“the whole idea of a school for the brightest pupils as you

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

“the whole idea of a school for the brightest pupils as you suggested is at odds with Labour’s core beliefs. ”

Yes I know it’s not Labour ideology, but then it’s not Conservative ideology either since previous Conservative governments were not interested in the future of poor kids.

Labour wants every child to be treated equally (an admirable goal), but since the country doesn’t have bottomless pockets to spend on education that means pulling down the education of those that could achieve so much more because it would be unfair on the rest of the children.

Conservatives don’t really care what happens to the majority of children’s education, they’ll supply a very basic education to all (lower quality than Labours) and if you want better for your children, pay for it like they do for their children, but they’ll give you some tax breaks to make it easier since you aren’t using state schools.

I don’t like either approach as they both fail so many children, though the Conservatives approach fails more.

Labour fails to bring the best out of the brightest and don’t reward those who work hard, though the majority of children should do OK IF they wanted a good education (unfortunately so many children don’t want even a half decent education!). The Conservatives fail to help children that don’t have well off parents, means we had a two tier education system based on wealth with little mobility. The children of poor parents struggled to get an exceptional education under the Conservatives. The Conservatives failed the majority of children who didn’t have wealthy parents.

I believe strongly in merit/ability based rewards, if a child is gifted in an area, that gift should be encouraged by government as it’s good for the country long term. Imagine if people like Charles Darwin, Isac Newton, Einstein, Mozart, Charles Dickens, William Shakespeare etc… were 5 year olds with poor parents in Britain over the last 30 years. What sort of education would they receive, would it encourage their gifts or would they be lost to mediocrity because of a state education system that doesn’t recognise and certainly doesn’t encourage genius?

Then there’s the children who aren’t gifted per se, but work very hard on their education. Over the last 30 years of government, is this hard work recognised and rewarded by either the Conservatives or Labour? Unfortunately, no.

BTW I live in an area with an awful comprehensive school (was closed down at one point and will soon be an academy) and an OK grammar school (selective grammar school, takes the top 25% of pupils). I’ve looked at the grammar schools results and they aren’t that good considering they are a selective grammar school, though relative to the comprehensive school it’s in a different league. The rubbish school doesn’t even do proper A-Levels like Maths!

The problem I have with this system isn’t that the top pupils are given a better education, but the average pupil with less ability, but still willing to work hard are left with the idiots who for whatever reason don’t want a decent education and ruin it for everyone else. I would put the idiots in special schools, and I don’t mean special in the sense of mental inability to do the work, but special in the sense that they choose to be idiots and shouldn’t be in mainstream school disrupting pupils who want to work.

David