Quote Originally Posted by mickd1961 View Post
At least Blair put his cards on the table.

The problem with his “education” mantra was that it became a must for a lot of parents that their kids went to university, more a badge of honour for pushy parents in a lot of cases.

This lead to a dumbing down of what people were pursuing at uni, I remember hearing that at one point there was 47 kids doing a photography degree for every one job that was available.

If we’d had kids doing maths, physics, chemistry etc, etc in big numbers the Blair mantra would’ve been a genius plan, sadly it lead to a lot of dead end degrees and disappointed students who ended up in jobs well below the level they thought they were at.

My opinion has never changed with university, it should be for those who are academically elite and the subjects available should be much more narrow and of real value.

Grammar Schools worked because you had to be clever, you couldn’t scrape in really and if you did, you got found out.

Too many universities chasing the £ these days.

Yes there are less academic uni courses but it’s up to the students whether they wish to pursue photography or dance etc. My kids worked hard to achieve excellent A levels and my daughter has been rewarded with a top job. What you put in you get out!

It was the Labour government who phased out state grammar schools and it was the t wat Tony Blair who banned the creation of further grammar schools.

Stick VAT on private schools Labour say! Yes there’s very rich kids who go to private schools but a large proportion of families who scrape the fees as they value education and want their kids to do better. All those kids who then can’t go to private school because the fees become unaffordable will go to state schools. State schools are not free FFS as each child costs the tax payer about 10K a year.

Bizarre how some of these PM’s wanted to wreck state grammar schools erode competitiveness and stick VAT on school fees when almost all went to private school. Starmer will have you believe he went to a state school but he went to Reigate grammar and then it turned private.

Getting a good education is now more important than ever. Some excellent companies though pay uni fees or have super apprenticeships although mega hard to get on unless you have the right qualifications.

I agree with you about weak degrees although up to the kids. A good degree though can be life changing and my regret was not getting one myself!