All schoolchildren should have a right to green space to play in, with private schools made to share their extensive facilities, campaigners have said.
A Guardian investigation this week found that children at England’s top private schools have access to 10 times the amount of green space that the average state school pupil can use, while there are some state school pupils who have no access to playgrounds or playing fields at all.
Look look, Mummy! They’ve got something nice! Go and steal it for me!
Yeah but surely the schools sold off all of their playing fields yesrs ago ?
So now they are complaining that they don’t have any ?
There is no obligation to live in central London. If you want your kids to go to a school with a lot of land, either suck it up and pay the private school fees or — crazy thought — move somewhere that isn’t a city centre where land is cheaper and thus the schools have plenty of it. My old school in Devon still has all the land it did when I was there, and it was ample.
“The state can manage services better than the private sector, and protect our nation’s assets”
followed by
“Why don’t we have any school playing fields any more?”
These state school kids needing green space to play in presumably go home to parents every afternoon and spend the weekends at home with parents who can take them to public parks etc unlike kids in boarding schools who don’t get this option – but the guardian and its readers want that taken away – are they also proposing that kids in state schools don’t leave their homes over weekends etc too?
I went to a hustings last night. The Labour guy accused the Tories of “letting the market” decide for the last 14 years and it hasn’t worked.
Idiot. I had a good larf at that one.
I must admit, after seeing Yvette Cooper’s generosity in housing all those illegal immigrants I’m more sympathetic to the socialist attitude. Admittedly, some of my fellow far hard right cronies have rudely pointed out that we paid for the Balls’ property empire and according to the socialists, property is theft, but still, I’m a generous person. Then some hard hard far far right fascist naughtily pointed out that the number of illegals she housed was rather less than 1, so perhaps…
One of our local private schools saved 20 odd acres of green land in SE London from being developed on when they took it over and they make it frequently available and share their resources with state schools and mentor them. They pay for this by renting it out a bit on the side. Historically could be the first ever school with a science lab too.
Anyone one would think unionised state monopolies don’t like competition or innovation …
It’s not like they get to brainwash kids with no other experience and give them the vote is it …
My (state) Grammar School had extensive grounds. So They converted it into a Comprehensive, built a huge new block for the extra 1600 pupils and covered the cricket field in tarmac. A year or 2 ago I passed the old place on the District Line. The new block has gone. So has the cricket field. All covered by houses. The Grammar School building remains – as apartments. They really can be trusted to care for the assets they take over, can’t They?
They obviously don’t want us to win any more Battles of Waterloo, which was won on the playing fields of Eton, as any fule kno.
The whole thing with these schools, historically is that they were in cheap places in the middle of nowhere. That worked because you dropped them off and came back and got them months later. Of course, they’re going to have 10 times more land. There’s a lot of spare land around Marlborough, Westonbirt and Dauntsey.
And how the fuck is this going to work? Are the kids from Scumbag College, Stroud going to get bussed 12 miles to Westonbirt School just to stand in a field?
And really, how much green space does a kid actually need? I would say enough to put down some jumpers for goal posts and kick a ball around. Every town and city has this.
“A Guardian investigation”
Arf, arf.
I wonder if The Guardian has ever investigated anything where the results weren’t exactly the same as the opinions held before the investigation began.
Bosses are evil
Men are evil
immigration is great
multiculturalism has worked
etc etc
Yeah, the greenery and the swimming pool were in our minds when we moved the daughter from a state school to a private school. So she sobbed her farewells to them and adjusted to a tarmac netball court.
P.S. A photo of my old secondary shows a tree, a fucking tree, growing where our cricket wickets were. Have the bastards given up cricket and used a tree to make the decision irreversible? I wouldn’t put it past them.
My old comprehensive was in a pretty rural spot and the playing fields are still there as far as I’m aware. I acquired my life long loathing of all kinds of field sports there.
VAT on school fees tomorrow.
Next day, a land tax on the playing fields.
Then a ban on home schooling.
So unless you can afford a hundred grand a year for each child the state gets to indoctrinate every child. A socialist idea stolen from the Jesuits.
Philip – So unless you can afford a hundred grand a year for each child the state gets to indoctrinate every child.
I honestly don’t see how. Do some people not talk to their children or something?
Children have noticed the LGBTQ push in schools, and they don’t like it. The state is doing a great job at radicalising primary school kids.
It’s important to note the truth that no good deed goes unpunished – and also that human beings have an astonishing ability to draw the wrong lessons out of their own experiences.
My cousin married an unsuitable wanker who abandoned her with four young kids, three boys and a girl. She raised them as a single mother, and though she had some help here and there from our very large (Catholic) family it was hard for her.
One of her kids got to Oxford to read Classics on account of the private school my brother and I attended, and to which he lived near, providing him with free lessons in Latin and Greek for some years.
Far from being grateful, he has turned into is the bitterest, nastiest little socialist cunt I know.
One of the others – an intelligent bloke who could have done anything – insists on working a shit job in a factory, I am told, in honour of the proletariat.
The other brother is at least running his own business and seems reasonably sound.
