Anglesey Council's Heavy Hand

Late last week, some protesters - witnesses say they numbered about 6 - gathered outside to protest about the alleged neglect of horses at an Anglesey farm.

The Council, together with the RSPCA and other agencies, had been involved with attempting to resolve the horses' claimed plight.

Anglesey Council's next security cordon for peaceful protesters?

The six protesters, however, were met with about twenty private security heavies, paid for out of your hard-won taxes.

So there you have it.  Politicians and authorities doing what it has always done in the face of dissent - put up aggressive, disproportionate barriers between it and the people who pay their salaries.

Anglesey Council - Hypocrisy Central

Anglesey Council has "categorically" stated that there will never be a nuclear waste repository on the island.

This reveals the monumental stupidity and sheer hypocrisy of this council and its noddy councillors, who have often been labelled a "basketcase" council by Private Eye.

Anglesey wants the good, but not the bad.

You see, Anglesey has, for the past several years, been enthusiastically embracing a new nuclear build - now to be called Wylfa Newydd, as though it were some innocuous family farm.  This, in addition to its mindless support of the existing Wylfa, now half a century old.

Anglesey council even decided years ago to trademark itself as "Energy Island", although their mandate for doing so is open to serious question.  

So, the message is precisely as we would expect from the parochial, provincial little people who make up Anglesey Council: we want the benefits of nuclear, but not the waste that industry generates, thanks.

This kind of idiotic argument reflects the populist, pathetic politics of recent years in relation to nuclear: those parties, like Plaid Cymru and the Lib Dems, who had 'official' positions against nuclear, saw their local candidates warmly supporting the industry.

The message there was as hypocritical as that against nuclear waste: we want the votes, and opposing nuclear won't deliver them - or so they think.

An Anglesey councillor: "we want niwcliar jobs, not waste.  Baaa.."

Popular support for new nuclear on Anglesey is more an assertion and industry distortion, rather than fact.  An independent, academic-led survey of attitudes to new nuclear asked far more subtle questions of the Anglesey population.

The outcome of the survey by Bangor University researchers was in contrast to industry-conducted surveys: the majority were opposed to new nuclear, not in support.  It all depended on how your framed the question.

So, for the past few years, Anglesey politiicans and the council have been leading the people up a garden path, forcing them to accept new nuclear, new pylons, but no waste.

On all counts, Anglesey fails.  Its Council, already mired in cuts amounting to £20 million over the coming years, is apparently "categorically" refusing to consider the hundreds of millions of pounds offered on a plate, were they to host a repository for waste.  

If ever you needed an example of why people are disengaging with politics, this shameful episode must surely rank as a classic.

Collective Failure

A few days ago, the media rushed through the Executive Summary of the OECD report into welsh education, trying to make headlines before their competitors did.

Overall, the media rightly reported that the OECD study concludes that Wales is well behind other OECD nations, most notably in reading and mathematics, these being rather critical to living a life and finding a useful job.

The report highlights the lack of direction within the welsh system.  This, despite the clear message that Wales is doing very, very badly, and that a clear direction is urgently required.

But, nobody really seems to have a clue.  We're endlessly locked into 'well, Wales isn't like Finland', so we try to ignore everybody else's successes, whilst reinventing the wheel for ourselves - only to find it looks more like a square.

Accountability is highlighted in the report.  The welsh education system is singularly incapable of accepting proper, transparent and fair accountability.  Instead, the profession has ensured teachers and headteachers, LEAs and the education bods win Cardiff are all able to instantly wash their hands of any criticism from parents, carers or anyone below ministerial level. 

That needs to change, because avoiding accountability is the first sign of a failing system, and one that is trying to keep the status quo to maintain face.

Have a look at the graphic on page 24 of the OECD report. It is, without any doubt, depressing, showing Wales bumming along the bottom of the pile.  It is a terrible indictment of everyone within the welsh education system.  Nobody can avoid responsibility for this result, yet everyone is trying to do just that.

Astoundingly - and this is a figure you won't readily find elsewhere - a full two-fifths (that's 40% to you and me) of primary school headteachers have been judged by Estyn to be inadequate.  Read that again: 40%. 

Yet, approach any headteacher with concerns or complaints, and you'' quickly be shown the door, or run through a ridiculous 'complaints process' that nobody has any interest in operating in the spirit of improvement and transparency.  Instead, it's closed doors all the way, aided by nodding donkey governors who, all too often, are precisely those 'local worthies' alluded to by Michael Gove himself. 

