Friday, February 29, 2008

Government looks to Saudi Arabia and Seychelles for school advice?

I do love it when MPs asks departments about what travel they've been up to because you always get something interesting in the response. For example, the Department for Children, Schools and Families, (formerly the Department for Education and Skills) has been on quite a few jollies over the past few years to look at how other countries do education.

Algeria, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia Herzegovina, Botswana, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, China, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kenya, Korean Republic, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Malta, Mauritius, Mexico, Morocco, Namibia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Russia, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, USA.

Nice travel if you can get it huh? Didn't cost too much either, only £1,436,939 apparently. I'm sure Saudi Arabia with its Madrassas, along with Pakistan must have a lot to offer us in schooling expertise. And I bet going to the Seychelles and Mauritius must have been enlightening for the wonks, what with the sand and sun.

Speaking of sand, its worth noting that the original list in Hansard had two of the greatest typos in the world in them - even better than some of mine in fact. First there was the "Koran Republic" and then just to make it all the more amusing they said they went to "Sandi Arabia". Oh yes they did!

6 comments:

anthonynorth said...

When will governments realise that different countries have different cultures, and what works in one will not necessarily work in others.

dizzy said...

But the Seychelles is lovely.

Anonymous said...

And of course, all that was learnt on those many trips has been so well deployed in our now glorious education, education, education system....

Perhaps not


Er...

It's a struggle, put private education is looking rather worth it.

Anonymous said...

Well, at leaast some of them may now have a slightly improved knowledge of geography.

Anonymous said...

Scotland not exotic enough obviously, and nothing that the Jocks do of any interest to Whitehall...

Mulligan said...

I have no problem with these twats going to any country in the world, my biggest issue is with them coming back.