Education Crisis - Has it occurred to anyone else that maybe the Tories like keeping us plebs thick and uninformed

Teachers are on strike in schools in Barnet as we speak. As someone who is the chair of a charity that oversees fundraising for a local school and has a daughter who works at a local primary school, I see the myriad of issues caused by underfunding first hand. It is clear to me that over the duration of Conservative rule since 2010, there has been a concerted attack on educational standards. There was a time when goinmg into teaching was viewed as a good profession to be in. From what I can see this is no longer true. Due to the strain on school budgets, schools have been getting rid of experienced teachers and replacing them with cheaper, newly qualified teachers, many of whom are good teachers but lack experience. 

Given that the UK PLC is no longer a major manufacturing country, we need a well educated populace to perform in the world economy in 2023. The IMF released figures yesterday showing that the UK had the worst growth of any major country, even sanctions hit Russia is doing better. For me, this indicates an economy suffering lon g term mismanagement. A huge part of this mismanagement is to have a labour market that is not fit for purpose and the reason for that is bad education policies over a long period. 

There is an old saying that if you want to get the truth, follow the money. Where is the money in Education? It is in the private sector and Englands public schools. To see children through a private Education costs hundreds of thousands. No sane person, especially a rich person, who by definition must be reasonably financially astute, would pay such fees if there was not a serious benefit. They know that the cash spent will give a handsome return on investment for their education. I went to Comprehensive Schools, I can read and write and am numerate. For many years, I had an extremely lucrative career as a Freelance IT consultant, despite leaving school with rather poor A Level grades in 1981. I worked with people from all sorts of backgrounds. Much of the work I did was at the real cutting edge of technology. I soon learned that people with private educations, in general, were less technically capable than those in the industry from state sector schools. They did, however, always seem to be preferred for management positions and better paid roles. As managers, they would often have no interest in the technicalities of projects, but would oversee rounds of redundancy, where time and time again the best staff were let go (usually those from state schools and of ethnic minority backgrounds). As one blue chip company, there was much talk of 'ethnic cleansing' when one round of cuts was announced. Just about every person from an ethnic background was let go, whilst some absolutely useless desk warmers were kept. 

I did alright, I generally found roles that no one else could or wanted to do, but it was clear to me what was going on. For years I couldn't get my head around why the UK didn't properly fund schools. Then the penny dropped. I was thinking about this last Sunday. Our drains were blocked and I dug out the drain rods. I bought them 30 years ago for a fiver and they've probably saved me £10,000 over the years in saved plumbers fees, as a callout often costs around £500 and we get one or two blocks a year.  I was brought up to do stuff for myself. However, if you are spending hundreds of thousands of pounds on an education for your kids, you don't expect them to clean their own drains. You want someone else to do that. The truth is that there will always be dirty jobs that no one wants to do. Historically these are well paid. No one would do such jobs if they weren't well paid. But there are plenty of other jobs that only exist because people are too lazy to do the work themselves. The better off members of society do not like to lift a finger unless they have to and this lazy indulgence can only exist if there is a pool of people who are not well educated and prepared to do menial jobs for low wages. 

The bitter truth is that the people who donate millions to the Conservative Party in power have no interest in improving the lot of working people. In fact, quite the opposite, the more people there are to do menial work, the more cushy the lives of the well of are. For people at the bottom of the UK's social structure, there are three ways to lift themselves out of poverty.These are, typically, sport, music and education. Of these, Sport and Music offers limited opportunities for a very talented few. Education is the bus for everyone for a brighter future. It is no surprise to me that people who are too lazy to hoover their own carpets or mow their own lawns are quite happy to see educational standards for us ordinary plebs to plummet. The sad truth is that many very bright people from poor backgrounds are given no real chance from the day they start at a sink school with dodgy teachers. As someone who runs a music studio, I see such people all the time. They drift into music and end up rehearsing with us. When I talk to many, they got almost no education at school, yet make amazing music. Once given a chance, they have passion and commitment. There is a disconnect and it is clear to me why. It is no surprise to me that budget for music education is perhaps the one suffering the biggest cuts. 

It is scandalous and immoral