Learning from Finnishing schools!!

When it comes to education, there is indeed, as your editorial stated, "a lot to learn from Finland" (Morning Star, 14/01/19). It is all too obvious that private schools, with 6% of all children attending them, have far too many places in our so-called "top" universities, and too much influence in the running of the country, especially economically and politically. Measures are clearly needed to redress some balance, perhaps by taxing fees and reducing their financial benefits gained through their charitable status, or by preventing them using lightly regulated examinations like the Pre-Us which include coursework as part of the grading process. 

    The constant use of OECD/Pisa data to "evaluate student performance and make comparisons" with other countries has to stop, especially as these are often flawed, not even based on a common test, but involving students in different countries answering different questions! Increasing pressure to succeed in education is an important reason for the rising incidence of depression in young people, but here at least, there is a relatively simple solution.

   With scandals revealed over public school pupils being able to avoid the more difficult exams, both at GCSE and A-level, examinations causing huge stress and anxiety amongst pupils in the state sector, and universities, desperate to get "bums on seats", offering increasing numbers of unconditional offers, isn`t it time to get rid of the majority of external examinations, and follow the Finnish example of having one pupil performance test only? Teacher assessment has always provided a far more accurate indication of pupils` potential anyway!

May`s "cunning plan"

The "decisive rejection" by MPs of May`s withdrawal agreement does appear to make it impossible, as your editorial says, for the motion to be brought back to the Commons, even "with a few tweaks from Brussels", and "hope for success a second time around" (May`s Brexit deal did not survive contact with the Commons. What will? 16/01/19). A cunning plan, however, could seal the deal for the prime minister: before a second vote on her "tweaked" deal takes place, she should announce to a meeting of her MPs that if it fails again, she will announce a general election. Will the 118 Tory MPs who voted against her be so eager to betray her a second time, with the alternative being the challenge of defending nine years of needless austerity, underfunding health, caring and education, and cutting taxes for the rich? Even Baldrick would know the answer!

Reform of the private schools

Reform of the private schools, as Kynaston and Green suggest, is indeed "long overdue", and some of their proposals, especially relating to taxing fees and reducing tax subsidies, are especially welcome (If private schools are the engines of privilege, isn`t reform long overdue, 13.01.19). It was strange though that they didn`t comment more on the fact that private schools are "working" the examination system, and suggest the probable reasons for it. Shouldn`t parents spending vast amounts of money on their children`s education be worried that most private schools are now opting for Cambridge Assessment`s IGCSE and Pre-U examinations, both allegedly easier, and both including coursework as an assessment option. Pre-U examinations are more lightly-regulated than their A-level counterparts, and have much higher percentages of A*-A grades. With all the resources at their disposal and "especially small class sizes", one would have thought good schools would relish the challenge of newly reformed, and more rigorous, examinations.

 The authors rightly recommend "contextual admissions to universities", but perhaps should have added that the only entry qualifications for our state-funded universities should be A-levels, described by Ofqual as "national qualifications based on content set by the government", which Pre-Us certainly are not, and BTEC`s vocational qualifications. This would have the effect of ensuring that the huge advantages privately educated pupils have over pupils from underfunded state schools do not extend to a different route to higher education. As "6% of the UK`s school population" attend independent schools, banning universities from having more than 6% of their undergraduate intake from the private sector does not seem unreasonable, either!

Why Labour should support a 2nd referendum

It does appear that Labour`s leadership has realised, at last, that a hard, or even no deal, Brexit "won`t just be blamed on the Tories" (Disaster looms. Can MPs act quickly enough to save us? 12/01/19). The large number of Remain voters who voted Labour last time might not be too keen to replicate the act in the next general election, whilst Labour`s Leave-voting supporters will not be happy either with the Norway option, which includes large cash payments and "a commitment to free movement".

