A great leap forward in Wales’ education policy
THE Welsh Government’s decision to replace the simplistic “Green/ Amber/Yellow/ Red” measurement of schools’ progress and achievement, and to replace it with a much broader, more sensitive assessment, strikes me as the best and most sensible development in political thinking on education in decades.
I taught in Welsh classrooms from 1964 until 1998, and in the earlier part of that time, there were no league tables or official comparisons at all, so I suppose schools were, to use a phrase being quoted now, “marking their own homework”. But, as I experienced things then, most teachers were conscientious and took a real professional pride in their pupils’ progress.
Schools and teachers were not perfect but what human institution ever is? And, for what it’s worth, I must record the widespread belief of the time, here and overseas, that a degree from a British university was a kind of hallmark and that the British education system was the best in the world.
Cue Mrs Thatcher and the first systematic attempts to “make teachers accountable”. League tables, assessments and inspections followed, before we had Tony Blair’s quest for “choice”, with its inevitable creation of a competitive ethos. Now that Michael Gove has complicated the mix with even more obsessive judgements, we are left, after decades of political “improvement”, with an education system in which mistrust (of schools and teachers) abounds.
I am heartily in favour of a system in which teachers are actively involved in framing and developing a school’s ambitions and in which the reports on a school’s progress have breadth and subtlety. Superficially a “1-2-3” system may better suit the kind of political and media attitude which likes to see education as a kind of football match, but I suspect most parents will prefer a more thoughtful report than one which is, of its nature, bound to simplify beyond any real truth. Robert Nisbet Haverfordwest
Flowers vital for food supply
IT IS said that about one-third of the food we eat in the UK relies on bees.
How do we get those with concrete or other hardstanding gardens to plant flowers in order to safeguard their food supply?
PC Williams
Abercarn, Newport
Strange tidal action observed elsewhere
WITH reference to WalesOnline’s story about a “meteotsunami phenomenon” at Solva, exactly the same happened in Newport, Pembrokeshire, on June 18.
We were standing on the balcony of Newport Boat Club watching the tide flood in when the flow suddenly reversed. After about 10 minutes of flowing outwards the direction changed again and began flowing back in.
Unlike Solva, all boats at Newport are on swinging moorings so they just followed the flow.
This odd event happened three or four times before the tide flowed steadily inwards. I’ve never seen the tide do that before.
Kevin Davies
Newport, Pembrokeshire
Chaos looms thanks to Tories’ EU stance
WE HAVE two disastrous scenarios playing out as mirror images of themselves in the UK and the USA.
Over there, we have judges arbitrarily making laws instead of interpreting them, while here we have politicians interpreting, to their advantage, international law instead of negotiating changes.
In the USA, it has been predicted that civil disturbance, or worse, will arise as a result of their stand on abortion.
Here, the unilateral changes in what is essentially the Good Friday Agreement, under the name of the Northern Ireland Protocol, will prove equally disastrous. The EU will definitely consider the UK Government as untrustworthy and will, at the very least, create trade problems with us to protect their own. Also, border-associated violence becomes more than just a possibility.
One solution, to rejoin the single market, if not the EU, is simply not being considered. The safety and good name of UK citizens are being sacrificed on the altar of Conservative conceits and fetishes. They collectively seem to have no concept of their failings.
With ongoing and deepening conflict in Ukraine and seemingly insurmountable economic problems, we are on the point of finding we are out of our depth and unable to swim.
Chaos looms large.
(Mr) Sion Griffiths Trawsgoed, Aberystwyth
We are left, after decades of political ‘improvement’, with an education system in which mistrust abounds
Robert Nisbet
Is Britain becoming a banana republic?
MY SON flew to Barcelona for a few days and just before the plane landed they were told over the intercom where to go for their baggage and within 10 minutes they were out of the airport.
When they arrived back at Bristol Airport on Saturday morning he sent me a video of the chaos there. It was as bad as when that mountebank Mountbatten partitioned India.
I swear I could see Rowdy Yates on a horse (Clint Eastwood’s greatest role as trail boss Gil Favor’s ramrod rounding up the cattle in Rawhide) shouting “head ’em up” and “move ’em out” – they don’t make them like that any more.
Idi Amin famously described Britain as a “humbled toothless bulldog” and promised to send us free bananas. I don’t know who is running the show in Uganda at the moment; however, the everincreasing underclass in this septic isle could do with those bananas; any fruit rich in vitamin C would be welcomed. Buddy Holly had his Crickets, the children of Britain’s underclass are full of rickets. James Barry
Gabalfa, Cardiff
Capital much worse off without its canal
I HEARD that they are bringing back the canal to Cardiff.
But what’s underneath Churchill Way is not the canal, it’s a dock feeder which used to be linked to the canal. In fact, the canal did not run anywhere near Churchill Way, but it used to run from the Docks up West Canal Wharf to Mill Lane and Canal Street through to Hills Terrace and underneath a tunnel at Queen Street.
They have probably regretted fill
ing in the Glamorganshire Canal after all these years.
I think that what they’ve done to the city centre is absolutely disgusting really.
Stephen Malarby
Roath, Cardiff
Blame rail firms for strikes, not union
THE Tories vehemently attack the RMT Union for standing up for their thousands of members.
Don’t blame the RMT for the rail strikes this month; blame the private rail firms who have provoked the strike by refusing the railway workers a decent pay rise.
Solidarity with the RMT.
D Meskill
Aberavon, Port Talbot