"Accurate, transparent data are critical to local decision-making and parental empowerment."

To better understand just how difficult it can be to collect the correct data and report it the right way, picture this: State education department officials from 40 states have been meeting twice a month since fall 2016 to iron out the intricacies involved in complying with a new federal mandate that requires them to publish how much federal, state and local money every school in the country receives.

They call themselves the FitWigs – short for the financial transparency working group – and their job isn't an enviable one: Figure out what pot of money is used to pay for which personnel and what programs at each individual school.

"It's sort of amazing to watch it play out," says Marguerite Roza, research professor and director of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University, who helped mobilize the group nearly two years ago knowing full well how difficult a reporting requirement it would be for school districts.

"They don't have a lot of capacity," she says. "They have a hard time keeping staff. The work that's put on their shoulders is big and huge."

The mandate is one of the last to go into effect as part of the Every Student Succeeds Act, the federal K-12 law that Congress passed in 2015. Among many other things, the law ramps up data reporting requirements for states, districts and schools. In addition to reporting individual school spending, it also requires, for example, that every school keep tabs on students who are chronically absent.

"They're not in panic mode right now," Roza says of states, adding that most of them already issued guidance and instructions to school districts and some have even tested their data collection system by having districts log into a portal and input it as if they were doing it for real.

"They've rolled up their sleeves and are marching forward," she said. "The biggest loose end that most of them don't have figured out yet is how they're going to display the data. That's the work they have left."

That being said, Roza fully acknowledges that the first year of reporting the spending data won't be perfect.

"There are places where the first years of data are messy, and that's just what its going to look like," she says.

To be sure, data discrepancies aren't solely the result of faulty data input. They can also be driven by incentive to look better, as is believed to have been the case earlier this year when an investigation revealed that 1 in 3 District of Columbia Public Schools students who graduated in 2017 shouldn't have received diplomas due to missing too many classes or improperly taking credit-recovery courses.

There's also the case of breathing life into a convenient statistic that fits in neatly to enforce a narrative but goes unchecked before it's used. That was the case last week when Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos during the first G-20 education summit in Chile repeated a claim that 85 percent of the jobs of 2030 haven't yet been invented.

"You throw all of this stuff into a blender and all of sudden I'm not so sure about the things I was sure about this morning," Pondiscio says. "I'm not the guy who says don't use data to inform your decision. And, not to say we shouldn't be trying to get better at this or ignore it, but it should make us more reflective. The incentive you have to make things look better than they really are, you know, this is all a giant study in conflicting interest and data confidence."

However they come about, data discrepancies can have real-world implications for researchers, practitioners and policymakers who make important decision about how to run school systems and ultimately for students who enroll in them.

The revelation that only a fraction of the students the District of Columbia reported as graduating should have been graduating, for example, rocked the education reform community, which for years heralded the District as the fastest-improving in the country and one that was reaping the benefits of more rigorous standards, new teacher evaluation and compensation models, and increased school choice. Indeed, many other urban districts looked to the District as a model for wholesale improvement.

Kowalski is quick to note that the country has only been in a "make-data-useful environment" for about a decade and that demand for data is higher than ever.

A new Data Quality Campaign poll, for example, shows teachers and parents understand the value of data and want to use it to make decisions on how best to educate students.

"I think our polling shows that there is widespread demand and belief that data is a critical strategy for decision-making in education," she says. "That level of belief and demand should drive the resources necessary to get quality data in the hands of those who need it most.

Will Bezos Heed Other Education Philanthropy Mistakes?

The world’s richest man is heading down a path of charitable giving that has tripped up some of his contemporaries.

AMAZON FOUNDER JEFF Bezos is the latest tech giant to splash onto the education philanthropy scene, announcing plans to develop a network of preschools funded through an initial $2 billion commitment.

"The Day 1 Academies Fund will launch an operate a network of high-quality, full-scholarship, Montessori-inspired preschools in underserved communities," Bezos wrote in a letter posted to Twitter on Thursday morning. "We will build an organization to directly operate these preschools."

