Kelly complains over story on son

news.bbc.co.uk...

Surely The Daily Mirror has better news to report about then attacking a Government minister for sending her son (with learning difficulties) to a private school that will treat his difficulties?

I have to say I don't blame Ms Kelly for doing it at all. To not give your child the best chance in life they can get, especially if they have special needs/a disability because you're a Labour minister is wrong. She would fail her child as a parent if she didn't try her best to give her son as much help as possible for political reasons. Playing party politics with your family is on very shaky moral ground... I wonder how many of Ruth Kelly's critics would have done the same thing if they were in her position?

Even the Tories haven't pounced on her for it. David Cameron, who has a disabled son himself, was asked about it by the BBC and he said that she wasn't a hypocrite because the Labour Party doesn't want to abolish private education anyway.

And I am going to be real harsh.

2 things spring to mind:

1) If only we all have the money to choose the best school

2) What did Ruth Kelly think would happen when this come out. And could we all afford the hire legal advice to help with this.

Or has Ruth Kelly used Government lawyers to advise her.

The New Labour stratergy has made massive strides in the integration of children with special needs into mainstream schools. Obviously some children with exceptional needs require private education but a child with dyslexia certainly isn't one of them.

Surely she should know the large amounts of money this government has spent upon this process yet apparently her child is too good for it. She went against the policy her party advocates.

More on topic, I dont see why the papers shouldn't name her. She deserves what she gets.

Assuming the reported facts are the full facts (which, one ought to bear in mind is something one cannot just take for granted) then my own personal view is that RK was flat-out wrong to do this, more so for having recently been a SoS for Education.

But I wouldn't be so quick to rush to judgement on this, the British media have a skill at presenting mere spin and partial truth and expecting us, the gen public, to take definite stands on something we plainly do not know the whole story about.

I'd just like to know when sending ones' children to a non 100% state funded school became so serious (the implication seems to be it's now a resigning matter for any Labour MP or Minister?) and whether this new morality is set to be extended to all the MPs we have (particularly on the tory side of the house where it is so much more apparent)?

Whilst I think it's the wrong thing to do I don't think it bars a person from doing their job, even if it is SoS for Education.

......and given the new privacy legislation I just wonder how much of this Kelly story is relevant but not in the public domain?
Pause for thought, anyone?


[edit on 11-1-2007 by sminkeypinkey]

I think the main problem people have with Kelly isn't that she sent her kid to a private school, but that when she was Secretary of State for Education and Skills Labour policy ended up shutting down dozens of specialist state schools designed to deal with kids with special needs.

So basically, she shut down specialist schools, then when it turned out her kid had special needs, she had to send him to a private specialist school.

Lucky she's paid £135,000 a year or she'd have to send them to a normal school like the hundreds of parents with special needs kids have to do because there are so few state run special schools now.

Thats te exact thing that annoys me over the whole thing. Its not about private schools (even though I think they should be abolished), its about the fact that her government has a policy of educating children with special needs in mainstream schools, to give them statements and additional educational support, yet she goes outside the system for her own children!

The papers were reporting that her child has dyslexia which is one of the lesser special needs dealt with by local education authorities. Blind and deaf children are being educated in mainstream schools, as are children with diseases and syndromes most people havnt heard of, so why cant her child?

It's an easy thing to try and claim (that the Labour Gov cut specialist places whilst she was SoS) but the truth is little more complex than that.

It's true some places were cut, it's also true that many of those places supposedly 'cut' were in fact integrated back into 'normal' schools (under advice which indicated this was the best course for all concerned......and with increases in the schools budgets to compensate).

That doesn't mean that there is no place at all for separate specialist schools.

But you won't find too many arguing the finer points when it comes to a tabloid version of events.

As I said before, assuming all the facts are exactly as stated in the tabloids (a very very big 'if') then I'd say she was completely wrong.

But I can't pretend to know the full ins and outs of her case.

I am also reluctant to go raising the issue of her SoS 'record' because when all things are considered that is far from a simple and superficial matter either.

The facts are that this Gov's record on education (inc. Ruth Kelly's) is an excellent one when compared to any previous Gov (save perhaps the 1945 Labour Gov which set up the state-funded school/college/university system as we now know it in the first place).

[edit on 12-1-2007 by sminkeypinkey]