Department for David Beckham Studies
Education education education
A question: has any British government ever won, or lost, an election because of its education policy? We ask because there are signs this morning that this government's "policy" - more choice for parents in selecting schools, more independence for the best-performing schools, combined with a shedload of extra cash - is beginning to unravel.
The man who's let the cat out of the bag is Sir Bruce Liddington, the commissioner for schools, whose job is to deliver "parental choice" for parents when selecting school. This policy is a central tenet of the 2006 Education Act.
Problem is that choice, as any parent knows, is a mirage. A fantasy. A delicious fiction perpetrated by civil servants high on the happy pills. There are several reasons for this:
- In rural areas, there will never be enough schools to provide choice, because there aren't enough kids to fill 'em.
- In urban areas, the disparity between good schools and poor schools is so enormous that parents who wish to exercise their choice flock towards the good ones, which then become so oversubscribed that they are forced to adopt admissions procedures which make nuclear physics look like an accessible weekend pastime.
- And at the other end of the scale, there's all those millions of people who don't exercise their choice effectively - either because they can't, or they're too busy surviving, or they don't give a toss. Oh, and they don't vote either. Only the middle classes vote. The 2006 Act envisaged "choice advisers" to go around the estates of our cities and help people choose secondary schools for their children. This at a time when we're struggling to hire social workers. Smart.
As the old Irishman said when giving directions, you wouldn't start from here. Parental choice is a chimera, as Sir Bruce has acknowledged (he'd rather it was called "parental preference"). So, in pure political terms, what's to be done? Well, rather splendidly, we think the Conservatives might have the answer. Because this morning, when we clicked on the Opportunities Agenda link on their policy page, we got .... an empty page.
That's right, folks. The best thing to do is sit back and do nothing. It'll all work itself out. And all joking aside, they might have a point.
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