In doing so, Bezos follows in the footsteps of other tech giants, like Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and Laurene Powell (the widow of Steve Jobs), who have all directed through their foundations hundreds of millions of dollars – billions, in the case of Gates – to various education initiatives.

To be sure, Bezos – who also plans to use some of the money to aid nonprofits that help homeless families – is not new on the education scene. The Bezos Family Foundation, founded in 2000 and run by Bezos' parents, focuses solely on education, and earlier this year Bezos gave $33 million to a scholarship program for children brought to the United States illegally, TheDream.us.

But the uptick in philanthropic giving from such organizations has sparked heated debates about the influence they wield over public education and their overall impact.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has been involved in education for nearly two decades and has directed billions of dollars into advancing policies that gave rise to the education reform movement.

Some of the foundation's biggest bets have been in its decision to back the Common Core State Standards – academic benchmarks for what students should know by the end of each grade – and its push to reimagine teacher evaluation and compensation systems based in part on student test scores.

But the foundation has been widely criticized for funneling funding into what some consider silver-bullet policies or the latest education fad.

In May 2016, Sue Desmond-Hellmann, CEO of the Gates Foundation, apologized for the foundation's misread of how ready – or not ready, as it turned out – states were to handle implementation of the Common Core standards. And last year, Gates himself offered somewhat of a mea culpa for the foundation's involvement in teacher evaluation.

In fact, in outlining plans for a new $1.7 billion investment last fall, the Gates Foundation made a U-turn from its typical education reform agenda to instead focus on new initiatives that include building networks of schools.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's education philanthropy hasn't been without criticism either. He was excoriated for his first foray into the space – a $100 million investment in Newark public schools in 2010 – for not taking into consideration the community's wants and needs.

He's since acknowledged "lessons learned," and has more than doubled down on his investments through the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.

"No effort like this is ever going to be without challenges, mistakes and honest differences among people with good intentions," he wrote on his Facebook page.

Bezos' big bucks will have a narrow focus, which could play in his favor since he'll likely sidestep messy and expensive fights over things like teacher pay and evaluation. And the spotlight on preschool comes at a time when states are struggling to find ways to provide affordable early childhood education programs, especially to low-income families.

"The space of preschool is interesting," says Jeffrey Snyder, assistant professor at Cleveland State University who has studied the impact of education philanthropy. "Other philanthropies have given to it but have not made it their sole focus. I wonder if he's trying to hollow out a space in which he is a big fish."

Also of interest to Snyder is the specific method of schooling Bezos chose, the Montessori model, which focuses self-directed, hands-on activity with only minimal direction from teachers.

"I would be interested to hear about why he settled on that model, and that question is based on lessons we've learned in giving from other granters," Snyder says, noting that one of the most common failures of recent education initiatives is pushing policies onto a community rather than asking what they need.

"Have they learned the lessons of working with the communities to create a reform that has buy-in?"

Laura Bornfreund, director of early and elementary education policy at New America agrees.

"Certainly the big philanthropic collars are really helpful and important, but community buy-in is also important," she says. "Setting some dollars aside for that community engagement and thinking around implementation and how are we going to have long-term impact is just as important as the overall idea of what kind of change can we bring to the style of education to children in low-income communities."

"Where is he thinking about starting this," she continued, "and how is he thinking about the needs in those communities and talking to families to see how familiar they are with a Montessori type of approach and what does he have in mind to help them think about whether that kind of approach is a good fit for their child and for the community."

Bornfreund says the Montessori approach and other high-quality early childhood styles should be more available in low-income neighborhoods but that it's imperative to understand what type of education those children will then matriculate into after preschool and how to ensure a smooth transition into public kindergarten.

My mind jumps to lots of questions about how this will be rolled out," she says. "It's a lot of money, so I think about things like implementation and wanting to start small and see what really works well and then scaling it up in a thoughtful kind of way."

Snyder says he'll also be interested to see in what way Bezos gives the money – through a traditional philanthropic model, for example, or a limited liability company, like the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, which can often be less transparent about exactly where the money is going.

Bezos offered few details in the announcement and did not say how he plans to choose the low-income communities for the preschools or who he plans to tap to run the effort.

