Yesterday, while I was at a KCC initiated conference, Eastcliff Matters author Cllr David Green published a post entitled "Failing Schools Rescue Plan". In this he explains that KCC will be taking action to make sure the lowest performing schools improve their figures on the percentage of students getting A to C grade passes at GCSE. This is a good thing but there is a limit to the work a school can do with students to help them improve academically.

He also quotes Kent Labour's Children & Families spokesman, Clive Hart, as saying "Local councils with high numbers of grammar schools are among those with poor performance figures. Kent has one of the highest numbers of grammar schools in the country." and then going on to observe that we have one of the highest counts of grammar schools. I have no firm opinion on the whole eleven plus and school selection thing but I can not help but wonder if Clive Heart is suggesting that mixing higher performers and lower performers would produce better averages (it would by force of maths alone) or that we are facing a more complete breakdown of analytical thinking.

While I would not expect many readers to be on first name terms with such phrases as "Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc" I would expect that common sense should indicate that just because two things follow each other that one cause the other. This would be like saying of a cow that the head causes the tail. There are clear underlying problems that are not excuses and that must be addressed before these issues go away.

On the post in question (the link in case you missed the first one) I left a comment to this effect:

I studied statistics at a level and after a levels I looked into such topics as logic and also education. I learned a thing or two in that time not least of which that a correlation does not prove a causality. It is not enough to say that where A is high B is high therefore A causes B.

Furthermore, I recently attended a conference headed by KCC. It was here that I learned of studies that show that even the best schools can make no more than a 14% impact on the educational outcomes of students. It is the influence of parents and environment that are the biggest sources of learning or impairment to learning in a child's life.

Therefore, the only sustainable long term approach would be to address to single biggest cause of poor academic performance and that is poverty - something else we have one of the highest rates of.

What is your party doing to directly address this issue that the others are not doing?

I would like to take the opportunity to open this one post to political conversation and ask each of the parties the same question: What are you doing to address the issue of excessive poverty in Thanet?.

While we are at it I would like to inquire of our KCC representatives - what this move will do to support the Every Child Matters educational outcomes?

Finally I would like to ask all my regular readers what there considered opinion is.

Other bloggers might like to write up their answer on their own blog (for more control) and I am sure a link can be arranged.