Posted by: David
on Jun 16, 2010
Disciplinary issues, truancy, special needs (to integrate or to separate) – some of the everyday problems which beset teachers in our schools, and that’s before you get to the administration, let alone actually start to teach!
Teachers are not necessarily equipped to be social workers, psychiatrists, or, heaven forbid, policemen, yet even the most damaged (in the widest sense of the word) children can be helped with the right care and attention – see www.kidsco.org.uk, the charity founded by Camila Batmanghelidjh in 1996. Of course, such care and attention costs money, but in today’s climate, with disruptive pupils in particular, it is exclusion that sometimes seems as though it is becoming the weapon of first, not last, resort.
Such – neglect? - however can be an expensive solution – expensive in human terms, because it can lead to semi-literate adults with significant unemployment issues, perhaps even drug abuse and criminality, but expensive too in cash terms, because of the opportunity cost to the economy as well as the additional costs to the public purse in terms of the justice and health systems.
Posted by: Martin Bojam
on May 19, 2010
Any motorist driving to work at school times will be familiar with the congestion caused by the school run - but what are parents to do? Schools are often not within walking distance of home and if you have two or three children at different schools – which does happen - how do you cope? Choice (whatever it may be) is universally held to be a good thing, but in practice it often means that children do not go to the nearest school. How can government want parents to have a choice of school on social grounds, and also encourage women to work on economic grounds, and promote children walking to school on health grounds - but at the same time make all of this all but impossible because it means that children attend schools miles from home? There is a further effect, namely that driving is the only practical way of getting children to school on time, especially outside the major conurbations.
So much for environmental policy.