"I'm excited about that because it will give us the opportunity to learn, invent and improve," Bezos wrote. "We'll use the same set of principles that have driven Amazon. Most important among those will be genuine, intense customer obsession. The child will be the customer."

Without knowing much more about Bezos' plans for the preschools, many in the education space were simply happy he was shining a spotlight on an issues that's vexxed states for years.

"From where I sit it's so good to see all this additional attention being drawn to the issue," says Sarah Rittling, executive director of the First Five Years Fund.

"If it's high-quality, then that's what we should be doing," she says. "Getting down the model or the specific curriculum or how it's managed or funded or who the partners are – as long as there is a high-quality setting and children are getting everything they possibly need to leave that program prepared and ready, then that's what they should be doing."

Another Advantage for Wealthy Students

A new study on grade inflation shows that it occurred in schools attended by more affluent students but not in schools attended by less affluent ones

AFFLUENT STUDENTS HAVE major advantages when it comes to K-12 education: Among them, better teachers, more access to advanced courses, resources for counselors and a variety of extracurricular activities, which when combined can lead to higher high school graduation and college-going rates than their poorer peers.

Now those wealthy students can add to that list another advantage their less affluent peers don't receive: grade inflation.

A new study on grade inflation published Wednesday shows that schools attended by more affluent students saw less rigorous grading than schools attended by less affluent ones. While median grade point averages increased in both school types between 2005 and 2016, it increased more in the more affluent schools.

"In other words, it's gotten easier to get a good grade in more affluent schools, but not in less affluent ones," says Seth Gershensen, associate professor at American University who conducted the research and authored the report. "The GPA Gap has widened."

Gershensen used statewide data on all public school students in North Carolina who took Algebra 1 between 2005 and 2016 and compared their grades to scores on the state's end-of-course standardized exam. He also compared their cumulative GPAs to ACT college entrance exams.

Researchers have long documented the mismatch between school grades and their performance on tests, but prior research has been limited to smaller pools of students – those who took the SAT, for example, or those at a specific school. Looking at all public school students in the Tarheel State allowed Gershensen to draw conclusions about the difference in grade inflation between poor and rich students, which until now hadn't been done.

The study showed that the likelihood of receiving an A remained about constant between 2005 and 2016 among students attending the same school and who scored similarly on end-of-year exams. But more and less affluent schools experienced very different trends in that likelihood during the same time period: Beginning in 2010, the probability of receiving an A in more affluent schools increased significantly, while beginning in 2013 the probability of receiving an A in less affluent schools decreased significantly.

An analysis of the ACT scores also shows that grade inflation accelerated from about 2011 onward, mostly in schools serving advantaged students.

"I wasn't expecting to see that, and if anything, you might assume to see the opposite," Gershensen says, explaining that instances like the recent graduation scandal in the District of Columbia, in which administrators fudged attendance data in order to graduate more students, had him expecting to perhaps see the opposite effect, if any.

So who's to blame? Gershensen says he expects the culprits are pushy parents and insistent students.

"Both parents and students from more well-off backgrounds have the social capital and confidence to confront the teachers in the first place," he says. "The classic helicopter parent stereotype. If you think about why parents would be doing that, a lot of them are well aware of the high-stakes and potential payoff of going to an elite university."

Such GPA gaps, as Gershensen describes them, can have a devastating impact in driving larger education and socioeconomic gaps.

"When students in more affluent schools systematically receive more optimistic evaluations of their current and future performance than their more disadvantaged peers, they will act on this misleading information," he writes in the report. "That means, among other things, that they will apply to and attend more selective postsecondary institutions. In this way, inflated grades trigger a self-fulfilling prophecy that perpetuates – even exacerbates – existing socioeconomic gaps in educational access and success."

The study looked at the issue of grade inflation more broadly, also finding that many students who receive good grades do not demonstrate mastery on end-of-year exams, and that some students with good grades fail to demonstrate simple proficiency.

In fact, among students with top grades, just 3 percent of students earning a B and 21 percent of students earning an A reach the highest level of achievement. And for those who earned a B, more than one-third, or 36 percent, of them did not even score proficient.

