Let down but not left behind

Originally posted across at everyone's favourite Liberal Youth blog, now under new editorship :)

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Liberal Democrat education policy is good. We are giving 15 hours of free pre-school education to disadvantaged toddlers, stopping children falling behind in basic reading skills and we are committed to ending child poverty by 2020. The jewel in the crown so to speak is the Pupil Premium: money given directly to schools for each pupil on free school meals to spend as they see fit. In the next academic year my old junior school will be given over £79,000 and my senior school will get almost £150,000. All of this is fantastic news and hopefully will going some way towards tackling social mobility and stopping children falling behind.

One thing we don’t seem to be looking at is the children who need a different kind of help, the ones who don’t fall behind because they’re what my school deemed ‘gifted and talented’. The sixth form college in my town looked at the academic performance of children at junior school and picked the best ones – including me - to put on their ‘gifted and talented list’; we were enrolled in a summer school for a fortnight between junior and comprehensive school, taken on trips to Oxford and Cambridge and generally encouraged to think about applying to elite universities.

Unfortunately this level of encouragement wasn’t carried across to the schools. I was, for want of a better word, ignored at school because the focus was on getting students to leave with the magic 5 A*-C grade GCSEs. This meant that the focus was on pupils around the C-D border, because I could get top marks without much effort I wasn’t given as much attention. I can’t blame the teachers, I can only imagine the pressure they were under to get students up to C grade and they were probably relieved to have students like me who they didn’t have to worry about, but it did mean that I didn’t achieve my full potential. I left school with 4 A*s, 5 As and 3 Bs and I left college with AAA* grades but I go to a university that could in no way be described as ‘elite’ and my marks at university are good but nothing remarkable because I was never pushed. My teachers were happy to leave me to blag it because at GCSE that still got me good grades but I’m rapidly discovering that – unsurprisingly – that doesn’t work at university. A lot of this is my fault; I don’t try as hard as I should and I certainly don’t manage my time well – last minute essays are a speciality – but I do feel that the lack of drive I have now has something to do with the fact that I was never tested by previous education.

The Liberal Democrats are doing a fantastic job of encouraging those from disadvantaged backgrounds and showing young people that there are more options open to them than just university by creating more apprenticeships than ever before but we’re still missing a trick. There are some young people whose talent is being allowed to waste because they don’t find the education system enough of a challenge. Helping disadvantaged and underachieving pupils make the most of their education is a noble aim but it should not come at the expense of those who are more able. Labour allowed this situation to develop; the Liberal Democrats cannot allow it to continue.

Ladies First...?

I wasn't originally going to write a post about the Chris Huhne resignation for a few reasons, one being that it triggers in me an excess of anger towards an ex-wife who is clearly only interesting on inflicting pain on a man who left her (however justified that pain may be), another being yet more anger at certain newspapers' reporting of the incident which always seems to make reference to Huhne's new partners' sexuality as if it were a contributing factor to their infidelity. As it happens Carina Trimingham has decided to sue the publisher responsible and I fully congratulate her in doing so (the spelling mistake in that article's headline isn't The Independent's greatest moment!). The third reason is that the press and social media chatter, both before and after Kier Starmer's announcement that charges were to be brought, seemed to focus on what would happen if he was guilty whilst ignoring the fact that Huhne is innocent until proven guilty. I didn't think that the gender of his replacement would be the thing that made me change my mind about writing a post.


Well it isn't so much the fact that Ed Davey is male but the fact that this seems to anger some people. I must admit I have very little knowledge of Ed's work but as far as I can tell he has done a great job in his previous role and I can only hope he does the same in his new one but the criticisms of Nick Clegg for his "failure" to promote a woman to the Cabinet, such as those from Stonewall Chief Executive Ben Summerskill, are ridiculous. Worryingly some of the most vocal criticisms come from party supporters, liberalism is equal opportunity for all regardless of arbitrary distinction therefore jobs should be awarded on merit. If a deficit develops it is due to a lack of education and opportunity for that group or discrimination against it and these things need to be tackled at the root, not glossed over when it's too late. That is not to say that Jo Swinson and Lynne Featherstone, the women most mooted for the job, are not fantastic MPs and fantastic ministers because of course they are, Lynne is pretty much single-handedly pushing for gay marriage as I can't imagine Theresa May is a fan (but the less said about her opinions on Page 3 the better), but I don't believe they should be promoted just because they're women.


I have never believed in positive discrimination: it's an oxymoron for a start, putting the word 'positive' in front of a negative concept does not automatically make it a good thing, and also because in the 60 years of affirmative action in America there has been no fundamental change in ethnic minority representation at the highest levels (the reasons Barack Obama doesn't count are too numerous to list here). Anyway, surely all discrimination is positive? If one group is being discriminated against, surely that means there is discrimination in favour of another? I'm a white woman who grew up in a middle class family but whose parents are now divorced: I don't want to live in a country which values my gender above my ability but counts my skin colour against me. Are my childhood holidays in Africa counted against me because they clearly indicate a financially-stable family even though I get bursaries from my university because my dad left and took with him a large chunk of the family income? I'm a politics student who doesn't want to become an MP but if I did, I would want to fight to be selected by the party and elected by the people on the basis of my ability and my beliefs not existence of two X chromosomes and a comprehensive school education. The use of all-women shortlists by Labour implies that women are unable to be selected on merit and have to be given a helping hand and this implication spreads to all women, even those who weren't selected in this way.


