Children Are The Future... If Only They Had One

As Mrs M and I sat in the garden watching the younglings engage in yet another deeply intense role playing game of inter species marriage, adventure, war-come-musical, scientific innovation and epic screenplay  between Draculaura, a couple of Moshies, about 28 Barbies, one Ken and several Trash Packs , all conducted with excellent American accents, an occasional Scottish one (the release of Brave cannot come quick enough for Ginger) and some really raw Essex vowel use, we thought, ‘Blimey, we need to stop watching quite so much telly!’  But this thought was quickly replaced by concerns for their future and the future of the current generation emerging from school.

Ginger and good at fighting. Genius.

We had it quite easy really. Work hard and you will get a good job. That was pretty much it. There were friends who were going to be academic, there were friends who were savvy but not hugely intelligent who were destined to be go-getting successes and there were friends who were plain and simply grafters. There was a set of rules we abided by; only spend what you have, save up for something you want and don’t expect everything straight away. Educationally, we were told that Universities were the places that quaternary and high level tertiary occupations were forged, Polytechnics were the places that secondary occupations were forged and jumping into the wide beyond straight from school was the fast track to the primary sector. Important to note that of my particular group, if you had aspirations of quinary you had to enter the army as an officer or go to Oxbridge. I considered one of these – the other didn’t consider me at all, what lofty ambitions the teen me had, the reality is so far short of this the Hubble Telescope would have difficulty covering the distance.

My career, as seen from space.

So what is there for our kids? Let us start with the nostalgic meddling of Professor Gove. What’s that? He isn’t actually a Professor? He has no real professional understanding of the education system other than he went to school once? You surprise me! He is on a path to turn every school he comes across into a Free School. My basic understanding of this is a school funded by the tax payer through the council? (but to a lesser extent to that of a regular school – I could be wrong here) but without that local education authority having any say at all in how the school operates. The school then has to seek sponsors (see middle-class parents wishing to donate or local and/or national companies that want to sponsor it). So what happens when there are enough like-minded individual donors for a school that threaten to withdraw their funding because they want their children taught in a specific way? The school is held to ransom by parents who may know what is best for their child but not what is best for all the other children. Or maybe we look at the results driven perspective of the company that sponsors the school. Say, for a reason of cycles, there are a few concurrent years where the kids attending the school just aren’t high achievers for no fault of their own or their parents, results take a bit of dip, the school doesn’t fly high on the league table. Does the sponsors act responsibly and say – well let us look at this long term, or do they just say, ‘We are sponsoring a failing school; we should get out before Ofsted get involved.’ Are these unnecessary pressures that are being forced on schools and on teachers who should just be concentrating on the shaping of children’s lives? Shouldn’t the schools be protected from the harshness of capitalism, this kind of exposure to a world of cold statistical decision making surely at worst will only harm them and at best distract them from what they do best?

A G(l)ove

But Gove isn’t finished there either. Exams. Yuk! I had an inability to revise, GCSEs helped me because it wasn’t all revision based. I like GCSEs. Had you held a gun to my head, sure I would have revised, but in most schools we try not to do that. Gove once again is reaching back into hazy halcyon past, maybe one where he sat in field of long grass and recited Amo Amas Amat just because he could. He wants us to have two tier examinations again. I buy into his assertion that there should be one examining board and therefore one benchmark for achievement; it seems nonsensical that there are so many different boards asking so many different things of the examinees and as a result raising doubts around the legitimacy of one child’s achievements over another. But to force teachers to decide the future of student’s entire life at 14 by putting them on a path of qualifications that could become a barrier to further training and/or learning in later life is daft. Gove has prattled on about level playing fields in education for some time, yet every change he makes is another contour in the ever increasingly hilly topography of UK education.

So, our children have scraped together some qualifications, probably in spite of the system they are in. What now? Well they are all now expected to go to a University or straight into employment. A hangover from a previous administration that means many spurious courses were created fulfil some dodgy course quota to secure funding, resulting in thousands of students being promised a life of security wealth and work, and every single one of them being spat out of the system having wasted money and three years of their lives with a meaningless qualification that only harms their employment chances. But the main thing with this was the demonization of other centres of learning, vocational learning, apprenticeships. The opportunity to go into further education should be there for every child, but there should be a range of realistic opportunities that suit the abilities and aspirations of the individual. And that individual should be able to hold their head high while pursuing their course in life.  It is complicated, GCSEs and the merger of into Universities happened at more or less at the same time, one was a good move and the other could have been handled better,  if we adopt a two tier education system (too early in my view) and do not alter the University system at the same time to allow for this we will have a huge, and I mean colossal, chunk of society that is demeaned, and degraded because they are prevented from being able to enter into further education and adulthood with any prospects or self-respect.

Nothing like a literal visual aid.

On top of all of this, our children will pay for all of this, and continue paying for it. Parents too will undoubtedly pay for it as well as no parent with the means available will want to see their child burdened with debt as they enter an employment market with so few job opportunities as we have now. Our children will be competing with us for jobs as we will certainly never be in the position where we can retire. Will our children inherit our debts that have been built up over the decades in an attempt to cushion their early lives from these traumas? Will they be able to get mortgages, or even just credit? Will they even understand the value of money as it ceases to be a tangible currency and becomes something that it only a password away spending on an App?

And then it struck us. All the political posturing of day, from all three main parties, that states that our generation is working hard to give a secure world for future generations is nothing but guff. Our children are going to pay a very very heavy default sum on our political apathy.  We could have done something, we could have held our government to account. Sadly I think we are all noticing this too late. The ruling class has its feet under the table and are changing the menu in such a fast and deep way that we will probably be 30 years away from any hope of sensible non-profit orientated community minded change.

For now, our two are oblivious and happily marrying two Barbies with an American master of ceremonies that is a rubberised thumbnail of vomit – but soon to be blown away by some singing ninja Moshies from Arbroath.

Trash Packs have released a Prime Minister series.