BBC Report this morning:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/5361818.stm

Schools should be given cash incentives to take underperforming children, says Lib Dem education chief Sarah Teather.

Ms Teather will tell Lib Dem delegates that children's school prospects depend too much on what their parents earn.

She wants more funds targeted at children who underachieve, rather than just focusing money on deprived areas.

The "pupil premium" could encourage good schools to take on challenging children rather than leaving them to go to "sink schools", she says.

Sounds like a half baked market "solution" to the problems caused by the marketisation of education in the first place. With schools competing for "the best" children and being held up to account with fairly constant measurement, league tables and inspection, a group of children that no school wants to educate has been created.
A better solution would be to insist that local children go to the properly funded local authority controlled local comprehensive and that competition between such schools be outlawed.

I also would like to see an end to selection. (That includes the closing down of public schools). However, I fear this in itself would not solve the problem. For example, Brighton does not have selection. Before the introduction of league tables, parents sent their children to the neighbourhood school. When exam data was made available parents discovered that the percentage of students getting A-C at GCSE was much lower at the two schools on the two large council estates surrounding Brighton. These two schools then became depopulated. One has closed and the other will go soon. Virtually all these children go to schools nearest to these estates. These schools now have moved down the league table and are in danger of being classified as “failing schools”.

Do you really think it was baked this much?

'Pupil Premium'... as if education needs another set of sound bites! And when did a sound bite ever do any good (although I'm discounting the sound of the biting off of a few heads!)



Here here... A good local school for every child would make selection a nonsense, ease a lot of 'school run' traffic and be of benefit to the community.

Very much into John's idea of closing the 'Public' school system. Apart from the obvious joy of such a two-finger-salute to privilege, it should give the richer sections of society an interest in getting state education right, and that migh end some meddling.

These comments surely just back up my point that it is the introduction of market principles into education which causes all the problems.
A New Labour spin doctor once told me that there was common agreement that "markets" were a better way of organising services... he was wrong and the wasteful and inefficient shambles that is British education and health care today rather back up my viewpoint.