David Cameron is to sweep away the last vestiges of the
old Local Education Authorities as he plans to turn every school into an ‘academy’.
Brilliant. Let’s change the name again; after all it works for tired old
companies doesn’t it? Doesn’t it? When they swapped GCEs for GCSEs it was
better all round because you got the extra C, see? Now if we can have the kids
gaining baccalaureates or, better yet, high school diplomas (there’s a slender
chance they’ll actually be able to spell that) it will look brilliant on the
several hundred identical CVs they will be mailing out to indifferent employees
who couldn’t give a shit.
Who wants the output of British schools these days? Yes,
they’re diverse; yes they have been culturally ‘enriched’; yes they have all
passed ‘History of the Holocaust’ and unwittingly converted to islam on a
school trip to a mosque; yes they have a list of ‘achievements’ as long as your
arm... But, seriously, have they got a clue? For too many years we have allowed
academic theory to get in the way of education, churning out identikit model
citizens with cultural awareness, gender sensitivity and a total blindness to
arse/elbow differentials.
The left, of course, in the form of the NUT and other
usual suspects are claiming that there is no evidence this will improve anything,
oblivious to the reality that fifty years of progressive education has hardly proved
the theorists fit to fiddle with anything, let alone kids. I choose my words
carefully, for piss-poor education is tantamount to child abuse. Spare the rod,
they used to say, and spoil the child.
Those employers I mentioned? All they want is work-ready
youngsters with solid basic skills and the ability to learn without being
coddled. Maybe – if the NUT’s conspiracy about preparation for privatisation
holds true – some of those companies could end up running their own academies. Some
already do, at graduate level, but imagine what might be achieved if, instead
of tinkering around the edges with ephemeral, government-term headline ‘fixes’,
companies could inject education with enthusiasm and vitality and – I hardly
dare say this – the prospect of real jobs at the end of school?
But of course it won’t work like that because mass education
belongs to the statists and the state will simply be unable to prevent itself
from interfering. And they’ll start measuring and testing and re-testing and altering;
experimenting with real live subjects all over again, the only constant being change.
And once again the smart parents will see what is happening and use
whatever influence they can bring to bear to keep their own kids from becoming
just another brick in the walls of the national house that Jack built.
Another wall to tear down?
So, whatever Cameron proposes, the course of state
education seems determined to steer forever towards a dodgy, dumbed-down horizon.
Those with private means will turn to genuinely independent, private schools
thus bringing about the NUT’s feared privatisation prophecy. Every time a government
intervenes in education (anything, for that matter) it seems to only get
worse; the three Rs now stand for Reading, Rights and Rioting. Have they
learned nothing?
