education

11 January 2023

Let’s make private schools help pay for state schools

I’m delighted to hear about this and I hope the vote passes. It’s a farce that place of privilege should gain tax breaks and have ‘charitable status’. As I’ve said many times before, opting out of state education and the NHS should be, either impossible or ridiculously expensive.

Labour will attempt to force a binding vote on ending private schools’ tax breaks and use the £1.7bn a year raised from this to drive new teacher recruitment.

The motion submitted by Keir Starmer’s party for the opposition day debate on Wednesday is drafted to push the charitable status scheme that many private schools enjoy to be investigated, as the party attempts to shift the political focus on to education.

[…]

Labour will hope the motion will force the government to make its MPs vote down an issue, rather than ignoring the process. A Labour source has previously said: “Conservative MPs voting against our motion are voting against higher standards in state schools for the majority of children in our country.”

Source: Labour look to force vote on ending private schools’ tax breaks | The Guardian

30 September 2022

AI everywhere in education

Jon Dron makes a good point here that we need to put the humanity back into education, otherwise we’re going to have AI everywhere and a completely broken system.

I thought it would be fun, in an ironic kind of way, to use an AI art generator to illustrate this post…

To a significant extent, we already have artificial students, and artificial teachers teaching them. How ridiculous is that? How broken is the system that not only allows it but actively promotes it?

[…]

This is a wake-up call. Soon, if not already, most of the training data for the AIs will be generated by AIs. Unchecked, the result is going to be a set of ever-worse copies of copies, that become what the next generation consumes and learns from, in a vicious spiral that leaves us at best stagnant, at worst something akin to the Eloi in H.G. Wells’s Time Machine. If we don’t want this to happen then it is time for educators to reclaim, to celebrate, and (perhaps a little) to reinvent our humanity. We need, more and more, to think of education as a process of learning to be, not of learning to do, except insofar as the doing contributes to our being. It’s about people, learning to be people, in the presence of and through interaction with other people. It’s about creativity, compassion, and meaning, not the achievement of outcomes a machine could replicate with ease. I think it should always have been this way.

Source: So, this is a thing… | Jon Dron

Image: DALL-E 2 (“robot painting a picture of a robot painting a picture of a robot, in the style of Rene Magritte”)

9 August 2022

Eddie Jones on how privately educated rugby players ‘lack resolve’

It’s no secret that I believe that private schools shouldn’t exist. I’ve explained why so many times over the years I almost don’t know where to link, but try this from 2012, or this from 2019. Ben Werdmuller also shared his thoughts a week ago.

I’m pleased to see this report of comments made by Eddie Jones, England Rugby Union’s head coach on private schools. I think we’re coming to realise, as a society, that more diversity really is better for all of us.

Jones, 62, claimed the pathway produced players who had enjoyed a “closeted life” and lacked “resolve” in a weekend interview with the i newspaper.

[…]

Jones had claimed in his interview that “you are going to have to blow the whole thing up” as the system yielded young players who struggled to lead because “everything’s done for you”.

“When we are on the front foot we are the best in the world,” Jones added. “When we are not on the front foot our ability to find a way to win, our resolve, is not as it should be.”

Source: Eddie Jones: England head coach admonished by RFU over private school system criticism | BBC Sport

Tag: education (page 1 of 12)

Let’s make private schools help pay for state schools

AI everywhere in education

Eddie Jones on how privately educated rugby players ‘lack resolve’