07 April 2008

University aspiration gap remains: it's the learning styles!

Not surprising but still concerning: University aspiration gap stays stubbornly wide, survey shows | higher news | EducationGuardian.co.uk: "While overall the proportion of children who say they would like to go to university has increased from 53% in 2000 to 62% in 2008, the gap between the social classes has not narrowed."
It's about aspiration, yes. And it is good that more now aspire to university. But I suspect that we're still suffering from a malaise borne of an inappropriately narrow view of education and 'academic' which goes right to the start of formal education and begins to exclude able kids who happen to have background detriments or who are not able to key into dominant schooled learning styles. And half the problem is that the parents who take most interest are the ones who like it that way, and the ones who don't, don't because they too were failed by the system. For them and their offspring school is at best a child-minding service and more often a form of day-prison. How do you get a child to aspire to do more of the same voluntarily? And go into debt for it?

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"Spend and tax" not "tax and spend"

 I got a response from my MP which got me kind of mad. You'll see why as I reproduce it here. Apologies for the strange changes in types...