The report underscores that grade inflation can be a double-blow to poor students, both because it can widen the socioeconomic gap when the grades of wealthy students are inflated, and also because when poor students' grades are inflated it may cause them to miss out on tutoring services that could help them catch up, or worse, lead them to graduate high school mistakenly thinking they have the necessary knowledge or skills for college or a career.

One potential fix, Gershensen posited, is designing a system akin to a GDP deflator, which economists use to predict dollar amounts over time. If we knew which schools were more prone to grade inflation, he says, a GPA deflator of some sort would allow a better apples to apples comparison.

"There's no debate that grade inflation exists," he says. "It's unequally distributed across schools. It is especially perilous for disadvantaged students."

SKUNK SMELL

BOB HIRSHON (host):

Skunk vs skunk. I’m Bob Hirshon and this is Science Update.

[Pepé LePew clip] The cartoon skunk Pepé LePew was oblivious to his own stink, and listener Arthur Magida wonders whether skunks in general are immune. We asked University of New Mexico skunk researcher Jerry Dragoo. He says that skunks and other members of the order Carnivora, including dogs, don’t seem to mind the smell. But they are still repelled because the spray is an irritant.

JERRY DRAGOO (University of New Mexico):

If one skunk gets sprayed by another one, and it hits him in the face, gets him in the eyes, they do go through a lot of the typical behaviors you could see a dog do, you know, rub their face in the dirt, put their paws up to their face and rub it a little bit, so they are definitely affected by it when another animal sprays them.

HIRSHON:

If you have a science question, give us a call at 1-800-WHY-ISIT. Or email us from our website, science update dot com. I’m Bob Hirshon for AAAS, the science society.

Story by Bob Hirshon

CBSE Class 10 Board Exam 2019 New Rules for Pass Marks

CBSE Class 10 Board Exam 2019 New Rules for Pass marks – According to Indiatv News the Central board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has tightens the rules for pass marks in Class 10 board exam 2019. According to the new change in passing mark by board, the students will now have to secure passing marks i.e. 33 per cent separately for theory and internal assessments
Students will now require to secure a minimum of 27 marks in 80 marks board examination and a minimum of 7 marks in 20 marks internal assessment.
 
The class 10 students who appeared in board exams in 2018 were granted one-time relaxation in passing marks  by CBSE as students found it difficult to clear the exams. The board had said that the students getting overall 33 per cent marks would be considered pass as it was the first batch after the mandatory board exam made a comeback after a gap of seven years.
 
The CBSE had introduced the Comprehensive and Continuous Evaluation (CCE) scheme along with optional Board exam in the year 2010-11. However, the board decided to withdraw it in 2017 and reintroduced the mandatory board examination from 2018
 
Over 10 lakh students are likely to appear for the CBSE class 10 examination in 2019.

NEWS Fani-Kayode reacts to Aisha’s resignation from Buhari’s cabinet, APC

The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, chieftain faulted Alhassan’s refusal to heed his earlier caution for her to dump the All Progressives Congress, APC.

Alhassan, better known as Mama Taraba, had resigned her ministerial appointment, after she was disqualified by the ruling APC from contesting the governorship seat of her state.

According to her, it would be out of place for her to remain as a minister in the government when the party that formed the government does not find her qualified to be a governor.

She stated that she felt betrayed and let down by the party.

Reacting, Fani-Kayode said Alhassan was humiliated and pushed out of APC despite his earlier advice to her.In a tweet, he wrote: “Few months ago I advised Aisha Alhassan that she should leave Buhari and APC before they humiliate her,push her out and insult her.

“She responded by insulting me. Now they have humiliated her,pushed her out and called her a “hypocrite that was working for PDP”. Poor,dumb Aisha!”

New minimum wage: Workers shut lecture rooms as ASUU, NASU join strike in UNIBADAN

Academic and non-academic activities were on Thursday disrupted at the University of Ibadan when the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Non-Academic Staff Union (NASU) and other unions in the institution joined the strike declared by the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC).The NLC, DAILY POST learnt had directed all workers across the country to embark on one-week warning strike which starts today.

