Ruth Kelly announces changes to the way that schools are run.
PARENTS’ groups will receive public money to run
their own schools under plans being drawn up by Ruth Kelly, the
Education Secretary.
Ms Kelly told local government leaders yesterday that she intended
to end their dominance of state education by inviting other groups to
open and run schools. A White Paper this autumn will include radical
proposals to replace failing schools with ones run by parents,
companies or charities.
…
Ms Kelly’s radical proposals indicate Tony
Blair’s determination to accelerate the pace of education reform in his
final term and could end 60 years of local government control of
education, which has seen the growth of town hall empires resistant to
reform.
The aim is to transfer power from bureaucrats to parents, to
force schools to respond more rapidly, and to overturn the Labour
orthodoxy that councils should control education.
The problem with this is that it is the usual half-baked wurble from the Nu Labour crowd. They’re not suggesting that the town hall empires be dismantled, just that they should now take a more advisory rather than managerial role. And they still get to allocate the money. Has anyone ever actaully managed to reform a bureaucracy that way?
You can see what they’re trying to do, get more parents and less bureaucrats involved. But they don’t quite have the courage of their convictions. We already know how to do this. It’s called education vouchers. Like the Swedish system. It’s all already there, been working for a decade and a half. Just copy that.
Ooops! Of course, we can’t do that, can we? The Tories muttered something about doing that.
Never mind that it’s the right thing to do we must not do what our political oppoenents half-heartedly suggested.
Bollocks. If it’s a good idea why not bloody do it?
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