Show me in all of that where I have said “the rise in support for right wing politics across Europe” is nothing to worry about, or anywhere close to that.
I was going to ask what the hell the Auditors were doing during this time and then read this:
The roots of the audit crisis – described by one expert as a “public administration disaster” – date back to the former local government secretary Eric Pickles’s 2015 abolition of the Audit Commission, which provided oversight of council finances and audit, and create a private market in auditing local authority accounts.
Oops…
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And I have never fucking said they are. This is a classic Strawman tactic.
There is no point talking to you if you are going to continue to deploy bad faith arguments.
I think we should stop arguing with him. He’s doing this me too. It’s infuriating.
Having spoken to @Lynch04 over private messages before, I don’t think he’s doing this consciously and in bad faith.
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Fixed it for you. Austerity was / is a political choice.
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What’s his excuse then?
You’d have to ask him, not me.
If you’d ask me to speculate, I’d say it’s no more than the usual baked-in narratives we are conditioned into from media leading to confirmation bias, and our own biases colouring what we remember. I wouldn’t say any of us in this thread, let alone the entire forums, is immune from that, just a question of extent.
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Agree with you absolutely. You pay taxes yes? Then your kids should have the same kick back from the government as everybody else. If you choose to top that up for better education, good on you.
And what about kids that need more? Various reasons for this but interested to read your thoughts on that.
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It’s an interesting point. I work in primary schools in the standard ordinary sector. I occasionally run lessons and staff meetings. I’ll give you an example. I know a school that has a room setup purely for 2 kids who are, shall we say, awkward. There are 2 full time staff members looking after them (they perapatet (spelling?) but cover for each other). So that’s a room and 2 salaries for 2 kids just to keep them in main stream education. Separate funding is provided. So kids who need additional help do get it.
Doesn’t alter the fact that if you tax people to death, you should at least pay back to help educate their kids. The right vs left debate looms large over this. Some would say that those who can afford to pay should and leave more for those who can’t. Equally some would say something that doesn’t quite comport with socialist values. If I can pay for my kids, why should I pay for yours too? Springs to mind.
This was actually the argument always put forward by Roy Hattersley. If benefits are universal, then those who pay more in tax are likely to consent to those benefits being provided for those less well off than themselves.
In terms of private education, those who are using it are not denied access to mainstream state education. They are perfectly entitled to use it. However, they are choosing to pay extra to get a perceived (and usually real) advantage for their own children. They are not being denied a benefit that is provided to those less well off than themselves.
I’m a bit more bothered about the effect on those with special educational needs, because many paying to send their children to private SEN schools are those who have been failed by the local authorities acting as gatekeepers.
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The key is that the benefit is universal, everybody gets it.
State education is. As is the NHS. You can chose to go to a BUPA hospital on your own cash, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t still use an NHS hospital.
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Correct but when you send your kids to private school, they don’t turn up at the local primary at 9pm with a broken leg.
Yet again, the issue here is that people view their contribution to education as purely being about educating their own children.
This leads the mistaken belief that if you don’t have kids you shouldn’t have to pay, or the idea that the state should contribute to the private education of your children.
We all benefit from creating a capable, employable and educated population. The economy is enhanced. Crime is reduced. Reliance on benefits and welfare is lessened.
That’s why, regardless of how you chose to educate your own children, you contribute to state education.
It’s exactly the same argument around health. I don’t care if you have private healthcare. You aren’t paying into the NHS for you. You pay into it to create a healthy population, and everyone - including you - benefits from that.
It’s like when you hear businesspeople justifying tax dodging because the don’t use public services. Yeah? Well who is paying to educate your workforce? Who is keeping them healthy? Who is paying for the roads your lorries drive on? Who is subsidising there energy that you use? Who is paying for your rubbish to be collected? Just the simple matter of paying to run the society you operate within?
People have very little sense of how they benefit from public services and totally misunderstand what the point is.
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Not always unfortunately. Which to me is yet another failure of our education system and overall assistance i feel we should expect from government…
There should be something in place that recognises that certain kids are struggling and at the very least identify why. That can be a tough ask but I’m honestly disgusted at the battle I’m having to go through at the moment. It honestly shouldnt be this way.
There will be nothing prior to him going into secondary school and thus far we’ve done all the work regarding assessment and so on ourselves. I recognise some families may not have been able to afford it.
It’s just frustrating that you have to fight for something that should be a basic function of our education system. The easy answer and the result that a tory government wants is that you pay for it all if you want to achieve. Thats utter crap. Opportunity should not be curtailed because parents cant afford it.
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I don’t think so either…
As this is obviously deeply personal to you, I’ll leave it. I wish you all the best and hope that all required help is provided.
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I really sympathise.
We’ve had a similar situation with my eldest son. He obviously has ADHD, and we’ve struggled to any assessment.
The referral has to go via school, and for a long time school just were not that interested. Because he isn’t disruptive and his disorder isn’t externalised that much, they saw no real need to get him assessed.
The problem is that he is quite naturally intelligent (I know, I know - but he is most definitely getting that from his mothers side) and that balances out what the ADHD is dragging down. That’s what some of the more sympathetic teachers were telling us. And that’s why he isn’t getting support - if he was kicking off in class and making it impossible to teach, he’d have been supported by now.
When we finally got the assessment, again we were told that because his behaviour isn’t disruptive they wouldn’t give him support or official take forward a diagnosis. Again, it really felt like his support was being judged on his impact on other kids and teachers, rather than his ability to do his best. It felt like madness to me. All the in school criteria related to his impact on other kids rather than his own impact on himself. As long as school spat out another kid with decent SATS that’s all they cared about.
We’re now about three years into a waiting list for an NHS assessment with very little chance of getting him through before his GCSEs. I feel like the only option open to us is to bite the bullet, go against all my principles, and get a private assessment.
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