There is no denying that there is a problem of representation for women, BME people, non-heterosexual people etc in places such as the House of Commons but artificially boosting their representation does not help tackle the fundamental social circumstances which create this deficit. Incidentally I'm not entirely sure that the House of Commons needs to be a direct microcosm of society, without sounding flippant I don't feel that my MP being male makes him unable to represent me (his position as a Labour Whip on the other hand does). Interestingly, men are under-represented in teaching at lower levels, by lower I mean nursery and junior schools, but no-one is advocating giving male applicants these jobs over women simply because they're men, the effort focuses on making young men more aware that teaching is an option available to them and encouraging them to train and apply. Why doesn't this same thinking apply to under-represented groups in politics or business? Why is positive discrimination called for?


The Liberal Democrat leadership programme is well intended, of our 57 MPs only four are openly gay, only 7 are women and probably most shamingly none are BME, but it is fundamentally pointless. We should be tackling the problem at the root, pushing for change to an education system which nudges boys into 'hard sciences' but girls towards English and away from engineering, in order to ensure change which not only creates a more equal society for the next generation but for all the generations that follow, not aiming to provide change which is purely cosmetic.


Change is needed but condemning and repressing straight, white men is not the way to do it. 

We have no time to stand and stare

Well I've done so much today I've practically forgotten I even had a lecture! Got dragged to the Union Parliament by a friend who wanted to see what it was like and ended up getting nominated to stand for election to the bloody thing. I have no idea why I've done it but there we go, I'll send a message round the UoL groups on Facebook and hope lol. It would help if I know enough people to get elected! I also had to go to the Labour society meeting which led to the awkward moment when they tried to sign me up for the party. The Conservative society is open to people with an interest with politics, regardless of party, but the Labour one seems to require party membership. Might email a exec member tomorrow and see if this is definite or if I'd got the wrong end of the stick but trying to get out the room without filling the form in, signing away my soul and possibly breaking some law (I'm not sure if its legal to join more than one political party lol) was ridiculously difficult!

LUSH was a ridiculously chaotic meeting; I would much rather do some campaigns or scheduling work but Roisin persuaded me to join up and she really wants to do a radio show so I can't really say 'yeah erm go off and do it on your own...' can I?! The model UN meeting was actually brilliant, I persuaded Jason and Joe to come with me and they've both signed up too. There's a informal debate thing next week to get us into it, I never actually thought to ask if we pick our own country or pick them out of a hat or what. And do we keep the same country for every MUN or does it change? I really should email on of the exec guys and find out, probably the distractingly hot guy who happens to be on my course and friends with a girl I know :)

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Contrary to the impressing this blog post may have given so far I did actually attend some lectures today and yesterday. Mondays are now my least favourite day of the week as I have two lectures and a seminar with a lecturer who has a hideously dull and irritating voice :( The European Union lecture today though was really good, the lecturer seems nice and unlike 90% of students I know I don't find the European Union dull as hell or a pointless waste of time. It was amusing though to see that the most recognisable 'important EU figure' (as decided by our lecturer) was Cathy Ashdown even though there was one guy who for some reason recognised not only her and Van Rumpoy (as did I, before someone thinks I'm think) but also Jose Manuel Barroso and Jean-Claude Trichet. Clearly someone how either reads for seminars way way in advance or someone who actually gives more than a passing glance at EU news!

Anyways I have a killer headache and am panicking slightly about my new-found need to campaign for a week for the Union Parliament so I'm off! Night folks x

Lazing on a sunny afternoon, in the... winter time??

So politics first, for a change. I'm currently in the middle of a 'debate' (I'm right, he's wrong, 'debate' is just me being polite) with a guy on Twitter over Michael Gove's plans to teach languages to children as young as five. My fellow politics student - whose favourite topic happens to be education policy -  believes that while languages are important, 5 is too young to be learning them. A person is most receptive to learning between the ages of 3 and 5 years and the New York Times has reported that anyone who starts speaking a language after the age of 10 will never be as proficient as those who begin learning before that age so why shouldn't foreign languages taught from primary school?

I actually wish I had been taught languages from an early age, I didn't start French until I was at school and I didn't enjoy it because it was taught from a textbook.Although I hope to learn Russian through university this year I feel I would have been better equipped for it if I had started learning earlier. Plus I was always envious of other schools in my area who got to choose other languages at secondary level beyond the standard French and German. As Chris Bryant said French is a 'useless' modern language.

Just had another tweet containing the phrase 'or Latin as Gove would have it!', this now leads me to believe that a small part of his dislike for the policy is class-based and there is a perception someone that the Tories want everyone to learn Latin (I realise some - Boris Johnson for example) do.

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On a personal note, my mother came to visit bearing cake that her friend had gotten up especially to bake for us this morning. Needless to say chocolate cake with whipped cream and raspberries was very well received by all my housemates :)

Spent the day with my mother shopping and drinking a ridiculous amount of liquids because the weather this year has decided to fuck us over. Just as all the shops and getting out jumpers and coats the weather goes 'fuck that shit' and turns the temperature up by about 20 degrees. Well bugger that weather, I like jumpers! Give me back my normal British winter of snow and ice!

Please...