  If the only solution is support for a second referendum Labour is right to be wary of the People`s Vote campaign appearing as "a Blairite shadow army". Just as few will ever forget the Tory nonsense about us "all being in it together", plenty of disgust was also registered with too moderate New Labour being "intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich". The Labour leadership launching its own second referendum campaign, along the lines of "Labour for Democracy", could prove the answer, taking control of both the message and the messengers, and able to ensure Blair and co. were kept on the sidelines.

    If Brexit were to be overturned, Labour could escape responsibility for free movement`s retention, and losing Leave supporters votes would not be guaranteed. I`m surprised no one has used this analogy to counter anti-democratic criticism and justify a second vote: imagine if a party won a general election by promising to cut all income tax rates by 10%, but after two years had failed to act on the election pledge. Everyone would demand another election immediately, and justifiably so. Hasn`t something similar happened here since 2016?

Hopefully Clarkson is right!

Hopefully, Jeremy Clarkson is right (Clarkson: BBC favours women over men, 08/01/19). If it is true that "male presenters should accept they have no chance of winning jobs at the BBC", the nation should celebrate. The more of the likes of Clarkson, Lineker, Humphries and Shearer who go where their obscene levels of pay are provided by gambling companies paying for advertisements, and not by the corporation`s licence-fee payers the better. 

It`s high time the BBC shed its image of an over-paid boys` club, sorted out its pay structure, with a sensible cap on top earnings, cut down on the number of managers earning over £150,000, currently at well over one hundred, and ended the culture of tax avoidance within the corporation.

Unpublished NS letter on editorial policy

The Leader`s summary of the dire effects of the ideologically-driven austerity measures ends with an admission that this "is not left-wing alarmism" (After austerity, 7th December, 2018). Its conclusion, therefore, seems rather bizarre; the statement that the country is "in urgent need of social and economic renewal" is accompanied by the implication that the reason is that the government is "absorbed by the epic task of Brexit"! Does the New Statesman really believe that if it wasn`t for the 2016 referendum result, a Tory administration would have delivered the transformation required? With no workers on company boards, no "burning injustices" removed, but much underfunding of key services, and budgets favouring the rich, where is there an iota of evidence to support this?

     One also wonders why, in the same edition`s "Editor`s Note", Mr Cowley says that in the light of recent events like "the collapse of the centre-left across Europe", what the UK needs is "moderation". Surely the main reason for the decline of the centre-left has been its support for moderate, laissez-faire policies which have failed to rein in either the excesses of capitalism or the rising inequality?

By all means, "take the New Statesman upmarket", but being free from "the clutches of the Labour Party" does not mean unfair criticism of every one of its policies is required; dismissing its electorally-popular pledges to increase the income tax paid by the rich as "unimaginative" (The tax conundrum, 16th November 2018) smacks of unnecessary bias, when for most voters these proposals look about "the best in context"! "Getting the balance right" requires that left-wing solutions are not always lambasted!

Guardian letter on private schools "gaming" the system

Of course, it`s welcome news that Labour is demanding an inquiry into the ways private schools are "gaming" the examination system, and Angela Rayner is absolutely correct to say that we cannot have an education system "with different rules for the privileged few" (Labour calls for an inquiry into GCSE changes "gamed" by private schools, 31/12/18). The inquiry, however, must go further than looking into what is happening at GCSE level where clearly private schools prefer to use Cambridge Assessment`s IGCSE exams, because they are "less robust". 

   The fact that more and more private schools are opting for Pre-U examinations rather than A-levels is also worthy of investigation. With much higher percentages of A*/A grades, papers set and marked by teachers in the independent sector, and with a more lightly-regulated regime than A-levels, Pre-U examinations, also provided by Cambridge Assessment, could well be another means of giving the privately-educated yet more advantage over the pupils from underfunded state schools "in the race for university places"!

   The general secretary of the Independent Schools Council might well say that private schools have a duty "to ensure their pupils are fully prepared for their next steps in life", but is it fair that those "steps" are so far ahead of pupils in the state sector, when increasingly suspicious methods are being used?