The real point that is missed - or is diplomatically blind-eyed by the OECD, is that the welsh education system is a bit like a Masonic lodge or a mafia gang.  It is insular, self-interested and overwhelmingly defensive in its approach.  It is a bunch of people who clam-up on the outside world.  They are within the schools whilst you, the public, are kept firmly 'out there', where you belong and can't interfere.  By following this path, proper scrutiny is unachievable, which is precisely why this path has been followed and reinforced for so long.

Indeed, the OECD report repeats the Estyn view that governors' ability to tackle change is "weak".

Only a strict regime of performance assessment, proper and meaningful parental engagement, and true accountability will do for our kids.  Yet, there are today plenty within the system who will fight tooth and nail to avoid this coming about.  They prefer to damage our kids' prospects than damage their reputations and careers.

I say to those people, 'get out!', because your failure is laid bare in the appalling, terrible outcomes of the system you operate.

Taffia Banshees Out Again

Here we go again!  The Taffia are out to force-feed the welsh language on the unsuspecting populace of Carmarthenshire.

Following the shock!  horror!  finding that welsh is rapidly being dumped as a language by those in the county - which has a rather troubled council, to say the least - the Taffia are out in force (usually about four teenagers, typically kids of ministers, teachers and public sector workers).

The Taffia want the situation reversed.  One wonders about their mandate, but one can only presume, given the downward spiral in the use of welsh, that such a mandate is weak, at best.

It is a damning indictment of the Welsh Government that it readily gives in to the Taffia, and so fails to force-feed 'modern languages' - that is, those which will be of real, practical use - to kids at primary level.  Instead, in the state schools, welsh is seen as somehow a terribly worthwhile language that will somehow drag Wales out of the economic, educational and other doldrums it variously occupies.

The sad reality is that welsh is in decline for a number of complex reasons.  But in simple terms, it is a language spoken by only 250,000 people and falling, is of no use outside Wales (or even, much, within), and the kids of today are looking for something more rewarding than a secure but dull 'job for life' with the local council.

Good luck to them, because the best thing anyone in Wales can do is - yes - join the Germans, French, Polish and Russians, the vast majority of whom speak at least three, useful languages.

Pushing God in Schools

God is a contentious topic, most of all when it comes to God in school.

In the UK, the majority of people call themselves Christian, mostly out of a mindless repetition of what their parents used to say.  Hardly any of this majority, though, pray, attend church or exhibit any identifiable characteristic of a Christian.

A large proportion of the UK, of course, is not Christian.  They may be active Muslims, Buddhists or atheist.

God's got his fingers in education within Wales.

Whilst I have no problem whatsoever with those of a religious persuasion, or in measured teaching of religion,  I do have very great concerns about state-sponsored religious education when it is not balanced in presenting the non-religious view.

Here in Wales, a remarkable statutory requirement is in place to ensure Christian values predominate and our kids are brainwashed into becoming bible bashers.  Or so they hope. Standing committees known as SACREs are in place across the nation, consisting of do-good preachers, religious zealots and such like who like to see their position as telling others what to do.

In Wales, such religious fanaticism is usually blended to make a toxic mix of public sector jobs, narrow-minded welsh nationalism and, more often than you might want to comfortably accept, membership of the Masonic lodge.  In other words, these are the kinds of people that can only get on and influence the world through arse-licking and joining childish roll-up-your-trousers kids' clubs.

The harsh reality is that, whilst these committees are worrying, single-issue aberrations from the past, nobody really takes any notice of them.  Most schools have simply got more important things to do.

Sitting quietly, often lax in their presentation of what actually goes on in those meetings, these SACRE men do, however, do their best to pontificate on how they can make schools - that is, our kids - more Christian.  I'm not sure how many decades behind society these people are, but the sad fact for them is that whilst you may be able to just about get a kid to repeat some bible stuff because they have to, as soon as morning service is over, they ditch God.  Once out of school, they overwhelmingly ditch Him for good.

It's simply a quirk of power and tradition that we still have these SACRE bodies.  A once-powerful church swung legislation in its favour, whereas in Wales, such laws found willing supporters in the shape of 19th-century attitude preachers and good, old-fashioned welsh values (according to them.)

I'd be much more willing to accept SACREs were they balanced by a statutory advisory body on Science.  But they aren't.  In an overwhelmingly secular society, where science and technology have already pushed religion to the severe margins, there ought to be no special, separate place for religion over science.

It's time someone living in chapel la-la land looked at the statistics.  If they did, they'd have to accept that Wales will never be going back to building chapels and churches around every street corner.  Personally, I'd be happy to see a few mosques and synagogues popping up to add some welcome diversity in this monotonal principality.  But I doubt the chapel-meisters would welcome those with open arms, because they are generally not the tolerant sort of people Jesus would have promoted. 

