Date published: 2005/08/10
The BBC says:
Schools need to recruit governors from working-class and ethnic minority backgrounds to become more democratic and "cosmopolitan", a report says.
Largely middle-class volunteers had helped to improve performances but had left some boards "significantly unrepresentative" of their communities.
There were also not enough women involved, researchers argued.
Schools across the UK had to create stronger community links to ensure continued improvement, they said.
In the late 1908s, the Conservative government created more than 400,000 "volunteer citizens" to occupy boards of governors.
This was the "largest democratic experiment in voluntary public participation", said the report by researchers from Warwick, Glasgow Caledonian, Queen's Belfast and Birmingham universities and the Centre for Public Scrutiny.
However, those recruited were "generally white, middle-aged, middle-class, middle-income, public/community service workers".
Such people had the knowledge to make a "profound contribution to regenerating the schools", with their "access to privileged networks and resources".
But this approach only went a certain way to improving schools if the bulk of the community was not involved.
Is this stating the obvious or what? The middle class have more time and energy and interest for this kind of voluntary work, so it is hardly surprising that more of them do it. And no doubt most of the "researchers" for this wonderous report are also "white, middle-aged, middle-class, middle-income, public/community service workers". As is most of the BBC. Why is this kind of "research" funded? Divert the money to something more useful (e.g. science).
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