This is a superb response to the “Pass SATS or you’re a failure” Conservative policy announced today. Every child Matters, right? This paragraph sums it up for me:
“Perhaps most importantly, we could offer kids like mine what their primary school has offered them already : care, compassion; an opportunity to shine at non-academic activities like swimming, or telling stories, or singing; a safe place where dedicated adults try to find what they’re good at (even if they’re not actually that good at it) and nurture those abilities and interests. Rather than saying “Look, kid, you’re 11 now, so jump through this specific hoop, or you’re a failure”, we might see it as our duty to try and offer at least a range of different approaches to education which allow all children to get something valuable out of their last half-decade of schooling.”
My children are adopted. They were adopted at the ages of three, four and six. As with nearly all children adopted in this country over the last couple of decades, this means that their early life experiences were pretty terrible. As each was born, their collective experience of life became more damaging, as their circumstances worsened. So the eldest is least affected as her first years were perhaps less difficult experiences, while the youngest is most affected, as her entire first two years of life were appalling. I’m not going to go into detail here about their specific early life experiences, but if you want to read up on the sort of effects which can result from serious neglect or abuse, then you could read this .
Why am I writing this ? Especially now after midnight in the middle of the Easter holidays ? It’s because I’m so angry I…
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Eclectic pleasures 
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again…. The English mindset. Education is for gentlemen, gentlemen don’t get their hands dirty, so if it’s a practical, hands-on subject it isn’t education. So we won’t count it in our education policy. This lady has pinned it down beautifully.
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