Education Secretary Nicky Morgan is gaining a
reputation for mishandling statistics. And this won’t be improved by her knowing the 12-times tables which, according, to Morgan, will push English children up the
PISA rankings.
But the mishandling reached new levels of daftness on BBC’s Question Time on Thursday*.
Morgan was defending the cut in education funding in real terms under a future Tory Government. But schools WILL get more money, she said, because pupil numbers were rising. If a school had more children then it would get more money. Therefore, the amount of funding in that school would rise. It would have more money to spend.
But this ignores the fact that the money available to spend on each child will not rise. In real terms, it will fall.
Morgan wasn’t alone in making this silly statement. David Cameron said the same thing in his
recent speech.
‘The cash sum that follows your child into the school will not be cut. Because the number of children going to school is going up, this has an implication that means that in cash terms the schools budget is going to be rising.’
He didn’t seem to realise he was contradicting another statement when he admitted per-pupil spending would go down.
So, don’t worry, parents. When your child’s school admits more children, class sizes rise and the amount spent on your child goes down, it won’t matter because your school’s budget will go up because, er, the school’s got more children.
*Watch it
here (no time limit – the programme will remain in the archives for at least five years – programmes are available from 2010). The education question starts at 22.11 minutes into the programme.
Comments
Cameron's wording, though is clever. His statement "in cash terms the schools budget is going to be rising" suggests individual school budgets will go up - but can be true even if there is no rise at all in budget in the vast majority of schools.
Or maybe the start-up funding which seems to go on for ever.
All this fuels the suspicion that some schools are treated more favourably than others.
I was equally as disgusted by the vacuous performance of Tristram Hunt on Question time.
The mounting negative impacts building up within the profession leads me to have the most serious fears about the very real potential for a marked melt down / implosion facing schools.
Instead, he said something daft about the convent teachers being nuns. Own goal, I think.
He took appalling and dismal to new even lower levels.
He was the epitome of a career politician playing at shadow education secretary. Morgan does the same but, and I hate to say this, she does so with greater panache and confidence.
I do agree, Andy. From Nicky Morgan we got what we're used to, but I felt Tristram Hunt sank to the occasion. Then I found myself in the slightly uncomfortable position (for me) of agreeing with George Galloway, who was calling for decent education provision/funding for his constituency. Sigh!
But in her reply she's added the word 'properly' to her sentence.
That's not what she said originally, as FullFact points out.
In any case, 'properly' is subjective. If a child leaves primary able to read and write 'properly' because s/he's reached Level 4, can that child no longer read and write 'properly' if s/he doesn't get a 'good' GCSE grade?
She criticises the fact that children who enter secondary school with Level 3 don't achieved Grade C. But DfE target for such children is a D. You'd think a SoS would know that.
The inclusion of 'properly' reminds of the comment by the head of the Basic Skills Agency some years ago .who said,given time, he could prove every adult in Britain was 'functionally' illiterate!
Read the full post at http://www.schoolzone.co.uk/schools/blog/What_does_a_standstill_budget_m...
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