school reforms

what to say about Blair's new education reforms? Well, I never thought that Labour would take us back to grant-maintained schools, put it that way. This government has a mania for heaping reform (by which I mean humiliation and massive organisational change) on its public sector. Given their obsession with offering 'choice', it's little wonder that they have opted for a reform which invites the spectre of selection back into comprehensive education; it's the same old story really - shoring up the middle classes and cutting off the working class kids, leaving them to drown in sink comprehensives while giving expanding 'parent-controlled' schools the opportunity to cherry-pick from their own. At the same time, it's a dazzling piece of centralisation, meaning that schools who want to depart from the curriculum will have to apply to the government rather than their local council. In the meantime, unelected businessmen and faith groups manouvre for influence. As for parents? We can't find enough school governers amongst parents, so the evidence that they want to run schools is far from established. What a mess.