Education in 2009 - regressing?

Michael Gove, in taking Ed Balls to task in the Daily Mail for pointless tinkering with education, reminds us of the true picture.

Among youngsters leaving junior school, 40% lack the ability to read and add up properly.

As a consequence, 205 of children later leave secondary school without a single proper pass at GCSE, despite as we have heard recently a GCSE paper in Science asking what an astronomer uses to study the heavens, a microscope, a telescope, an ex-ray tube or a synchroniser?


Of the 26,000 students who achieved three A grade 'A' levels last year, only 65 were from the poorest levels of society.

His evidence goes on. He doesn't include recent worrying statistics about our more able students at 'A' level.

So what does Mr. Balls do? He suggests twittering classes - see my last posting. He attacks church and Jewish schools, which are among our best schools in terms of results and discipline, - the two are surely related. He is slowly killing off the flagship Academies, one of the few NuLabour policies which offered hope of freedom and high standards in the public sector of education.

The progressives, as they like to call themselves, are really regressives. Children may have more to learn than in a less scientific age last century, but the education they receive is often inferior and certainly equips them less to enter the working world.

Cut out the ideological claptrap, cut out the administrative demands on schools and free education for its real task, - to prepare young people according to their ability for work in the real world. Or is this too much to ask?