DAILY POST correspondent who visited the university Thursday morning observed that students and lecturers who had lectures as at 8am in the morning were shocked to meet the lecture venues put under lock and keys.Administrative offices were not spared as most members who had come to work were directed to return home after attending the congress of their unions held at the Theatre Arts to intimate members on compliance.

The development also forced many students to loiter around, discussing the implication of the development on their pursuit.

Offices were put under lock and key. Those selling on campus have started feeling the impact of the strike.

Those who had travelled to process academic transcripts could not achieve their goal as those to process same were not available.

The University of Ibadan Chairman of ASUU, Dr. Deji Omole while speaking said, “ASUU is an affiliate of NLC and the national leadership of the Union attended the NEC meeting of NLC where the decision to embark on the ongoing warning strike was taken.

“Members of ASUU are therefore directed to join the strike action declared by NLC as from today Thursday, 27 September 2018.

“With this decision to join the NLC declared warning strike to press for the conclusion of negotiation on minimum wage, ASUU, UI emergency congress will hold tomorrow Friday, 28 September 2018 to share information and to formally declare the strike.

“We should not allow the government to always walk away from concluding negotiations with the organized labour Unions as this also has implications for the renegotiation of ASUU/FGN agreement”.

Seven ways to improve the ACT's education system

Given the amount of money we spend per student and our relative socioeconomic advantage, the ACT’s education system should be at the top of the class. Unfortunately, debates on performance rarely go beyond playground arguments.

Claims that any criticism of public schools is talking down the system are toxic and must be rejected outright. Equally, empty rhetoric about failing our students by the opposition must also be rejected. Voters deserve viable alternatives to current government policy, not just name-calling.

The ideological inertia of the Labor and Liberal parties in the ACT has squandered our opportunities.

The vacuous Future of Education strategy released by the ACT government this August epitomises the problem. The document has eight points that mean little, waffling about “putting students at the centre”, “empowering teachers”, and “strengthened systems”. The strategy says nothing about what will improve performance. The plan has no metrics to hit and no milestones to meet. It is a strategy that cannot fail, because virtually anything can be claimed as a success.

This ignores the real and growing problems in our education system. ANU research shows that our children are up to a year behind in learning compared to other children who come from similarly wealthy and educated populations. The most recent productivity commission report found that compared to other Australian states and territories, the ACT has the third-lowest year 12 completion rate of students from low socioeconomic backgrounds.

The ideological inertia of the Labor and Liberal parties in the ACT has squandered our opportunities.

The vacuous Future of Education strategy released by the ACT government this August epitomises the problem. The document has eight points that mean little, waffling about “putting students at the centre”, “empowering teachers”, and “strengthened systems”. The strategy says nothing about what will improve performance. The plan has no metrics to hit and no milestones to meet. It is a strategy that cannot fail, because virtually anything can be claimed as a success.

This ignores the real and growing problems in our education system. ANU research shows that our children are up to a year behind in learning compared to other children who come from similarly wealthy and educated populations. The most recent productivity commission report found that compared to other Australian states and territories, the ACT has the third-lowest year 12 completion rate of students from low socioeconomic backgrounds.

