Excellent piece by Simon Jenkins this morning on the many many wrong turnings of governments and politicians on education, localism, fairness etc over the years. There is now a real opportunity for the new Labour leader, if he or she is brave enough, to suggest something quite radical and rational on the schools front. It would not only be the right thing to do, it would be massively popular.
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A pretty good and well written potted history lesson and one that reminds me of the ever moving goal posts for LEA’s, students and teachers. Governments of every political colour have fiddled with the way we educate the next generation in their state schools. The same cannot be said of private schools where they are given significantly more autonomy to run things the way they want to – this (and a tenfold investment figure from rich or sponsored parents) consistently produces high academic standards and more parents lining up with their cheque books to get Tarquin in next term.
Government has a duty to provide education that is funded from our taxes, but the amount of interference must drive teachers to despair. Why is it that governments appear to have that “we know what’s best for you” when most of their members couldn’t organise a piss up in a brewery, unless of course they had shares in that brewery and there was a chance of a bit of a back hander. Please excuse my cynicism, but I’m still being threatened with the sack for not agreeing to my conditions of service being ripped up. But that’s another story. One you could cover in the Guardian Ms Benn. I’ll open a few doors for you there if you like 🙂