This saddens me because...
Barrow is a small north western town that can only support a certain number of engineers, hairdressers, mechanics etc yet despite this fact and the fact that such businesses are in a constant ebb and flow of staff, depending on prevailing market conditions, it means kids will be leaving with diplomas that are worthless in this neck of the woods so if they want to pursue their pre-ordained career path they will have to move away which is the exact opposite of the intended outcome of diplomas and the structural Academy school.
This government wants diplomas to keep young people rooted in the area of their birth to help pay for an ageing population and keep parts of the UK 'vibrant'. It's sheer lunacy but it's fact which you can read for yourself across acres and acres of newsprint and internet pages.
And it gets even worse.
The Labour government is now going to bribe kids to take the 'right courses' to ensure their policy is a 'success'.
Considering the hoops we already have to go through to get an EMA allowance for our kids that attend college on vocational and academic courses it shows there will be another level of crazy bureaucracy that serves no purpose. Worse still the EMA is used as a stick by the colleges to keep the kids attending their courses, especially the totally and utterly pointless 'general studies' course, so presumably the new bribe will be used in the same manner.
It all falls down of course because despite what government ministers and their legions of 'special advisor's' think if there are not the jobs available in the first place then no matter how many 'qualified kids' enter the job market they will not be able to gain employment even with their bits of paper.
The only way jobs get created is by a solid and ever expanding economy providing products or services that a lot of people need or by massive over spending on public services that no-one really wants, the latter has been this current governments chosen route and look where that has taken the country.
Here's the link and the story about the latest government bribery.
Young people in England may get financial incentives to take college courses likely to lead to jobs.
Further
Education Minister Kevin Brennan told the BBC details of the plan would
be published in a White Paper on skills later this autumn.
Youth unemployment is likely to hit one million this year. The
government is under pressure to make vocational qualifications more
relevant to the workplace. The Tories say youngsters are being misled. Colleges
have faced criticism over the high numbers of students on "soft"
vocational courses, such as performing arts and hairdressing.
On some courses, the numbers of places far exceeds the jobs available for those who complete them.
More often than not there are not enough jobs for the soft vocational
diplomas, despite this Furness College, Barrow Sixth Form College and
Furness Academy Limited are pursuing Diplomas with increasing vigour.
Dead-end courses
Mr
Brennan admitted too few college leavers were finding jobs, and said he
wanted to work with both employers and colleges to gear the system more
closely to the labour market.
"What we're looking at in
reviewing the skills system for our new strategy paper is to clearly
look at where we place resources, and what sort of incentives we can
put in place for people, to opt into areas which the economy is going
to need in the future," he told BBC Radio 4's Analysis.
The
minister was speaking as figures released under the Freedom of
Information Act revealed further education college leavers were
actually more likely to be unemployed than they were to get a job.
Care to respond in public, Mrs Attwood, Mr Kelly, Mr Blackledge?
The survey of the destinations of more than 40,000 16 to
18-year-olds who completed courses in 2007 showed most went on to study
for further qualifications - many at the same level as the ones they
had already taken.
Clearly the current system is not working.
Nine per cent of the respondents were unemployed, but only eight per cent had found a job after completing their courses.
"We
have to make it more relevant, and get up the numbers of people who can
actually get into work out of further education," Mr Brennan said.
"I've
been meeting with employers to discuss that, and we have been making it
easier for employers to get involved with colleges, and actually design
the qualifications that people take."
Selling illusions
Further
education colleges take on a large proportion of the approximately
250,000 school leavers who fail to achieve the benchmark five good
GCSEs each year. They have been criticised for offering attractive courses which sometimes give students unrealistic hopes of stardom.
No surprise there then. Proof that education
is being dumbed down so all kids get 'something' no matter how
worthless that 'something' actually is. There can be no losers.
For instance, there are more students on courses in performing arts
and media than there are jobs in the entire entertainment industry -
including cinema usherettes and lap dancers.
Guess what sort of Diploma courses Mrs Attwoods college is running!
There are around 150,000 students on hair and beauty courses, which
is similar to the number of hairdressers in the UK and while there are
a total of 140,000 on college-based construction
courses, there are 330,000 doing performing arts and media.
Furness college runs all of these courses and Furness Academy Limited
is going to be running diplomas in these disciplines as well. It's
madness given these figures but its the sad reality.
Mr Brennan said the government was also considering better incentives
for employers to take on apprentices. He admitted he had sometimes had
difficulty persuading even government departments to take on young
trainees.
"I think there has been a cultural change about employment around the age of 16," he said.
"One
of the things I'm trying to do is to get the government itself to take
on more young apprentices, and the view sometimes comes forward: 'Isn't
16 a bit young to be working in the Department of Work and Pensions?'
"But you'll often find some of the senior managers started at 16 in the
old Department of Social Security. We're looking at ways we can make it
easier for employers to take on younger workers."
'Cruel trick'
The
government has already announced its plans to raise the education
leaving age, so that by 2013 all under-18s in England should be in
education or training.
David Willetts, the shadow universities
and skills secretary, said some of the courses currently on offer had
such a poor reputation that students who had completed them were
actually less likely to get a job than those without qualifications.
The way forward was for employers to accredit more courses, he said.
"That
is a very cruel trick to play on young people," he said, adding that
students should also be told which courses would be likely to lead to
jobs.
