Education continuing to fail under Labour control in Wales

[Heathblue]

I've said the same so many times, wherever 'Wales' is compared with 'England'.
I wouldn't want to defend poor standards in Education, nor failing NHS performance targets etc, etc, but the England/Wales comparison is clearly not like-for-like.
Yet political mileage is wrung from it.

I'm not sure why people want to compare it with any other country, the point was, education standards are failing in Wales and that's concerning, I have no idea why the usual suspects think that spending vast amounts of money are the answer to teaching children to add up and take away, reed and rite and actually turn up for school.

[Dr Tim Muff]

I'm not sure why people want to compare it with any other country, the point was, education standards are failing in Wales and that's concerning, I have no idea why the usual suspects think that spending vast amounts of money are the answer to teaching children to add up and take away, reed and rite and actually turn up for school.

So without comparing to another country, what persuades you that Wales is failing?

[Sgt. Pepper]

I'm not sure why people want to compare it with any other country, the point was, education standards are failing in Wales and that's concerning, I have no idea why the usual suspects think that spending vast amounts of money are the answer to teaching children to add up and take away, reed and rite and actually turn up for school.

Apparently you have deliberately missed the obvious point that was made.
The point is - how can Wales be compared with England? Overall they almost certainly very different, socially, economically, demographics, communications, average earnings, health, wealth etc etc etc..

Now if you compared Wales with a combined area of 'similar-to-Wales' counties - say Derbyshire, Yorkshire, Tyne & Wear and Cumbria, you might get a very different set of results. We might not look so 'behind' after all.

Now lets compare both of those with say : Berkshire, Hertfordshire, Sussex and Surrey...

Again, I don't want to defend poor Education standards - not in Wales, nor anywhere!

It is frustrating to see yet more Wales bashing after employing the usual wholly inaccurate 'comparison' model.

[tommy31]

Apparently you have deliberately missed the obvious point that was made.
The point is - how can Wales be compared with England? Overall they almost certainly very different, socially, economically, demographics, communications, average earnings, health, wealth etc etc etc..

Now if you compared Wales with a combined area of 'similar-to-Wales' counties - say Derbyshire, Yorkshire, Tyne & Wear and Cumbria, you might get a very different set of results. We might not look so 'behind' after all.

Now lets compare both of those with say : Berkshire, Hertfordshire, Sussex and Surrey...

Again, I don't want to defend poor Education standards - not in Wales, nor anywhere!

It is frustrating to see yet more Wales bashing after employing the usual wholly inaccurate 'comparison' model.

Why is wales in such a state that it ca't be compared to those areas? Who's run it into the ground?

[Eric Cartman]

Why is wales in such a state that it ca't be compared to those areas? Who's run it into the ground?

Was Wales previously very high performing educationally?

[Heathblue]

Apparently you have deliberately missed the obvious point that was made.
The point is - how can Wales be compared with England? Overall they almost certainly very different, socially, economically, demographics, communications, average earnings, health, wealth etc etc etc..

Now if you compared Wales with a combined area of 'similar-to-Wales' counties - say Derbyshire, Yorkshire, Tyne & Wear and Cumbria, you might get a very different set of results. We might not look so 'behind' after all.

Now lets compare both of those with say : Berkshire, Hertfordshire, Sussex and Surrey...

Again, I don't want to defend poor Education standards - not in Wales, nor anywhere!

It is frustrating to see yet more Wales bashing after employing the usual wholly inaccurate 'comparison' model.

Selective interpretation, I'm not Wales bashing as you put it, but pointing out that, education standards in Wales continual to fall under Welsh Labour, if you are happy with it, then fair doos, Devolution in Wales took place in 1997-1999 and the Welsh assembly has been in Labour control since, the stock response, repeated by their stooges on here is "Blame Westminster and cash starvation" they did try a little swerve last year by putting a Lib Dem in charge of education, Whatever the Labour boyos do, it isn't benefitting the children but the eligible voters still do what their fathers told them, and that is to vote for a turd with a red rosette, I'm a traditional labour voter but Welsh Labour isn't good enough and although would probably go with Dustbin at the next election, would like to see a change of government in Wales, you never know, Wales might prosper because of it and education standards may rise.

[Sgt. Pepper]

Selective interpretation, I'm not Wales bashing as you put it, but pointing out that, education standards in Wales continual to fall under Welsh Labour, if you are happy with it, then fair doos, Devolution in Wales took place in 1997-1999 and the Welsh assembly has been in Labour control since, the stock response, repeated by their stooges on here is "Blame Westminster and cash starvation" they did try a little swerve last year by putting a Lib Dem in charge of education, Whatever the Labour boyos do, it isn't benefitting the children but the eligible voters still do what their fathers told them, and that is to vote for a turd with a red rosette, I'm a traditional labour voter but Welsh Labour isn't good enough and although would probably go with Dustbin at the next election, would like to see a change of government in Wales, you never know, Wales might prosper because of it and education standards may rise.

Seriously, I don't know how you got to any of ^^ that as a reply to what I posted!
I have not said that I think it is good enough.
I questioned the measuring system.

[Eric Cartman]

I'm not sure why people want to compare it with any other country, the point was, education standards are failing in Wales and that's concerning, I have no idea why the usual suspects think that spending vast amounts of money are the answer to teaching children to add up and take away, reed and rite and actually turn up for school.

I sit near to the team who deal with pupil attendance and in the last few years the approach has changed from working with families to improve attendance to fine fine fine and take them to court if they don't pay - all due to cuts in funding/capacity, the team simply don't have time to do a proper job. I live in England but I would imagine the same can be said of Welsh local authorities since the government drastically reduced funding in this area. This will only get worse with academisation.

There is a massive (and seemingly unrecognised if this thread is anything to go by) correlation between family wealth and pupil attainment. Look at a map of the UK and in general the poorer areas are the lower achieving. There is an even bigger correlation between parents level of education and pupil attainment, effectively what we have is a never ending cycle - until we find some way enhancing the prospects of poorer children.

edit/ I lost my way a bit there. The point I was making is that funding does matter! Resources cost money, motivated staff cost money, school buildings that aren't falling apart cost money, services to catch those who aren't achieving their potential cost money.