Another of Labour’s supposed successes has been stripped of its baubles, with yesterday’s damning investigation into the state of Britain’s primary schools, describing them as being in “severely utilitarian and philistine timesâ€. I suppose one should be glad that the charade has finally been completely exposed. But I just feel so angry that what has been clear to me for years – through a simple “investigation†that involved nothing more or less than watching my own children, and many of their friends, flounder in a system that taught them only that learning was unutterably tedious – has remained unacknowledged by the Government for so long.
The Government has been told a million times that “teaching to the test†was destructive, because it blighted the schooldays of children in order that they could jump through hoops to make their schools look good on paper. But minister after minister kept on retorting that the schools did look good on paper and so the cycle of denial continued. It was not until last year that the Government’s delusions about primary education began to crack, and it admitted what many parents knew already: that many of our children are not being properly taught to read and write. Until then, Labour’s honest, stupid, belief was that primary schools were fine.
via Deborah Orr: No excuses – only better schooling – Deborah Orr, Commentators – The Independent.
I’m not sure that I necessarily agree with her conclusions, but I still thought it was an interesting article. Makes you wonder at what point Government is finally going to realise that given it can’t manage its own setup for education, it has absolutely no right to come wading into ours.
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