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A Bradford Apprenticeship by Donald Naismith (view source)
Revision as of 13:28, 17 December 2016
, 13:28, 17 December 2016no edit summary
Like Donald Naismith, Bradford is my adopted city. Most of my working life was spent there (at one point in a building opposite one of the schools which he attended) and my daughter thrived under its education system. These days much of Bradford is down at heel and it was a real pleasure to read about how the city used to be and the ways in which it was an educational pioneer. It was his days firstly as a teacher (in Greenwich) and then as an administrator (in Bradford) which shaped Naismith's belief in the value of local government as an essential part of the national educational system.
Naismith's descriptions of Bradford as she used to be are excellent: he has the ability to convey in very few words a feeling of the city in its prime, when there was prosperity from the woolen woollen mills and the sense of hope reflected in the attitudes of the educators. He sums up the suburb of Heaton in the mid-twentieth century perfectly: ''Conservatives lived there''. But delightful as it was to read about the city, it's Naismith's thoughts on education (past, present and future) which are the meat of the book.
I liked his concern that the average and less-than-average pupils are being neglected, his concern that marks have become the end rather than the means and that expenditure is best controlled when incurred as closely as possible to the point of delivery (something which doesn't just apply in education, but seems to be widely disregarded) and done in an open and accountable way. I appreciated too that he hasn't closed his mind to new developments such as academies but argues that they would make greatest headway in partnership with local authorities.