Confusion in the conservative camp?

Or is it just in the way it’s being presented by the timesonline?

Right at the moment if you go to their education section you will find that headline no 1 is

Tories want reading tests for 6-year-olds while headline no 3 is:

Tories want reading test for 7-year-olds

Aargh!

Look, Mr Cameron (I know you aren’t reading here, but you might actually stir me to write to you direct), stop it. More tests won’t help. You can’t expect all children to be reading at age 6 – there are many countries, far more successful than us educationally, who don’t even start teaching reading until age 7. Stop headline grabbing and have a look at the root cause of the problem which is overbureacracy, central control and this insistence that one size fits all. Synthetic phonics has proven to be very effective for lots of children, so you say, so it must be used on all children. No! Not all children are the same. Teachers know which children can read, you don’t need externally managed, and no doubt very stressful, tests for 7 year olds. What are you trying to achieve? Out labouring nulab?

Please please please, for the sake of our children and our sanity, could you base your educational policy on what educational experts tell you?

Oh and :

He also wants Ofsted, the government inspectorate, to check schools are using “tried and tested” teaching methods such as synthetic phonics, where children learn to connect sounds with letters or groups of letters.

There are tried and tested techniques that go back much further than synthetic phonics you know, you could consider some of those if you really wanted to shake up primary education.