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August 26, 2005
Party-politics, much like Prescott: it just gets in the way
There's some interesting stuff on the things Charter 88 were highlighting the other week in the latest issue of Prospect magazine. It is, however, slurried with yet more impure party-political nonsense. Ah well...
(my emphasis to highlight unholy use of journalistic licence)
Charter 88 has produced some fascinating facts and figures regarding another of Cook's causes, proportional representation. The lobby group's number-crunchers have scored every MP for what share of the local electorate turned out to vote for them.
The results are not a pretty picture. No MP scored higher than 50 per cent at this year's election. Ironically, the MP who fares worst is a Lib Dem: Lorely Burt, who captured marginal Solihull with only 16 per cent support. Among the Labour ranks, two MPs score under 20 per cent - Ann McKechin in Glasgow Maryhill and Roger Godsiff in Birmingham Sparkbrook and Small Heath. Only one weighs in above 40 per cent - Chris Bryant in Rhondda.
But what does any of this mean? Charter 88 says the fact that it took 27,000 voters to elect a Labour MP but 44,000 to elect a Tory proves that 'some voters are more equal than others'. In fact, it proves that in Labour's innercity and industrial heartland, many voters feel too dispossessed or downtrodden to have much faith in any political party. Yet the MP elected in such an area must represent all local voters, of all political opinions and none - and with more casework than their counterpart in a Tory shire.
Switching to a system that lumps innercities in with shires, and that awards seats in proportion to votes cast, would effectively give the well-to-do areas greater weighting in parliament, disenfranchising the most vulnerable. Some variants of PR have this weakness, some don't. If we do ever adopt PR, we must avoid the pitfall that Charter 88 has fallen into.
In other news:
MPs need to learn to speak "fluent human" the BBC's Andrew Marr said yesterday.
And agreeing, it seems, with Steve Richards:
"This idea it is all about presentation is wrong," he said. "Journalists say that MPs are all clones. But when one says something interesting he is marginalised and called a troublemaker".
And could it be? Some sensible words on education from the Graun?
Examination boards freely admit that people who know more than the syllabus demands find it harder to do well.
There's no doubt that GCSEs and A-levels demand hard work.
No they really don't.
Twenty years ago, teachers taught to a syllabus without knowing how it would be marked. Now the exam boards issue precise mark schemes, with points awarded for the use of this word or that point. It's the teachers' task to drill that incessantly into their pupils. By doing so they achieve the pinball effect: as long as the ball hits enough points on the way down, students will pick up the marks. But there is almost no scope, either in the exam or the classroom, for children to explore their own thoughts or responses. "At GCSE our children go into exams incredibly well-prepared," she says, "but by God are they bored."
Schools that agree have drawn up their own curricula, dropping many subject barriers and giving children structured projects, where teachers lead learning but children can think for themselves. Most secondary schools have only dared conduct the experiment with their first-years, fearful of interrupting the national curriculum for too long.
Yet the results have been striking. Every school has seen marked improvements in behaviour, attendance, attitudes and achievement in the Opening Minds pupils, particularly among those at the top and bottom of the range. In many cases the statistics are striking: truancy halved; exclusions down by 90%; detentions down by 60%; Opening Minds children scoring 15% higher than their peers in tests.
That’s impressive in anyone’s book and by any mark scheme.
What it shows so clearly is that children aren't being stretched by the current system; they're being failed by it. The prescriptive curriculum prevents them flourishing as they might.
Posted by pauldavies on August 26, 2005
