Quote:
Originally Posted by 320touring
Now Now... There are only so many new McDonalds branches opening every year..
And who wouldnt want to have to spend 4 years getting a degree for a £800 a month Classroom assistant post?
TBH the money would be better spent giving classroom asssiatants recognition of the importance of their job, and a livable working wage
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I agree with the comment about classroom assistants, its a valuable role that needs development in most school environments. I'll come back to schools in this rant in a moment.
My frustration is with childcare, things like after school clubs and so on. Because of the changes in regulation the ASC we use has had to sell off it's vehicles and make the drivers redundant. Instead they now use commercial coach services. This also means that they can no longer offer flexibility for activities such as out of school clubs or sports like they used to. They are offering taxis to do this.
Of course the drivers are Disclosure (criminal records) cleared, taxi drivers tend not to be as you don't need it to get behind the wheel of a black cab.
The qualifications required now mean that (for example as I understand it) young people studying child related items - such as childcare or teaching - can't be employed by these clubs on a part time basis. Even though they have first aid training and criminal clearance and could use the cash. My own ASC has advertised for staff and there are people unemployed and available subject to clearance and training but they can't be used.
This is partly due to the fact that the McGovernment decided it wanted to save money. So it decided on a lighter inspection regime under the new SESWSDCSSWSEW or whatever the organisation is called, and to offset the effect demanded higher standards from carers - standards they could check online or without leaving an office. It saves money because of fewer inspections.
Of a qualification doesn't make anyone any good, there are quite a few qualified techers who are useless. Surprisingly few of them seem to get fired though...
Thats one aspect, the other is this new education curriculum in Scotland.
I got A Junior's school report at the end of last year. It was a single sheet of A4 of which about half was space for the content. So I get 1/2 a sheet of A4 as a summary of how my child is doing.
Not only that but its (excuse me) b@ll@cks. Its one of those wishy-washy nonsense reports put together by a piece of bingo-carp software packages. Bit like a school report version of this
I have no idea from reading it whether my son is doing well or not in school.
I have no idea if he needs help to keep up or something extra to stretch him and keep him interested.
There are NO assessments, no idea of where people are.
I have to pay an outside company to test and assess my son and they rate him as being almost S1 stage for most things - he has just started P6 (thats a 3 year difference).
I'm going to send his report to Mr Russell (education secretary) and ask him to tell me if he thinks my son is doing well or not from his school report. No doubt I will get the usual carp about how the new system needs to bed in etc.
But at the same time as all this is being done, the Scottish education system that used to be 3rd best in the world is now outside the top 10 and even ranked below the English one despite spending more money per child.
EDIT - The key thing here is that whilst they are dicking about with the system, kids are going through it and they only get 1 chance.
Rant over and disclaimer, I have no political views for or against the SNP or Scotland's desire to have its own government although I am English
