Religious Schools in the UK- Potential Meltdown

Great Debates
21

In England it is illegal technically for a school to not have a daily act of worship! This is not generally respected any more!

"The most recent legal statement of the requirements for collective worship (as distinct from assembly) are contained in the School Standards and Framework Act 1998. These build on similar requirements in Section 346 of the Education Act 1996, the Education Reform Act 1988, and Section 25 of the 1944 Education Act, where the law on compulsory collective worship began. Section 70 of the 1998 Act states that, subject to the parental right of excusal or other special arrangements, “…each pupil in attendance at a community, foundation or voluntary school shall on each school day take part in an act of collective worship.”

Schedule 20 to the 1998 Act gives more detailed information on the worship requirements. It notes the different practical arrangements that are allowed: “a single act of worship for all pupils or separate acts of worship for pupils in different age groups or in different school groups.” A “school group” is defined as “any group in which pupils are taught or take part in other school activities”."

22

That seems awfully uncivilized to me.

23

‘Collective worship’ is generally just interpreted as ‘assembly’ now - even in the church school where I am a governor (where you might expect it to be a religious service etc) it typically comprises stuff like a talk from a visiting police officer on the subject of road safety etc, a talk from the headteacher about bullying, etc.

24

I think you’re trying too hard to find it so.

25

Baiting from a disagreement on another thread is just childish.

26

Smapti is just being silly. I pointed out that I consider states which end their prisoners’ lives by judicial killing, somewhat barbaric. He is trying to extend that argument over here.

27

Non sequiturs make the baby Jesus cry.

28

And I consider states which allow publicly-funded schools to engage in religious indoctrination highly barbaric.

29

I suppose that does fir one of the dictionary senses of ‘barbaric’, but not the same sense that fits torture and killing, so you have a point, but it’s a semantic one.

30

Please don’t feed the troll.

31

All of you, shut up.

Bringing a disagreement from another thread into a new one on a seperate topic is extremely poor form. So is responding to that sort of baiting.

It is also against the rules to call someone else a troll.

So everyone just stop it right now. I have spoken.

32

That case looks just like the system failed though. They’re not supposed to be teaching creationism, but they got away with trying.
Any school can try to do something that is against policy/regulation - it’s a concern that this one did, of course.

Grindon Hall just had their OFSTED report - I wonder if it will say anything on this matter.

33

Filmstar-en.

Your analysis of the UK economy is exactly the self serving rubbish that useless and ineffectual UK industry leaders have been pushing on the population for decades.

The idea that we do don’t do heavy engineering because we belong to a knowledge economy is complete rubbish, and its exactly why Germany has simply left us completely behind and is the powerhouse economy of Europe.

Its really down to the UK industrial outlook of making maximum returns over the short term for the absolute minimum investment, its what has led to our industry becoming so uncompetitive. Its the lazy way to look at industry and manufacturing - UK would rather use lots of manual labour, other more developed economies understand the falsehood of such an approach. What they do is to invest in new processes, machines , research and technology - they end up with more production, and at better quality for lower cost.

The ‘knowledge economy’ is a giant con, because it is sold to the British as something inclusive - facts are that this does not employ the numbers of workers that we need to employ. Its great we have companies such as McLaren, but they simply will never ever provide enough work to employ millions of workers.

Even if this were possible, the fact is also true that this means anyone with lower academic attainments is simply going to be abandoned to a life of unemployment or fifth rate jobs wiping the arses of the wealthy.

Lets get to the real effects of wider higher level education, all this has done is put up the price of education, so that our young enter the workforce with levels of debt that will burden them for the rest of their lives, and also the value of that education in terms of income is steadily declining. It used to be that if you had higher vocational qualifications such as HND - level 5 or above, then you had a chance of getting into management, no longer, you can struggle to get a job stacking shelves in supermarkets if you only have an Ordinary degree.

We constantly come across problems of skills training, the term ‘apprenticeship’ has been abused so much that it has become meaningless, which means we are importing our truly skilled labour, unless you want to employ my generation, one that is fast approaching retirement.

It has always been a constant complaint of UK employers that they find our workforce entrants do not have some of the most basic skills of numeracy and literacy, and its something I come across quite regularly - so much for the so-called reformed and improved education system you seem to believe we have.

I get the impression your view of education in the past produced a drooling bunch of illiterate peasants who were only equipped to swing a large hammer in unskilled physical labour, such a load of old tosh which I am completely dismissing.

Almost everything around you right now has been designed and built by my generation, you know, the one that can barely string two words together due to the terrible education they received.

Its my generation that has built the roads, houses, rail networks, the computers, the cars - you name it, and it was done in an industrial manufacturing metal bashing economy.

Tell me just what the heck does Whitehall and its mandarins understand about the needs of steel manufacturing in Sheffield? Zero, nada, nothing at all and they have not on iota of an idea what education or even research skills would be needed, and you can repeat that for every single industry in our country. This is why control of our education cannot ever be left in the hands of partisan politicians who centralise power in order to further their own personal agendas.

