GFTU BGCM Minutes 2017

That moves us on to Motion 13, Selective Education, page 62 of your bible, AP

to move.

MOTION 13 – SELECTIVE EDUCATION

SIS ANGELA PRATTEN (Association of Educational Psychologists) moved the

following motion:

1

We note with concern the intention of the Government to promote

educational selection through increasing the provision of Grammar Schools.

2

We call upon this Conference to oppose this increase in selection at the

end of Key Stage 2 as children and young people transfer to secondary

education. This opposition is based on clear evidence of the negative effects of

selection on the educational, psychological and social wellbeing of children and

young people.

She said: Good afternoon. My name is Angela Pratten and I am on the

National Executive of the Association of Educational Psychologists and I also

represent our union on the GFTU. Brothers and sisters, we note with concern

the intention of the Government to promote educational selection through

increasing the provision of grammar schools. We call upon this conference to

oppose the increase in selection at the end of Key Stage 2 when children and

young people transfer to secondary education. This opposition is based on

clear evidence of the negative effects of selection on the educational,

psychological and social wellbeing of children and young people.

Recently proposed Government cuts in school budgets will leave schools in

some areas losing a fifth of their school finance. This is a time when six out of

ten academies are running with average deficit budgets of £350,000,

presumably somehow underwritten by, I don’t know, the Government. Michael

Gove’s obsession with converting huge numbers of schools once overseen and

accountable to local councils to academies run by complex money-eating trusts

has proved to be an ineffective school improvement strategy as the worst multi-

academy trusts perform just as badly as some local authority schools and now

we have Theresa May’s rhetoric around the expansion of grammar schools

57