Education, education, education, and not a drop to drink....

I often wonder whether those whom we have elected and those whom they appoint to do certain things actually have much of an idea what ordinary people think and have to deal with. I know that their words indicate they care but do they, really?

Take the case of this Corona virus problem. Of course it is a problem, people generally have no immunity and we might well ask why this has occurred at all. Like how was it possible to yet again originated in China? What are they doing there? But that question will have to be asked and hopefully answered another time.

But the virus is just one of the problems we face today, let’s take Wales, Wales is a much poorer part of the UK, and nothing like the London and Home counties areas. In Wales education is bedevilled by a quango called Estyn that ‘supervises’ standards. We might ask what standards and what are they based on? In my book standards mean the quality of the education on offer. But seemingly, at least according to Estyn they base standards on the attainment levels of pupils. In other words how many A’s have been acquired. It seems that they continually ask, nay demand standards increasing but without the resources needed to do so. Wales struggles with old legacies of ill-health, unemployment and more but let that rest for a minute. It should however be quite obvious that increasing standards in education needs more than putting pressure on educators e.g teachers. It needs an infrastructure to do so. You simply cannot tell pupils to learn who have no support at all from family or have no family. The social structure just is not there. These are facts that escape organisations such as Estyn and indeed I suspect government as well. Or if they know they simply ignore it.

It is true that some of the teachers are below of what is required. That is a problem that needs sorting by higher educators. It does no-one any good to have teachers who do not really want to be in the class-room. The battlefield which is today’s classroom is entirely of the governing classes’ making. Meddling politicians, poor decision making, and above all political dogma have decimated the quality of education in all fields. It is time to give the teaching professions the power back to educate and side-line political interference.