Taking the control of education out of the areas where the local industry needs to recruit its workforce is classic stupid thinking and its really pretty obvious.

Right now we have a critical shortage of horticultural skills and knowledge - yet local schools that might produce a workforce in those rural areas are closing down because they are being centralised and have a national curriculum imposed that does not allow for flexibility - the centrally imposed inspection process reinforces that.

I love your idea that somehow the city and financial trading is some sort of panacea to all the previous industrial woes, fact is that even now our manufacturing and construction industries still employ far more people and generate more UK income than the City, the glorious city that has screwed us over to the extent that our government has had to bail out financial services in this country to the tune of £1200 BILLION, yes, that’s right, so now you know why we are so screwed for money and why we have an austerity programme.

My view is that the argument of City types who claim they deserve extremely high pay for disastrously bad performance - or they will leave our shores is quite simple, cut their pay, let them leave and let them screw up someone else’s economy.

Financial services, will never employ 10s of millions of workers, except in ultra low skill call centre work, which is simply a large factory full of telephone desks. It is just production line work in another form. Call centres require little capital investment compared to manufacturing industry.

What we have seen is the loss of higher skilled well paid work which has been replaced by low skill badly paid work - which then begs the question, what need is there for higher education for the majority of the population.

The growth in higher education has come at the same time as the downgrading of assessment, more learners pass with higher grades but all an institution does is carefully select which exam board it uses to ensure it maintains this high pass rate - its all smoke and mirrors.

I have seen the pressure that teachers, lecturers and trainers are subjected to ensure they keep those pass rates up, I have experienced it, the standards are simply not going up at all - there are so many ways in which education institutions game the system.

Far from Local Authorities tolerating sink schools, what we really have is a series of governments that tolerate sink regions, entire counties and cities are left to decline, meantime the government pretends that pass rates are higher - when of course the assessments are easier.

When I left school it was a real achievement to attain 5 o-levels, now 8 or 9 are the norm, and yet spelling and grammar are not checked, research is confined to searching the internet instead of actually doing the work yourself. Our education system that you think so much better than in the past is nothing but the copy and paste generation, without a single original idea in their studies whatsoever.

We teach our young to do lots and lots of exams merely to provide figures for ministers to use to justify their own political bias, we don’t actually try to develop cognitive abilities we are not interested in teaching critical or creative thinking.
Our centrally controlled curriculum has little truck with innovation, its all about producing charts, and league tables and nothing at all to do with education.

Academies take all this, and flush it all down the toilet, all they do is divert and resources from local oversight. I have seen the unfair financial advantages given to Academies, with better equipment, and frequently new build facilities, meantime LEA schools had to have their large scale reconstruction project stopped due to cost. Ever heard of Barnsley college and what a complete shambles that became?

The problem with current teaching is that learners are not allowed to fail, instead they are diverted into attaining lower standards with ever easier assessments where every learner, no matter how stupid, gets a prize. This is the modern education culture that is so much better than in the past.

34

I don’t hold with that rosy view of the glorious industrial past.

Hard, dirty jobs that sapped the health of workers in mills, steelworks, factories and mines with their dangers and hideous pollution. Regimes of stultifying rigour and mechanisation that required zero creative input from the workers.

That these industries have been reduced to a few efficient plants and the rest of these jobs exported elsewhere seems to me to be a smart move. It happened in the UK and in many industrialised economies. The truth is manufacturing became deattached from geography. We can no move stuff around the world so economically, it does not matter too much where it is made. Manufacturing can be contracted to whoever can meet the terms of a contract. Only highly specialised products need to reserved for domestic production. Eg. Defence.

Better to invest in the premium knowledge of how to design and products, develop new techniques. This does not need metal bashing workers in the rust belt, it requires a workforce with professional and technical skills and continuing education and training.

With respect to the City and Financial sector. This is a part of the UK economy that is every bit as important as manufacturing. It is a major wealth generator. You seem to imagine it is just a lot of fat cats profiting at the expense of the rest of population. In fact the Financial services sector helps companies to borrow money and to even out the cost of their materials, it helps industry to mitigate risks and it helps governments borrow money to put into place the grand plans that have been sold to the voters.

The UK is a major trading nation, which is a natural consequence of its economic history. London is one of three major Financial centres in world (the others being New York and Tokyo) that provide services to the world economy.

Sure we had a credit bubble caused by politicians wanting cheap borrowing to finance their projects and this caused a bit of instability, but the benefits outweigh the costs. Look around you, see all those new state schools. Those academies that you so deride? All those primary care health centres. All those were paid for by borrowing money a cheap rates. This was a stategic project. You talk as if the credit bubble were simply and elaborate confidence trick for the sole benefit of fat cat bankers.

