A Coalition of Clowns - Big Top Big Society

The BIG TOP - Big Society


Dave decides to rewrite history, Nick can't answer questions until he has asked himself the question first and Osbornegump? Well he just smirks.

A coalition of clowns?

And then there is Michael Gove.
in blazer.
with adviser
and demonstrating his plans for the state education sector .

Clowns have those big feet and Gove has certainly been stomping all over the educational community in the last few weeks.

Talking to Headteachers in the last few months, it is clear there is no great enthusiasm for the new Academies. They want new buildings, more money and greater control of their school's curriculum. Gove has disappointed many with the BSF fiasco and when you get down to the detail you discover that even with new academy governance, new money won't be flooding in. In the meantime, all the expertise, local knowledge and local history built up in the Local Authority teams will be lost.

Once you destroy such a team, it is next to impossible to get it together again. Corporate history and the basics of getting things done for the benefit of the local community will disappear with the LA staff forced to hawk their services elsewhere.

In the Academies Bill debate yesterday, Glenda Jackson made an impassioned appeal for schools as part of their communities. The education world Gove is creating, is a return to the competition, to the lack of local collaboration that initiatives such as trust schools started to create.

Clowns are supposed to make you laugh. But an awful lot of people are terrified of clowns.(Coulrophobia)

I am terrified of what this lot of clowns will do. Big Society? Big Top.

the great TWITTER debate

As a late arrival to this community, I have sometimes seemed over enthusiastic. But there are so many silly things said about what goes online, as well as some very silly twitterers. But I don't think people in education have seen what we can all do with this. Lots of pioneers but the wagons are a long way behind.

So some initial thoughts while they are still in my head.

1. Did some searching for refs to BASINGSTOKE and discovered some useful ideas and people and one twitterer who had nothing to say but had over 1000 followers! Its really easy to see why people who just dip their toes in the water get the wrong impression.

2. On the day of the SOUTH AFRICA elections in April, I watched the voting on BBC News24, SkyNews and AlJazeera. All interesting but not nearly as informative as the tweets from people actually lining up to vote. People in Cape Town were telling each other via TWITTER what queues were the longest and heading off for another station.

The Guardian correspondent in Africa wrote stuff for the paper but in his tweets he gave us much more interesting info. (@SmithinAfrica) . Where else could you get descriptions of what was happening as people arrived for ZUMA's slightly premature celebration party that evening? And I was able to pass on to those who were interested, what the media in the UK was reporting. Some of it was just plain inaccurate.

3. The power of Stephen Fry!! Next post