Any Answers?

I find the comment Michael Gove made about making state schools indistinguishable from independent Schools very infuriating and the subsequent comments made by Tory politicians and others backing him up even more so.

I worked in the independent sector as a teacher for 4 years and have now transferred to the state sector. I decided to make this transition as I do not support the independent school system. If it ceased to exist, the standards in state schools would be driven up by pushy parents who no longer have the option of private schools and money could be spread more fairly across children in the country. And importantly it would break down the social barrier and the class system in the UK which leads to arrogance, narrow mindedness and the Tory party!

However, the main point I want to make is that teaching in state schools and behaviour management systems are already far superior to that in the independent sector. It is laughable that Tory politicians say that independent schools have it 'right on discipline'. It you swapped the students in a state school with those in an independent school for a term, the independent schools would be beyond hopeless at dealing with the behavioural issues. The only reason independent schools APPEAR to have it right on discipline is because they have selective intake.

On teaching, I want to make the point that it was very difficult for me to transfer to the state system as it has much more rigorous screening process. The independent sector's admittance criteria is broadly were you privately educated yourself and can you play hockey. It is a bit of an exaggeration but not that much. The state sector interview process was highly demanding, hence why it took me 8 attempts to get a job. The Ofsted criteria for good teaching is hard to achieve. I've had to work very hard to reach it. I've worked in two independent schools and compared to the state schools I have worked in, there is much less pressure on independent school teachers to raise their standards of teaching. Much of the teaching in the independent sector is purely didactic, chalk and talk, low on group work and discovery learning and lacks regular formative assessment and differentiation. But it doesn't really matter as the children are selected so are bright enough to get the results anyway.

I'm just making the point that it is ridiculous that the Tory politicians are saying we need to get the state sector to match the independent sector on quality of teaching and behaviour management policies. If they did, we'd have a much bigger problem in the state sector than there is at the moment!