Where do you think those companies that you admire would be if they did not have access to financial services?

Now the fact that this rapid expansion of education has led to a few problems around the edges does not detract from its central benefit: to educate a workforce for new industries and businesses that will be the basis of the economy in the coming decades.

So we have a few problems with religious schools! They can be fixed. So the financing of schools has been wrestled from the control of local politicians in education authorities? It will return in due course, once those education authorities have been reformed. Education is far too important to be left to a cosy cabal of pompous teachers and self interested local politicians. Central government has only a few tools at its disposal to effect change and some policies may need to be developed further. But the strategy of comprehensive education for a literate and numerate workforce seems quite sound to me. A few compromises are worthwhile to get the numbers up to where they should be.

I think they should go further, I would like to see a commitment to lifelong learning and skills training. We still live in a country where education seems to finish at 21, which is an improvement on the past when much the workforce gave up education at 16 or 17. People switch off learning far too early in life after having it spoon fed to them by institutions. That has got to change.

35

The point I am making is that the idea that the UK population can be largely employed in knowledge base industries with well paid jobs is utter rubbish, it cannot and will not ever happen, all that will result is a minority on good incomes and a majority on low tech low skill low paid crap jobs. This is already happening.

So we will have the wealthy minority who will decide how to distribute their largesse to the majority - quite how the ratios of minority to majority will work out, but I expect the minority will be quite small in relative terms.

Get back to the skilled work, and despite your assertion that it shortened the lives of its operatives, such work provided improving living standards, improving health and increasing lifespans for the majority of the population, and this is why we need a must larger manufacturing base.

Finance has ceased being the servant of industry, it has ceased to enable long term investment, it has ceased to enable manufacturing, it feeds on itself and self generates its own worth based on little more than confidence.

I know we are in the run up to a general election, so there is an awful lot of politicking going on, however its worth noting that Michael Gove is being accused of favouring the funding of Academies to the cost of LEA - and that this has nothing to do with education and everything to do with a political ideology.

I have read many of the reports regarding a lifetime of education, continuous self development and it is absolutely true that education is front end loaded, with little prospect of longer term development, except in specific fields where knowledge can become outdated rapidly in the light of technical advances or in changes to protocols and legislature. Academies do absolutely nothing whatsoever to address this, and are just an answer looking for a question.

Tertiary education was historically funded by Trades Guilds, Unions, and industrial sector councils which were intended to produce a skilled workforce for specific industries. The mass closures of those industries has led to the loss of much of that post compulsory education system, no point in training instrument makers if there is no industry to make use of their skills.

Academies do not address this issue, faith based education does not address this either.

All there reforms will completely fail unless there is a market for the end product, the educated workforce, the knowledge based economy cannot provide this labour market for our national workforce, and that is why it will fail.

Education must have a national strategic purpose, even if it is also about many other things. If there is no use for the end product then it just won’t work. Stripping money from LEA in order to fund Academies is more expensive, and will not provide the Lifelong Learning Path that you so fervently desire.

I suggest you do what I did, and research some of the papers into lifelong learning, then come back and tell us about it, perhaps you will be better informed.

http://shop.niace.org.uk/ifll-learningthroughlife.html

36

I’m also going to add some more for you, so that you can see the history of the development of education in the UK, from the seminal 1919 report onwards - because that 1919 report is pretty much what the current crop of reactionary UK Tories hark back to, without understanding the weaknesses of it.

I will add that Infed is a very highly respected academic organisation in respect of education.

The following identifies some of the flaws of the 1919 report and the problems between dividing education into vocational and academic learning

http://www.niace.org.uk/lifelonglearninginquiry/docs/Learning-from-the-past.pdf

https://www.escholar.manchester.ac.uk/api/datastream?publicationPid=uk-ac-man-scw:1m1850&datastreamId=POST-PEER-REVIEW-PUBLISHERS-DOCUMENT.PDF

I will also add that a strategic report on training and education to meet the demands of the UK economy was carried out just prior to WW1 however I can’t find a link to it.

That report identified the importance of adult education in providing skills for industry - you know the dirty metal bashing industries that won us two world wars.

I emphasise again, and maybe for the last time, a knowledge based economy cannot provide adequate employment or income for the majority of the population, which means that the majority of the population can expect to find income will decline in the foreseeable future whilst a minority will do well - this will lead to inequality of opportunity, as it has done in the past. Please realise that this has led to recent social unrest - which the right wing rags portray as nothing but sheer criminality - which is only partly true.

Lastly, to quote you,

Oh how I wish it were true, but saying so does not make it so, we have a model - its called Germany, where they do all the industrial metal bashing they ever did, but they found a way to clean it up, they use investment from financiers to fund production plant, they expect to have long lead times on investment rather than the shortism shown by UK City and they also have a healthy financial sector - its just that the financial tail is not wagging the national economic dog, like ours does.