole point of government, to engineer a country to an image we want?

You might not like what the Labour party are trying to do (I don’t either), but that’s what governments do and if the Tories win they’ll put forward their own agenda that will try to take the country in another direction. Like the tax breaks to encourage marriage, blatant social engineering. If you disagree with social engineering per se, you might want to not vote at all because they are all at it.

David