NEWS ........

By Rodney Atkinson and Edward Spalton

Dateline 23rd August 2006

Rodney Atkinson
The introduction of money into athletics was the prime cause of the massive and virtually uncontrolled drug competition which international athletics has now become. Similarly in British Education when the Conservative Government introduced the concept of students bringing funding with them to the Universities which selected them, the same principle applied. With the masive expansion of University places the pursuit of money relegated the pursuit of academic standards to second (indeed last) place!

Today British Education has descended to the levels of many American Universities and pseudo Universities (many of which advertise their "instant degrees" in the United Kingdom). But the situation is even worse since a record 15% of students who get to university actually drop out before they take their finals. One could perhaps say that they are fortunate not to have added an increasingly worthless certificate to their curriculum vitae.

Plagiarism is rife in the British education system as the non exam-based "course work" with access to already written essays and dissertations on the internet and the "directing" of students towards exam questions have made a complete farce of both school and University exam qualifications. The Exam Board Edexcel found that all students were writing the same essay: "paragraph by paragraph…this is not acceptable" (but they appear not to have failed or disqualified any students).

Students apparently think nothing of paying someone else to do their course work and Universities and colleges conspire with them in accepting inadequate students because they mean money for the institutions which pay their salaries. Students pressure lecturers to give course work for which they know they can find already completed (and marked) essays and dissertations on the internet.

As one schoolteacher described the situation: "In my department the proportion of A to C grades is 54% but taking the coursework element alone we gain a ridiculous 84%". (Sunday Telegraph 20th August 2006)

This Grotesque Orwellian situation in which more is better, failure is impossible and the "best results ever" coincide with ignorant and illiterate students is now beyond parody. But even Orwell in his wildest dreams could not have conceived a British Education system which cannot teach numeracy and literacy but circulates material for use in classrooms for 14 year olds on "oral and anal sex" as my colleague Edward Spalton reveals below. Having recently heard that a Conservative Shadow Education Minister was "well aware" of the scandal in educational standards we might well ask why nothing has been done about it. Next to the decimation of life-time savings by Government inspired inflation, the tragic future for students given fraudulent exam certificates comes a close second in the decadent society which is Britain today.

Edward Spalton
Rather more disturbing than the annual round of ever "improving" exam results is a report which emerged in January and was reported in the Spring newsletter of the Campaign for Real Education.

Professor Michael Shayer, psychologist at King's College London, conducted a study on 10,000 children and found that 11 year olds are now between 2 and 3 years behind in their ability to think and reason, compared to children 15 years ago. Much of this collapse in mental ability took place between 1995 and 2000 but the downward trend appears to be continuing.

Commenting on the study, Sir Digby Jones of the CBI remarked that employers find they have to give remedial lessons in numeracy and literacy to 30% of those leaving school and starting work. David Smith, chief economist at Williams de Broe said "Unlike the government's fantastic elastic standards, this new research is actually trying to measure absolute standards and found that
they are in freefall".

Direct government intervention in the school curriculum was initiated in the early Nineties, following a paper by Martin Turner, an educational psychologist. He conclusively demonstrated that reading standards had fallen over the years. Whilst the then government acted on his report, this did not stop his employer, a Conservative-controlled education authority, from censuring him for letting the facts be known.

A Times Survey in February reported on a survey of 222 top companies which recruit GRADUATES! They complained that "Poor spelling, grammar and mathematical ability mean that graduates make basic mistakes, write illiterate memos and need constant supervision". Admissions tutors from 250 universities complained that they were losing time providing remedial courses in subject knowledge and skills such as writing essays.

On 12 March the Sunday Telegraph reported that many British undergraduates, even those who had won places at top universities TO STUDY ENGLISH LITERATURE cannot compose basic sentences. My own theory is that the recent rapid decline of standards has coincided with the retirement of those teachers who were trained before the great permissive experiments of the Sixties.

Things like this do not happen by accident but through policy. I have a horrible feeling that this trend is part of a deep-laid scheme to produce people of low mental attainments, incapable of deep thought and without the vocabulary for it, whom the government can manage easily.

When you add it to the huge grab for power over children's lives by means of greatly expanded nursery provision, it amounts to something like the nationalisation of childhood. Many of the proponents of this expansion are quite open that they want to use this opportunity to inculcate "values" into the children - such as acceptance of "gay" lifestyles. A "Study Guide for Personal, Social and Health Education" published by Co-ordination Group Publications and used in schools for 14 to 16 year olds contains advice that pupils should practice "sexual touching, talking dirty face to face or on the phone, even sexy emails". It goes on to say "There's no accounting for taste. Not everyone likes oral sex. Not everyone likes ham and cheese sarnies either". It goes on to promote anal sex, saying "some women like it too". Some 60,000 copies of this "study guide" have been sold which indicates the number of misguided teachers in this area.

Parents can be jailed for failing to send their children to school. Yet the school will take upon itself the job of referring children for contraceptive advice or abortions without informing the parents. So the authorities are prepared to connive at the criminal offence of under-age sexual activity, as well as claiming the children for their own rather than the parents'