The trip was “crashingly insensitive”.
This was part of the criticism of spending more than €80,000 on sending a group of teachers to Arizona in order to attend a two day conference about teaching poor children.
I would imagine that, unless they flew 1st class (and I wouldn’t put it past them!) they would also say that the flight experience was also insensitive, exposing these poor teachers to the risk of deep vein thrombosis.
Just where do these people get off?
What possible reason can there be for swanning off to Arizona when they can study teaching poor children on their own doorstep? Why study it where the local population is already deeply concerned that their own (American) education system is failing to produce employable, literate young adults?
It beggars belief that any sane person can really think that there is sufficient difference in the methodology of teaching anywhere in the western world (with the shining example of those very few schools that still aim for excellence despite the severe dumbing down of standards that we have seen) to merit such an appalling waste of tax payers money.
Surely, if there is sufficient reason to believe that such a conference could be of value, does the education service in the UK not possess the necessary hardware and software to join in online? Is it not possible to purchase the recordings or transcripts of the conference?
It probably is – but greedy local authority employees (ie. paid their wages out of the pockets of local families) continue to get their ‘jollies’ at the expense of parents who probably could not even afford a day out in Southend.
I don’t think ‘insensitive’ is quite the word, do you?
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