1. Increasing choice in public school selection. Every school has a unique style. A more traditional academic approach may suit some students, while inquiry-based learning or play-based learning may suit others. Unfortunately, the old-fashioned and strict in-area enrolment rules for ACT schools make parents feel that they have no choice for their children’s education, purely to avoid bureaucratic inconvenience.
2. Learning lessons from all education sectors. Everyone should have access to free, high-quality public education. We must also accept that some parents want independent schooling, given that private schools like Radford College have a seven-year waiting list. We must ask the question: what are these schools delivering that the public school system is not? Why do parents want to spend the extra money?
3. Publishing better statistics on educational outcomes. Although NAPLAN is controversial, it remains the main available measure of school performance. The Federal Government is currently implementing the 2016 recommendations of the Productivity Commission to create a National Education Evidence Base and drive education reforms from real data. Yet the ACT’s strategy does not reference this major project once, or the opportunities to compare notes with other jurisdictions to see what works and to learn from them.
4. Equalising resources at all public schools. It is a travesty that some ACT public schools have multiple halls and sporting ovals while others have no oval at all. The infrastructure at Weetangera School, just 3 kilometres away from Florey Primary School (with a high proportion of lower socioeconomic and ethnic children) couldn’t be more different in the facilities available to them. The government should establish an asset register and prioritise capital works for schools with lesser facilities. Every child should have access to equal resources, regardless of the age or suburb of the school they attend.
5. Committing to introducing early childhood education for three-year olds. Research indicates that early childhood education is essential to allow people from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds to achieve parity in educational outcomes. Despite the Education Minister recently announcing that the ACT government would fund education for three year olds, this transformative change is conspicuously absent from the overarching strategy and there is no timeframe for commencement.
6. Aligning schools to the capacity of working parents. Too many schools are still designed around the benchmark of the 1980s where it was common for one parent to stay home while the other worked. Now both parents work and care for their children, with an increasing number also caring for their ageing parents. Schools shouldn’t assume parents are easily available during school days any more. Further, parents may have limited skills or capacity to help at home. Schools cannot expect parents to provide additional tuition to students who are falling behind.
7. A greater focus on fundamentals. Reading, writing, and maths are more essential than ever. Unfortunately a seemingly endless range of fundraising and awareness “events”, often combined with undirected learning activities, provide too many opportunities for the less-motivated student to be distracted and fail to obtain these critical life skills. The ACT government should review all use of school time that isn’t delivering on the core curriculum.
The ACT Government has poured more and more money into the public education system, including rolling out school computers worth tens of millions of dollars, but it has dropped the ball on practical educational reforms in favour of glitzy initiatives. The truth is that our ACT education system is not delivering the results it should, and we need to acknowledge that openly.
We can do better. With leadership, I believe that it is possible to have a high-achieving educational system that makes children, teachers, parents, and the community proud.

Why is Labour so timid on education? It makes the Lib Dems look radical

I’ve been a teacher for the past five years at an inner London academy, and I’ve seen the injustices that education professionals, students and their parents face first-hand. State schools are chronically underfunded, while elite private school fees cost up to £30,000 a year. Ofsted and school league tables are used to enforce a narrow vision of education, and an Institute of Education report this week has found that teachers in England have the lowest job satisfaction of all English-speaking countries.

Perhaps most importantly, students are suffering: the OECD has reportedthat young people in the UK are among the unhappiest in the world. This is the result of 40 years of education “reforms” driven by a rightwing political agenda, favouring privatisation, obsessive testing and endless competition between students and between schools – as if these were things to be celebrated in themselves.As an active Labour member I want to see radical ideas coming from shadow secretary of state Angela Rayner aimed at tackling these challenges. Labour’s flagship education policy, the National Education Service (NES), contains the seeds of this radical potential. But the idea remains an empty shell: there hasn’t been a single education policy announcement from Rayner since the NES idea was launched 18 months ago.

Layla Moran, education spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats and a former teacher, on the other hand, made a powerful speech to the Liberal Democrat conference this week.She promised to abolish Ofsted, league tables and SATs, to remove private school charity tax status, and subtly hinted at abolishing the 11-plus test for grammar schools, because they perpetuate “state-sponsored segregation”.

I have never voted for the Liberal Democracts and never will. But there’s no denying that they currently have the most radical offer on the table when it comes to education.

By contrast, Rayner in her Guardian interview this week insisted that her party’s policymaking on education would not be “ideologically driven”.

The trouble is, education policy has always been ideologically driven. So either Labour is going to challenge the particular neoliberal ideology that has created the current mess or it isn’t. And if it doesn’t, it won’t fix it.

Rayner claims that academies as such are not a problem. But academisation has led to a situation in which we now have a competitive market in education that pits desperate schools against each other to retain their “market position”. This has led to terrible examples of gaming the system and outright corruption, at the expense of the most vulnerable children. The recent education select committee report showed that disproportionately high numbers of special educational needs students are being “off-rolled” to improve league tables positions. The academy revolution promised that the market would improve schools for all our children, and yet the gap in attainment between working class children and the rest stubbornly persists.

