On 10 Apr 2013, at 19:09, John Francis <[email protected]> wrote: > > I know a little about this; one of my parents (and both of those of my > wife) were life-long teachers. I went to the UK equivalent of both a US > public school (although this was before Maggie Thatcher's drive to full > comprehensive schools, so even then it was a selective 'grammar' school) > and a voucher-supported school (a so-called Direct Grant public school), > so I've seen at least some of the inside of both sides. > > My mother was a very close friend of the headmistress of one of the big > experimental comprehensive schools (Kidbrooke - Bob probably knows of it), > so I also know something about how a public school system can work, and > of the problems encountered in trying to make it work. >
Indeed i do - two of my friends have been teachers there. I went to a gramer schol, which became comprehensive at about the time I was in 6:1. The thing that went really wrong with the transition to comprehensives, which I support, is that some grammars got out of it by turning private, or something similar, and were able to poach the best teachers from the comps, so the comps became a dumping ground for bad teachers. This meant a fall in standards on average. If they had retained the best of the grammar teachers and ethos standards would probably have risen on average. As it is now, though, I think teaching is much better than it was in my day. B -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
