{"id":6422,"date":"2015-08-25T06:42:06","date_gmt":"2015-08-25T06:42:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=6422"},"modified":"2015-08-25T06:42:06","modified_gmt":"2015-08-25T06:42:06","slug":"a-storm-in-a-g-and-t","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2015\/08\/25\/a-storm-in-a-g-and-t\/","title":{"rendered":"A storm in a G and T"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There was a piece in the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/education\/2015\/aug\/21\/telegraph-cheers-success-of-state-schools-a-levels\">G<\/a>\u00a0last week about a recent article\u00a0in the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/education\/educationnews\/11815341\/State-schools-outperforming-average-private-schools.html\">T<\/a>\u00a0which had gone\u00a0out of its way to praise England's tax-funded schools in the great pre-university [A-level] qualifications race, comparing them favourably with 'independent' schools \u2013 that is, the ones where (grand)parents pay cash.<\/p>\n<p>The G says that the T's comparison (as well as fudging the exam results data \u2013 well, who doesn't!) was unfair as such tax-funded schools are likely to be selective, whereas independent schools are open to all who\u00a0can\u00a0pay the fees. \u00a0I spluttered into my Waitrose rich muesli mix as I read this distortion of the reality that most parents face.<\/p>\n<p>The G also hinted that the T was probably playing politics in that it was talking up some\u00a0welcome outcomes of government schools\u00a0policy; but\u00a0then I thought\u00a0that, perhaps, it\u00a0was only trying to reassure its liberalista readership that the considerable sums many of them\u00a0fork out to separate their Tamsins, Tristrams and Tamaras from\u00a0<em>hoi polloi<\/em>\u00a0(and to buy them some socio-economic privileges) are still worth it.<\/p>\n<p>It's obviously still August ...<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There was a piece in the G\u00a0last week about a recent article\u00a0in the T\u00a0which had gone\u00a0out of its way to praise England's tax-funded schools in the great pre-university [A-level] qualifications race, comparing them favourably with 'independent' schools \u2013 that is,...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6422\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}