The two leftists dote on their father, who has stolen oxygen every day of his worthless life.
My local comprehensive (formerly a fee-paying “grant-maintained” state school) used to have massive playing fields as recently as the 1980s. They’re now a housing estate.
There used to be another one nearby with several football pitches on the premises. The council knocked the school down and sold the ground to developers, retaining the pitches. (Which lay derelict for over a decade.) Then, about five years ago the council realised its mistake and built a new school. On the pitches.
Speaking of which, I live practially across the road from some council pitches, not formally connected with any school, but they could be used. Only a bunch of hippies occupied them about 15 years ago, declaring them a “meadow”, the council took no action, and they’re now basically (and rather amusingly) a privately-managed public park.
Still, I’m sure the independent schools would be willing to discuss terms. In my experience, they’re always up for hiring out the facilities when they aren’t in use. But then, that’s not how this nice, kind, caring socialism business works, is it?
The Guardian has mapped out the land owned and used by the top public schools in the country, an area never previously established. Using publicly available information, our team looked at the schools in the Heads’ Conference – the association of the heads of the UK’s top private fee-charging day and boarding schools – and used satellite tools to differentiate between school buildings and the green space around them.
Maybe they subcontracted the task out to one of those Bangladeshi students Tim was referring to in his last post yesterday?
The analysis established that the average student at one of these schools has access to approximately 322 sq metres of green space, while the average state school student has access to about 32 sq metres of green space, a ratio of 10:1.
Could be because of smaller class sizes as well as the land itself. But whether the statistic has any meaning is open to extreme question.
The Labour candidate for Hayes and Harlington, John McDonnell, who previously served as shadow chancellor, has called for the government to enact legislation to enshrine childhood green space as a right.
He said: “This is yet another example of the grotesque levels of inequality in our education system. Legislation is needed to introduce a right of access to these green spaces and sports facilities for local state school pupils.”
I think there’s almost no dissension from the conclusion that this ‘Conservative’ government is among the worst in human history and you managed to preside over the greatest electoral defeat to them in 80 years – I’d suggest you may want to retire gracefully rather than keep your nose in the trough
Clive Lewis, Labour candidate for Norwich South, said: “Any green prosperity plan by Labour has to include nature renewal and access to green space – it’s not just about growth, it’s about wellbeing and health and true prosperity across society. It can’t just be about access to a park or access to some green space while at school – schools should all have quality areas to play on site and on campus. Green renewal isn’t just about energy, it’s about people.”
One of the leading anti-semites and racists in the UK as your next supporter? Perhaps they could visit HMP Frankland and get Ian Huntley to endorse the measure?
Lewis Winks, from the Right to Roam campaign, said: “These findings are yet another example of the stark inequalities in access to green space across our society. It’s right that private schools make good on their charitable status by sharing these extensive green spaces with their peers. Wider reform is also needed to ensure all people are given better access to the outdoors”.
Let’s start with the ‘Right to Roam’ campaigners being forced to give up their addresses and gangs of people descending on their back gardens demanding the right to traipse over the flower beds. The right to private property is one of the great guarantors of human freedom. And with the threats to it from the WEF and other it is even more vital that it be maintained. Public parks exist in almost every part of the UK and left wing local authorities sold off large swathes of playing fields to developers to house immigrants. Perhaps the remedy lies closer to home than emanations of class envy.
Kate Ashbrook, the general secretary of the Open Spaces Society, said that access to nature should be part of the national curriculum and that this would help solve inequality.
She added: “We believe that all children should have easy and safe access to green space, for play, sport or quiet enjoyment. The government has pledged to ensure that there is green space or water within a 15-minute walk from home, but so far we’ve seen zilch.
“Every child should have the opportunity to spend regular and extended times in nature and to participate in outdoor activity; this should be part of the national curriculum.”
The ‘Open Spaces society’? How are these groups funded? It’s often asked – where’s the money going and I think we know, both from monitoring the likes of Murphy and others that taxpayers money is squandered every nanosecond on sockpuppets and third sector organizations pursuing either a Communist Chinese, a WEF or an ultra – green agenda. All need to be ‘nuked’ and funding reallocated to productive people.
With Murphy in tin foil hat mode there’s obviously no contributor extant more idiotic than him but this is a definite medal contender in terms of being utter bullshit
“VAT on school fees tomorrow.
Next day, a land tax on the playing fields.
Then a ban on home schooling.”
If only there were an economically literate, entrepreneurial type living in Portugal and prepared to start a school specifically for such schoolboy (or girl) refugees. I’ll bet that at the Portuguese cost of living a handy profit could be made.
Steve
My kids are avid watchers of Youtube and I couldn’t agree more – a video came up about a spat between a truly appalling Vegan activist (‘that Vegan Teacher’) and Gordon Ramsay. My kids came down strongly on the side of Gordon Ramsay and my son even requested I cook Burgers that evening as a result.
Much the same with Militant Trans campaigners. Obviously they have a pliant police force and judiciary making people ‘believe’ in all the nonsense about Gender and so on but I don’t think they have the stomach of the Iranian or North Korean regimes (for example) to use force to enforce their will so I predict a reaction against this indoctrination in fairly short order.
