I don't know much about free schools and so what I heard on TV sounded OK. Some schools are failing, parents want better schools, make it easier for people to set up new schools and give them a chance. But I have now read a little about the Al-Madinah school. Has giving a chance led to getting chancers?
I am against "pointless bureaucratic hoops" and the pontificating, patronising progressives who often go hand in hand with them. That's why I like real conservatives like John Redwood who believe in "cutting red tape" and freeing and energising people by removing the weight of an over-heavy progressive bureaucracy from their backs. But if there is too much bureaucracy, then remove some of it, change it, but there is no need to overturn the applecart and throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Just because hospitals are failing and because there is too much form-filling and box-ticking and target setting, does not mean that we should create new "free" hospitals based on "business plans" and a committed group of ex-hospital staff and local citizens. What we should do instead is work within our current system, built up over decades, and remove the barriers to good service and "free" up the workers so that they can provide exceptional care to the public. We don't need new "free hospitals", we need to "free" our existing workers from pointless progressive bureaucracy.
I am sure that we could do the same in our existing schools. If our new schools are "free" schools, then what our our thousands of existing schools and the millions of children in them - "prisons" and "prisoners"? Just because they are State schools does not mean that they are not "free". The State is not a "prison" and the government runs the State, so if the State is too bureaucratic and too progressive, then just change the State, don't treat it and the millions of people who depend on it as a lost cause, don't let them languish in a "prison", and open up a shiny new "free" alternative.
I am a conservative, not a progressive, which is why I am not for constant change which progressives claim will be for "building a better Britain". I am conservative and like things how they were. I preferred it when the energy companies worked for us, when their chief executives got ordinary State salaries unlike the millions in bonuses that they get now. I preferred it when a Prime Minister could tell them what to do instead of telling us to go on to websites and "switch" to another provider because he is "disappointed" in the level of their price rise. I preferred it when our government didn't issue advice to elderly people frightened by the price increase, to put an extra "jumper" on. I preferred it when our Prime Minister and government could do something rather than issue empty words.
I am against progressives and a progressive elite, but I am not against our State or our millions of hardworking state workers. I don't want to see our prisons or our probation service or our police service or our ambulance service or our fire service or any of our other public services privatised and contracts given to the less accountable private companies like Serco, G4S etc. I don't want it because I think the service will deteriorate. I think all these things should remain in the hands of the State. I think that the State has more accountability to the public and is more ethical than private companies. I think that state employees have more pride in working for the State than in working for G4S because the State serves the people and G4S serves its shareholders.
Also, who profits from "free schools"? What are their qualifications? It worries me to read the following about Al-Madinah school and I wonder who was regulating this school and why did it take so long to apparently find that the school was "dysfunctional" and why aren't any heads of bigwigs rolling over it?
"The governors did not answer a series of questions put to them by the Guardian on Thursday regarding alleged nepotism.
This includes allegations al-Madinah's poor computer network has been outsourced to another nearby school, the Noel Baker School, where one of the governors, Ziad Amjad, is head of information and communication technology.
A source at al-Madinah also claimed the school's HR department had been outsourced to a firm, Prestige HR Solutions, run by Javid Akhtar, who became a governor soon afterwards. He is now believed to be chairman of the committee that oversees HR at the school.
Relatives of Akhtar and another governor, Shahban Rehmat, work at a cleaning company awarded a contract at the school, the source said.
The source also claimed that one of the geography recently teachers appointed by the governing body was the brother of Fasal Hussain, another governor. The source said this geography teacher had been turned down for a job earlier in the year when Andrew Cutts-McKay was still head teacher."
www.theguardian.com/education/2013/oct/17/al-madinah-free-school-faces-closure-government
Also, when I read about progressives being advisers to companies like A4E, which have huge state contracts, then I start to worry about the relationship between progressives and some of these large service companies and between ex-civil servants and government people and these giant service companies. This is all State money, the people's money, the money of the "hardworking" millions.
"Blunkett registered earnings of between £25,000 and £30,000 from A4e in the December 2008 Parliamentary register of members' interests under the heading "remunerated directorships". "
www.theguardian.com/politics/2009/feb/01/david-blunkett-private-companies
I am a commonsense conservative, not a progressive revolutionary who wants to change what was good and create a "brave new free world". I have no time for Campbell and his progressive crusade against the Paper of the People, and I don't agree with much of what Fiona Millar says. But I read recently that Fiona Millar decided to turn down the chance to be a One Nation Labour MP and my respect for her increased. Maybe it is because her opposition to free schools and her views on education for which she has campaigned for so long are strongly held and real. Maybe she has principles and is not prepared to follow the New Labour Whips and argue for free schools when she fundamentally disagrees with them. Maybe her principles are more important to her than pleasing the progressives.
When I watch these public school educated Murdoch Sun journalists on Sky News Press Preview, I find I disagree with most of what they say. I wonder if they are in fact progressives rather than commonsense conservatives. They seemed to support that progressive Blair, and maybe they are the progressive heirs to Blair. When they extol the virtues of having ex-soldiers in the classroom in free schools, I think they are wrong.
"Michael Gove has said that he would welcome the idea of former soldiers coming into teaching because they would be capable of re-introducing discipline in the classroom."
blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/janetdaley/100065195/ex-soldiers-in-the-classroom-thats-how-it-used-to-be/
I'm old school, I believe that schools are for teaching, for teachers who teach maths, not ex-servicemen who can set a good example to "da yoof" and who can instil discipline. Has our society really got so bad, has Britain really broken so much, are our children really so feral and wild, that we need ex-military personnel in our schools to teach discipline? Did the progressives ruin our country to such an extent? Is our future to be one of "free" schools staffed by ex-military personnel who will be charged with instilling discipline on our "free" people?
I am a commonsense conservative, old school, from a time when grades were worth something and when standards counted. That was when our State was in charge, when a Prime Minister could tell an energy company boss exactly what to do, not when he had to cajole and ask and invite and then be totally ignored. I don't want a future of having services provided by Serco and G4S and all the rest, and I am beginning to wonder too about these "free schools". I don't want the progressives to play the public for fools.