Rayner is right, of course, when she says that many vulnerable, working-class young people are being failed. And everyone agrees that practical education should be more highly valued than it is by our elitist system. But simply saying that we need more “technical” or “vocational” training, as Rayner does in her interview, is not enough. Her suggestion that the study of history is too “abstract” suggests a dangerous anti-intellectualism. It also reproduces the snobbish belief that working-class children shouldn’t have access to high-status knowledge. The 2011 Wolf report made clear that vocational qualifications under New Labour were an abject failure. Not only did they not prepare young people for skilled work, but they also created a narrow, technical curriculum that meant students continued to be locked out of the powerful knowledge that teachers know can enable them to understand the social, economic – and dare I say it, historical – forces that shape their worlds.When asked about private schools Rayner rules out abolishing them, saying that if we only make “the state sector good enough” then private schools will wither on the vine. She forgets the main reason many people choose private education is snobbery – they don’t want their children being educated with the “great unwashed”. Labour’s plans to impose VAT on private school fees was a step in the right direction.

But why not suggest that university admission departments must only accept 7% of their undergraduates from private schools, given that this is the proportion of students they represent in the country as a whole? Then you really would see parents flock to the state sector, and perhaps have a greater investment in improving it.

So while the NES remains a potentially radical idea, that potential is currently going to waste.

The Lib Dem policies don’t go far enough for me. They would only roll back the worst of the education reforms adopted under Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair. But Labour should be offering a great deal more than that. Labour must have an exciting vision for the future, a vision for the NES inspired perhaps by Finland, where schools promote collaborative, creative and emancipatory learning, rather than endless competition for exam results.

Labour galvanised people with its manifesto in 2017 because it promised something genuinely different, yet this has not been reflected in Labour’s education policy to date. As a teacher, I know that my students and their parents deserve more from Labour: otherwise, the deep inequality that blights our education system is set to continue.

Development goals

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by the United Nations (UN) General Assembly in September 2015, calls for a new vision to address the environmental, social and economic concerns facing the world today. The Agenda includes 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including SDG 4 on education.^[37][38]

Since 1909, the ratio of children in the developing world attending school has increased. Before then, a small minority of boys attended school. By the start of the 21st century, the majority of all children in most regions of the world attended school.

Universal Primary Education is one of the eight international Millennium Development Goals, towards which progress has been made in the past decade, though barriers still remain.^[39]Securing charitable funding from prospective donors is one particularly persistent problem. Researchers at the Overseas Development Institute have indicated that the main obstacles to funding for education include conflicting donor priorities, an immature aid architecture, and a lack of evidence and advocacy for the issue.^[39] Additionally, Transparency International has identified corruption in the education sector as a major stumbling block to achieving Universal Primary Education in Africa.^[40] Furthermore, demand in the developing world for improved educational access is not as high as foreigners have expected. Indigenous governments are reluctant to take on the ongoing costs involved. There is also economic pressure from some parents, who prefer their children to earn money in the short term rather than work towards the long-term benefits of education.^{[citation needed]}

Since 1909, the ratio of children in the developing world attending school has increased. Before then, a small minority of boys attended school. By the start of the 21st century, the majority of all children in most regions of the world attended school.

Universal Primary Education is one of the eight international Millennium Development Goals, towards which progress has been made in the past decade, though barriers still remain.^[39]Securing charitable funding from prospective donors is one particularly persistent problem. Researchers at the Overseas Development Institute have indicated that the main obstacles to funding for education include conflicting donor priorities, an immature aid architecture, and a lack of evidence and advocacy for the issue.^[39] Additionally, Transparency International has identified corruption in the education sector as a major stumbling block to achieving Universal Primary Education in Africa.^[40] Furthermore, demand in the developing world for improved educational access is not as high as foreigners have expected. Indigenous governments are reluctant to take on the ongoing costs involved. There is also economic pressure from some parents, who prefer their children to earn money in the short term rather than work towards the long-term benefits of education.^{[citation needed]}