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  Educating the elite

  victoria 10:40 am on 28 April, 2010 | 8 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: 6th form, education

  The moves to provide decent education for all over 16 year olds are running into opposition across Wales. The latest furore is in Merthyr Tydfil where the council is due to announce its decision on a tertiary college today.

  ‘Save our 6th forms’, shout schools, along with the pupils they manipulate into supporting them. What they really mean is ‘protect our privilege’ – for a handful of pupils to do well at A level and for teachers to enjoy small classes of able students. At least one school is threatening to seek Foundation status if tertiarisation goes ahead.

  However the 6th form lobby completely ignores the needs of school leavers who do not go on to study A levels.  Not only are they dumped at the age of 16, but the focus on 6th form achievement that permeats the school means lower achievers are left to their own devices from an early age.

  Tertiarisation offers a truly comprehensive system for post 16 learning, where vocational and academic options are available to all, and all are encouraged to achieve to their highest ability.  The promotion of an educational elite has no place in Wales – let alone one with so many without decent qualifications.

  POSTSCRIPT:  I understand Merthyr Council has voted in favour of tertiary.  At least one school in the borough is already consulting on seeking Foundation status, which would enable it to select pupils.

   

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  Dr TJ Dyke remembered

  jonathan 11:55 pm on 16 September, 2009 | 4 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: doctors (2), education, Health (11)

  Some of the newest houses in Merthyr are to be found on Thomas Dyke Close between Penydarren and Galon Uchaf, close to the site of the old Penybryn waterworks.

  Thomas Dyke was Medical Officer of Health for Merthyr Tydfil from 1848-1894. He was born in Merthyr in 1816, apprenticed to the surgeons at the Cyfarthfa Ironworks before completing his training in London. He served the community for all his working life, surviving an attack of cholera in 1849. He strived to introduce sanitation to the town, working against the resistance of nearly all the Iron Masters. It took fifteen years to get the Penybryn waterworks built, the first source of healthy water for the workers and their families.

  His life story has a number of contemporary resonances. He was a Merthyr lad who returned to the town to work as a doctor. A Victorian essayist writing about the doctors of Merthyr Tydfil commented: “Merthyr was the nursery ground of many men of ability who afterwards settled down in other towns”. He went on to report that nearly all of the other doctors working here had “arrived from elsewhere”. Nothing has changed.

  Every year, between five and ten of our brightest young people leave Merthyr to train to become doctors. In my twenty eight years working here, I am aware of only three who have returned to work in their home town. Some have returned for some of their postgraduate training, some have settled in other Valleys communities. Where have the rest gone? What has kept them away?

  The former Archbishop of Liverpool, David Sheppard described the inner cities of England in the 1980’s as “communities of the left behind”. I was reflecting on this with a patient who replied: “anyone with get up and go has got up and gone”.

  How can today’s men and women of ability be encouraged or challenged to contribute to the health and wellbeing of the communities that nurtured them?

   

  UPDATE:  

  As soon as I had uploaded my first ever blog I noticed flaws in my thinking! Lots of the ‘brightest young people’ choose other careers. It seems that those who choose nursing and teaching for example do return and work locally. Do people who do not have the resilience required to continue living in a community like Merthyr choose certain professions, perhaps thinking of them as a way out?