“Every child should have the opportunity to spend regular and extended times in nature and to participate in outdoor activity; this should be part of the national curriculum.”
I suspect most city kids would be traumatised by contact with raw nature.
One of her kids got to Oxford to read Classics…he has turned into is the bitterest, nastiest little socialist cunt I know.
The purpose of the afore said university. You’re surprised?
@BIS
I’m not particularly surprised, but it has fuck all to do with Oxford. My kids all went there and are not remotely left-leaning, and neither are most of their mates.
Open Spaces Society. Reg. Cha. No. 1144840.
Seems like a real charity, just for a change.
Steve, V P
All I said was that the government would indoctrinate the kids. I didn’t say the indoctrination would work.
They’ve been taught the “new maths” for ages but some of them still can’t put two and two together.
As for the demand that all children should have access to green space within a fifteen minute walk? Where is this not possible? Some part of Glasgow? An oil rig? The moon?
Wait! I’ve just remembered, isn’t the countryside racist? Don’t they have a coordinating officer for their fantasies?
Where were the campaigners and the Guardian when kids were being locked up in tiny flats, parks padlocked, swings and roundabouts taped up to stop them being used?
Kids are the excuse that allows the power hungry and nasty jealous middle class progressives to get their kicks.
On a Sunday the cagoule wearing set are seen boarding a train from Sheffield to Edale, whence they walk to Hathersage and get a later train back. I think it’s called having a club for rambling for people who live in the city.
The opportunities to do this exist. The people who do this already would love the train journey to be free courtesy of the State, but are intelligent enough to know that that would be a ‘For the Few, not the Many’ policy.
Philip
I do apologise – of course there are people who drink the kool aid. Hamas already are looking to try and evacuate battalions over to the U.K. if they can as they know that Mossad will get short shrift from our ‘politicians’ because they are afraid to use water cannon and baton rounds on the indoctrinated students that constitute Hamas ‘support’. So I agree the indoctrination is there – just when it comes to the Alphabet Soup it seems to be having a diminishing effect.
If we can revert back to pre 1940s on that front I think a few would be comfortable. The Alphabet soup crowd have long exhausted tolerance from many – as for Big Trans frankly they’re so obnoxious -and evil it’s about the only policy I have an inkling of sympathy for Hamas on. Lampposts might be too kind.
The great BiND has it – any of these fuckers that supported lockdown should be executed and they don’t really have a leg to stand on. It was the greatest crime in human history and anyone who supports it publicly need to be incarcerated for false imprisonment and treason – indefinitely or face execution.
The government has pledged to ensure that there is green space or water within a 15-minute walk from home, but so far we’ve seen zilch.
Forced mass relocation of city-centre kids into the countryside?
jgh says
The government has pledged to ensure that there is green space or water within a 15-minute walk from home, but so far we’ve seen zilch.
Forced mass relocation of city-centre kids into the countryside?
The Pol Pot solution. Why did they take so long to think it up?
VP
don’t worry, I have thick skin (and head). I’m just hoping that Egypt continues to bottle up these mad arabs in Gaza. Judea was renamed Palestine after a Jewish revolt, and everywhere they’ve gone since 1948 they’ve fucked up completely. I am in awe of the restraint that the IDF has shown.
BiND hits the nail.
These busybodies would be locking us up / organising compulsory calisthenics / throwing children into freezing lakes at the first sign of some imaginary health threat or benefit.
“ The government has pledged to ensure that there is green space or water within a 15-minute walk from home, but so far we’ve seen zilch.
Forced mass relocation of city-centre kids into the countryside?”
Reminds me of the old revolution joke:
“Comrades, when the revolution comes, you’ll green space within a 15-minute walk of where you live.”
“But I do not want to live near a green space” said a voice from the back.
“Comrades, when the revolution comes you’ll do as you’re feckin’ told.”
Steve: “I honestly don’t see how. Do some people not talk to their children or something?”
Some people don’t even know they have children. Or care.
“Where is this not possible? Some part of Glasgow?”
Acre for acre, Glasgow’s one of the greenest cities in Europe, largely due to the efforts of Victorian city fathers who thought about this at the right time, when the city was expanding. I’d be astonished if there was anyone more than 15 minutes’ walk from a green space.
@Van_Patten quotes “John McDonnell, who previously served as shadow chancellor, has called for the government to enact legislation to enshrine childhood green space as a right.”
This is just magical thinking – that merely by wanting something it can appear. If we want green space enough to pay its true cost, then we’ll have it and preserve it. If we don’t, we won’t.
@philip – “within a fifteen minute walk? Where is this not possible?”
That depends on how fast you walk, doesn’t it?
Anyway, with all this VAT on school fees and whatever more envy-driven policies that follow, all the private schools will be shut down and their lands sold off to build on, so there will be the usual leftist solution to inequality – destroy the valuable things so we all equally have none.
They do already have that right.
What they don’t have is the right to force someone else to provide it to them. They can go get it themselves.