"The scandal is the very limited information that's
available to young people about the returns to different courses, their
likelihood of getting a job from them, and the shocking erosion of
careers advice in our schools. We are letting them down by not giving them that information," he said.
I doubt Mrs Attwood, Mr Kelly or Mr
Blackledge will publically respond to this, they have never bothered to
respond to anything before, but this is really serious and I'm sure
there are lots of people in Barrow who would like to know why their
children are being trained in disciplines that are more likely to lead
them to the dole queue than secure employment or even their own
businesses so I live in hope.
Will they never learn?
The term “diploma” is so widely used, and has become devalued to such an extent that it makes the “diploma” not worth the paper it is printed on.
The latest I understand is a diploma for shelf stacking in the supermarkets.
Even worse, the diplomas being trumpeted by the Academy will have to compete in the market place with established and accepted qualifications, and are unlikely to find favour
with employers in a straight head to head contest with GCSE’s..
In the early 1960s a Diploma in Technology (Dip. Tech) was on offer for mature students at some of the CAT colleges. The final exams for these were external papers set by the University of London and others.
The full content of these Dip Techs was open to full scrutiny, as these qualifications were going head to head with the established BSc award .
Despite standing up to full scrutiny, Dip.Techs never caught on due to employers (including Vickers) simply preferring to stick with the established alternative, the BSc.
The Dip Tech courses were therefore reluctantly discontinued.
This same scenario is likely to be played out with the Academy diplomas.
Grammar schools – out, Technical schools – out, Comprehensives – out.
When will these bungling fools stop tampering with the educational system?
These are the same numpties that are proposing that every household should have
a slop bucket for left over food scrapings.
Bring on the election.
Thorncliffe's floor targets were nearly as bad as Alfred Barrow's floor targets. The only way to effectively secure the results needed for the government to say that ALL schools in the Furness Area had reached the floor targets was to amalgamate the two of them with Parkview. It had to be about all three schools all the way along Doug.
People tend to forget that Barrow has an 'Excellence Cluster' (BECP) which costs over £5 million per year in addition to the other educational costs. This funding comes directly from the Government. How embarrassing would it have been for the government to admit that two of the 5 the Excellence Cluster secondary schools in Furness had failed to reach the desired floor targets in Science and Maths (which were also part of another two idiotic schemes 'Extended Schools' and 'Pathfinder Trusts' - that cost even more).
Moreover, several people have suggested that Alfs and Thorncliffe being put into Special Measures was political. Yes it was - but not for the reasons people think- by putting both schools in Special Measures, it was a way to improve GCSE results at the two schools dramatically just before the academy opened, this was to remove public pressure for the academy opening and any pressure from existing Parkview parents who may have felt that being lumped with Alfs and Thorncliffe was not what they wanted. Yes Special measures did improve results, as did entering the kids for the 5 Specialised Diplomas (which was granted to the Barrow region by the DCSF for part of the same political reason).
It was, therefore, a source of never-ending consternation of the county that despite all of this, the town would not and will still continue to fall for its political spin.
I have worked for decades at senior level in these schools, thankfully I'm now out of it, and I know this is all the truth. I miss the kids and teaching desperately, but the whole policical agenda was more than a true educationist could possibly bear. The waste of money, the lies, the spin and were enough to make me run from education screaming.
I am not biased, neither am I bitter, just very concerned at the way that education has gone nationally and a feeling of powerlessness to stop it.
If the academy is truly innovative, why didn't Doug, after all the hours he spent in BAE systems, secure engineering status for the Acdaemy instead of letting it slip to Walney?
I offer this word of warning to all - the academy is already 20% overstaffed. Dowdales and St. Bernards are syphoning off the best staff and kids. UVHS is offering free travel subsidies to Barrow kids to fill the places it has spare due to the rise of Dowdales. Walney is now a specialist school and will expand even bigger. Academy numbers in 5 years will be less than 60% of their current number...there WILL be massive staff redundancies, there WILL only be one site (this will probably be after they have opened the new Thorncliffe site academy in 2012 thereby wasting even more money)and Douggie won't care as he will have moved on into Consultancy for Mouchel or, ironically the DCSF.
You are so right Mr Chips! I also know this to be true. It's a disgrace, the political spin and lies are outrageous. But as we know the majority of parents don't have a clue, wouldn't understand even if they did, are so easily conned and sucked into believing that education would not be allowed to fail their children and are so apathetic that the poor little kid's are like lambs to the slaughter. Well not my child, I would rather home educate than send him to the academy.
And yes, I fear that you are also right about about your word of warning to all and most definitely right that Douggie won't give a toss about the trail of destruction behind him when he has an even higher paid job in consultancy. No doubt he'll secure a high profile well paid position for his girlfriend again at the expense of someone else!!
Hi Derek
Media Diploma is taken at the sixth form.
Bring on the election?
What have we to look forward too?
More of the same from the pro Academy Conservatives.
We are truly doomed, there is no decent political party out there with a chance of getting into power.
You are absolutely right. The whole of British mainstream politics is rotten to the core.
My wife and I consider ourselves to be a balanced middle of the road couple, but we will never vote Labour or Conservative ever again.
I look forward to the general election only for the satisfaction of seeing many of these cheating lying scoundrels thrown out on their ear.
It is just a pity that the Liar-in-Chief Tony Blair is not to be amongst them.