Thursday, October 09, 2008

Lottery

The government seems determined to randomise the intake of schools, which will come as a bit of a blow to those of you who have spent their hard earned money moving to a nice area near to St. Goodboys School in the hope that your child might receive a decent education.

The flip side of course is that if you presently live on Hell St. then your children might be given a lifeline and selected for a decent school, which has the potential to dramatically change their life for the better.

Unfortunately this is another of those nice warm, cozy ideas which are always dreamt up by those in Public Office who can avoid any nasty unpleasant realities. In the Real World, all decisions involving large numbers of people need to be looked at from a statistical point of view. The inescapable conclusion is that although there will be a few success stories; on average Kyle plucked randomly from the Grottville Estate has a low IQ and will not get any support from his bovine mother or from her succession of partners who will only seek to guide him into petty crime. Therefore he will utterly waste his place at St. Goodboys.

This is the place that could have been taken by Mr and Mrs Smith's child Daniel, who instead ends up at St. Thickchilds in a class full of Ritalin Rattlers led by a Supply Teacher. With a great deal of support from his concerned parents, he might just about scrape through and get a place on a Comedy Studies course at Scagtown Institute of Further Time Wasting. (On the other hand he might easily sink into the abyss)

At St. Goodboys he would have gone on to study something sensible at a good University.

ps don't bring any Bats into school either.

2 comments:

Ranting Teacher said...

I thought you meant baseball bats for a moment. But now you mention rabid mammals, could you please let me know where I could purchase one? I would quite like a few pupils to see and feel this for themselves before the next full moon.

Anonymous said...

Although never a fan of condemning some kids to the scrapheap at 11*, I can see a good argument for bringing back some kind of selection by merit.

Grammar schools did at least allow some social mobility whereas the current system is essentially a postcode lottery. The government idea of sending kids to the furthest school within the district is ludicrous - and think of all the greenhouse gasses the transport will generate.

Selection by ability will at least allow Duane from the Grottville Estate, who is fairly bright and has supportive parents (and yes, kids like this do exist, even if they're a rarity) to do a lot better than his father the bus driver.

* If not condemned to the scrapheap by accident of birth