Tessa Jowell is getting tough. She has set her sights on television phone-in shows, warning them that they face being shut down and prosecuted if they ‘operate as lotteries’.
In order not to be classed as a lottery, a phone-in show must offer free internet entry for those who choose not to call the premium rate line.
Tessa will be watching, hawk-like, for any television phone-in shows that fail to do this.
So a television phone-in show, drawing its audience from adults, all of whom have the choice whether or not to take part, dare not act as a lottery. On the other hand, a local education authority may decide, with Government approval, to allocate school places by precisely that method.
Wonderful.
March 27th, 2007 at 1:22 pm
and what is wrong with a lottery for school,places . Its a damn sight better than what we have now which is selection by postcode or in other words wealth. I support Lotteries amd submit that you put this in only because it sounded good and went with your story . GASP !!!
There is a great post up on Croydonian about La Toynbees temporal transformations vis a vis Lotteries
Bye Bel…( blimey now I have that cheese advert song going in my brain)
March 27th, 2007 at 1:31 pm
Newmania, so what you are saying is because some parents already select by postcode lottery, why not introduce a wider-ranging education lottery for ALL parents?
C minus for that response, if you were in my class.
Since we all want lotteries for education, why not that time honoured lottery system called entrance exams? Or is that too taboo to mention? It’s the fairest lottery of all. While exams may not be a true test of knowledge (the ability to pass exams is after all, just that, an ability to pass exams), this ‘lottery system’ is better than the rest because there is at least a good chance that those who make it through have, at the very least, some aptitude for academic study, which is what a school should be focusing, after all.
March 27th, 2007 at 1:39 pm
newmania, I suppose what Bel is saying in her post is that if the idea of a phone in operating as a lottery is so objectionable that Tessa has to wade in to the ‘defence’ of willing adults who choose to take part, then why no such outrage when it is the futures of the nation’s children being decided that way?
Somehow I guess you already know that that was the point of Bel’s post.
March 27th, 2007 at 4:17 pm
lottery systems for schools
. I agree with George Orwell who called Public schools festering breeding grounds of snobbery and the state system has become as bad . By such means as, Buying flats and letting them out in the right area, ,the better off ,cheat the system ,and get their children into what were often ex Grammar schools . Emily Thornberry is typical cheap lying hag, of this variety , and so , of course, is Ruth Kelly .Follwing the development of the housing market since the second world war the re-introduction of grammars would not help break down exclusion
One of things I like about the idea , is that the hypocritical lying socialists will be forced to put up or shut up. At the moment these MP`s ,including Tony Blair ,ship their children into good catchments area schools ,if by some astonishing feat they have not managed to make their wealth tell another way. They would then have to do the full ‘Dianne Abbot ’, and go private, whilst publicly spitting on the educational system they recommend for their constituents.
Pedro replied, “ Fuck that! ,after we scrimped to get
My overarching point is this . There is no justice in the Conservative low tax argument, if the majority are not given a chance to join the competition ,win or lose,. We have to have early state intrusion to level the playing field. After that you should be free to fail . I see it as akin to Monopoly legislation and not Social engineering . It is liberating social movement that happens naturally .
We should indeed have strict lotteries on academic lines ,within wide catchments and ,above all, we cannot justify Private schools . At the very least it is an insult , that the already privileged ,should buy further advantages for their children ,and it is called a charity.
With fair access to education ,a less class ridden society would be less full of envy and the need to shore up infantilised basket cases, would diminish. It is an essential corollary to Conservatism that opportunity exists ,otherwise all we are doing is defending class injustice.
. I know the Libertarians want to be free to take everyone else’s Liberty ,but I have always thought that doctrinaire Libertarianism was bollocks ,and stems from an overly literal and legalistic view of Society . Liberty is something we make from rules , the natural state is the enslavement of the majority ,as it was in all Classical cultures. They have it back to front.