Here's an option which i know works in the Channel Island. Rather than pay somebody say £50 per week (sorry I dont know the current levels so using this as an example), lets pay that person to do a days work on some social worl scheme (street cleaning, graffitti removal etc). Apart from a year when i was looking Ive worked all my life and have become so dispondent in recent years which mean that may of "the poorer members of society" are better off than me and my family.

As for removing TAs from classrooms, its NEVER gonna happen. They do so much work and actual teaching of the kids that removing them would mean that teachers would actually have to do some work.....NEVER GONNA HAPPEN!!!!!!

I'm guessing that as a child you got molested by a teaching assistant.

What about using the ex squaddies who have come back from Afghanistan and Iraq and struggle to get jobs on civvie street, lots of them end up either turning to alcohol or crime or in some cases committing suicide. They have that "Teach First" programme which trains graduates on a crash course to be teachers, gives them a couple of years teaching in inner city schools to learn skills, then sends them off to work in the private sector. How about make some scheme available for ex squaddies to teach them to be at least a TA and then allow them progression to go on to be a teacher if they complete further qualifications. Rather than having to spend money on having them in the criminal justice system why not give them an opportunity to use some of their skills in developing kids. Anybody who's been in the Armed Forces has got skills, discipline, routine, ability to think under pressure, cope with hostile situations, they would be perfect for a school environment, they would not put up with crap and the kids would have a level of respect for them.

We had a history teacher who was an ex Army officer, and all of the cocky wannabe bad boys who acted up in every other lesson, wouldn't dare go out of line against him. He didn't have the cane, he just had an assertive manner about him that you didn't question.

The real problem is having a one size fits all education system. People with 'learning difficulties' (a nice euphemism for ill behaved or poorly taught children) should not be in the same classes as those children that are simply brighter than them or have a greater thirst for knowledge (i.e. want to learn). It's not fair to either of them.

A proper school system based on the only really true fair test - ability - with a Grammar school at its head for the brightest, underneath which you'd have secondary moderns (with equal levels of investment - what didn't happen previously) and with real vocational / technical training for those children who clearly aren't academic so they can be trained to do something useful.
If a child has clearly been placed in the wrong school then there should be a facility to rectify that (having this kind of relegation and promotion would also ensure that children focus and perform.) In Germany, the grading of the child is done in agreement with the parents which seems a civilised way of doing it. The level of German spending on defence is a left wing red herring - education is the real reason for German economic success.

Allied to this cut down the ridiculous size of the 'University' sector. Most University's are nothing more than glorified sixth form colleges and have no economic value whatsoever. Spurning out thousands of students doing pointless degrees whilst piling up debt spending 3 years on the lash. The private sector also needs to step up and start taking in school leavers and training them in greater numbers to pick up the slack.

It's interesting that before we abolished Grammar Schools - the independent school sector was significantly reducing and the number of state schoool children going to Oxbridge was a significantly increasing percentage - and far greater than it is now.

To go back to the 'terrible cuts' - they are nothing of the sort - we'll still be spending more in 2014/15 than we are now. We spend more on housing benefit than we do the Army and Royal Navy together.
As a country we've been living in a fool's paradise - which if we're not to become a third world country in 25 / 30 years time has to stop and quickly.
The level of spending next year will be at the same level as 2007 - I realise the economy has deteriorated since then but you'd think the world was going to end the way some of the press have been talking or the likes of the Unions.

If you look at Asia and the growing economies there - we don't stand a chance. They work harder than we do for less money. As a country we spend more than we create yet have a population which seems to expect the government to do everything for it.

Summed up nicely by Langer7's ("made me want to wretch"icon_wink.gif comment about Duncan Smith's interview saying if there's no job in your town then maybe you will have to take a bus ride to get one in another town. What exactly is wrong with that? (Which is what he actually said about catching a bus from Merthyr to Cardiff.)

If you are in favour of high levels of state spending and a continuation of the benefits system then you should be quite happy with the current government.

It's only the idiot press that is perpetuating the cuts myth.

A few years back, I was on break duty at the London comp where I worked, standing by the gate to make sure the kids didn't go off site. Needless to say, a number of them would find ever more ingenious ways of bunking over the fence elsewhere so they could go for a fag. Anyway, on this particular day, a copper came up to me and told me that there were a few of our pupils smoking in the estate opposite. He wondered if I would be able to 'go and sort them out'. I wondered in return if he might not perhaps be able to do this himself, given that he was an officer of the law.
He tutted, and walked off

I think its a disgrace that child benefit is cut for people earning over £44,000 pounds a year.
What are they going to stash in their off shore tax free bank accounts now? they will have to get a bit more clever with their tax avoidance scams in future otherwise the Range rover will have to go.....

I know a bloke that has over a million quid in the bank and still gets the pensioners winter payment every year ...... he goes the bookies and sticks it straight on the horses.

funny how the chav type scroats get up peoples noses when all they amount to is owning a fancy track suit and a neat baseball cap...

My eldest son is autistic with complex learning difficulties and by no means ill behaved or taught poorly. He goes to a mainstream school where he works with a dedicated TA who works exclusively with him. With people like you about my son could never go to mainstream school and would be labelled unteachable. Dont put y comments on about children with learning difficulties unless you actually know what the f**k your talking about. People like you make me so bloody angry sometimes.

single parent earns just over £44'000 PA and loses child benifit. A family where both adults work earning £80'000 PA between them Yes i can see which one can afford the range rover and offshore bank account all right.

The trouble is it would probably cost more than it would save if it was tested on a case by case basis. They needed to find a quick bench mark. Personally if you're moaning that you need the child benefit and you're hard up on 44k, you need to look where you're frivolously wasting your money.

It's no more unfair than buying a house, it's a lot easy with 2 incomes than 1 but 44k is a generous threshold, personally 30k should be enough.

yes but the threshold should be joint income not on 1 persons income. Say £50'000 in a household.

How much would it cost to means test it though ?
Would it be worth it if we're doing this to SAVE money ?

The whole cutting child benefit = money saved is laughable anyway. We have increased foreign aid so any savings made are now going abroard anyway.

The child benefit $44k single, £80k family child benefit thing has been soooooooooooooooooooooooooo misreported by the press. if you read the statement properly (unlike the media) there is a mis-match but the levels are far closer.

Means testing and the cost of it is the heart of the problem. There was a very good Dispatches programme on during the election with some discussion about the cuts (at a level of the specifics, which wasn't what we were getting in the election campaign from the parties involved), it had Portillo, Lord Falconer and Shirley Williams on it and a few retired senior Civil Servants. The ex Civil Service bosses were basically groaning at all these types of arguments coming up (which were the same as have been on this thread), because they said that pretty much every government had said the same things "we will stop the state being a free ride, work must pay, hand up not a hand out" and it had always died in the detail because the more 'rigorous' you make the system the more complicated it is to enforce and the more expensive it is to administer. The reason universal benefits like winter fuel payments were never touched was because the means testing involved is a bureaucratic expense that eats away at the savings.

Back in the early 1990s Peter Lilley was Secretary of State for the Department of Social Security and he announced his plans to the Conservative Conference with a 'song'I've got a little list
Of benefit offenders who I'll soon be rooting out
And who never would be missed
They never would be missed

There's those who make up bogus claims
In half a dozen names
And councillors who draw the dole
To run left-wing campaigns . . .

Young ladies who get pregnant just to jump the housing list
And dads who won't support the kids of ladies they've just....kissed
And I haven't even mentioned all those sponging socialists
They'd none of them be missed!
'"