Remarkably, whilst we in the UK think of the US as still locked in church-going and bible-bashing, that view is not generally correct when it comes to schools.  It is, in fact, unlawful to promote (or inhibit) religion in US schools under the First Amendment, a remarkably democratic piece of early law-making that, sadly, has no parallel in the UK.

So, let's make an amendment of our own to change the law, ditch these outdated SACREs, and let those retired, white-haired, white-skinned chapel men go to their maker.  That would be the best way to move our children - and the failed welsh education system - into a brighter future.

Schools: Now it's Cardiff

Cardiff's LEA is the latest casualty in inspectorate reports.  A couple of days ago, Estyn, the welsh inspectorate, classified it as needing "significant improvement", or one step above the bottom, "unsatisfactory."

As this blog endlessly reminds readers, the quality of education, and the ability of anyone to improve it, is in very deep doo-doo, and nobody is taking decisive action.

Because LEAs have consistently been unable to improve the situation, they are claimed to no longer have this responsibility.  Quite why we still have 22 LEAs can probably only be explained by some back-room dealings to ensure those in well-paid jobs can get to their pension without too much fuss.  Those hoping for a cut or even an abolishing of LEAs altogether, have been disappointed.

But, you may also be disappointed if you apply some thought - never a welcome thing with councils - to how 'consortia' are constituted.

Who are the members?  Well, for north Wales, which has come in for particular criticism from Cardiff Bay over the past few months, this is not as readily-determined as it could be.  Their current website is full of tosh about their hopes, but precious little is given away as to who does what.  A large part of the non-PR stuff seems to be accessible only to members.

What can be deduced from the sparse documents made available to the plebs, is that the consortium is simply a gathering of senior LEA staff from each of the constituent councils.

In other words, the consortium is nothing new at all - it is simply those LEAs pretending that, somehow, as a bigger group, they are different and better, and won't be liable to failure as many of them have been as standalone LEAs.

One could call it a gathering of the failed.

So now you know.  Not only have the bigwigs managed to keep their LEAs and perks from the chop, they've shape-shifted into what is in many senses, and quite falsely, being presented to the public as a new way of doing things.  But if the same people are in new clothes, what, other than the clothes, has changed?

Just like the welsh TV channel that nobody watches, we're yet again stuck with the same, tired old actors, and a comfortable knowledge that today is as familiar as yesterday.  That's education.  That's Wales.

Anglesey's New Education Clothes

For as long as anyone's been using their brain, the more considered observers of society have noted how quick the ruling class is to produce new clothes for the Emperor when things aren't going so well.

Recently, the beleaguered Anglesey education department, taken under special measures by the Welsh Government in 2012 for being "unsatisfactory", has been handed a large, multi-million pound grant to consolidate its school buildings and overall services.  The council is match-funding the grant.

But, given that clever people of old were educated with little more than floors to sit on and sand to draw lines in, is spending money we haven't got on razzamatazz new buildings the answer Wales is looking for?

To me, this looks very much like trying to plaster over the criminally poor performance of the welsh education system.  No doubt buildings with better facilities will improve matters somewhat.  But they won't, of themselves, bring about the dramatic and urgent improvements needed to get our kids on a level that isn't, as it currently is, bottom of the PISA pile. 

No, we're so far behind the rest of the world that doing anything other than paying architects, lawyers and LEA chiefs huge wads to build new 'ta-da' constructs is simply too tall an order.  Ergo, revert to the usual answer: bamboozle!

Up and down the country, hundreds of millions are being spent on new school buildings.  Yet, if a fraction of that money were spent on the salaries of the best teachers, and schools given much more independence from the bureaucratic and interfering nightmare of LEA control, then we might find the cost-benefit analysis looks a lot more attractive.

Sadly, we are simply seeing more of the same old crap: throw money at tangible things politicians can say "Look!  See what we have given you!  We are already addressing the problems.  Be grateful and vote for us!"

With a population almost entirely switched off from the self-importance and, more locally, basket-case activities of politicians, far too many tick their ballot boxes without a second thought.  On Anglesey, the electoral results clearly show people, when it comes to the quiet anonymity of their polling booth, vote predominantly for those they know and speak welsh, irrespective of how rubbish they actually are as their representative.

So, the next time you find yourself slightly awed by the glitzy new multimedia, green-powered, sedum-roofed local school, spare a moment to consider that the kids educated in there - and their kids after them - will be the ones paying for it when the current politicians have taken their credit.  It really is 'buy kudos today, pay later'.  Or, as the same politicians always wag a finger at, exactly what we shouldn't do.

Spare a thought also for those countless ones before us who have moved humanity on in leaps, not by relaxing in plush new schools, but by being blessed with naturally superb teachers and an application of talent.