What a load of Rankers

The suggestion that 11 year olds should be compared against each other, with parents informed exactly which 10% band their kid falls into, makes me feel physically sick. It's both cruel and illogical. Imagine how you would feel if the government announced that adults were going to be lined up and assessed as to their attractiveness in swimwear: this is what ranking 11 year olds amounts to. Worse, in fact, because as yet nobody has invented the academic equivalent of “going to the gym”.

The very way it has been reported by the media - probably taken straight from a Whitehall press release - begets a total lack of understanding of education. No test measures pure “ability”. We all know the average girl who worked her socks off and got 3 Bs at A-level, and the hyper-intelligent but disaffected youth who spent most of his time bunking off or smoking and got Ds and Es.

In education, the discrete level a child reaches is called attainment, and is affected by any number of socioeconomic factors as well as baseline aptitude, not a whit of which is within their control. The children at the bottom of the class are invariably the kids for whom learning to spell Mesopotamia comes a poor second to the sheer struggle of staying fed, clean, and not knocked about by their latest “uncle” - does the government think these families are even going to open the results letter, let alone think “Shit - I'd better start listening to her read?” Does the government think these poor little scraps don’t already know they're at the bottom of the pile, or would be anything other than totally demoralised by knowing that almost everyone is “cleverer” than them?

The government presents this retrograde and reprehensible step as a means of “raising standards”. I would suggest their own intelligence is in question if they don’t understand that even if all 11 year olds were achieving to GCSE level, if you rank them into percentiles someone will come last.

It is time to stop seeing intelligence as some sort of moral virtue, any more than we have control over the colour of our eyes. As Eeyore said, “We can’t all, and some of us don’t. That’s all there is to it.” With 900,000 kids NEET, my suspicion is that the government - having first tried to blame immigrants, and families on welfare selfishly renting a council house that has a box room - are now trying to blame our children for their monumental policy cock-ups. Doesn't bloody matter how well they do if there aren’t any jobs for them to go to, does it, Dave?

Saltburn Pier

Moors Explorer

Yesterday we went on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway. It was not a stress-free experience, although for once Molly behaved absolutely impeccably.

Tooth-grinding first occurred in Whitby station car park, which aside from costing an eye watering £8 for the day, required you to input your entire car registration number. This demand, combined with a very small QWERTY keyboard at hip height, didn't suit the railway's typical customer, a 76 year old struggling to see in their Variofocals. I stood in mute agony for a full 10 minutes waiting for my turn.

The first 20 minutes of the journey was brilliant, then a large, garrulous Greek-Cockney family sat down opposite and by us, and the old-school magic was somewhat lost as father and son loudly debated the cost of CNC milling machines. These were replaced at Goathland by a younger family, and here the fun really began. The parents, clad in that Gore-texy kind of stuff that wicks away moisture at such a rate you can easily dehydrate, didn't speak to each other once. Dad concentrated on getting Quavers into his 3 year old, like a council worker feeding Christmas trees into a chipper, while a baby grizzled away on Mum's lap. I know babies whinge, but it's the most irritating sound when you're not a parent yourself. I flung myself and Molly out of the train like a champagne cork when we finally got there.

Of Pickering I will say little, except that it is quite a challenge to while away 2 hours there in the rain. The churchyard was full of Suzys, which freaked me out, and the High Street full of snarling aggressive dogs which had a similar effect on poor Molly.

The return journey was 6-seater carriages, making choice of neighbour even more important. The people we ended up with sucked in their breath over their teeth when we asked if they were dog-friendly, before relenting when they saw how small she was. They were okay, but the man in particular was not backward in coming forwards with his opinion on dogs in general, and I was relieved that Molly fell daintily asleep on my lap for the entirety of the journey. She took revenge on behalf of canine-kind by stealthily farting throughout.