Tuesday 2 September 2014

Great student comment on thread following my Guardian article

"I'd be interested to know, how many of the people here attacking Michael Rosen are currently in or have recently been through the education system? Because it's not his background that makes his views valid, it's that he's right. I've just finished school, I've been to state comprehensives all my life. I will now be attending university and in four years time I will have over £50000 in debt and I agree with Michael Rosen.

If I saw diversity among the education team I would find it far easier to have confidence in it. Now the secondary school I went to was very good and so was the sixth form, so good in fact that when looking at applications universities consider to be a private school and yet the students attending have come from a wide diversity of schools some of which this year achieved less than 50% A*-C grades in their GCSEs. My school achieved over 90%. Now is out really fair in this adjustment process of GCSE grades to class these students as the same? No, but they do. 

We need to know about the diversity within an area. We need to see what's really going on with free schools. My sixth form was one that lost out when some of the sixth form funding was turned over to free schools. It would there educate only a tenth as many students. Only those with the interest of the students in mind should be allowed to make policy on education. Or at the very least they should listen when we speak up. "